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 SECOND SATURN RETURN: HOW TO BE AN ELDER

By the time we arrive at the MC, the 10th House Cusp, in the journey through the Houses, we are looking at the Elder, someone who assumes responsibility for the community. This is Saturn's realm. But how can a lone individual assume this onerous responsibility? It is by looking at Saturn in a different way.

Sitting Bull

During the 1st Saturn Return, we assume responsibility for ourselves, we begin to incarnate. And that is how Saturn is generally seen, as the worldly taskmaster, for better or for worse. He is a very mixed blessing in our extraverted culture.

In the 2nd Saturn Return we have, schematically speaking, done 30 years of incarnating. We no longer have to pretend to be an adult 😂 Seriously, Saturn is the bridge to the outer planets. At this time Saturn learns to be the servant to the outer planets, instead of trying (unsuccessfully) to boss them around. In other words, the responsibility is no longer 'ours', it belongs to something bigger than our narrow selves.

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So this is how the lone individual assumes this impossible responsibility: by recognising that it is 'not my will but thine'. This is Saturn, at his 2nd Return aged 58 or so, giving us the broad shoulders that the community needs of us. We quietly know that they are not our shoulders, but something bigger than that, beyond that, to which we surrender. The outer planets. Spirit.

And we can surrender in part because we no longer care so much about our reputation, a concern of the 1st adult Saturn cycle. If everything f*&^s up, so be it, we can live with that and what people may say. (This also describes the way in which Saturn-ruled Capricorn, with its mastery of the tribal tried-and-tested norms, earns the right to move into rule-breaking, transpersonal Aquarius.) There is undoubtedly some broader purpose at work that we do not know about and may never know about.

The Late-life Crisis

I was reading today that along with the ‘Mid-life crisis’ there is now a 'Late-life Crisis', that happens to people in their sixties. Thank heavens for that I thought.  Life does go on after all. Because where would we be without crises, how would we ever make the big changes that are necessary for our lives to move on?

 

Crisis comes from the Greek Krisis meaning a turning point in a disease. That’s what they are, turning points, and they aren’t of our own conscious making, it’s like life puts them there. Or the gods, the spirits, we call on them, and they respond by turning our lives upside down. Or own unconscious propensities lead us there. Whatever. The Germans have a great word for mid-life crisis: Torschlusspanik, literally "shut-door-panic."

And one of my internal fights (along with the one against reductionist science) is the idea that once we are in our sixties, that is it, it is at best a long decline. I do not THINK that, but somewhere I BELIEVE that, because that is what our culture, to a large extent, believes. Otherwise people would not be forced to retire at a certain age, or become unemployable in their fifties if they find themselves jobless.

This attitude is changing to some extent for purely economic reasons: we are living longer, so the pension pots are no longer big enough, so the retirement age is being gradually raised, in the UK at any rate. But that still means people in their 70s and 80s are left on what can effectively be the scrap heap, though no-one would say that. From their point of view, fair enough, they may not want to work anymore. But to others work can seem like everything, if you can’t or won’t work you’re either a loser or an old person on the scrap heap.

The time is ripe for change astrologically, as the Pluto in Leo generation enter their 60s and 70s, and Pluto transits Capricorn. The generation who knows how to stay youthful (Leo) transforming attitudes to age (Capricorn.)

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What I find myself saying regularly in readings is when you get older, it can be time to start over in a really BIG way. Think BIG, think RADICAL. When you are older, you know that life is about change, you hang looser to some of your beliefs and shibboleths than when you were young, all this achievement stuff is just part of life being a dream that transfixes younger people, so being older frees you to do things and live in ways you have never done before. In ancient India,  older people often went off and became wandering mendicants, spiritual seekers. In Australia and the US they buy mobile homes and travel round the country in tribes and their children worry about them.

But what is this ‘Late-life crisis’? It seems to be about people in their 60s experiencing bereavement or illness, and it brings them face-to-face with their own mortality, and there are 2 frequent responses: they either give up and go downhill, or they find a new lease of life.

And this is well described by the two generational transits that we all experience at that time: the second Saturn Return, aged 58-59, which ushers us into our sixties, followed by the closing square of the Uranus cycle, in the same way that we had the opening square aged 21 or so.

So the second Saturn Return. Well I haven’t experienced it yet, so I don’t know what I’m talking about, but hey, when did that ever stop me? :)

Before Pluto came along, Saturn was the planet of death, and he still is: he sets boundaries and gives us judgement, the ability to weigh up and learn from the past. At the first Saturn Return, he is orientated to the future, towards what we have yet to achieve. At the second – well, we could look at it as orientated to the past, to what we have done. But, particularly with the modern increases in life expectancy, we can also look at the 2^nd Saturn return as orientated to the future. What we can achieve now that we have many years’ experience behind us, but also, crucially, what we can achieve now that we are aware of our mortality. And what also do we mean by this word ‘achievement’, that is so tied up with Saturn, so tied up with what the world and our parents expect of us and which may have driven us for most of our lives? What is worth achieving now that we know we will die and that we can’t take anything with us, particularly worldly recognition? 

(I don’t know what happens after we die, all I know is that I’m quite suspicious of any certainty, including certainty that death means extinction: in its own way, that certainty is also a false comfort.)

So after the rounding-up of our lives through Saturn, and the perspective and realism and awareness of mortality that he gives, comes the Uranus square Uranus. A disruption of what has become safe and routine and predictable in us, in order for new possibilities to get in. And that may involve illness and bereavement. Or unemployment.

It’s like when we were 20-22, but the other way round. First you have the Uranus Square, opening you up, making life seem full of possibilities. Then Saturn square comes along and says OK, but you need to be grounded first, you need to be able to take care of yourself, otherwise all the vision is unreal.

But in our early sixties it’s the other way round, it’s Saturn then Uranus, it’s Uranus who has the last word. And that’s just as well because we shouldn’t need to go off and ground ourselves, that’s there as a matter of course (hopefully), so we can live out those Uranian possibilities in quite a real way.

But it depends, and here’s the crisis, because that’s what Uranian disruption often means, crisis, we can’t carry on as before, something’s changed, and we don’t know what to do. It depends on how you respond to that disruption, and that may depend on the state of your Saturn: have you become so fixed that either you carry on as you are now or you feel you may as well just leave? Or has Saturn taught you his secret lesson, has he taken you beyond what the world wants of you, and you are free? Either way it may still not be comfortable.

But the best meaning of Uranus square Uranus, best in the sense of going where life wants us to go, is to go with that change, begin anew, because that’s what life always wants us to do, however old we are. Jung found through dreams of his elderly patients that life behaved not as though it were about to be extinguished, but as though it was going to continue, and he said the best way to live is according to nature, which therefore means looking to the future. And Uranus is a forward looking planet. Maybe they’ll come up with a new crisis based around the Uranus Return in our 80s.

Because it’s also about recognising old people as people with lives that develop, and that are just as important to them as younger people’s lives are to them, and the more society can do that, the more it will recognise events such as the ‘Late-life Crisis.’