Planets, Not Signs, in Enneastrology

First, a bit of business: If you don't see an Enneagram Planet banner at the top of this page, please hit the "refresh" or "reload" button for the page on your web browser bar. For some mysterious reason my banner disappeared recently and I needed to replace it.

My topic today is a reminder that in Enneastrology, my focus is on the symbolism of the planets rather than the signs such as Aries, Taurus and the rest. Often, when people begin to wonder if there might be a connection between their astrological birth sign and their Enneagram type, they begin by asking others "what's your sign and where are you on the Enneagram?" and they try to see if natural groupings occur. Usually, the results seem pretty random to me. This approach fails for the same reason "Sun Sign astrology" fails to shed much light on personality: There is simply not enough information to be meaningful.

Trying to assess personality type based on Sun sign alone is like trying to bake a cake knowing that the main ingredient is flour, while remaining ignorant of the other ingredients. Two cakes may consist mostly of flour, yes, but one is chocolate and the other is vanilla with strawberries. In some fundamental way, they do not resemble one another, and a non-baker could conclude "cake baking is nonsense, there is no such thing as cake recipes, it is just a random accident that one is chocolate and another is vanilla!"

We who know the "recipe" know that one or more key ingredients can have a huge impact on the final product. When it comes to Enneastrology, I have discovered that one "out of balance" element (the Enneagram Planet) will result in one of the nine Enneagram Personality types. For example, an "overdose" of Pluto in combination with the Sun, along with "not enough Saturn", will result in Enneagram Type Eight personality. An overdose of Neptune/Sun could result in Type Three. Each Enneagram type has its own recipe of special ingredient combinations. The ingredients to watch are the placements of the planets in the astrological chart.

Got questions? Please put them in the comment section and I will try to answer them.

Thanks!
Andrea Winchester
originator of Enneastrology