Planets as symbols of outer and inner energies

Planets represent, or correspond to, the energies within us. They are "what we do". The signs represent the way we live, handle, apply those energies, and the chart's houses represent the areas in our lives where those energies act.

According to Robert Hand, PLANETS represent the ENERGIES we use to face a certain set of circumstances.
For instance, some of the energies represented by each planet would be the following (these are just examples; each planet represents a rich and complex set of energies):




There is an evolutionary aspect to these energies. As we follow them, we can trace our own life's evolution, from our childhood to our physical death. It would be something like this:

SUN and MOON: The LUMINARIES
* Our SUN is the energy that makes everything else possible, the original seed, our conscious energies. Our MOON is what turns that energy into new life, our instincts, our subconscious. They both are the origin and, at the same time, are always within us.

MERCURY, VENUS, MARS: inner planets, personal planets
* When we start to differentiate between us and the object, the need and the ability to separate, to put some distance, and communicate from there, arise. That is MERCURY.

* VENUS is the beauty of harmonic relationships, our physical creativity, and love, without which communication would be merely functional. VENUS is love, the non verbal expression of the truth.

* MARS is our assertiveness, our ability to protect our individuality. We need it more and more as we get ourselves more out there. Mars is our shield to protect what we have built inside us. It is our ego's warrior.

JUPITER, SATURN: social planets
* Once we have established our inner foundation: differentiation, conscious-subconscious polarity, ability to communicate, ability to love and protect our inner world, it is time to expand, learn, meet the world, seek for meaning, and that is JUPITER.

* JUPITER's energy takes us to meet the world and expand, and then SATURN puts a limit to that. Saturn takes us to build a world around us, to establish structures that allow us to fit in the world.

URANUS, NEPTUNE, PLUTO: outer or transcendent planets
* URANUS comes precisely to destroy those structures, totally or partially. It destroys rigidity, what we don't need, what keeps us trapped, what doesn't let us be who we truly can become. We find this energy in our life on the onset of many crisis, including the famous middle-age crisis, during which a hidden part of our true self shows up so we can grow more, and become more authentic.

* NEPTUNE is detachment, the beginning of the transcendent. This is the energy that awakes or sparks in us the need to get in touch with something that is beyond what is tangible, beyond what belongs to the earthly world of Saturn.

* PLUTO brings the end of what doesn't work anymore. Plutonian crisis are about cleaning up and getting rid of toxic waste form our subconscious. Pluto brings to us a psychic death need to be reborn into a new phase of our life.

If all the universe is made up of the same energies, it makes sense that what manifests itself inside us and what manifests itself outside of us be the same. This is SINCRONICITY. The planets' placements at any given moment (natal, transits, progressions) are indicators of what might be going on both outside of us, and inside.

That is why "As Above So Below".