Instinct vs Intuition

My intuition is very strong. I’ll often act on intuition alone. My intuition has led me into some awkward situations. I can’t really say they were good or bad, though I can say they are never terrible. Because I’m being guided by something, or at least I sure think I am.  I can tell you this, I never regret acting on intuition.

Instinct is something else. I have it but I don’t trust it. It feels unwieldy to me. Like it could be dangerous. 

I know people with phenomenal instincts. They hone right in…usually on money. Money-money, but also money as in the currency of power.

A person will hone in on my because they know I’m a source of extraordinary knowledge. I don’t mean to flatter myself. I got this way via life experience. My experience is extraordinary and I’ve managed to make it into something potent and effective that I can share with others.  A person with instinct knows this. I feel they’re a bit like hunters, which doesn’t bother me.

Think about it. There are people who go hunting for whatever…and come home empty handed. There others who go hunting and come back with the thing they desire, time and time again. I think I am too yin for that.  You can’t tell on my blog, because I write here and my natal, Mars-Mercury conjunction is displayed.

I wonder how others define instinct and intuition. Do you have one? The other? Both?
How do you see this, astrologically?

33 thoughts on “Instinct vs Intuition”

  1. Usually I let my intuition to tell me what is my next step, sometimes I have a need to force an action, but things always turn out the best when I wait for the gut feeling about something. Its like a knowledge, I simply know that I should do a particular thing. Or when Im between options, I`m trying to be patient because the next step appears on its own.

  2. From my amateurish understanding, instincts is more nature. Like let’s say that you naturally incline towards humility, then it’s easier for you to be nice and softhearted than someone whose inclination is towards hardness and being stoic.

    Like sea turtles know that they are supposed to go into the sea. But they might still run into trouble, yes?

    Intuition, on the other hand, is more like a compass. If you want to avoid danger and lessen your pain, your intuition is your guide and arrow. Call it God’s voice, the divine, or whatever. Intuition leans towards the positive rather than the negative.

  3. I could be envious of people with either one. I have compulsion instead. All I can do is consciously accept both my actions and lack of action. Lately it’s like my life is riding a railroad track. No choices available.

  4. Instinct is the thing that you listen to in order to survive a life threatening situation, like Animus? And Intuition is more like Anima, nurturing in some way? Either way, they are subconscious influences that we are sometimes vaguely aware of (usually through peak experiences)

    Maybe instinct lives in the 8th house (Aries, Scorpio) Mars, Pluto

    And Intution lives in the 4th house (Cancer) Moon and Maybe Neptune?

  5. Avatar
    circle.dot.oceans

    Hmm.. intuition I use at work with education. Instinct for me arises usually as a sense of panic. So, I definitely have a wrought relationship with instinct and try to slow down to get to intuition, which of an slow rising feeling out of the fog.

    However, I think instinct can be honed through experience and learning. It is sharp and decisive and it has its place in this world.

    Kind of like that concept of Thinking fast (instinct) and slow (intuition) 🙂 Cool, right? I love how you came to this independently, Elsa! Just makes my world more interconnected

  6. I sometimes have intuition, but generally speaking the more screwed up or upset I feel, the more it doesn’t work.

    Today my intuition told me to hit the library right before they closed, so we’ll see what comes of those books.

  7. Hm, well I’d say the body is instinct but then there them instincts are how many tens of thousands to possible of hundreds of thousands of years honed? Your body keeps you alive without you even knowing it. Always creeped me out a bit actually.
    if it weren’t for science & human curiosity I’d have no idea what was beating within my chest. Each of us is a colony of trillions of processes & All those cells that border on sentient!!
    Intuition to me is what we know ‘irrationally’. For me generally these things are trivial, but ‘out of left field’ & end up true. Sorta like knowing in the 3rd quarter down 28-3 the Patriots would come back & win ?I KNEW it – too bad I didn’t bet!!

  8. Yes ma’am- you’re a source of extraordinary knowledge, there’s no other astrology blog that compares to this one in the sense that you can come here and not only learn astrolgt but learn about life. I’d say I have extremely fine instincts, yes. It’s the opposite for me where I trust my instincts but my intuition is more tricky. I can never be sure if my intuition is made up or not. Neptune squares my lights.

  9. I’ve got zero instinct. I put it down to having Mercury in Virgo square Saturn in Gemini analysing everything, and having Aries hidden in the 12H.

    Intuition on the other hand, I have tons of the stuff. Always being led to the right thing. But there’s no big alarm goes off in my head to say “this is your intuition helping you make the right call” which is kind of frustrating. I now just trust everything is going in the right direction.

  10. I was naive for a very long time: I had to learn my self esteem. Had to learn to indicate my limits. Often afterwards I know why I acted like I did. Now I know many things in advance. Indeed by life experience. I had a hard life I can tell you. But a happy inner life, still have. Have a lot of Virgo, Capricorn, Cancer, Pices and Aquarius in my chart.
    Only Pluto in fire, Lion.

  11. I had never thought of that distinction before, it can be a tricky one . . I was ready to say that instinct comes from the animal part, whereas intuition comes from the so-called ‘higher self’ . intuition feels more refined but it could be that intuition is instinct itself in its refined form, combed through in subtle ways, say maybe the animal nature ‘tamed’, not fearing fear and working alongside reason and love and tenderness . . that’s the best way for me to grasp it

    1. astrologically speaking, would it be fair to say instinct is scorpio and intuition is pisces? both are water, like both spring from the same nurturing cancer womb yet they are in different levels of attunement (if that is even a word!)

  12. I asked my husband (a seasoned soldier), if he came to a crossroads in the middle of a war, what function would he use to choose a direction.

    “Premonition,” he said.

    And get this…

    He was taught, if you’re sneaking up on a sentry (to kill him), you should not look at the back of his head. You keep your gaze off to the side. The idea is that if you’re fixed on the back of his head, he may sense you.

    1. They’re related aren’t they? I think intuition proceeds instinct. Insticts are what happens first-say you sense something in your body (someone watching you for instance) then you go through a reasoning process and intuition is what follows. So intuition is a sort of process, whereas instict is spontaneous.

      1. The instinct is the instant feeling you get when the phone is ringing…the instinct to answer it or not. The intuition comes afterwards, even if just a few seconds.

        Instincts are where you sense things like danger and its based on survival. It is primal. Like if your clothes catch on fire, you immediately stop drop and roll if you have good instincts…if not, you may run around like an idiot.

        Say we sense someone watching us, instinct would be to look around and figure out who it is…intuition is what follows reasoning- say you feel someone watching (instinct) your reasoning will quickly start kicking in and you will come to a conclusion about maybe who it is based on the instinct of whether or not the watcher is dangerous or not. A lot of intuition comes from the source. Like how in prayer or meditation we are able to figure out solutions to problems because we have connected with our higher wisdom aka intuition.

        1. Think of animals in the wild. Even though they have hardly any ability to reason, they do have great insticts and can sense danger even without it being in front of their own two eyes. Humans have instincts too, we are animals afterall. Peace.

        2. Without *conscious* reasoning. I said it was a *type* of reasoning. Mostly subconscious. It’s a little hard to explain for me. No instinct comes first…I though I said that, if not, that’s what I meant to say. You can come up with your own conclusions, alright. Have a good one

        3. Oh I see why it looks like I said intuition comes first…I should have maybe said proceeds from..or instinct precedes intuition. Proceeds and precedes…damnit!! Lol

  13. The only insight that I get when I ponder this is that instinct comes from a place of protection and survival and intuition comes from a place of expansion, infinity and general well being. So maybe instinct is in our bodies and intuition is from our souls. Instinct is something in our DNA and comes from our ancestors struggles and intuition comes directly from god.

  14. I always think of instinct as that primal lower bodily thing that keeps people alive. An inborn survival mechanism designed to protect you from harm. But intuition is your higher mind, your spirit guiding you where you need to be and with the people you need to learn from or to teach. The fact that the situations you encountered were neither good or bad but awkward–did they serve a role in your life somewhere down the road? Did you grow from the discomfort you felt? Did the other people you encountered grow as well? So much of my life is a crazy blur but there are those moments of clarity I can look back on the day down to the time where my intuition sucked me right into a spiritual vortex of situations where I was forced to grow at an abnormally high rate of speed. Where life got turned on its head almost overnight. Or I’ve gotten to see how I lit a fire in someone else that caused them to grow overnight and that’s why my intuition led me to say the right thing at the right time. Because it’s not always about us. ?

  15. The base chakra is associated with the base chakra and intuition is associated with intuition. For those of you that are interested.

  16. Instinct is an action or reaction for survival. Maternal, Self preservation and Animal. Instincts are inborn, natural, something felt from a need.
    A baby cries from hunger and the mother feeds it, they both have instinct. A baby cries from hunger and the mother does not feed it, the baby has instinct, the mother does not. A bird instinctively knows how to build a nest, a spider instinctively weaves a web. Fight or flight, hunger, sex, all based on instinct for survival. Deer in the headlights, not good for the deer.
    Intuition is seemingly knowing something about something without reason, although everything we know from experience contributes to our capability to intuit and reason which would therefore include the knowledge of instinct. If the awareness is there it would not be intuition it would be deduction based on experience and knowledge, whether conscious or not. Everyone has both instinct and intuition which are ruled by the Moon. The mind is the relationship between Mercury, the Moon and the Ascendant. The Mind through Mercury plays the part in the interpretation and communication of an instinctual need or intuitional feeling. The different instinct types involve other planets besides the conditions and ruler of the Moon.

  17. Hmmm both from
    Moon. Interesting to think about this. I think someone earlier mentioned scorpio re instincts. Pluto/ Mars. That makes spence to me. I would think Moon could be either … depending on boys sign. and Neptune the planet in relation to intuition… Of course Mercury linking them all in our conscious brain.

  18. Bringing together instinct and intuition – spirit and soul – seems the central challenge to wholeness we all face.
    While its true that money and power yield themselves to those who have some degree of instinctual mastery – their pursuit are a distraction.

    Remember the character Willem Dafoe played in “Platoon” ? …..very close to the fusion of instinct and intuition.

  19. Intuition may be the result of a mercury mars conjunction, because you can communicate it and act on it, and instinct means moon mars as you can act on it while feeling it. I have moon in the same degree as mars, and mercury 2 degrees away, and neptune 4 degrees away, all in scorpio in my 3rd. I actually receive spiritual communication from the dead! And I also have an amazing capacity to mimic health concerns of loved ones(and acquaintances) from afar, with no prior knowledge. Examples: I acted out when my ex had a stroke and fell immobile on the couch, and then his roommates tossed him on his bed, and then experienced the hysteria when they discovered his condition and got him to the hospital. Then I experienced the chest pain and verbatim thoughts of a family friend I had just hung up with as she experienced them(she was fine when we hung up). My car “died”(threw a rod) and left me under a huge tomb like overpass after rushing to meet my podiatrist for an injection, which I inexplicably told the doctor that I didn’t need, that there was nothing more we could do, and everything else they were simultaneously telling my best friend about his father who had arrived at the hospital at the same time and died at the same time as my car. I get the immediate answer to prayers in the middle of the night, comforting ladybugs when things aren’t going right, physical manifestations of spirits passed- bathtub water turning on by itself, physically being prevented from leaving a mall, radios that turn on all by themselves, lights exploding, catching on fire as I gazed at them, oooh tons of stuff. So I think, feel, act, and receive spiritual guidance all at the same time!

  20. Confused if I have one or the other or none. Sometimes I just know a few things. Like Johnny Depp was not guilty and never had any doubts whatsoever. I wasn’t star struck with him to overly favor him. I just knew it. Some people went gung-ho on that mars conjunct uranus and pluto of his and assumed all sorts of things. My gut with people works ok too. But when I overthink or don’t listen to that first inkling, it obviously won’t work because I silenced it.

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