“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” — Keats
Root & Etymology: Latin venustas = beauty, charm, grace. Related to venus (love, desire), from PIE root wen- “to desire, strive for, love.”
Expansion: You begin your expression through attraction, pleasure, and embodied relational harmony. You are moved by the beautiful first, before action or logic.
Literary Echo: Aphrodite rising from the sea — your soul first touches earth through the foam of aesthetic magnetism.
“I desire, therefore I am.” — Sartre
Root & Etymology: Latin voluntas = will, desire, free choice. Connected to velle (to will).
Expansion: Love alone is passive unless animated by force. Mars is the engine of motion, not aggression.
Literary Echo: “The sword is not the enemy of the heart, but its defender.”
“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” — Thoreau
Root & Etymology: Latin sapientia = wisdom, from sapere “to taste, discern.”
Expansion: This is the philosophical compass behind action. It is principle over impulse, knowing why something matters.
Literary Echo: Gandalf — the wise one who acts in service to the greater balance.
“This above all: to thine own self be true.” — Hamlet
Root & Etymology: Latin solus = alone, also sole, sovereign. The Sun symbolizes individual essence, clarity, and radiance from center.
Expansion: Your ethical clarity only becomes luminous when it's grounded in your own center of being. This is self-integrity—not egotism, but coherence.
Literary Echo: “You don’t become fully human until you stand in your own name.”
“I learn what I think by hearing what I say.” — Joan Didion
Root & Etymology: Greek logos = word, reason, principle. Dialogos = through word, between two.
Expansion: Solary gives you identity, but language gives it wings. Mercury here is intelligence in exchange—the dance of thought, the craft of speaking and listening.
Literary Echo: Hermes as the translator of gods and men—the bridge between realms.
“The body keeps the score.” — Bessel van der Kolk
Root & Etymology: Latin mens = mind, memory, measure. In Sanskrit, Soma = the Moon and a sacred drink—linked to emotional rhythm, felt reality, and nourishment.
Expansion: Before language, there was feeling. The Moon shapes how your thoughts move, how your stories form. It’s mood-mind, not detached intellect.
Literary Echo: “We feel, therefore we are.”
“We live in the illusion of the known, but we are made by the unknown.” — Rebecca Solnit
Root & Etymology: Greek mystērion = secret rite, hidden thing; mu- = to close the lips. Related to apophasis (unsaying).
Expansion: Ketu is the dissolver, the past-life echo, the pre-verbal wound or wisdom. It’s the guardian of silence, mystery, and soul memory.
Literary Echo: “The roots of the lotus are buried in the mud.”
“It is the unknown we crave—more than the known we flee.” — Clarice Lispector
Root & Etymology: Sanskrit Rahu = to seize, devour. Latin insatiabilis = unsatisfiable, unquenched.
Expansion: Rahu isn't just rebellion—it’s craving, disruption, and soul expansion through edge-pushing.
Literary Echo: Prometheus stealing fire—the divine transgressor.
“Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.” — Edwin Hubble
Root & Etymology: Latin Saturnus → satus (sowing) + serere (to bind). Related to Greek Krónos (Time).
Expansion: Saturn is structure, testing, and the sacred act of endurance. It is the final filter through which every layer must pass. What survives time, remains.
Literary Echo: “The mason of fate is slow, but never late.”