Rethinking Astrology:  Building Tolerance Through Meaning

Astrology and Tolerance

One of astrology’s pioneers in the twentieth century, Llewellyn George, noted that even a slight familiarity with astrology “tends to make people broader in their views and more charitable toward their fellow beings.” In this comment, he not only offered a reason for astrology’s resurgence in the twentieth century, but he also stood against reductionism. In other words, just as he opposed materialist scientists reducing people to a few chemical reactions, he also opposed astrologers reducing people to a few categories—“Oh, you’re an Aries! Well, we all know about that temper!” If people wanted this kind of abuse, he thought, they could get it without going to astrologers.

As an alternative, Llewellyn George proposed what present-day transformative astrologers seek: to investigate the deepest meaning of the birthchart and to invite each person to reach for that meaning as his or her destiny. Dane Rudhyar, humanistic astrology’s founder, said that the birth chart represents what the universe needs at this moment in time, space, and consciousness. The universe calls us into being because it needs the qualities that we will exhibit in this lifetime. Astrology helps us discover this unique joining of qualities and hence why we’re here.

That we each have a purpose connected to the big picture offers a foundation for tolerance. We don’t have our differences just to annoy each other; they have a role to play in our personal growth and in the larger evolution of the culture, the planet, and even the cosmos.

The job of astrology isn’t therefore to impose agendas of who we should be. Its value lies in helping us become the creative force in the society that we were each born to be, whatever form it takes.

To this end, astrology offers a safe space to discover our innate healing, self-evolving processes and to develop our transformation skills. This vision guides astrological consultations as well as astrology’s perspective on the future.

And nothing symbolizes astrology’s perspective on the future better than the 1999 solar eclipse and grand cross.

The grand cross solar eclipse—and predicting

If you heard about a grand cross of planets created during the August 11, 1999 solar eclipse, you weren’t alone. Because a cross in the sky is high astrological drama, many people (not just astrologers) noticed it—and made predictions about it. Even Nostradamus got in on the act, dating one of his quatrains to coincide with the eclipse (and Nostradamus seldom dated anything). Most doom-and-gloom soothsayers didn’t hit the mark, of course, though several astrologers predicted a major earthquake in Turkey and a drought followed by a massive hurricane in America.

Which raises an important point about predictions. Most astrologers, myself included, don’t believe that the future is fixed. For this reason, astrological predictions merely set a stage for developmental trends. They’re more like weather forecasts than prophetic utterances or more like telling time than announcing a predetermined future. When specific predictions are offered, they indicate potentialities only. They serve either to warn us or to inspire hope.

For my part, I’ve always been nervous about specific predictions in astrology. Granted, some of my clients congratulate me on “predicting just what happened.” But in fact, they did it. They’re the ones living their lives and discovering meaning. All I do is outline potential trends, based on the symbols as well as my knowledge of the client’s life. And that knowledge is just as important as the symbols. My relationship comments to a married person with children, for instance, differ from comments I make to a single person with no children. Without the knowledge, I’d have very little to say. If a Martian dropped in on my practice, I’d be at a loss until I got some details about Martian life.

And I make comments not to force what will happen (and so introduce the power of suggestion, which I as a former hynotherapist know how to avoid) but rather to raise the awareness of potentials indicated by the chart’s meaning and the person’s life. It’s the person who fills in the details and knows whether some potential we discussed became relevant. (In fact, potentials that don’t develop are usually forgotten.)

The result is to make a chart session a consultation rather than a performance by the astrologer, as Noel Tyl notes. Together, the client and I work to identify how his or her talents have been and are being developed. We look at the past and present of character development and consider potentials for growth in the future.

If both of us know the details well, we can often make some pretty accurate guesses, which, by the way, we could do with most character-analysis tools, such as Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram, astrology merely being older and more extensive than most tools. Accurate guesses mean that the consultation raised the awareness of both of us, so that we provided useful channels for character development. It means that we affirmed the talents the universe needs and how they’re manifesting. It doesn’t mean that we “proved” astrology by predicting a predetermined future.

So whatever external changes occur, transformative astrologers are most interested in consciousness and its dynamics.

Accordingly, astrologers treated the summer 1999 planetary pictures as symbols of consciousness change. And in this context, the grand cross symbolizes breakthrough insights that we’ll be having well into the new millennium.

From the summer of 1998 to the spring of 1999, for example, the “old order” (Saturn in Taurus) was under pressure to change or dissolve (Saturn square Neptune), making way for a more egalitarian, humanitarian culture (Saturn square Uranus in Aquarius into the year 2000). Because the Sun-Moon eclipse occurred in Leo (symbolizing the heart), many astrologers added that humanity’s heart was opening, fostering greater receptivity to new ideas and diverse cultures. The upshot of all this may be, in a phrase I heard often in the summer of 99, that “ordinary people are going to take the planet back.”

Because eclipse events coincided with a Venus retrograde, many people rethought their relationships as well as their creative and material resources. For not a few, summer’s end brought some discouraging moments, especially in their professional relationships (Venus squared Saturn as it neared the end of its retrograde). Some folks worried about their competence and how they handled the details of their lives (Venus turned retrograde in Virgo), while others wondered whether they’d ever get some creative project off the ground (Venus returned to Leo before going direct).

But as Venus went direct on September 11, we had a powerhouse conjunct of Mars (Mr. Energy) and Pluto (Mr. Intensity), which symbolized the oomph to take action about whatever we’d been stewing over since July. Some of the action may have been a bit more explosive than we wanted, but it also cleared the air in no uncertain terms.

As we looked back, then, we saw that we’d gone through a time of reexamination, of reevaluating our creative roles and our relationships. We’d all been through something together, and new realities would emerge from our joint struggles. We’d been colleagues in reconsidering potentials, and we remain colleagues in working out which potentials will actualize and which will not.

Most importantly, these configurations—the grand cross, Venus retrograde, and Pluto’s dance with Mars (and Chiron in the 1999 holiday season and into the new year)—symbolize a time of reevaluating our life missions. We’ve been asking ourselves what we came here for, as pioneers such as Llewellyn George and Dane Rudhyar hoped we would, and the symbols suggest that we need to keep asking the question—on peak days as well as in the trenches.

A new century and a new consciousness

What will emerge for the year 2000 and beyond is anyone’s guess, of course, but many astrologers suggest that the nature of the new century depends entirely on each of us claiming this deepest sense of who we are. It’s time to reimagine the purposes that our lives can serve and then dedicate ourselves to living our souls’ agenda—what’s most ours to be and to do.

Yes, there’s the Y2K threat. But one meaning of the new millennial consciousness may be that we learn how to turn threats into opportunities. In fact, most of the commentaries I’ve read cast Y2K dangers in this light: they give us a reason to reach out in our communities, to build bridges to neighbors and friends, and to decide what’s crucial in our lives as opposed to what’s merely convenient.

At the end of the 1800s, humanity roared into the twentieth century, expecting to see—with the help of its new god, science—the crowning century of human progress. Instead, wars and economic woes, cultural and personal crises dominated decade after decade, leading most historians to abandon their nineteenth-century optimism and invite the world to join them in post-World-War-I humanity bashing, which only got worse after World War II.

At the end of the twentieth century, we’re not roaring. Rather, we’re cautiously building a vision for a new culture while trying to think more deeply about the human psyche, emotions, and motivations. We’re looking for the deeper foundations of tolerance. True, some humanity-bashers are predicting, even hoping for, a catastrophe that will sweep humanity away or at least get rid of the worst of us so that the rest can make “a fresh start.” But the cautious builders, looking more deeply at history and consciousness, believe that a fresh start can happen at any time, catastrophe or not. Again, the key is not some event but the dynamics of consciousness.

The eclipse symbols—which some astrologers regard as the keys to the new century—suggest that we will in fact build a new culture with a new consciousness. We’ll find the deeper meaning that leads to broader perspectives. How will we get from here to there?

In the new century, the symbols suggest, we’ll be less inclined to turn our power over to external authorities and more inclined to discover our own creativity. We’ll be less likely to salute credentials and more likely to respect integrity and ability. Above all, we’ll want to know how to recover from a century of suffering and create a century of healing.

With a new millennium approaching—replete with planetary symbols of rethinking our belief systems, restructuring our relationships, and launching projects with long-term, spiritual implications—astrology has never been in a better position to serve humanity. My guess is that, the more transformative astrology builds the foundations for tolerance, the more we’ll see astrologers and all their colleagues in the service professions open their hearts to a new era, in tune with a more open-hearted humanity.