Rethinking Astrology:  A First Glance

In astrology’s multi-millennia history, it’s been in and out of fashion, praised and derided. Astrologers have worked next to kings and queens or been banished and executed. St. Augustine tolerated astrologers as long as they didn’t claim to supplant the will of God. Hitler had them thrown into concentration camps.

Though still regarded as superstition by officialdom, astrology is undergoing a renaissance, aided by psychologists, physicists, philosophers, historians, and astronomers, who are defining a new “humanistic astrology.”

Yet cross-discipline interest in astrology isn’t new. Aristotle, Ptolemy, Ficino, Galileo, Brahe, Kepler, and Carl Jung all practiced astrology. Jung, who used astrology extensively in his psychoanalytic practice, wrote, “I do not hesitate to take the synchronistic phenomena that underlie astrology seriously,” while contemporary psychologist James Hillman agrees that “Astrology provides the best descriptions of character qualities. More than any other field, astrology gives background for the psychology of personality.”

For this reason, astrology conferences these days get visits from physicist Will Keepin and noted author Thomas Moore. With the help of author-historian Richard Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, the physician famous for developing holotropic breathwork, has done extensive research on astrology. Grof writes:

Astrology, a discipline rejected and ridiculed by Newtonian-Cartesian science, can prove of unusual value as a source of information about personality development and transformation. For an approach that sees consciousness as a primary element of the universe that is woven into the very fabric of existence, and that recognizes archetypal structures as something that precedes and determines phenomena in the material world, the function of astrology would appear quite logical.

I first came to astrology in 1975 while doing a study of comparative myths. Since I cared about astrology only as a symbol-system, I did charts for family and friends just to see how archetypal symbols worked in everyday life. I didn’t worry about whether astrology was “valid” or legitimate; I was interested in how symbols impacted people.

Nor did taking clients occur to me—and wouldn’t for over fifteen years. Instead, with my wife and colleague Denise Breton, I taught part-time in the Philosophy Department at the University of Delaware, wrote books, and worked with nonprofit organizations and publishing companies (all of which I still do, though Denise and I no longer teach at the university and a few nonprofits have gone by the wayside).

When astrology re-emerged in my life as a possible profession (along with writing and teaching), I hesitated to embrace it, given the dim view society takes of it. Award-winning astrologer and author Steven Forrest says that he always dreads the moment at public functions when someone’s engineer-father turns to him and asks, “Well, Steve, what do you do for a living?” What’s more, my philosophical training was in the skeptical tradition, and I couldn’t come up with a compelling theory of astrology that satisfied me.

But books by serious astrologers such as Robert Hand, Donna Cunningham, Noel Tyl, and Stephen Arroyo presented a rapidly evolving discipline that offered an intellectual challenge, an openness, and an integration of spiritual wisdom that was irresistible—not to mention practical. The bottom line was that the new astrology helps people. One therapist I work with reports that her clients make significant advances when they add astrology consultations to their therapy. “Sessions with a good transformative astrologer,” she said to me, “can speed up therapy by months, even years.” Psychologist Greg Bogart, author of Therapeutic Astrology, believes that astrology’s ability to increase self-awareness is the key to this progress.

So now, along with writing, I take clients and teach basic and advanced classes on transformative astrology (the variation of “humanistic astrology” that fits my approach). And almost as a reply to Steven Forrest’s dread, one of my students is a father and an engineer.

While I’m still working on a philosophy of astrology, there are several tenets of the new astrology I agree with easily—and one in particular (since it’s the one most scientists fight with). Like almost all humanistic astrologers, I don’t believe that planets determine our lives—an idea attached to astrology by, among others, ancient Roman Stoicism. Most Renaissance astrologers didn’t believe it either. Along with many contemporary astrologers, I embrace Jung’s synchronicity theory: planets don’t influence; they symbolize.

What do planets symbolize? As I now understand it, astrology offers a dynamic map of meaning for each individual, as it can for businesses and nations. These meaning-maps are powerful. Historically, astrology served heads of state—movers and shakers—and a twentieth-century mover and shaker, the financier J.P. Morgan, made a famous comment about his respect for these maps: “Millionaires don’t use astrologers; billionaires do.”

For us regular folks, the meaning-maps of transformative astrology serve as jumping-off points for exploring the core issues of life: who are we? where are we going? what is our potential? what are our challenges? what’s the story of development that we’re experiencing personally, in relationships, and in the world?

These are big questions, and astrology helps not by giving rigid answers, as if our destiny is fixed in star-stone, but by indicating life-themes and tendencies. How we deal with these issues is our choice. Transformative astrology makes us aware of patterns, and awareness is a potent tool.

For those new to the idea of astrology, astrology begins with the natal chart, derived from a picture of the sky the moment in time and space when we’re born. It’s considered the “seedplot” from which our lives and characters grow.

But the sky is always changing, and so are we. Transits map the dynamics of these changes, indicating the themes and rhythms of our lives.

Astrology is also a powerful tool for mapping relationships, a branch of astrology called synastry. I’ve had people come to me afraid I’ll say a relationship is doomed. Transformative astrology doesn’t do that. Rather, it gives us a language to talk about the dynamics and subtleties of relationships. In romantic or professional relationships, for instance, some people use a challenging aspect to spur growth, while others find the challenge more than they’re prepared to deal with. By contrast, parents who come to me almost always use relationship charts for finding more options in interacting with their children—an ideal use of the discipline.

An example of how the new astrology works is the consideration of retrogrades. Though the outer planets appear to go retrograde about half the year and so get noticed only on the days they “change direction,” the inner planets are much more noticeable. Mercury (famously) goes retrograde about three times a year, while Mars and Venus appear to do a back-and-forth dance every couple of years.

In the ancient world, these retrograde times represented natural rhythms to be respected. When the inner planets turned backward, individuals and communities turned inward. These were times to reflect, contemplate, rethink the world, or just slow down a bit.

In our contemporary world, we don’t slow down very much. As a result, the famous Mercury retrograde gets associated with misdirected mail, electronic breakdowns, or scrambled communications. The symbol, though, is best appreciated in reflection—rethinking belief-structures, revisiting relationships, and reconsidering projects for fresh insights. We may also find timeless principles returning in new garb, offering us guidance.

This is where astrology helps. As a discipline based on seasonal symbols as well as star lore, it points to natural rhythms beyond what we’ve noticed in the changing of the seasons. By helping us align with who we are and with subtle rhythms around us, transformative astrology offers us a deeper self-awareness.

We stand on the earth and orient ourselves in dynamic time, but we also look up to the stars. Through the symbols they represent, astrology can shape a cosmic context for our earth-space-time life. Within that context, we can claim our highest sense of creative identity.

And as long as transformative astrology does that, it works for me.