“In every corner of my soul, there is an altar to a different god.” - Fernando Pessoa.
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Embracing astrology may begin with a dawning idea of the complexity of one’s own nature. We rebel against one-dimensional sun sign astrology if we have even a beginning level of self-understanding: a self-aware person cannot truthfully say “I am a Pisces.” Even for someone with a very Piscean chart, Pisces is just one flavor of their character and it will take the entire zodiac wheel, refracted through the individual’s very particular lens, to offer even a snapshot of their consciousness – let alone describe its unfolding over time. Sun sign astrology reflects the lazy ego’s desire to establish itself simply and quickly through overidentification with a single archetype. Once we reject this caricature, we can either reject astrology in total or reconsider our understanding of how it describes the individual. The Sun – Helios, ego, the germination of the soul, what says “I am” and is self-aware or learning self-awareness – is just one planet on the chart. All the elements of personality, as well as transpersonal levels of awareness, are represented in the chart through the other planets, each flavored with a zodiac sign and with concentrated expression in one of the astrological houses of human experience. The full Greco-Roman pantheon of archetypal humanity stands within each of us:
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• Moon, or Selene, the mammalian instinctual nature that feels its way through the dark by attuning to animal need.
• Mars, the henchman of the Sun, what brings the expression of ego into action, drive to move, Nietzsche’s “will to power.” 
• Venus, what practices the universal love of god through the particular, what sees the values and desires of the Sun reflected in the face of the beloved, the yearning to unite, the desire to express the nature of god through beauty and pleasure.
• Mercury, the messenger, the bearer of thoughts, logos. “In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god.” The mental function that communicates god to us by observing and forming connections between observations, and that communicates our experience of god to others. 
• Jupiter, the benevolent father, expansive, jovial. How our understanding of reality expands. The channel through which we give and receive gifts.
• Saturn, the stern teacher, the reminder that our own expression of god in this life is in relation to others’ expression of god. The padded rails that keep our caroming ball on track to its destination. Where we must contract, exert effort, endure pain to squeeze through a birth canal and into greater life.
• Uranus, the great disruptor. The lightning bolt of inspiration, the shock of static that rearranges the electromagnetic field of experience. Undeniable truth that changes everything. Where we innovate and create something entirely new, expanding the universe.
• Neptune, the restful fog, the land of Eden. The dreams we have to remind us of the return to center. The glowing idea of perfection. How we cast glamor, and where we cannot see clearly and cannot walk in the ways of the living. 
• Pluto, the devouring crone, the purifying fire, the lord of the underworld. The power that melts everything we have created, everything the ego has become attached to, burns off the dross, and distills pure gold in new form from the raw materials of our experience.

​Astrologer Howard Sasportas describes these planetary influences (whether individually or in groups relating to each other) as “subpersonalities” and describes how realizing these characters fully, recognizing when each comes to the fore in our personality and allowing each of them to fully live, is an important step toward self-understanding and gaining fuller agency. Bringing the subpersonalities to life is not the goal of self-discovery, but it is an important step along the way. Analysis precedes synthesis.
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About Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa, born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1888, is widely regarded as the greatest poet in the Portuguese language. Not only did he write in English and French as well as in Portuguese, he wrote under at least 75 “heteronyms” – not just pseudonyms with different writing styles but fully fledged alternate personalities with their own biographies and worldviews (some of which were far off the beaten track). One of these heteronyms was Raphael Baldaya, an astrologer who analyzed the charts of live and dead celebrities, Pessoa’s friends and families, Pessoa himself – and the charts of many of Pessoa’s heteronyms! Pessoa was a heavy drinker, possibly as a coping mechanism for his inability to unite or harmonize the cacophony of gods in the various corners of his soul, and he died at the age of 47 of cirrhosis of the liver.