The State of California

Photo Mosaic

The State of California is the golden edge of America, the most populous state in the union and, on its own, the fifth-largest economy on Earth. From redwood forests and the Sierra Nevada to the Mojave Desert and the Central Valley's endless farmland, its geography is as extravagant as its reputation. Once one of the most linguistically diverse regions of pre-Columbian North America, it passed from Spanish colony to Mexican territory to the thirty-first state, admitted as a free state in 1850 just as the Gold Rush was remaking it. Today it leads the nation in farming, hauls in nearly forty percent of imported goods through its ports, and gave the world both Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Its Sun sits in Virgo, the sign that shines through skill, service and getting the work exactly right, fitting for the state that perfected both agriculture and the film reel, and it glows from the eleventh house of tribe and network, a natural leader of the collective. Its Scorpio Moon is an emotional volcano, intense, transformative, forever the phoenix rising from ash (fire, flood and earthquake are its recurring rebirths), and it sits in the first house, feelings right under the skin, on a Scorpio ascendant. A place of depth, magnetism and endless reinvention.