Then, after you’ve read the Introduction, the next step is to refer to Heed Your Signs. There, to get you thinking along the right lines about your birthday profile, you will find listed the pages relevant to generic personality traits for your sun sign and its Chinese equivalent. This is helpful information as, whether you feel true to your sun sign or not, the sun is a symbol of your hidden potential and the life lessons you need to learn.
Be sure also to check out Reach for the Stars, the final section of this book, too—preferably before you jump to your individual birthday profile. This will encourage you to see the book not just as a single profile for your birthday or a group of profiles for people you know, but as a daily cosmic planner you can dip into every single day of the year for guidance and inspiration. Indeed, you are strongly advised to use this book in this way because, from a spiritual perspective, every night when we gently fade away to the land of sleep, we “die” and are “reborn” again the next morning, therefore making every new day a special “birthday.”
The 366 Birthday Profiles are, of course, the main body of the book. They have all been updated to speak to modern times. I could write an entire manuscript on each day of the year because of the wealth of information I could potentially include. But due to space restrictions, I have instead focused on the key information and the most important themes. If you want more insight or want to know more about how to interpret and make the most of your birthday potential, you are welcome to contact me.
How to Contact Me
You can message me via my trusty reader email: [email protected]. But in keeping with this book I have moved with the times and you can now contact me via my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter author pages. You can also message me via: www.theresacheung.com. Do subscribe to my newsletter if you visit my website. It’s a way for me to share the latest research and to update you about birthdays and other New Age topics.
Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, insights or stories you want to share with me and potentially with a wider audience. I endeavor to reply to everyone who reaches out to me. But please bear in mind that sometimes it can take a while to reply if life is superbusy, or I need to take a little time out to celebrate a birthday or two.
And now, without further ado, welcome to a whole new world of birthdays!
Step-by-step guide to getting the best out of this book
1 1. Read the Introduction.
2 2. Read the pages relevant to you in Heed Your Signs.
3 3. Read the closing sections of the book.
4 4. Read and reflect deeply on your individual birthday profile.
5 5. Read and reflect on the profiles of loved ones and friends, and anyone you care to understand better.
6 6. Use this book every day as a cosmic yearbook, reading and reflecting on a profile a day to guide and inspire you, and align you with the invisible influences and hidden potential that shapes each day of the year.
Introduction: The Life-changing Power of the Day You Were Born
“There was a star danced, and under that I was born.”
William Shakespeare
What exactly is a birthday profile? In short, it’s the rebirth of ancient arts—astrology, Chinese astrology, numerology, Tarot, and color theory or chromotherapy—threaded together by a modern psychological interpretation. Every profile also takes into account studies into how the month of a person’s birth shapes their personality, along with research into what personality traits highly influential people born on a specific day have in common. This unique combination results in a blend of cosmic and earthly, ancient and modern influences that can significantly affect your personality and destiny, providing you with invaluable insight into yourself as well as the lives, feelings, hopes and fears of loved ones, family, friends, colleagues and everyone else who crosses your path in life.
To help you better understand exactly how each birthday profile has been created, I have included the basic principles of these ancient arts and modern practices. You will see that individually each one can shine a light on the person you are but, when blended altogether, they can provide an exciting road map to your infinite potential.
The Basics of Astrology
Astrology regards personality and destiny as being influenced by the state of the cosmos at the exact moment of birth. The sun, the moon and the planets are seen as basic energies or life forces, and these forces take on different expressions depending on their position in relation to the place and time of a person’s birth. A birth or natal chart, also known as a horoscope, records the position of the planets when a person is born. It also looks at how these planets move over the course of their life and the influence such cosmic shifts can potentially have.
Astrology is an ancient practice dating way back in time to Babylonian, Egyptian and Aztec cultures. For centuries in the West, astrology was chiefly used for divination (fortune-telling) purposes by nobles and royalty. It fell out of favor in the seventeenth century and, as science developed, it was dismissed as superstition, but it never completely lost its appeal. In the early twentieth century interest in astrology re-emerged, this time not as a predictive technique but rather as a psychological tool for greater self-knowledge or awareness.
From the 1960s onward the popularity of astrology began to rise, with increasing numbers of people seeking a spiritual perspective on life. Today, astrology is not so much seen as a divination tool but as a self-help or personal-growth aid to finding meaning in life. Another modern development is that astrology is no longer regarded as complicated and requiring professional interpretation. These days anyone can learn about astrology and use its wisdom as a way to help them understand themselves and fulfill their potential.
Most of us know and identify with the characteristics of our sun sign—for example, Aries, Taurus and so on. The sun travels through the 12 signs of the zodiac through the course of the year and so when someone is said to have been born under Pisces, they were born when the sun was passing through the portion of the zodiac named after the constellation of Pisces. Each of the 12 signs has defining personality traits, with the elements of fire, water, earth and air also affecting each sun sign.
The 12 sun or zodiac signs correspond roughly to the 12 months of the year, and each of these sun signs symbolizes archetypes or universal life experiences. In your life you need to journey through the entire zodiac wheel of life and understand the experiences of all the other sun signs, but your sun sign reveals the major personality characteristics you are born to learn and express.
Although two people born under the same sun sign may share general personality traits, the reason they will not be entirely the same personality-wise is that the positions of the other planets will be different, depending on their motion on the day and at the time and place of birth. For example, as the sun travels through the zodiac sign over the course of a month, it passes through three periods of time called decanates, making each decanate approximately ten days long. Each decanate adds the influences of its own associated planet and sign to the basic influences of the sun sign. Therefore, by considering the decanate as well as the sun sign, you can fine-tune the reading for an individual’s birthday. Let’s look at an example. An Aries born sometime in the second decanate (March 31 to April 9) will be under