The Grand Cross or Cosmic Cross

When four or more planets occupy the vertices of an imaginary square in a chart, that planetary pattern is known as a grand—or cosmic—cross shown above. Consisting of two oppositions the ends of which mutually square one another, this pattern could also be described as a completed T-square or a complete "fourth harmonic syndrome."

The grand cross, along with the Wedge, is the most rare of the ten planetary patterns in astrology displayed on pages 310 and 311 of You and the Universe. It often symbolizes a person living under a great deal of stress and facing an apparently endless series of challenges. If you have this planetary pattern in your chart, you may feel as though your life is in a constant state of tension and upheaval, and that there are many obstacles getting between you and your goals. You have a lot of energy that is certainly up to meeting your many challenges, but you need to focus it on specific issues one-at-a-time, rather than allowing it to be diffused over many, simultaneous targets. People experience you as having a great intensity just beneath the surface, waiting to be released.

Usually a grand cross falls entirely or almost entirely in one quadruplicity (cardinal, fixed or mutable signs), and it is important to discriminate between the effects the different quadruplicities have on a cross. Since a grand cross is composed of four squares and two oppositions, this paragraph and the next discuss the grand cross from the perspective of its component squares and oppositions. Mutable squares (between Gemini or Sagittarius and Virgo or Pisces) need an adjustment in thinking or attitude and are telling you that you need to change your mind about something. Cardinal squares (between Aries or Libra and Cancer or Capricorn) can be handled by appropriate action, or by changing or ceasing the way you go after or start things. Fixed squares (between Taurus or Scorpio and Leo or Aquarius) are the hardest to deal with because they symbolize your will, which is far harder to surrender or to change than thought or action. A fixed cross symbolizes the necessity of a humbling of the will.

My first teacher Isabel Hickey thought that squares or oppositions in mutable signs are just beginning to manifest in this lifetime and are therefore the easiest to handle. Squares or oppositions in cardinal signs, on the other hand, are carried over from our last lifetime. If handled appropriately through constructive action they won't manifest in the next life in fixed signs. And squares or oppositions in fixed signs symbolize “lessons we have failed to learn over many lifetimes, and are deeply ingrained patterns of behavior.” Because hard aspects in fixed signs symbolize our will and have become habituated ways of being or responding, they need a great deal of attention and self-discipline to change.

If you have a fixed cross, I recommend that you first become conscious of these problematic and willful parts of your identity that you believe you must hold on to and cannot lose—and see how they are self-willed; that is, become aware of how it is that you, originally very innocently, are now their engine. Then consider the possibility of surrendering them up to the way things are. This doesn’t mean willfully destroying those parts of you. You cannot do this, nor is it even advisable. Rather it means allowing life outside of you to interact and mix with these willful aspects, making them available to growth and change. Surrender may be a bitter pill for you to swallow, but letting go of some of your stubbornness here is necessary for your integration, growth and health.

Celebrities with grand crosses are/were Anna Maria Alberghetti (mutable), Simon Bolivar (cardinal), John Coltrane (fixed), Bobby Darin (mutable), Geena Davis (fixed), Miles Davis (fixed), Angie Dickinson (cardinal), Isadora Duncan (fixed), Mia Farrow (cardinal), Dennis Hopper (mutable), Steve Jobs (cardinal), John Knowles (fixed), Jack London (fixed), Bill Maher (fixed), Mickey Mantle (cardinal), Jayne Meadows (fixed), and Allan Sandage (fixed; astronomer: expanding universe).

This Grand-Cross-Cosmic-Cross page and much of this 600-page website are excerpted from the personalized Fine Art Book You and the Universe.

11 Planetary Patterns: