Starsky - SEXTROLOGY - The Astrology of Sex and of the Sexes

[SEXTROLOGY]

2012 Wheel Atelier Inc.

All rights reserved.

CAUTION: "SEXTROLOGY" is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), the Berne Convention, the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention as well as all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including excerpting, professional/amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, CD-I, information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to:

William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC
1325 Avenue of the Americas New York,
New York 10019
Attn: Britton Schey

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acknowledgments

We are grateful to family and friends, associates and even acquaintances who have contributed to the creation of Sextrology, sometimes unwittingly, over the past several years. Gratitude goes to Rob Weisbach, Elaine Markson, Tracy Fisher, Britton Schey, Christy Fletcher, Emma Parry, Libby Jordan, Joe Tessitore, Mary Ellen O'Neill, Laura Dozier, and all the supportive people at HarperCollins Publishers.

We extend our deep appreciation to Julie Gilhart, Simon Doonan, Debi Greenberg, Sarah and Colette Lerfel, Linlee Allen, Nadege Mezou, Guillaume Salmon, Alannah Weston, Sarah O'Keefe, Katharina Sand, Marianne Eschbach, Sithara Atasoy, Laurence Antiglio, Vanessa von Bismarck, Maura Egan, Annabel Tollman, Joanne Good, Aatish Tasseer, Matt Tyrnauer, Jessie Brinton, Hannah Sim, Jane Lomas, Brendan Courtney, Tom Ackerman, Pauline Fisher, Robert Duffy and everyone at Marc Jacobs, Guy Trebay, Sally Singer and Sebastian Kaufmann.

Our warmest thanks go to Nancy Corbett and Brian Doben, John Derian, Jack Pierson, Justin Bond, Griet Vandekerckhove, John Bartlett, Laurie Pike, Melissa Crowe, Alicia Trani, Michael Slimmer, Corvette and Josh at Mudhoney, Stephen DiCiccio, Stephen Kijak, Craig Chester, Christina Ferrari, Susanne Tide, Jackie and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Andrea Houlton and Dom Smets, Bndicte and Martin Newland, and especially Pascale Smets and Matthew Pritchett. Lastly, we wish to thank William Leone and Lynne Corbett, without whose imaginings Sextrology would never have been born.

contents

introduction

For years, we've contended that men and women of the same astrological sign are actually different signs. Most astrology books lump males and females together, while those that do attempt to treat the sexes separately have never fully explored the distinctions between the so-called sex signs or even so much as ventured to explain why it is they are, as is so often the case, markedly unlike each other. We maintain that astrology must factor in the great divide between the sexes, that the energies that comprise the signs filter through the opposite sexes as through prisms, separate and unique from one another.

We believe that the zodiac has been ignored as a real meditative tool for understanding human nature. Even astrologers themselves have had a hand in discrediting its validity, making such a stink about sun-sign astrology, especially horoscopes, being charlatanism while prescribing individual birth-charting. In so doing, the baby went out with the bathwater. Of course, drafting a person's birth chart will outline the potentialities specific to that individual's life. But that shouldn't be used as an argument against a more general sun-sign astrology. Indeed, there is much more to be gained via its exploration than most people realize. Particularly when it comes to sex.

To be fair, we can't completely blame the skeptics. Especially on the subject of sex and astrology, there is nothing cringier than the type of material lining the bookselves on the topic. It's hardly a big epiphany to say, for instance, that Taurus "gal" likes candlelit bubble baths and pink champagne as a prelude to getting laid. We believe that the subject of sex and astrology is vastly underexplored, and it's our aim in writing this book to show how rich the subject is with potential revelation.

Let's face it, we all like to read about ourselves. Yet, the biggest argument against astrology remains: The whole of the human race can't possibly be divided into twelve (or in this case, twenty-four) categories. Well, guess again: Just because most sun-sign astrology has been so general and gotten such a bad rap doesn't mean it isn't valid. And, for our money, it is most intriguing when investigated via the sexual natures of the signs. In reading Sextrology, we believe people will be pleasantly surprised, and in a certain way excited, to discover that men or women of a particular sex sign share so much more than a string of hackneyed adjectives. They fall under the same personality archetype, the gist of which, as we'll readily explain, you needn't be a Jungian psychologist to comprehend. But let's back up.

The zodiac itself is a dialogue, and often a bit of a battle, between the sexes. And Sextrology is an exploration of the astrological signs from the perspective of gender, sexual identity, and sexual behavior. The zodiacal wheel is first and foremost divided along gender lines into six masculine (fire, air) and six feminine (earth, water) signs. This reflects universal balance, existence being one big system of yin and yang. The basic premise of Sextrology is that there are twenty-four signs, not just twelve, each sign being divided again into gender polarities.

Men and women of the same sign can actually be very different from one another as they manifest the dynamic of their sign's energy in opposite fashions. Specifically, if a person is aligned with the gender polarity of his or her sign-men in masculine signs, women in feminine signshe or she embodies the elemental-quality of the sign; whereas men in feminine signs and women in masculine signs will enact this dynamic. First, when we say elemental-quality, we refer to each sign's particular blend of element (fire, earth, air, water) and quality (cardinal, fixed, mutable)each sign is a unique amalgam of these two zodiacal components that are key to understanding individual characterwhich, when paired, one category with the other, four times three, gives us the twelve combinations of the traditional signs.

For example, the masculine sign of Aries is the one and only cardinal-fire sign; in simple terms, the cardinal quality suggests initiative and the fire element represents life-spirit. Aries man, aligned with the gender polarity of his sign, thus embodies this dynamic: He is like a spark, or an explosive fireball. Aries woman on the other hand is a rather cool character who is nonetheless the zodiac's little fire-starter, an instigator, inciting others to explosive action while she remains unruffled. To look at Aries man and Aries woman one would say they couldn't be more different in temperament, because, though they are playing with the same astrological recipe as dictated by their sign, they manifest these specific ingredients in an often diametrically opposed manner. This is where personality archetype comes into play.

In the pages that follow, the zodiac will be illustrated as a mandala of human existence and, specifically, human sexuality. Sex, whether referring to gender or "getting some," is the primal key to life. We are our sexual natures. And so, in exploring the various personalities of the twenty-four astrological gender-signs, it's not only more fun to focus on the sexuality of these characters, it's essential to do so. To appeal to a primarily occidental readership, archetypes for each sign have been drawn from classical models-the pantheon of various gods and goddessesas well as their biblical Judeo-Christian equivalents and the echoings of these characterizations throughout ancient and modern literature.