DIVINATORY ASTROLOGY

I run a group on Facebook that used to be called UK Astrologers. I have recently changed the name to Divinatory Astrology, and opened it up to anyone to join. Here is how I introduce the group: 

Welcome to Divinatory Astrology. Divination, I think, is the real nature of our craft. We are vehicles for the intuition, for the sky spirits, for the gods. The tradition itself, valuable as it is, is a launch pad, an orientation, an egregore: it has its own power that has built through the millennia. But eventually we need to move from Capricorn – mastery of what has come before – to Aquarius, where we earn the right to reinvent the tradition, to create the future. Without this constant reinvention, a tradition dies. It often requires courage, and it usually requires years of getting to know the gods – and our demons.

 Astrology is a different kind of knowledge to science: it is knowledge of consciousness, essentially, rather than knowledge of things. Our craft makes no sense from the point of view of the specialised remit of science. We use all 4 Elements – Fire, Earth, Air and Water – to gain knowledge. Science, by contrast, emphasises just Earth (data) and Air (theory). We are therefore part of a broader tradition of gnosis, within which science finds its place. Nor do we need to feel over-beholden to the astrological tradition itself: it needs to be worn lightly, so that the gods have room to speak.

 

So please come along and join. Meanwhile, here are my recent short pieces from the group (and from Twitter):

 

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I have a Pluto conjunct Venus (at 1 Aquarius) transit this year and next. The emerging deep theme seems to be the surrender of Mars to the Divine Feminine.

 

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I learnt astrology by talking with a friend, then doing readings. How you learn is revealed by your Mercury placement. Mine is in Aquarius opposite Uranus. I have to find my own way in, then I can hang the received learning on that. Astrology shows us why we are not stupid, but each have our own ways of learning. A watery Mercury may have to feel the idea, a fiery Mercury will need their imagination sparked, an airy Mercury will need to see its connections with other ideas, and an earthy Mercury will need to see its practical applications.

 

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The BBC News presenter Huw Edwards has natal Sun at 25 Leo. Uranus is in the early stages of squaring it. So his life goals are due for some major shifts. What has been happening with the young woman from the dating site has a self-inflicted, trickster feel around it, and looks set to end his career as he knows it. This is how Uranus sometimes upsets the apple-cart to get us to change. Edwards has natal Sun conjunct Uranus: he is a deeply unconventional (Uranus) and individual (Leo) person, yet he has been doing this staid job all his life. No wonder, in a sense, that this has happened.

 

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The Sun is afflicted in Aquarius because we tend to identify with changing the world, at the expense of that thing deep within us, that we are primarily here to take care of. Leo, the opposite sign, knows about this, and is the remedy, the balancing point.

 

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Sex, death and money. Mars, Pluto and Venus. The 3 things people don't want to talk about. But which are part of my job description as an astrologer. If not me, then who?

 

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James Webb telescope, 1st anniversary picture. From the constellation Ophiuchus, which are also the stars of the notorious and nonsensical 13th sign of the zodiac. Which has the perverse characteristic of actually working, thus demonstrating the divinatory nature of astrology. Here's what I wrote about it some years ago.  It is also a chapter from my book 'Surfing the Galactic Highways', for which you get a free reading if you buy it and leave a genuine rating on Amazon. 

 

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The IC - the bottom of the chart - denotes the end of life. It also describes home. Put together, it suggests death to be a homecoming. Jupiter is associated with death: the king of the gods welcoming you back to his realm. Jupiter is also good fortune, suggesting that death has that attribute too. In the Middle Ages, death was perfectly normal; it only became an event to be feared later.

 

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12th July:  Volcanic eruption in Iceland as the Moon in Taurus conjoins Jupiter and then Uranus.

 

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We are in retrograde season: Saturn, Neptune and Pluto. Uranus and Jupiter will join them at the start of Sept. It is 4 of Swords time: waiting and cooking. And the Moon card: listen to your deeper instincts, rather than where you think you would like your life to be going.

 

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Saturn is the planet of incarnating, of responsibility. The first Saturn Return usually sees us taking some new level of responsibility in the world. I think at the second Saturn Return, the responsibility shifts towards the Spirit. We have done the worldly bit. And it is when we can do our most significant work.

 

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Watching the series Vikings gave me an appreciation of the rationale behind human sacrifice, the genuine power it could have, and prompted me to write an astrological piece: Astrology, Death and Human Sacrifice 

 

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Mercury rules my MC and ASC. When Saturn conjoined my Aq Mercury in 2021, I wrote my first 2 books, after 15 years blogging. It was kind of easy, and earned. When he conjoined my Aq Sun last year, a wolf showed up and nudged me to write my first fiction. A Shamanic fantasy novel. That was much harder. It is good to have something that is difficult. Here is the blurb I have written for the back of the book in my Shamanic blog. Would you want to read it?

 

 

The Dakota Pipeline Protests and the 13th Sign of the Zodiac

According to motherjones.com, protesters began blocking the oil pipeline contruction sites in North Dakota on 22 August this year. Since then it has turned into a protest that has united the various Native American peoples. 

That unity sends a strong message: it stands for a humanity that has not lost its participation in nature, versus modern, technological man, who has lost that connection to nature and therefore to himself. This is a kind of madness. The dominant civilisation in this world of ours is mad, a madness that has been growing for thousands of years, when the disconnect began.

As the poet Ted Hughes said: "The story of mind exiled from Nature is the story of Western Man." 

Ruling this protest has been a Mars-Saturn conjunction in Sagittarius. The conjunction was exact on 24th August at which point (and for a couple of days before) the Sun, North Node, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter were all in Virgo, the sign of the cycles of nature. The North Node was square to Mars-Saturn and opposite Neptune, showing that this was a battle (Mars) against the establishment (Saturn) not just for the stopping of the pipeline, but for the soul (Neptune) of nature (Virgo). The Moon was in Taurus, emphasising the love of the natural world. The sign of Sagittarius shows the legal battle involved. 

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Obama has little to lose politically at this juncture in his Presidency, he may as well back these guys. He is very good at standing for all the right liberal things, and will make the ideal elder statesman; but unlike Bill Clinton, not very good at rolling up his sleeves and making change happen. Now is his chance. What are America's values?

The enduring aspect is a t-square between Saturn, Neptune and the North Node, which will last until November: so this protest is liable to run and run. It could become an issue in the Presidential campaign.

I said Mars and Saturn have been in Sagittarius. But they also conjoined at the start of the so-called 13th sign of the zodiac, Ophiuchus, which extends from about 8 to 26 Sagittarius. The start of a sign is a powerful place, it begins things. This sign is the subject of ridicule from traditional astrologers (see my blog defending Ophiuchus)  purely because it doesn't fit into their system.

Ophiuchus

But this idea of a 13th sign keeps presenting itself, via the BBC of all places. It has popular appeal, it intrigues people, and that is enough for me to say there is something real going on. A tradition stays alive when it responsive to how people feel, and it dies when it stands on its doctrinal correctness, which is what some astrologers are trying to do. So it makes a mess of the system, deal with it!

Ophiuchus portrays a man battling a serpent, and neither ever wins. It is Aquarius (man) and Scorpio (serpent). Technological man versus instinctive man. Humanity has always got itself into trouble when it thinks it has god-like powers, and this is attested to in many ancient stories. What we are experiencing now is a perennial problem. But it has become extreme, and it is at this time that Ophiuchus has presented himself, saying this problem has always been there and always will be, it is in the nature of being human. But it IS a problem, proportionality needs to be found, or the serpent will destroy you.

This struggle with deeper forces is part of shamanism, it is understood by indigenous spirituality. Ophiuchus was identified by the Romans as Asclepius, the healer. For the ancient Greeks, the figure was Apollo wrestling a huge snake that guarded the oracle at Delphi. So there are numerous connections here suggesting Ophiuchus as a shamanic figure, and these figures, in our world, are outside society, just as the 13th sign of the zodiac is anathema to traditional astrologers. And his emergence now seems to me to be pointing us towards the indigenous understanding of humanity's relationship with the natural world, for it is only mutual respect between humanity and the serpent that can restore balance.

In Defence of the 13th Sign

Ophiuchus

In the late 70s, someone mentioned to me that there used to be a 13^th sign of the zodiac and that it had something to do with a spider. I was intrigued. I had a strong feeling for astrology, but I knew nothing about it (which is probably why I was better then at guessing people’s star signs than I am now.)

I never followed up on the 13^th sign, but I did hear it mentioned from time to time. It was only a couple of days ago, when I saw a piece on Facebook protesting (quite rightly) at the BBC’s inaccurate presentation of astrology that I found about properly about this mysterious sign, Ophiuchus.

From the point of view of traditional astrology, the 13^th sign is a piece of nonsense, invented in about 1970. What happened was that in 1930 the astronomers redefined the boundaries of the constellations so that Ophiuchus was now behind the Sun from Dec 1 to Dec 18 each year.

From there it was a short step to someone saying, well in that case it is a zodiac sign, because that is how zodiac signs are defined: they are the constellations on the Sun’s path through the sky (the ecliptic).

Except that the signs aren’t defined that way, not any more. Originally, the signs would have been based around the constellations on the ecliptic. But then they got tidied up into 30 degrees each (which of course they aren’t) and since that time, due to precession, they have drifted 23 degrees off that original alignment.

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So the signs are a fiction, as they have nothing to do with the stars anymore (though I don't think the public is usually aware of that!) They are simply a way we have of dividing space into 12 segments, based around the seasons instead of the stars. So that Aries always begins at the spring equinox. Whereas in India, where they take precession into account, Aries now begins in mid April.

The 12 signs and the corresponding constellations: note the constellations are of unequal size and do not line up exactly with the signs

So from this point of view, claiming the constellation Ophiuchus as a sign makes no sense, because the constellations are not the signs.

This is incorrectly called The Zodiac. It is in fact the 13 constellations on the ecliptic.

And if we were to incorporate it, it would make a mess of all the symmetry and symbolism that comes with having 12 signs.

And yet…. The 13^th sign clearly has popular appeal, and it doesn’t look like it’s about to go away, especially with the BBC promoting it! One of the myths surrounding it is that 2000 years ago it was a sign, and the astrologers of the time excluded it (another piece of nonsense). That adds to its mystery, so when modern astrologers also shut it out, that almost adds to the mystique. An excluded, hidden part of the psyche.

I would argue that a tradition needs to respond to popular appeal if it wants to stay alive. Much as the Church did in the 10^th century, when the Pope began canonising saints, which up till then had just been a local, popular practice.

There’s nothing about canonising saints in the Bible, and no doubt some theologians dismissed it as doctrinal nonsense, and they would have been right. But if something has popular appeal, you can always adjust the doctrine.

And maybe astrologers also need to look at their criteria for incorporating change. When a new planet is discovered by astronomers, we accept it, and we accept the mythology around the name of the planet, even though the name is decided upon by astronomers. And astronomers are not people we generally think of as sympathetic to astrology. Yet when people who ARE sympathetic to astrology – a large section of the public – run with a new piece of mythology that has no basis in doctrine, we are quick to dismiss it. Our instinct seems to be not to adapt. Maybe we are too intellectual, so that astronomers get taken seriously where popular feeling does not?

But does the 13^th sign really have no basis in astrological theory? Do we, in other words, over-egg the difference between signs and constellations? Because the origin of the signs was indeed the constellations, before the systematisers came along and tidied it all up. 

Geometrically/astronomically, the signs and constellations are not the same. But mythologically, they are closely related. Of course they are. The signs are fundamentally mythological, they tell us ancient stories about ourselves, that is part of their deep appeal, and they are the same myths as the constellations associated with them.

So if a constellation is reconfigured so that it is, to some extent, on the ecliptic - as in the case of Ophiuchus -  then I think it is mythologically true to say that it becomes part of the zodiac, because the zodiac’s mythological foundations are those constellations on the ecliptic.

And when you are thinking mythologically, you’re not thinking about systems. You are feeling and imagining and divining, and this was the original basis of astrology: that raw relationship with the sky that Bernadette Brady has done so much to unearth and invoke through her visual astrology.

That, if you like, is my theoretical case for the 13^th sign. And my practical case is that it has popular appeal – in other words, it has found its way in, at least to some extent, whether we like it or not, and however much we may huff and puff about doctrinal incorrectness. Much as the outer planets and their  mythologies have found their way in through astronomy, so has the 13^th sign found its way in through its popular appeal. Not only do we need our public, but there can be a wisdom in that popular feeling, even if it's based on what we see as muddled thinking, that I think needs paying attention to.

So what are we going to do with it? Astrology is a flexible tradition, and in its modern form we find room for extra planets, asteroids and the Galactic Centre along with imaginary bodies such as Vulcan and the Dark Moon.

Black Moon

But I don’t think we can just pat Ophiuchus on the head and give him a new category and then quietly ignore him, while congratulating ourselves on being broad-minded. He has come in as a sign of the zodiac, and therefore needs to be treated as such. The way he has come in is part of the sign’s divinatory qualities, along with the mythology behind Ophiuchus.

I don’t say we have to change the zodiac to incorporate him (though maybe we could?). No, we can keep the same zodiac, but then – if we want - add in to our reading any planets in that sign, which extends from about 8 to 26 Sagittarius (yes, the Galactic Centre at 26 Sag harbours the dark secret of Ophiuchus!) and which is now also 0 to 18 Ophiuchus.

18th century star map illustrating how the feet of Ophiuchus cross the ecliptic

Ophiuchus is a man grappling with a serpent, the only sign to contain both man and beast. The mid-point of early Aquarius and early Scorpio is in Ophiuchus – the man and the serpent, he resolves these 2 signs.

The 1^st century Roman poet Manilius describes the constellation thus:

“Ophiuchus holds apart the serpent which with its mighty spirals and twisted body encircles his own, so that he may untie its knots and back that winds in loops. But, bending its supple neck, the serpent looks back and returns: and the other's hands slide over the loosened coils. The struggle will last forever, since they wage it on level terms with equal powers.”
(Wiki)

It is powerful imagery. Man grappling with his demons, but they are equals, he does not slay them like St George, but meets them with a respect which is mutual. Aquarius meets Scorpio.

And it seems that in modern times, this principle is having to force its way in, if the response of the astrological world to Ophiuchus is anything to go by. We live in an age of ideas, of scientific and technological progress (Aquarius) and the dark side of that (Scorpio) is all around us in environmental degradation, terrible weapons and an alienation from the rhythms of nature. Aquarius here is also the astrologers with their beautiful, human-made systems; and Scorpio is the popular feeling that doesn't always have much regard for such systems, that just likes a good story, even if it’s not true.

So it’s as if through Ophiuchus, that principle of integration of man and beast, human consciousness and its origins, is wanting to make a new synthesis between technological man and nature.

Later in his poem, Manilius describes the astrological influence of Ophiuchus, when the constellation is in its rising phase, as one which offers affinity with snakes and protection from poisons, saying "he renders the forms of snakes innocuous to those born under him. They will receive snakes into the folds of their flowing robes, and will exchange kisses with these poisonous monsters and suffer no harm" (Wiki)

This seems to suggest a healing quality. For the Romans, the figure in Ophiuchus was Asclepius, the Healer.

And again:

To the ancient Greeks, the constellation represented the god Apollo struggling with a huge snake that guarded the Oracle of Delphi.
(Wiki)

This brings us back to astrology: the use of reason to create a system (Apollo) and the divinatory power that system was built to serve (the Oracle); the tension, hopefully creative, that you get between the two, that one seems to get in any spiritual tradition: the direct experience of the mystic, and the wisdom of the book.

Jim Morrison

But what about some divination? After all, the above is no use if Ophiuchus does not have divinatory validity. And I thought the quality I want to look for is a struggle with demons as characterising the life of someone with Sun in Ophiuchus, and that I’d see who I had on my personal list of famous people. There were just 2 of them, Jim Morrison (of the Doors) and the painter Edvard Munch.

Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison is well known for his losing battle with his own demons, resulting in his death aged 27 of a heroin overdose. And Munch is known to all of us as the painter of The Scream, portraying the existential anxieties of modern people.

And that was enough for me. This thing works. I don’t test divination with statistics, because it doesn’t work that way. I test it with what immediately presents itself to me, and that was a double hit.

So if you have substantial personal placements in Ophiuchus, your life is likely to be characterised more than most by a struggle with demons, which you may at times be losing, or which you may turn into art for the collective; and whose wider context is the archetypal struggle (leading hopefully to synthesis) between humans and nature, a struggle that is particularly pressing right now as Ophiuchus pushes himself into view from the left field.

And the fact that Ophiuchus as a sign of the zodiac has popular appeal, but is ridiculed by many astrologers, maybe suggests an imbalance between the intricate and beautiful astrological system that has developed over 2 millennia, and the raw divinatory power that system was built to serve.