Hades Moon Genetics

Photo by Bruce Thomson (cc)

I’ve had a most interesting couple of days after my new copy of Judy Hall’s The Hades Moon arrived in the post last week. I ordered it along with a big list of other books, including a lot of Martin Schulman stuff I’ll get to in more detail later.

After plowing through this book in two days, and scribbling quite a bit in the margins already, I worked up the motivation to look at my parents’ natal charts for the first time. I hadn’t been putting it off consciously, but I’ve been studying astrology for more than ten years so I think there has been an element of… self-preservation involved. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to do anything constructive with them before this anyway. I’ve compared my chart with my sister’s for a while, but she’s the only family member I’ve looked at before today.

The Hades Moon, as Judy describes it, is a natal moon with an aspect to Pluto, or a Scorpio moon. She doesn’t describe differences between the aspects in detail, which was really my only problem with the book. However, she did trace family chart patterns in her case studies, which I found really interesting, and one has a chart extremely similar to mine.

So, on with the genetics!

My dear mother has her moon conjunct Saturn and Black Moon Lilith in Scorpio… this actually doesn’t surprise me much, although I’m finding it more compelling at the moment than I’m comfortable with. In a way this gives me more respect for her now- she’s always seemed something of a wilting, victim type to me so I’m a bit relieved that I’m just reading her wrong and she has some kind of shadow thing going on. Maybe all hope for her is not lost.

(I don’t have a birth time yet so this is a sunrise chart)

I found this jarring enough to pick up my phone and call her for my grandmother’s birth data, and see if she could round up any other family birthdates for me. I don’t have a birth time for my grandmother either, so another sunrise chart:

All kinds of stuff going on here… looks like that Scorpio moon conjunct Saturn thing is hereditary. If she was born late that night, the moon would move into early Sagittarius but there’s a lot going on here regardless. A fitting chart for a matriarch, and interesting because my due date was her birthday (I arrived four days late) and my chart is heavily aspected as well. Little sister escaped the Hades Moon but we share the same sun and rising sign. I don’t have a grand cross, but my sister does… I got the trines.

I’ll have to start poking into this more in the next couple weeks.

Related posts:

1. Moon Transit Adventures
2. Ask the Astrologer #8 – Eclipses
3. Transiting Moon Opposite Chiron