Monthly Archives: February 2011

By Dale O’Brien

If we just stand back and look at astrology visually, as the original astrologers did, we see a beautifully rendered art filled with imagery. We can see connect-the-dots pictures called constellations, a Zodiac (meaning a band of animals), intriguing inherently symbolical Zodiacal and planetary glyphs, systematic “Element-ary” and expressive modality clues to each sign, analogies for a twelve-fold division of the agricultural cycle of the Northern Hemisphere.

As a logos-study, Genuine Astrology should always be basically orderly, never just conveniently arbitrary. With rich mythology alluded to again and again by its Zodiacal Signs, planets, etc., astrology should have never been allowed to degenerate into mere cliched keywords, locking away imagination and the animistic vitality inherently always there, if we can boldly and confidently See, Hear and Evoke the Truth that the original astrologers, those seminal artists, systematically laid out for us.

Just what are we meant to see, to hear, to evoke? Our Sky Maps hold for us the great and wonderful potential of who we are meant to be, in contrast with an equally accurate mythic rendering of how we can tragically fail ourselves. The potentials of our time are defined in terms of issues and opportunities within a specific range of possibilities, mythically inspired.

Outside of Eric Francis’ Planet Waves, and precious few other sources, sadly, most of astrology has degenerated to arbitrary keyword cliches, dressed up in slick magazines and tooth-rotting cotton candy website fluff, trivia useless to help us through hard times. Many, many modern ‘astrologers’ have forgotten the essence of our sky-watching ancestors. For some who do look back on astrology’s history, they tend to look for old cliched keywords, ignoring planets discovered since antiquity, rendering or restoring value-judgment-laden numeric ratings, with an unspoken implicit fatalistic doom, equally useless in helping us through hard times.

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