 |
Dear Eric:
I haven’t read any of the translations you mentioned here Eric. You said that Project Hindsight has made traditional astrology more popular, especially with young people. Do you think this is a good thing? I have not seen much practical application o,f for example Hellenistic astrology so I’m wondering if it is all more of an academic exercise.
— Jamie.
.
.
Dear Jamie:
I think it’s essential that there be plenty of astrologers with roots in the tradition, who understand the basics — and some who understand the advanced ancient techniques, so that there are always teachers around who are grounded in the classics. I think every profession (or in this case art form) benefits from knowing its own history and suffers from ignorance of the past. It’s not merely an intellectual exercise because of the complexity of doing astrology well, and the grounding necessary: to learn astrology you have to study diligently for a decade or so, and you need a framework and intellectual rigor. The ancient techniques provide a platform, if we are cautious to recognize that they come from a different world with a different world view.
I am still looking for examples of practical application of ancient techniques, though this may be a matter of creativity. The newspaper horoscope is a good example of applying an ancient technique, in particular, whole sign houses, the first house system and the innovation that gave us aspects and other features of astrology that we take for granted today. The newspaper horoscope (a 20th century thing) revived an ancient technique; then the classical movement unearthed much more about the history of that technique (check a monograph called Whole Sign Houses by Rob Hand, one of my favorite astrology books).
Out of the traditional astrology research, something called the Thema Mundi emerged, a hypothetical chart of the world, which informs us that the 1st house is associated with the sign Cancer rather than the sign Aries. I call this the 90-degree shift issue. In the 20th century astrology was reduced to a “12-letter alphabet” that simplistically associated Mars, Aries and the 1st house, Taurus Venus and the 2nd house, and so on. As it turns out, the 1st house was associated by the ancients (in the Hermetic tradition) with the sign Cancer and the Moon; the 2nd house with Leo and the Sun; and so on. This has the ability to change the way that all astrologers work — and to improve the sensitivity of their readings.
The shift is not just theoretical. The ascendant or 1st house is a key to one’s sense of identity. Do we associate the identify of humanity or the world with the nature of Mars/Aries (war, sex drive, conquering, initiative) or do we associate it with the nature of the Moon/Cancer (nurturing, feelings, the home, mothers, children and another kind of initiative)? Big difference, right?
Those just are two examples.
I think it’s meaningful to understand worldviews of the past, and to recognize how they apply and do not apply to the present. We need to raise awareness of what astrology needs to do TODAY, where we live, and what astrologers need to do, to address the present turning point of humanity. We need to be able to handle the sudden incursion of so many new planets and classes of planets orbiting our Sun. There is comfort in the past, and we are facing a kind of chaotic abyss in the present, symbolized by all these new planets: there is no system except for maybe Chaos Theory that can handle the 230,000 planets discovered, most of them since the very late 20th century. These discoveries are a commentary on our lives, taken as a lot, and as individual processes.
This expansion presents special challenges of theory, practical technique, and understanding human nature. It’s going to take a lot more than astrology to help us get there, though astrology is a lot better off in a grounded, informed state about its past than it is floating on the bubble of pop psychology, magical thinking or occultism that has fed it for so long.
— Eric Francis
I’m grateful for both the reemergence of the ancient and the new discoveries. The ancients reveal astrology’s deep roots helping it to free itself from the triviality or at best irony that the modern and postmodern reduce everything to just like science reducing everything to baryonic matter.
Then there’s the Centaurs. They seem to have to do with therapy, reclaiming shadow when they’re accessed consciously. I think that their erratic inclinations suggest resonance with the vertical dimension of human awareness that includes the heavens above our heads and all the way down through our feet to the planet core, accepting the animal that the church held bound and gagged in a dungeon for centuries.
Retrograde Saturn in Cancer suggests an absent father, but Chiron conjunct my dad’s sun in Aries squared my sun in Capricorn reveals more detail about the wound of losing him around age 11 and further it suggests a method of healing~in my case it’s Taoist martial arts. Recent discussions of Nessus helped me unearth a particular memory at the root of the storm around my heart that sometimes leaks out here (sorry about that…I sometimes don’t see it until after it’s posted. I’m used to it after all), and again suggests methods of healing. When you only have the classical planets you don’t get as many clues as to how to manifest the best potential from the energies reflected in your birth chart. It’s a lot easier to get stuck in thinking that, for example Mars in Taurus is simply a bad placement so I might as well not even try any kind of martial arts cause I’d suck at it. Throw in Chiron and means of release present themselves.
These are great points. I think that for many the future (particularly as we think of it these days) is scary, unpredictable and anyway we need to be visioning, not predicting. So this is a whole new role for astrology. I consider the work a form of metaprogramming. We are not predicting the future but creating the mental and psychic tools to create it as we do so.
With the new points, nobody uses 230,000 of them; most of those don’t even have names and a lot are asteroids like 1789 Dobrovolsky and 1815 Beethoven. But the potential is daunting, especially if you just use nine planets and a couple of angles; and there is the need to work with an open palette rather than a closed one. This is one important shift: that the chart keeps changing, and that new points drop in without any real certainty of their “meaning.” We need techniques to do this, and I have some good ones: easy to teach, learn and apply.
Still, there is the confrontation with the unknown.
I hope you’re right in your example of grounding historical knowledge before taking a leap into a new body of knowledge. We do need both. But we need to remember that the information that comes through astrology comes from beyond astrology. Astrology is just the easiest vehicle for that particular form of the knowledge, grounded in its particular patterns, symbols and cycles.
Eric,
I wonder if the (unconscious) reason so many astrologers are turning to the past is because they feel at some level incapable of handling the future. In your recent presentation at the astrology conference, you seemed to suggest that you are one of the only astrologers trying to incorporate all these new planets, asteroids, centaurs, TNO’s, and so forth into your readings. I find that admirable. But you may be right in your sense that to most astrologers, it probably seems a little overwhelming trying to figure out how to incorporate more than 230,000 new points of reference into a chart reading.
In my own life, I have sometimes had periods where I explore a base of historical knowledge right before I take a big leap into a new body of knowledge that I’m not yet familiar with…the (admittedly Aquarian) idea being that knowledge of history can give you insight into both the present and the future. Perhaps something analogous to this is happening in the astrological community. Knowledge of the past is being actively sought out in order to prepare for leap forward.
Just something to consider. 🙂
astrodem