30.4: The Clinging Fire

Ra’s Line Companion

30.4 Burnout

The fourth line: the beginning of the upper trigram and the process of externalization. These people make 
other people sick. They make others emotionally unstable. They are less likely to show evidence of this themselves, but they can have deep impact on the people around them. The line is called Burnout. An 
unrealistic pace that begs misfortune. These are experience junkies. These are people who must have 
experience. They can only develop their feelings through experience and they must share their feelings 
with someone else. 


Pluto exalted. A compulsive and hyperactive nature that carries all the earmarks of burnout but doesn't 
necessarily arrive at it. A positive outcome is often assisted through analysis. This is a classic situation. 
You have a parent that has the 30.4 and they have a child with an undefined emotional system. The child 
becomes hyperactive and it gets sent into analysis. The 30.4 really impacts on other human beings much 
more that on themselves. 

Jupiter in detriment. Uncontrollable expansion with the inevitable bursting of the bubble. In this 
hexagram, you have three different situations in which Jupiter is in the detriment. This emotional field is 
enormously expansive. 

Highly energized feelings that may lead to emotional collapse. I have the 41.3, so my resonance is not to 
the fourth line. A friend of mine has the fourth line. Whenever that person visits me, it is so 
uncomfortable for me because I notice that, after they have been there for ten or fifteen minutes, I get up 
and go to work. I start doing something-an experience. I suddenly have the feeling that I have to do this. 

These people can be really obsessive about living out their feeling in that sense, but it is what they do to 
others that is so powerful. Remember that by the time you get to the fourth line, you get to a line that by 
its very nature is there to externalize a single track. And it is a collective circuit and it is about sharing, 
and the very next step is to penetrate somebody. When you see this, particularly in couples or parent-child 
relationships, this is something to talk about with them because this can always lead to a great deal of 
problems and misunderstanding about the nature of it. The person with the undefined system who takes 
that in becomes deeply vulnerable to that because they become twice as explosive. 

Personal Journey

2024, July 6

I had to write about this. It came up in an Iching reading for me when I was wondering: “where is this anxious energy in me, how can I align with the program?”

I was curious. I have a few people with 30’s prominently in my chart. But the reading was SO spot on, I kept digging. Burnout – excessive emotionality, a fixed ness about the process, this pressure to keep working – it was all true.

I looked through my families and clients – some had the 30 but nobody had the 30.4

I decided to look at my Saturn return, then. Yes, it’s there. Personality mercury, 30.4. Burnout.

How do I deal with this? Well, part of the 30 is it’s a gate of “Fate”. It’s Mystical theme is “The Witness Returns”.

This is from the Daily View:
“The Gate of the Fates teaches us that life is not what we expect it to be – it is what we allow it to be. Experiences are conceived from a desire that then meets life on the highs and lows of our emotional wave. This desire can feel like an obsessive hunger that weaves the yearnings of different lives together, influencing our every interaction until it is satisfied or fulfilled. The only control we have is over the clarity with which we enter into each experience, not over the outcome. Because desire can only be temporarily assuaged, life without clarity becomes a wild emotional ride. Over time, we see that the freedom to fulfill our wildest dreams is merely an illusion, and unreciprocated desire should not be taken personally. Balance in our life comes through surrender, through accepting what is. In doing so, we need not fear the fates or feel pressured to chase after the fantasies of Gate 41. By accepting our limitation, or place in the larger pattern of life, our reflections on feeling and desiring deeply while experiencing our humanness become a gift to be shared with others.”

Obsessive hunger – check. It’s so interesting, because the challenge I was facing is in marketing and social media. There is no limit – I have experienced this in my life in the past. No limit. The mind’s desires, a desire for life, influencing every interaction. It can only be balanced through surrender and accepting what is. We do not need to fear Fate, or chase after all those big numbers. Accept out limitation, our place in the larger pattern of life. Wow, those words are really hitting true for me.

Interestingly, the positive of having this 30.4 in my Saturn return mercury, is I feel a need to externalisé. Write books, I can get very overzealous about it all (undefined sacral). But, it keeps me busy, it keeps me stimulated. In a way, I’m grateful to keep it bringing me out of my shell, challenging me. How can I find a deeper surrender?