I like to celebrate my birthday. I learned that from my mom who would always tell us before we got to the restaurant on her birthday to please discreetly inform the wait staff and ask them to sing to her when they bring dessert to the table. Many of my friends scoff at celebrating their birthdays. They say it’s no big deal and that it doesn’t mean anything.

It does mean something, something important and not just to your mother. It means something even to those strangers sitting in Red Lobster who applaud your birthday for ten seconds, and will never see you again.

For one thing, it means that you as an earthling, physically made it this far and to this day, the same date as the first day you shot out of your mother and into the atmosphere of our hostile world. It means you may have made it past many possibly fatal threats to you being alive eating at Red Lobster on this day, your birthday.

You may have out dodged childhood diseases, car accidents, poverty, plane accidents, all the adult diseases, boating accidents, skiing accidents, maybe even hurricanes and tornados came your way and couldn’t take you down. You have been on the planet this many years and are still here!! Albeit you may be lurching about a bit, but you are still here for your loved ones.

Also, if you find any value in astrology, Eastern, Western, and everything astronomical in between, then investigating the archetypal meaning of your birthday can have great eye opening power for you as it did me.

For example, I was relieved when I read that the week of my birth is considered to be the week of "The Loner". It really explained to me why I have always chosen to spend so much time alone at home, in libraries or out in nature, often going to movies or dance clubs alone. I’d see large groups of girls going in and out of bars or shops and wonder what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I have that many friends? Why don’t I even have the desire hang out with that many people? Am I alone a lot because I’m a "witch" or "weird"? When I read that description about my being a loner by nature, I realized I’m not a pack animal. It’s not a problem; it’s just the way I was designed to roll.

March 5^{th, The Day of Heaven and Hell}

I actually remember the first time I opened to that paragraph in the BIG, giant, Book of Birthdays while standing in a Barnes and Noble bookstore on the upper west side of New York. I was hungrily searching for clues about my spiritual self and was pretty sure my birthday was going to be called something lovely and impressive like "Dances in Rain On the Day of Beauty and Roses" or "The Day of Laughter and Unicorns" at the very least "Super Duper!!- You’ve got the very best birthday in this whole book!" But no, there it was, mine was the ultimate good news/bad news birthday-"The Day of Heaven and Hell".

The good news? You bring out the very BEST in people! That’s GREAT!

The bad news, you bring out the worst in people. Holy sh-t, that sounded horrible. Almost like an oxymoron, impossible!

Now I think everyone has had that experience of seeing a person clearly and positively at the beginning of a relationship and then maybe a few weeks or months when the masks usually come down, suddenly see the person completely differently, maybe even negatively. This is a normal experience and when there is the desire and the time, this unmasking doesn’t have to mean the end of the relationship, it can actually mean the very beginning of the real relationship.

So what happens for a "piercing insight, able to easily access the feelings of others, and naturally psychic" March 5th baby like myself is that the heavenly, falling in love process, and the hellish, unmasking process, happen very quickly, almost simultaneously and very, very intensely. I say almost simultaneously because they cannot happen at the same time. Heaven and Hell are two opposing forces or concepts and cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Also because "Heaven" or "light" is real, it really exists everlastingly and "hell" or "darkness" is not real and does not really exist or last.

Most people get to play out the above "getting to know you" scenario over a few candlelit dates, or over a period of years or-for a blessed few there is no big change in image, but for those born on March 5th the heaven and the hell are going to make a soul shaking appearance right away, no matter what.

So here’s what happens when I encounter a person I am attracted to, someone I think may be soul mate material (because at my age I’m not looking for anything less.) I’m used to this process, this is old hat for me but for the guy, he’s probably never seen or psychically felt one of "these" ever before. By "these" I mean the unique collection of planetary energies that make up my birthday and year.

I was born in 1965, the Year of The Chinese Wood Snake, considered the most wise, beautiful and psychic of the Eastern traditional signs. I have also four planets or pairs of dolphins in Pisces, also considered by experts to be the most psychic and impressionable "mirrors" of the Western Water signs. Don’t forget four planets in Virgo, the earthy, analytical, fastidious Virgins, and one eternally youthful, Aries Ram Moon, behind the steering wheel of my emotions.

Picture the image of a large powerful mirror, carried by four very careful Virgins. The mirrors’ reflective surface is not made of glass it is made of water, with eight dolphins living in the water, and the mirror is being shoved forward by a ram with a happily coiled snake riding on his back, that’s a pretty good illustration of what I look like astrologically.

At first my guy sees heaven, reflected in the mirror of my eyes. Because I have four planets in Pisces, the very archetype of the Eternal Soul Mate in my lineup, he sees a very real personification of his very own heavenly soul mate, completely equipped with all the heavenly qualities he heretofore only prayed for.

And he sees that I see the heaven in him too. Not just the younger more successful him, maybe 35 years old, when he may have been at the top of his career but the 11 year old him, the pure dreamer with a pure dream, the vast unmolested potential of him still perfect and unbruised in it’s tightly closed bud.

In just one stunning, powerful glance we both get to see clearly the heavenly archetypes we both currently embody including The Victor, The Accomplished Artist, The Spiritually Mature, The King, The Queen, The Humorist, The Hero, The Survivor, The Free Spirit and The Lover.

He also senses that I have enough Pisces power or fairy dust and four times the Virginal earth to make the heaven he only dreamed of real on earth as well.

This is a wonderful process, fantastical at first, but like the Woody Allen quote about not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member, he immediately feels certain that I am not seeing the real him, the hellish Devil he fears he has become or that he is seeing the real me.

To any other girl, born on a day not as "naturally psychic" or "piercing" he might suddenly reveal that he leaves his socks on the floor, is lactose intolerant, or is isn’t happy in his work, but in my case I quickly get to see the real "Hell" him. These shadow archetypal versions of him might include the hellish Hypocrite, The Coward The Procrastinator, The Pervert, The Failure, The Bully, The Misogynist, The Cheater, The Liar, The Psycho, The Icy Cynic, The Cheapskate, The Hermit, The Impotent, The Weakling, The Depressive, The Idiot, etc.

Now I’m not like Lady Gaga, I don’t want your "bad romance", your disease, your revenge or your horror, I only want your love.

I SEE that perfect child still alive in you. It is one of my gifts that I have the ability to actually see and touch the real, eternally ageless, heavenly version of you and that’s the only one I want.

Because I’ve been through this experience already with several other soul mates in my 46 years I already know that the "Hell" version of you is not even real. At most, these thoughts and behaviors are just collections of symptoms left over from not being in true love with a soul mate for a while.

I know too that the fearful hellish images he temporarily imposes on me, i.e.,

The Whore, The Goody-Goody, The Critic, The Prude, The Bitch, The Workaholic, The Cry Baby, The Old Maid, The Needy One, The Jokester,

The Victim, are all unfounded too, just shadow figures, just reflections of fearful thoughts quickly passing across the surface of my water mirror.

Now, it’s in my nature to butt heads and then quickly swim, slither, and run away from someone who appears so demonic and threatening to me. That’s a good thing, a protective safety hatch in nature. I believe we have more than one soul mate in this short life and it is crucial to choose to spend time with the right one at the right time for that union to be truly positive and fruitful emotionally for both people, as truly heavenly in every way possible. Connecting with one of your soul mates in this brief lifetime is always amazing but choosing the wrong Soul mate to connect with at the wrong time can lead one down a path of disaster that takes you off your true, spiritually prosperous life path for many important years, maybe for the rest of your life.

I guess this is an open letter to my future soul mate, letting him know not to be afraid of what he sees in my mirror or of what he sees me seeing in him. Yes, I see it all; mostly the good, but also the bad and the ugly and I reflect it all. For lack of a better term, I’m a psychic-reflective-visionary! It’s a good thing, one of my gifts. Apparently I can’t hide it and I can’t help that you SEE me, seeing it ALL.

But know that if our timing on earth is right, we can just laugh at the distorted "Funhouse mirror" versions of ourselves, set the mirror straight and see heaven clearly, together.