Liz Greene > Quotes

“Individuals blind to the sexual opposite within them, be they men or women, never realise that the partner they choose is chosen because he or she bears some resemblance to the anima or animus. The anger and hurt felt at the 'true discovery' of the partner's failings is really anger and hurt directed at oneself; and this would become apparent, were one to see the dark figure within one's own unconscious impelling one into a particular relationship. Like always attracts like; rather than railing at the partner, one should take a long, close look at one's own psychic makeup. But it is easier to complain bitterly --- to analysts, marriage counsellors, and also astrologers --- that yet another relationship has collapsed and yet another partner has proved to be a bad choice. It is also fashionable to blame this on the failures of the parent of the opposite sex; but the past continues to live within a person not only because in some way it is part of his own substance, but also because he permits it to do so.
When a disastrous relationship occurs once, we may fool ourselves into believing it is chance; when it occurs twice, it has become a pattern, and a pattern is an unmistakable indication that the anima or animus is at work in the unconscious, propelling the helpless ego into relationships or situations which are baffling, painful, and frighteningly repetitive. Again, it is much wiser to look within oneself for the source of the pattern, rather than at the inherent failure of the opposite sex. For these destructive patterns are the psyche's way of making itself known, although great effort is often required to fulfil its demand for transformation. And great sacrifices also are required - of such precious commodities as one's pride, one's self-image, one's self-righteousness.”
― Liz Greene, Relating: An Astrological Guide to Living With Others on a Small Planet

“Every sign secretly contains its opposite”
― Liz Greene, Relationships and How to Survive Them

“The 8th is also the gateway into the underworld, the transitional place where we discover that we are not masters of our lives, but must bow to more archaic, primal needs and patterns that are larger and older than any individual. The meaning”
― Liz Greene, Relationships and How to Survive Them

“A relationship can push us into having to confront certain areas of life, even if natally we are neither predisposed nor well equipped to cope in that area.”
― Liz Greene, Relationships and How to Survive Them

“Sometimes “inner work” requires an act of loyalty rather than an effort at transformation. Knowing what makes us happy (Venus), expressing this to others (Mercury), and standing firm in the face of opposition (Mars) may seem very petty against the more profound concerns of the outer world. Yet in their own way, these things are equally profound, for it is these small acts of self-affirmation that define the ego and ultimately the capacity to mediate the heavy planets with their destructive and transformative potentials.”
― Liz Greene, The Inner Planets: Building Blocks of Personal Reality

“People with the Moon in hard aspect to Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto may still harbour a deep fear that they will destroy or lose those they love. They may have—way in the back of their minds—the idea that if they love something they will destroy it. It could be that as children they felt angry towards the mother and then the next day she fell ill or had to go away for some reason, and the children are left thinking that they have caused that. Or sometimes this pattern is there for children who have been breast fed and then for some reason they lose the breast—the milk dries up or the mother becomes ill. These children may be left feeling that their greed exhausted the breast. Later in life, they still have a nebulous fear that those they love will die, or leave them, or be driven away.”
― Liz Greene, The Development of Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology

“An astrological placement describes an arrow which points somewhere, a creative energy which gradually layers flesh onto the bare bones of archetypal patterning, an intelligent movement which, over time, fills in the stark black-and-white outlines of the essential life-myth with the subtle colours of experience and individual choice.”
― Liz Greene, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, Vol 3 (Seminars in Psychological Astrology)

“We can, to some degree, educate and manage, or at the very least, provide constructive outlets for what we are conscious of in ourselves. But if we are unconscious of something, it will sooner or later find a way to dominate and control us.”
― Liz Greene, Dynamics of the Unconscious: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 2

“If a pattern of triangles keeps repeating, then it is a very strong message, and we need to listen to what it is trying to tell us.”
― Liz Greene, Relationships and How to Survive Them

“Greek thought, as Russell states, is full of fate. It can, of course, be argued that these sentiments are the expressions of an archaic culture or world view which died two thousand years ago, prolonged through the medieval epoch because of ignorance of the natural universe, and that we know better now. In one sense this is true, but one of the more important and disturbing insights of depth psychology is the revelation that the mythic and undifferentiated consciousness of our ancestors, which animated the natural world with images of gods and daimones, does not belong to chronological history alone. It also belongs to the psyche of modern man, and represents a stratum which, although layered over by increasing consciousness and the hyper-rationality of the last two centuries, is as potent as it was two millennia or even ten millennia ago.”
― Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate

“This is called the tabula rasa theory—the notion that how other people treated you in early life gives rise to certain patterns or “scripts” which then determine your self-image and your expectations of what will happen to you later in life. (...) Now psychological astrology views all this slightly differently. Rather than just being born a blank slate and having things done to you which then lead you to form opinions about life and yourself, psychological astrology believes that you are already born with an innate predisposition which expects certain things to happen.”
― Liz Greene, The Development of the Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 1

“Saturn led the way in one of the triumphs of modern astrology in showing that a combination of acceptance, understanding, and the ability to perceive alternative choices with increased awareness is the variable that can change the way in which one experiences one's chart and one's life.”
― Liz Greene, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil

“The luminaries in the horoscope are truly instructors, reflecting what we could one day become, portraying in symbolic form the best of what might be achieved.”
― Liz Greene, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, Vol 3 (Seminars in Psychological Astrology)

“It has been said that life imitates art. Sometimes it also imitates television. We can view life through different channels; and according to the channel to which we are attuned, we may see some very different pictures of what reality is all about.”
― Liz Greene, The Inner Planets: Building Blocks of Personal Reality

“His lineage is ancient and impeccable, and his associations in the world of myth, religion, folklore, and fairy tale are innumerable and varied, yet always coloured by the idea that instead of running away from the devil, if one goes up and kisses him on the lips, he becomes the sun.”
― Liz Greene, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil

“The lunar light which lures us back toward regressive fusion with mother and the safety of the uroboric container is also the light which teaches us how to relate, to care for ourselves and others, to belong, to feel compassion. (...) The solar light which leads us into anxiety, danger and loneliness is also the light which instructs us in our hidden divinity and—as Pico della Mirandola put it in the 15th century—our right to be proud co-creators of God's universe.”
― Liz Greene, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, Vol 3 (Seminars in Psychological Astrology)

“In personal relationships, water may often be the one who exits due to a feeling of being injured or emotionally rejected; in such situations he or she will usually have found someone else who is more "responsive", only to discover wit horror that the new lover has a different face but is in fact the same person as the old.”
― Liz Greene, Relating - An Astrological Guide to Living With Others:

“If you identify very strongly with a particular set of qualities in your own nature, then when the opposite surfaces or appears in someone else, then the result is often repugnance. It's frequently a deep moral repugnance, a real distaste of what that other person stands for. It isn't just a casual disinterest or dislike. The shadow arouses anger far out of proportion to the situation. You don't just ignore the fanatic with the leaflets on the street corner. You want to beat in his head.
Why should there be this kind of anger and repulsion? If you penetrate at all deeply into the feelings around a confrontation with the shadow, you will see that the shadow is experienced as a terrible threat. It is a kind of death to allow the shadow any recognition or acceptance. If you are prepared to permit even an inch of tolerance or compassion or value, then the whole edifice of the ego is threatened. Of course the more rigid and entrenched you are in particular attitudes and a particular self-image, the more threatening the shadow becomes.”
― Liz Greene, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

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― Liz Greene, By Jove!: The Meaning of the Astrological Jupiter

“When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: ‘You are I’…Thus the two became one, and through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which lasted until the time of Christ. But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upperworld…But the separated cannot”
― Liz Greene, Jung’s Studies in Astrology: Prophecy, Magic, and the Qualities of Time

“This composite placement is not saying that the relationship is good or bad, nor that it is in pain. It is merely stating a fact: the full potential of the relationship can never be reached because something was irrevocably damaged long before the two individuals were born.”
― Liz Greene, Relationships and How to Survive Them

“This word “individuality” is used a great deal these days, often to describe behaviour which runs against the collective norm. But we are using it here to describe a loyalty to one's own unique nature—an embrace of all the characters in the play. Individuality costs, as T.S. Eliot once wrote, nothing less than everything, and many are understandably not prepared to pay the price of the internal freedom they claim they want.”
― Liz Greene, Dynamics of the Unconscious: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 2

“According to metaphysicians, there is a cosmic law called the Law of Desire or the Law of Attraction. This law supposes that we draw to ourselves anything we desire or appreciate—in other words, if you truly value and appreciate something, you are emitting an energy which then draws it to you.”
― Liz Greene, The Inner Planets: Building Blocks of Personal Reality

“The astrological chart is indeed a map of potentials and character traits, and reveals a rich portrait of a complete individual personality.”
― Liz Greene, Dynamics of the Unconscious: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 2

“I agree with Dane Rudhyar's theory that the house placements of planets and signs in your chart are actually “celestial instructions” on how you can most naturally unfold your life-plan in that domain of existence.”
― Liz Greene, The Inner Planets: Building Blocks of Personal Reality

“An archetype can be defined as a mental representation of an instinct. (...) We are already born with an image of mother, an image of that archetype; and we are already born with an image of father, an image of birth, an image of growth, an image of death, etc. But different people have slightly different images of these archetypal phenomena.”
― Liz Greene, The Development of the Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 1

“Psychological astrology has, like the old Roman god Janus, a double face. It can provide a surgical scalpel which cuts through to the underlying motives, complexes, and family inheritance which lie behind the manifest problems and difficulties which the individual faces; and it can also provide a lens through which can be viewed the teleology and purpose of our conflicts in context of the overall meaning of the individual's journey.”
― Liz Greene, The Development of the Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol. 1