Vocation

By their forties, people have the salary, the position and the security, yet often feel empty inside, with a sense that there is something they ought to be doing and have not yet done. The Australian astrologer Brian Clark often meets such people in his consulting room, and his Vocation: The Astrology of Career, Creativity and Calling, published in 2016, sets out from this very question. Most of those who come to him assume that once they find the right job, the missing piece inside will be filled. Clark's view is that a better job certainly helps, but what matters is for work to become meaningful again.

The Vocation of the title comes from the Latin vocare, to call, whose root voca means voice. Clark uses the word in just this original sense. What he means by vocation is the voice inside that calls a person to do something. It appears through images, feelings, fantasies and dreams, so it is often hard to put into words, yet it is felt deeply. In other words, this book asks what you are being called to do. A job or a title is one outlet for the call; a hobby, volunteer work or further study can be another. That is why Clark says that beneath the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” lies the question “Who are you?” The book first covers what each of the basic elements of the chart means for vocation, then spends three chapters on the houses directly concerned with work, the second, sixth and tenth, then discusses when a person is most likely to change direction, and closes with two lives.

Clark was often asked this question himself as a child. He spent his early years living with his father on an army base, surrounded by fences and gates. At the gate, a man would come out of a little hut and raise the boom so that he and his father could pass. So when grown-ups asked him what he wanted to be, he answered with great confidence: “A gate-lifter.” Later he became an astrologer, and looking back, what he does is exactly Mercury's kind of work: guiding people, and raising a few gates for them when those who come to him reach the transitions in their lives.

In class he also asks students to recall what they wanted to be as children and to compare it with their charts. One woman, for instance, wanted to be an explorer as a child. Her Sun and Mars are conjunct beside the Midheaven on the ninth-house side, and Uranus is near her Ascendant; she later became a sales representative, and her work took her to many places. One man has a stellium in Gemini and Jupiter conjunct the Midheaven; as a child he wanted to be a teacher, and he later wrote a very popular blog. Neither of them literally became an explorer or a teacher, yet the childhood image stayed in their work all along. Clark says one of the greatest obstacles to understanding vocation is literality: taking an inner image for a particular trade, at which point the exploration stops.

Astrology has always had its own methods for vocation. In the second century, Ptolemy held that the significator of vocation is the strongest among the ruler of the tenth house, the planets in the tenth house and the planets rising before the Sun. Later, William Lilly looked at the sign on the tenth house cusp, its ruler, and the house the ruler occupies. In the twentieth century astrologers came to look at the three earth houses, the second, sixth and tenth, together, and to take the Sun, Moon, Ascendant and Midheaven as the basis of vocational analysis. Clark's book still revolves around these.

What he changes is the way of reading. Earlier astrological literature often derived a handful of career options from the chart; Clark says the vocational path in a chart is neither straight nor literal, and does not stop at any one trade. He calls the chart a map of raw material, to be developed in the laboratory of life. A fulfilling vocation is neither bestowed on you nor something anyone can withhold; it is made through a person's focus, effort, passion and awareness. His method has two steps, first wide and then narrow. First he looks at the person's character, resources, talents and ambitions, while listening for what is troubling them inside; then he looks at concrete matters such as the workplace, pay, colleagues and superiors. He says the techniques of astrology are for opening up the analysis, not for boxing people in. So when he reads a placement, he reads the need behind it first, and is in no hurry to name a career.

This way of reading follows the psychology of Carl Jung and James Hillman. Jung said that true personality is always a vocation, and that following it takes the courage to leave the herd, that is, the well-worn paths approved by elders and parents. Hillman points to the other side: if a person believes they have been chosen, born to do something special, the idea easily becomes inflated. Following Hillman's caution, Clark writes:

Vocation is not about being someone, but becoming who we are.

So he reads the planets through Jung's archetypes. A planet stands for an urge everyone has, and a particular trade is only one form that urge finds in the world. On the lunar nodes, he uses Dane Rudhyar's modern reading, which links the nodal axis to a person's vocational path.

Even when the question is the same, Clark has very different things to discuss with a teenager and with someone already retired, with a person going through the first Saturn return and with one going through the second; education, family and work history all have to be considered together. His consultations have also become more and more like conversations. Those who come to him mostly do so because their work feels meaningless, because they are in conflict with colleagues, or because they feel undervalued in their field. He has found that exploring the complicated, ambiguous and uncertain places together with them helps people see themselves more clearly than handing them an answer, so he deliberately sets aside his own need to get it right.

Take Cate. She wanted to add a glass atrium to her house, and the plan had been stalled for a long time. Her fifth house cusp is in Cancer, her natal Jupiter is in Cancer in the fifth house, and at that time transiting Jupiter was returning to this position, beginning its fifth cycle. Clark asked her, like a child, to pretend the project was just starting and she was about to go and gather materials, and asked what her first step would be. Her first step was to go to old houses being demolished and collect old glass windows of different colours. By their next meeting, she had already started. From this Clark says:

We often mistake being stuck, uninspired or self-deprecating as something being wrong, whereas it is an intricate and early part of the creative process.

The fifth house is about play, so someone who is stuck can treat the task at hand as a game rather than a performance; once a person relaxes, the imagination comes back.

Some people have a natural charisma and can brighten a room just by walking into it, yet at work they are always asked to be diligent and disciplined, and they cannot help wondering whether they are in the wrong line. Clark explains this through the rising sign. The Ascendant is by nature at odds with the elements of the second, sixth and tenth houses, so personality and vocation always have to be brought into accord; he says one of a person's tasks is to let personality adapt to vocation. Someone with Leo rising going to a job interview, for instance, where the other side cares more about diligence and discipline, needs to leave the charisma in the waiting room before walking into the work.

Others feel they are too old and that it is too late for what they want to do. Mary, a long-standing client of Clark's, had run a bed-and-breakfast and worked in gardening and as a secretary; later, working as an assistant at a primary school, she was inspired, and at forty-seven applied to university to study early childhood education. She had always felt she was uneducated and not clever, yet from the first assignment she often received top marks, and on graduating she was hired by the school where she had done her practical training. That year transiting Neptune had just crossed her Midheaven for the first time. Clark uses her to show that a vocational calling can come at any time.

There is also the sense of time. Jupiter takes about twelve years to go round, and in consultation Clark pays particular attention to the year of a client's Jupiter return, because it is a good year to look back at what the past twelve years have achieved and then to imagine the next twelve. If you are around thirty-five or forty-seven, just the age of a Jupiter return, your hesitation over whether to change jobs can be thought about within a twelve-year cycle.

The book opens with a preface and an introduction on the word vocation and the meaning of calling, already discussed above. At the back are two appendices: one is a list of careers associated with the planets and signs, which Clark says are only general associations and invites readers to add their own; the other gives the birth data for the example charts in the book.

Chapter 1: A Fulfilling Career: An Overview of the Astrology of Vocation

The first chapter is an overview of the whole book, setting out where vocational astrology looks, and also discussing how the call can arrive at different ages. One example is Susan Boyle. In 2007 her mother died, and she turned back to music for comfort. The following year she entered the television talent show Britain's Got Talent, which her mother had always encouraged her to try, and at forty-eight stood on the stage and sang “I Dreamed a Dream”, from then on making singing her line of work. Clark compares this with her chart: in those years transiting Chiron was approaching her Midheaven, and transiting Jupiter had also crossed the Midheaven before the show aired. From that moment, he writes, she voiced her calling.

Chapter 2: Archetypes and Vocation: Planets along the Career Path

The ancients linked gods with occupations: Mercury, for example, with merchants and messengers, the Moon with nursing and food. Clark sees each planet as an archetype, and a particular trade as the shape that archetype takes in the world. He places more weight on the need behind the planet, because people today often have several careers in a lifetime, many of which do not yet exist. He gives the example of a client working in film and television production, with Neptune conjunct the Midheaven and square the Sun. The field itself suits Neptune's imagination and image-making well; what the client was unhappy about was that, after corporatization, creativity and meaning had gone out of the industry. So Clark says the difficulty lay in the atmosphere of the work, while the trade itself suited his nature; it was a prompt to take a fresh look at the job he had now.

Chapter 3: Elements of Vocation: Signs and Signals

The same planet in different signs brings out its urge in different forms. Clark takes the Moon as an example. The Moon stands for the need to care for others. In Libra it suits one-to-one counselling and care, because Libra is about the relationship between two people. In Scorpio it suits accompanying people through crisis, or in-depth care work. In Cancer it is best suited to looking after children, or caring for people in a domestic setting. This way of reading can be applied to any planet that carries weight for vocation.

Chapter 4: Identity, Fulfilment, Individuality and Fortune: The Sun, Moon and Ascendant

Ancient astrologers called the Sun, Moon and Ascendant the places of life, the basic structure for considering a life's purpose. Clark pairs each Sun sign with a virtue, such as responsibility for Capricorn and compassion for Pisces; virtue is the garment of character. People with the Sun in Capricorn often meet a string of incompetent bosses and frequently understand the job better than their superiors, so the challenge is to become their own boss and write the script of their own life, which takes some time to understand. The Part of Fortune is formed from the Sun, Moon and Ascendant, and Clark makes a point of saying that fortune is not only about money but also about opportunity.

Chapter 5: Destiny: The Lunar Nodes

Clark suggests seeing the North Node as an invitation and the South Node as a gift. The South Node is the familiar, secure end, where people instinctively return; it steadies a person, but can also easily keep them in a comfortable place. What the North Node asks to develop does not come naturally; it has first to be recognized, and then can only grow through conscious effort, teachers and outside help, so after some insight on the North Node side, people often slide back into the familiarity of the South Node. The sign describes the nature the person feels in themselves, the house describes the environment, and only together do they give a clear picture. Someone with the North Node in the tenth house, for example, is more at ease at home and in private life, yet has to look for meaning beyond the front door.

Chapter 6: Direction: The Angles of the Horoscope

Vocation and direction are intertwined, and Clark sees the four angles, the Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven and IC, as signposts on life's road. The Ascendant–Descendant axis is about personality and relationships with others; the Midheaven–IC axis is about the worldview inherited from the family and the expectations of society. The two axes are perpendicular, so what is inherited does not necessarily fit a person's personality. People with Taurus rising, for instance, like to go step by step, slowly, yet their work often demands that they handle many things at once, like someone used to a slow waltz being asked to dance a quick step. Planets near the four angles also carry weight. With Saturn conjunct the Midheaven, for example, the career is built from the foundations up, small at first and larger later, and he cautions such people against driving themselves hard out of a feeling that they are not good enough.

Chapter 7: Creativity and Talent: The Houses of Life and the Houses of Substance

Many clients assume that only writers, painters and actors count as creative. Clark says creativity is a process; science, engineering, business, human resources, even manual work can all be creative. Many people feel that only a new job could bring meaning, but what he often sees is that by working through the stages and troubles of the job already in hand, a person becomes creative. He looks at the first, fifth and ninth houses of the chart, which are about birth, play and the search for meaning, and each is followed by a house of substance: the second, sixth and tenth. In the dictionary, to create is to bring something into existence, so creativity is not only imagination and inspiration but also has to take material form; that the houses of substance follow the creative houses in the chart expresses just this.

Chapter 8: Vocational Values: The Rewards of the Second House

The second house governs money and values. In ancient times the English word talent was a weight of gold, so in the second house talent and reward have always been linked. Clark believes money itself is not the problem; the difficulty lies in how we treat it. The element of the second house cusp is also at odds with the Ascendant, and the personality sometimes covers up the real talent. He gives two clients as examples. A man with Aries rising, always restless and impulsive, became more prosperous once he settled into a steady job. A woman with Capricorn rising, by lowering her guard, controlling less, daring to take risks, thinking further ahead and being less conventional, became more appreciated at work. Clark says this is the secret of the second house cusp: honour its nature, and it will be abundant.

Chapter 9: Making a Living: The Sixth House Lifestyle

The sixth house is everyday work. Daily routine gives life order; without it, chaos appears as stress and a feeling of aimlessness. Clark is also frank about the pitfalls of this house: duty can take the place of satisfaction, and the pursuit of perfection can become compulsion, which may be why traditional astrology regarded the sixth house as malefic. Reading the sixth house is a way to recognize which daily arrangements clash with your temperament and put you under strain, which is why he says:

We do not always need to change our job to be content; perhaps we need to change our attitude and approach to it instead.

So when you want to quit, first find the few arrangements that wear you down each day, change what can be changed, and then decide whether to leave.

Chapter 10: Profession: The Career Path and the Tenth House

Of the three vocational houses, only the tenth is above the horizon, and only it is angular, so it is the most public and the most visible. Clark often imagines the tenth house cusp as the spire of a church, temple or pagoda, drawing the eye upward. The expectations of the Midheaven are not entirely one's own; they include those of parents and grandparents. The Midheaven is by nature at odds with the Ascendant: the Ascendant is the way a person reaches out to life, the Midheaven their role before the public, so what comes easily in private may not suit a public setting. Planets in the tenth house can also rewrite the path. For someone with Uranus in the tenth, for example, their career may not yet have existed when they were born.

Chapter 11: Vocational Transitions: Planetary Cycles and Transits

For when a person is likely to change jobs, Clark uses both transits and the cycles in which planets return to their natal positions. Jupiter goes round in about twelve years, and each cycle is like a vocational assignment. Saturn goes round in about twenty-nine and a half years, and its three cycles are the training ground, applying oneself in the world, and continuing to contribute without being defined by a career. He uses the Australian tennis player Lleyton Hewitt to show how these cycles play out in one life. At fifteen Hewitt became the youngest player at the Australian Open, turned professional at seventeen, and later became the youngest man to reach world number one. In his last six months as world number one, transiting Jupiter made three conjunctions to his North Node and Midheaven. His eighteen or nineteen years in professional tennis, from fifteen to thirty-four, are exactly one lunar nodal cycle. As Jupiter in its third cycle crossed the Midheaven into the tenth house, he announced his retirement. Here Clark writes that a new career is waiting for him. At the end of the chapter he considers entering and leaving the working world together:

We may retire from our work, our careers and our professions; however, we never retire from our vocation

Because the calling is part of who a person is, after retirement it finds another way to relate to work.

Chapter 12: Life Work: Patterns in the Opus

The last chapter closes with two lives. Clark says he wrote these two cases to show one thing only: everyone has a vocational calling inside, and following its winding path, without trying to control it, leads to places one could never have imagined. The American writer Thomas Moore, at twelve, saw a brochure saying he could become a monk and live in a simple room, and the next year he entered a seminary. Clark points out that twelve is exactly the first Jupiter return; when a person reaches this crossroads, there is always a signpost, and for Moore it was that brochure. He went on to be a musician, a university professor, a psychotherapist and a writer; failing to get tenure, he instead began his next career.

The other is the Canadian singer Leonard Cohen. Clark follows just one aspect in his chart, Venus conjunct Neptune in the twelfth house, to discuss a lifetime of creative work. At fifteen Cohen came across the poetry of Federico García Lorca in a second-hand bookshop, the year transiting Saturn passed over this conjunction three times. In his seventies his savings were drained by his manager, and after fourteen years off the road he began touring the world again. Clark says he was a channel for the music and was not swallowed by it.

Many passages in the book speak directly to “you”, and it often asks readers to compare their own charts and those of family and friends, so it is best read with your own chart in front of you. If you already know your chart, you can first look up the signs on your second, sixth and tenth house cusps, read the corresponding passages in chapters 8 to 10, and then go back to the Sun, Moon and Ascendant in chapter 4. If you are new to astrology, read the introduction and chapter 1 first to understand why Clark treats vocation as a calling; only then will the sectional descriptions that follow make sense. If you are wondering whether to change jobs, keep chapter 11 at hand and compare your own Jupiter and Saturn over these years.

The book has its difficult side. Most of it consists of sectional descriptions sign by sign and house by house, which Clark himself says are only generalizations, starting points to be seen within the whole chart; matching them up one passage at a time turns them into exactly the literality he warns against. He often quotes Jung and myth, which readers used to getting straight to the conclusion will find roundabout. The whole book uses Placidus houses, and readers who use whole-sign houses should be aware that in that system the Midheaven is not necessarily the cusp of the tenth house. On secondary progressions, he says only that each chart must be looked at on its own, and gives no general conclusions.

People who come to Clark often want to ask one thing: what should I do? Your Career Direction in Depth takes up this question with your own chart, and explains at the outset why Clark refuses to pronounce a trade directly from the chart. Your Sun sign speaks to why you do things, your Moon to what kind of work you can keep doing for a long time, your Ascendant to what others see in you first. The four angles have a section of their own: if planets sit on the angles, they are discussed one by one; if not, the Midheaven and IC are discussed. Then the second, sixth and tenth houses are read one by one, to see what you exchange for reward, what you really do each day, and where your road out into the world lies. The Part of Fortune and the North Node each have a section, with the North Node read by both sign and house to show which way you are heading. Over the next five years, when Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto aspect your Midheaven, its ruler, your Sun and your Ascendant, and which house Jupiter moves into, are calculated precisely by the program and laid out as a career timetable. Finally all of this is read together and brought down to what you can do in these years. It reads only the part of your chart that concerns vocation.

In the preface Clark says the answer is in the chart, not in the astrologer; what he aims to do is let a person enter into dialogue with their own chart. Reading this report works the same way: the images in the chart have to be placed within your own experience before you can recognize them.