Theresa Cheung - The Element Encyclopedia of Birthdays

This enormous project would not have been completed without the help of some unique and amazing people. Thank you to Katy Carrington for her extraordinary vision, insight, and encouragement; to Mark Bolland for his excellent editing and valued input; to Andy Paciorek for the wonderful illustrations; to Colin Hall for the fantastic page design; to Graham Holmes for his accomplished typesetting; and to Simon Gerratt for his skill, patience, and brilliance in making sure everything came together in one piece and on time. Last, but by no means least, special thanks to Ray, Robert, and Ruth for the love, inspiration, and support they give me every single day of each and every year.

The Element Encyclopedia of Birthdays is a complete guide to personality and destiny for people born on each of the 366 days of the year. Simply by knowing the date of your birth you can gain insightful and astonishingly accurate luck-making information about yourselfyour strengths, weaknesses, health, relationships, destiny, career, and life goalsas well as your friends, family, lovers, colleagues, and even people you have just met.

The power of your birthday is determined not just by your ruling planet but by a number of other invisible influences and patterns in place the day you were born. This book reaches far beyond basic Sun sign horoscopes, looking at these influences and patterns through the lens of psychological astrology, numerology, Tarot, and color theory or chromatherapy

To help you understand how your birthday profile has been compiled youll find the basic principles of these ancient arts and how they have put their stamp on you explained below; but if you want to dive straight into a specific birth date, yours or one of somebody you know, you can always return here another time. However you decide to read this book, never forget that every person is born unique and full of potential.

What exactly is a birthday profile? In short, its the rebirth of four ancient artsastrology, numerology, Tarot, and color theory or chromatherapyjoined together by a modern psychological interpretation. This combination results in a blend of cosmic and earthly influences that can significantly affect your personality and destiny, providing you with invaluable insight into yourself as well as the lives, feelings, hopes, and fears of family, friends and colleagues.

Astrology sees humankind as being influenced not only by hereditary factors and the environment, but also by the state of our solar system at the moment of birth. The Sun, Moon and planets are regarded as basic life-forces, the tools we live by as well as the basis of our very substance. These planetary forces take on different forms, depending on their zodiacal position and on the way they relate to one another.

Astrology is one of the most ancient of the surviving occult sciences, and evidence of highly sophisticated systems in Babylonian, Egyptian and Aztec cultures has survived. For centuries in the West, astrology was a revered method of divination (fortune telling) supported by royal courts. With the development of science in the seventeenth century, astrology was relegated to the realm of superstition, but it never fell completely out of favor and today it is hugely popular, followed by people from all walks of life.

Popular astrology is concerned with the reading of a horoscope, a chart of the positions of the planets, Sun, Moon, and stars at the moment of ones birth and interpreting the influence of the planets on human affairs. The Sun travels through the twelve signs of the zodiac through the course of the year and so when someone is said to have been born under Pisces, they were born when the Sun was passing through the portion of the zodiac named after the constellation of Pisces.

Each of the 12 signs has its own personality traits (see pages x-xi), with the daily position of the planets, and the element associated with the planetfire, water, earth, and airalso affecting each Sun sign. In addition, for serious astrologers, as the Sun passes through the zodiac sign over the course of a month, it passes through three decanates, making each decanate approximately ten days long. Each of the decanates adds its own associated planet and sign influences to the basic influences of the Sun sign. Therefore by considering the decanate as well as the Sun sign, the reading for an individuals birthday is fine-tuned. For example, an Aries born sometime in the third decanate (April 10 to 21) will also be under the influence of the third decanate sign of Sagittarius and the planet associated with Sagittarius, which is Jupiter. The ancient Egyptians considered the decanates as important as the Sun signs themselves.

Progressions are another widely used technique in the system of prediction. With this method the Sun takes about thirty years to journey (or progress) through each sign of the zodiac and in a persons lifetime it will typically progress through three to four zodiac signs, depending on the lifespan of the individual and their date of birth. Each time the Sun progresses from one sign to another, this indicates a significant birthday or time in your life when there is likely to be a dramatic change in either your circumstances or outlook. For example, the progressed Sun of a Scorpio born on November 9 will move into Sagittarius at the age of thirteen, into Capricorn at the age of forty-three and then Aquarius at the age of seventy-three.

Fixed stars associated with a particular day of the year also exert additional influences, but if decanates and progressions sound confusing, dont worry; to use this book you dont need to do any math or look anything up in complicated tables as the calculations and relevant interpretations have been taken into account when each birthday profile was compiled. All you need to do is read and enjoy.

Skeptics argue that astrologys suggested link between planetary position and human destiny is unproven, but recent scientific research about the seasons and even the month in which a person is born appears to suggest otherwise.

In the early 1970s, Professor Alan Smithers of Manchester University compiled data from the British population census showing clearly that architects tended to be born in the spring, secretaries in the summer, miners in the fall and electricians in the winter. He also asked members of the British Astrological Association (BAA) to indicate which signs were associated with the professions of nurse and labor union official. Without knowing what the BAA predicted, Smithers conducted a large survey of nurses and labor officials and discovered that, just as the astrologers had indicated, there was a statistical bias toward nurses being born under the signs of Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio and Pisces, and labor union officials being born under one or other of the other signs.

Other research has focused on the influence of one star in particular, the Sun. This is because a type of radiation emitted by the Sun, ultraviolet (UVR), is believed to cause genetic changes in the developing baby that may have a shaping effect on their life and personality. This could explain why many of us believe that common characteristics and fates are shared by those born at the same time of the year. For example, researchers at the University of Rostock in Germany have analyzed data to see if the month in which you are born affects how long you will live. It does. Their research found that your chances of living beyond 100 were up to 16 percent higher than average if you were born in December, but if you were born in June, your chances were 23 per cent lower. Another study carried out by researchers at the University of Chicago and published in the