There are just four things in a chart: the planets, symbolizing distinct, archetypal energies comprising your psyche; the signs, symbolizing how those energies are modified and their needs for proper functioning; the houses or life-arenas in which those qualified planetary energies are expressed; and the aspects, describing relationships between the planets and how they interact.

The signs themselves can be grouped into four affinity groups known as the elements, or three groups each of whose members conflict one another known as the quadruplicities (see page 24 for more). What is very significant about your chart, Betty, is that you have no planet or the ascendant in water (Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces; Neptune in Scorpio doesn’t count on an individual level as it’s a generational planet and was in Scorpio for everybody on Earth for the 15 years from October 1956 to November 1970). The element water symbolizes many things: emotion, feeling, empathy, relatedness, maternity, nurturance, compassion, vulnerability, change, the unconscious, the soul, the past, the sea, and the non-rational, subjective and personal realms. With no planets in water you may have difficulty understanding or penetrating the deeper meanings of things. Your emotions may not be easily engaged, and your intuitive skills not readily available. You may have difficulty forming close relationships, and may feel smothered or threatened by the strong emotional demands of others. You recover quickly from emotional setbacks, however, and depression is rarely a problem, but need to guard against becoming callous, cold, detached or unfeeling. Some people with no water in their chart even feel unlovable.

Famous people with no planets or their ascendant in water are/were Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong, Joan Baez, Beethoven, Lucrezia Borgia, Chevy Chase, Maurice Chevalier, Bill Clinton, Gary Cooper, Catherine Deneuve, Alan Dershowitz, Neil Diamond, Marlene Dietrich, Faye Dunaway, Dwight D. Eisenhower, T. S. Eliot, George Foreman, Haydn, Hitler, Paul Hogan, Herbert Hoover, Mick Jagger, Andy Kaufman, Carole King, Jessica Lange, Manet, Slobodan Milosevic, Al Pacino, The Rock, Pete Rose, Jerry Springer, Lech Walesa and William B. Yeats.