I’m a taurus with a pisces moon who grew up around people who regularly referred to people’s personality quirks in relation to their astrological sign. So I’m down with the woo.

That being said, this (super-flattering) Career and Vocation Astrology Report I got from Astrodienst resonates. Whether it’s just the flattering part or not, I certainly aspire to be the person the stars say I am.

How You See The World

Use your ideals to bring harmony to your world
You are an idealist with a deep conviction that life ought to be fair. You also need harmony, beauty, and civilised behaviour in your working environment.

Ideas fascinate you, and you enjoy communicating with others and inspiring their thinking in some way. You are always trying to better the world in which you live, according to the ideals you hold and the ethical codes to which you owe allegiance.

You are fundamentally kind and don’t like overt competition, although you are quite capable of enlisting the help of others to fight a ferocious battle in the name of a cause or ideal.

People interest you, and you might enjoy a field of work where you serve as a mediator for ideas which need to be translated and communicated.

The arts, although you are deeply drawn to them, may be too cut-throat a world for your refined soul. But you might enjoy the peripheral spheres of art history or design.

Psychology too may attract you – although your dislike of emotional excess, and your reluctance to engage in heavy-duty emotional in-fighting, may make it difficult for you to deal directly with the very disturbed or damaged.

Rather than trying to “fix” people, you really wish to educate them so that they can fix themselves. In this role you could excel, holding together the integrity of a group.

Politics too may interest you. But just as the world of the arts could put you off, the world of politics may require too much dishonesty, which you abhor. Although you can be conciliatory, you will not willingly lie, and you are not cynical enough to promise what you know you cannot deliver.

You probably have strong political convictions with a spiritual or idealistic base. But you are more likely to communicate your views subtly and indirectly, rather than engaging in the political arena directly.

You would be at your best in work which has some kind of ideal behind it. You are not careless with money, but it does not head your list of priorities; and you would be extremely unhappy working simply to earn money if you did not believe in what you were doing.

Humanitarian concerns could provide an excellent sphere for your talents, as could certain areas of progressive scientific research and spheres of learning such as teaching and translating.

You need to feel you are making the world more orderly, more conscious, and more civilised. You have an inquiring mind and should try to get the best possible education, as your work needs to have an intellectual content. And you also need intelligent colleagues with whom you can dialogue and discuss issues.

Anything which brings together disparate ideas, groups, and individuals could prove of interest.

Your deepest need is to see barriers levelled, chasms bridged, and conflict transformed into co-operation.

You might do this through the creation of beautiful objects, the promulgation of beautiful ideas, or the espousing of a beautiful cause.

Whatever you do, you have a natural courtesy which attracts people to you and ensures that you will always be at the receiving end of lots of good will. And you do love the feeling that others like you and like being liked by you.

The spirit of co-operation lies deep in your soul, and needs to form the basis on which you build a working life.

Your Aptitudes and Strengths

Needing to feel you belong

You know that no man or woman is an island, and you feel nourished and supported by a sense of belonging and the knowledge that you are able to contribute something which benefits others in some way.

Ambition in the ordinary sense is not likely to be one of your prime motivations, nor is the amassing of large amounts of money (although if it comes your way, you are likely to be generous with it, to yourself as well as to others).

Nor are you especially comfortable with hierarchical structures where inequality results in others – or yourself – being exploited in any way. You need a liberal atmosphere at work, where everyone can give voice to their needs, objections, and ideas.

Your direction in life needs to include the chance to express your truly democratic spirit, allowing you to meet people from all walks of life and expanding your own understanding through communication with others.

You have the gift of the “common touch”, and this equips you to work in many fields where you need to deal with different sorts of people. You have an instinctive sense of how to behave in any milieu, effortlessly intuiting others’ requirements and expectations.

You also know how to put others at their ease. You would find it very hard to be isolated at a desk with no one to communicate with and no “team” to discuss ideas with.

Most importantly, you need to feel you are part of a community, not a company. Others are inclined to trust you because you are ethical; also, you like them and they know it.

Therefore you need to know that the people you work for and with are also ethical, for you tend to believe the best of people until proven wrong. This can expose you to being exploited, and the standards and ideals of the world in which you work are extremely important. Although you can be understanding and forgiving, you are not always very good at expressing yourself directly if it means discord or rejection from the group.

In the most profound sense, others are your true vocation – not necessarily working one-to-one with them as a “helper” (although that might suit you), but feeling that you are part of a larger collective effort to leave the planet and the human race marginally better off than it was when you arrived.

Respect for the Feelings and Viewpoints of Others

You pay careful attention to the feelings and ideas of others, and are unlikely to try to impose your own ideas without prior consultation.

Faced with a difficult decision, you want to know what others think as a matter of course, for you are neither arrogant enough nor confident enough in your own rightness to assume that your knowledge is all there is to know.

This genuine willingness to consider others’ viewpoints, and the skill with which you elicit and provide information and advice, equips you to work in any liaison capacity, acting as a diplomat, peacemaker, legal representative, or strategic “power behind the throne”.

You could also make an excellent director of a team in whatever field your interests lie. You enjoy the lively exchange of creative ideas, provided the atmosphere is harmonious and the people agreeable.

Although you are perfectly capable of acting alone, taking the initiative, and coming up with your own strategies and inspired solutions to problems, you prefer co-operation.

You have the humility to know that you might be wrong and that others, even if their position is “lower”, might see something you have missed; and a balanced, clear viewpoint matters more to you than proving how clever or important you are.

This natural humility is devoid of pretence and false self-effacement. Others know it and are therefore willing to accept your authority without resentment.

You rarely act on impulse, but prefer careful reflection before making a decision. You also do not like to be seen as aggressive, even if you know that someone else is making a mistake; and you would rather suppress your feelings, and exercise tact to keep the atmosphere harmonious, than appear too harsh or authoritarian.

This can be both a gift and a handicap. It means you can put off necessary confrontations with colleagues until you build up such a head of steam that your annoyance bursts out of you in inappropriate ways which create the very disharmony you find so distasteful. It also means you can be taken advantage of by bossier people if you cannot find the confidence to stand up for yourself.

Work which involves you in direct conflict of any kind is not likely to agree with you. But work which allows you to use your diplomatic and strategic skills to win over others, and enables you to promote ideas which you believe in, will always satisfy you.

Intimations of Other Dimensions

You do not merely respond sensitively to others; you are them much of the time. You have a remarkable openness to the unspoken emotional atmosphere of the group, and equally to the boundless realm of the imagination.

You can sometimes experience feelings, intuitions, and inspirations whose origins are not within you, but which work through you because of your receptivity to the collective psyche.

This gives you the gift of expressing the values, dreams, and feelings of many people through your own creative vehicles. You have a strong sense of connection to others, and you need to retain that connection through your work.

These special gifts need careful development and handling. You can easily feel overwhelmed by the flood of inner images to which you are sometimes exposed, and you can be “infected” by negative atmospheres generated by the people around you.

Being in a group where the undercurrents are less than pleasant can leave you feeling exhausted and dispirited.

Because you may often find yourself acting as a kind of mouthpiece for the unvoiced feelings and dreams of others, you may find deep satisfaction in an artistic sphere such as music, drama, or photography.

Equally, you may be open to sudden intuitive ideas in scientific or mathematical spheres, for these, too, are part of the wealth of the collective psyche.

You need time and privacy to embed these intuitions in practical forms, and you may sometimes need to fight a kind of lethargy which makes you want to seek escape into daydreams. Hard self-discipline and the mastery of a chosen medium, artistic or scientific, can make an enormous difference to your self-confidence.

If you wish to make the best of your very special abilities, you will need to train on a practical level to shape your talents into something effective in the world. Although the inspiration comes freely, the skills have to be learned.

There is also a quality of melancholy which you often carry, which reflects your openness to the deeper sadness inherent in human life. This can turn your aspirations toward some kind of work healing or helping others, for you are acutely sensitive to others’ pain and can readily identify with it.

You may find satisfaction in this kind of work, especially if you have strong spiritual inclinations and feel you want to contribute your efforts to something greater than yourself.

Try to be realistic about your limitations. You must learn to balance your openness to others with a sound appreciation of your own needs and an ability to maintain your boundaries when others want too much.

You can sometimes feel afflicted with that “divine discontent” which is often the burden of the artist, the healer, and any individual who is intuitively aware of planes of existence subtler than the material world.

Don’t ignore this inner yearning, but don’t indulge it too much. Your gifts are too rare and special to squander in escapism, and too needed by others to be ignored in favour of a more conventional or earthbound path.

Insecurity Can Work to Your Advantage

You are not only sensitive to the needs of others; you are also acutely aware of how they feel about you, and you are not always sure you will be appreciated or your abilities valued.

This sensitivity to how others perceive you can be hurtful at times, because you are very vulnerable to criticism, real or imagined – especially from those in authority.

You sometimes imagine that you are being judged and found wanting, when in fact you are your own harshest judge.

But your self-doubt, paradoxically, could prove a great asset. Although it may sometimes make you feel unsure of yourself and frightened of failure, it can also act as a spur to accomplishment, making you determined to succeed with or without others’ support.

Ultimately, because you are so vulnerable to the judgements of authority, you will probably need to become an authority yourself.

And ambition, in someone as orientated as you toward pleasing others, is not at all a bad thing.

Despite your talents and natural charm, fear of failure and rejection has probably caused you plenty of loneliness and unhappiness during your life, and depressing thoughts may periodically undermine your sense of self-worth.

Your belief in your competence and creative potential is sometimes undermined by a deep conviction that you are not good enough, and that whatever you produce will not be acceptable. But your urgent need to be recognised and valued by the world could become a goad to push you into developing your talents.

There is a tough, self-sufficient core in you, probably formed through periods of isolation that began early in life. This tough core ensures that you can stand alone if necessary – and you need that inner assurance because others matter so much to you.

Your insecurity can sometimes make you a little too diffident and self-effacing. But it can also make you determined to prove, to yourself and to others, that you are deserving of respect and a position of responsibility.

When confronted with a work challenge, you may sometimes swing between feeling like a hurt child and feeling grimly determined to be in control one day.

Let your insecurity work for you; aim high and pursue your ambitions with determination, however much they may be a form of compensation for self-doubt.

Aim to become your own authority, rather than feeling like a failure because you cannot get on in a more subservient role.

Although you need to work with and for others, you also need to know that you can handle responsibility and take decisions yourself. Nothing less than the genuine respect and recognition of the world outside will ease your need to prove yourself.

Don’t sit about feeling sorry for yourself; instead, aim for the top.

Self-Love is as Important as Love of Others

You are a natural peacemaker and negotiator, and you possess the great gift of bringing warmth, empathy, and human interest to any sphere you work in.

You could make any work environment a happier, more inviting place to be. You need a field of work where you can exercise these talents and be rewarded for them.

Your desire to feel that others are in harmony with you can occasionally result in difficult situations at work, for you are prone to avoiding confrontation or difficult issues which might alienate others; and this can lead to confusion and communication breakdowns.

You prefer to sidestep others’ anger, but in doing so, you can sometimes make them angry because they feel things are not able to be openly expressed. This is not innate dishonesty, but springs from your profound desire to create an atmosphere of co-operation around you – the very quality which makes you such a valuable asset to any group, team, company, or institution with which you are involved.

In order to get the most out of your particular talents, one of which is your capacity to bring people together and smooth over potential disputes, you need to be able to stand alone if necessary.

Your diplomatic skills, and the spirit of unity which you have the power to bring to group situations, are best expressed when you know, deep down, that you can bear someone else disagreeing or exchanging sharp words with you.

Learn to value and nourish yourself as much as you value and nourish those around you. This will ensure that you yourself will be contented in your work as well as making the lives of those you work with richer and happier.

A Poet’s Vision Requires Work Which Touches the Heart

Your deepest loyalties are given to an inner vision, and you need a vocational path which allows you to express that vision.

This might cover a wide range of possibilities. But your heart and imagination must be touched, and you need to know that your work connects you with a higher, deeper, more meaningful level of existence.

That does not preclude material success; but such success should be the by-product rather than the primary source of your efforts.

Your real field of work is the imagination; and whether you express it in obviously creative ways such as writing, painting, or theatre, or in the helping professions through depth psychotherapy and dream-work, you would never be able to bear for long a field of endeavour where your imagination is not engaged.

An artist’s temperament and motivation are not necessarily accompanied by actual skill in draughtsmanship or fiction-writing, or actual talent at playing a musical instrument.

If you do possess a genuine talent for working with images, music, or words, then it is important for you to develop that talent with as much intensity and effort as possible.

But if you do not possess the literal manual or verbal gifts, this does not diminish the importance of your creative imagination.

A business or consultancy can be a creative product rather than a pragmatic construction; a school or training group can equally be the result of imaginative inspiration.

You possess the ability to recognise and interpret the symbolic dimension of life, and to perceive external reality as the embodiment or reflection of profound inner patterns and images.

This mode of perception is a special gift. Your work needs to be firmly rooted in what makes your heart and soul sing.

The Daimon of Creative Vision Outweighs Material Needs

More than most people, you need a true vocation rather than a job. And your vocation needs to be rooted in your creative vision.

The Greek philosopher Socrates described the inner impetus of his destiny as his “daimon”, and for you to feel fulfilled in work you need to know that you are moving in accord with your own “daimon”, your own inner sense of destiny.

There is a deeply devotional quality in you that needs to be expressed through a specific sphere of work; but its real nature is a need to serve some deeper inner reality.

You are too intense to feel comfortable devoting your energies and efforts to a company or institution that deals in banalities.

Whether or not you think in spiritual terms, your heart and soul need to be engaged in work which serves something numinous – in however humble a capacity in the outer world’s terms.

The artist and the priest have always served similar functions, for both work to build bridges between the inner world and the outer.

Even if your work is not “artistic” in the usual sense, it needs to be creative and serve the inner world.

An inspired chef, publisher, web designer, or educator can do this as authentically as an inspired painter or composer. Everything depends on where your loyalty is really given. Try to focus on what inspires you from within, and seek to understand its nature as best you can.

This could help you to formulate what you need to express to the outer world; and it will be your best guide in terms of which sphere of endeavour is most suitable for your considerable imaginative gifts.

What Success Really Means to You

Success, for you, may not be a meaningful concept if you view it only in worldly terms.

You are after something subtler, something which makes you feel connected to those deeper levels of existence which you sense beneath the surface of mundane life.

Your increasing awareness of these levels may not have been easy or even voluntary; and early experiences may have challenged you with profound questions to which no one around you had an answer.

Crisis points during the course of life may have taught you that entire worlds lie beneath the crust of what most people deem to be the limits of reality.

But whether you approach life’s mysteries willingly or because you must, your path needs to take you beneath the surface into the enigmas of human motivation and the unanswerable questions of fate, destiny, and the paradox of suffering as an instrument of growth.

You are intuitively open to the deeper patterns that underpin life, and the more consciousness you bring to these realms, the more rewarded you are likely to be.

Your work needs to allow exploration of this kind, whether it involves direct encounters with the psychological life of individuals or collectives, or whether it occurs through a creative medium which puts you in touch with the wellsprings of the imagination.

Never try to run from the deeper levels of life, and don’t be afraid of being changed through your encounters with them. Too strenuous an effort to control these dimensions of experience may result in your having to acknowledge that the ego cannot always dominate.

Unease about emotional vulnerability may make you retreat from the very experiences you most need to encounter, and a certain defensiveness about expressing your feelings could cause misunderstandings with others and create feelings of isolation.

Because you need to explore the depths and bring your understanding of the inner world to your working life, you also need to allow others close so that you can get the kind of nourishment your soul needs in order to grow.

But your discomfort about emotional expression and emotional vulnerability could also help you to create healthy boundaries and form rational conclusions about your perceptions of the inner world, both your own and that of others.

You need to find the right balance between intensity and detachment, passion and analysis; try to use your desire for emotional self-sufficiency to clarify your emotional experiences rather than defending yourself against them.

Your work path needs to lead into a direct experience of the richness of the inner world, including both its dark and its light faces.

A true vocation, for you, must transform your world-view through encounter with the depths and heights of human experience.