CHRISTIANITY VS ISLAM

It is possible to get some sort of chart for both Christianity and Islam by using the start dates for the Christian and Muslim Calendars respectively. (See Nick Campion's 'Book of World Horoscopes')

The Christian Calendar can be set up for 12am 1st Jan 0001 AD. (Click for larger image).



With Jupiter on the ASC opposite Mars in Aries on the DESC (‘open enemies’) square to the Sun, the expansive (Jupiter) and crusading (Mars) nature of Christianity seems to be clear. Islam has also spread widely, but it is not worldwide in the way that Christianity is.

The Muslim Calendar can be set up for July 16 622 AD at 6.45pm in Medina, Saudi Arabia: this is the traditional date of Mohammed’s arrival (at sunset) in Medina. These are both symbolic rather than literal charts, but so is the US Sibly chart! And astrology itself is symbolic.


Islam is much more identified with its place of origin, the Middle East, than is Christianity, and I think we can see this from its Sun in Cancer on the DESC conjunct Saturn: it is concerned to defend (Saturn) the homeland (Cancer) from its enemies (DESC). The Moon (Home) in the 7th House (enemies) seems to reinforce this point. With most of the chart in the 7th, opposition and enemies would seem to be central to Islam, it’s as though it wouldn’t know itself without them. Like an old friend of ours who also has Sun in Cancer and unaspected Mars in Virgo, George W Bush.

If you Progress the Christian Chart to 1095 AD, the date of the first Crusade to the Holy Land, you find Pluto stationary Retrograde. The Progressed Chart for 1271, the year of the final Crusade, has Pluto stationary Direct. So the Medieval Crusades involved a whole Progressed Pluto cycle for Christianity. If we fast forward to 11th Sept 2001, what do we find? Progressed Pluto stationary Direct! The start of a whole new cycle of aggression against Islam.


That this new cycle is not just a one-way process is confirmed by Progressing the Islamic Chart to 11th Sept 2001, and setting it for New York. What we find is progressed Pluto at 25.02 Aries, within 5 minutes of the MC at 24.57 Aries.

As I have written elsewhere, the War on Terror (using the 9/11 chart for its beginning) had a progressed New Moon in August 2007, heralding a major new phase in the conflict, whose nature will take time to become clear. The chart for Islam had a progressed New Moon 4 weeks earlier in July 2007, which is extraordinary, and confirms the point.


The Composite Chart for Islam and Christianity has Mars at 0.39 Cancer conjunct Saturn and Pluto in Cancer, which is about as heavy as it gets. Pluto will oppose this Mars by transit in Feb 2008, again indicative of a new phase in the conflict between the Christian West and Muslim Middle East.

When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated a few days ago, Mars was very close to this Christian-Muslim composite Mars, and so is descriptive of the tensions between the pro-western Bhutto and ther Pakistani Islamists that led to her murder.

As Pluto moves to oppose the composite Saturn and Pluto in the coming years, Uranus will also square them, at the same time as the Uranus-Pluto square transits the charts of most of the major western powers. This suggests that the development of the conflict between the west and the Muslim world will be an important part of the Uranus-Pluto square, which is the big astrological configuration coming our way. You never know, some sort of accommodation might eventually be reached, it might not be all doom and gloom.

Blair the Fundamentalist

There’s a series of programmes called ‘The Blair Years’ on TV at the moment, and I managed to catch part of one of them the other night. It was dealing with 9/11 and Iraq. What struck me was Blair’s position on it, after all this time and after he has left office. What we have, he convicted, is “a visceral struggle between what is right and what is wrong.”


Yes, he really does believe this. The man has learnt nothing from the war, all it has done is give birth to his latent fundamentalism. When there is a war, you have to look at it from both sides if you are going to make any sense of it. And it seems pretty obvious to me that the War on Terror is rooted in Arab resistance to western influence. It’s as simple as that. A bit like how many European tribes must have felt at the time of the Romans.

The West needs the Arab oil, and they’re going to make sure they have enough control and influence in the Middle East to safeguard their supplies. You can’t expect the West to behave otherwise. Nor can you expect the Arabs not to resent this influence in their homeland (for which they get nicely paid). This tension is going to continue for as long as we need their oil. Of course, it isn’t put like this by either side. America is ‘The Great Satan’, and the West is struggling against ‘Evil’.

If anything is ‘evil’, it is the fundamentalism you find on both sides that makes any sort of understanding of the situation impossible. If anything is ‘evil’, it is the way Bush and Blair see the ‘war’ as a battle of good versus evil, with themselves of course on the side of ‘good’.

It is hard to believe that Tony Blair is so foolish and superficial, so psychologically primitive. But he is, and we elected him 3 times to run the UK. Which doesn’t say much for we the British people, or for the American people who elected Bush twice.

Before the Iraq War, Tony Blair went to see the Pope to try to get his blessing. Yes, he really did do this. You couldn’t make something like this up, it is priceless comedy. It also makes it clear that Blair was unknowingly engaged on a medieval crusade against Islam. To the Pope’s credit (and I’m not inclined to give Popes much credit), he didn’t give his blessing.


It is gradually coming out that Blair was always much bigger on God than he let on. He was afraid, rightly, of being seen as a ‘nutter’. He has for some years been close to converting to Catholicism, the main barrier appearing to be political considerations.

Tony Blair was born 6 May 1953 at 6.10am in Edinburgh. He has Moon in 10th House Aquarius in a t-square with Sun in Taurus and Pluto in Leo. The challenge of Pluto is to find your own inner power, your own independent sense of confidence and strength. If you are unaware, if you are not up to this challenge, you will look for this sense of power and authority outside of yourself, and this is exactly what Blair has done with his religious certainty and crusade against ‘evil’. And through his need to be in a position of power. Unlike many leaders, he went straight from being PM to being a Middle East envoy on behalf of the major powers.

Aquarius at its worst can be rigidly ideological, which is where his Moon comes in, and we also see it in his Jupiter-Mars conjunction on the ASC. The fixity of his t-square doesn’t help either.

It was Neptune which liberated the fundamentalist within. Up until 9/11, Blair had been a bit timid as PM, trying to please everybody. After 9/11, and particularly in the run-up to the Iraq War, he became the opposite, he was going to do what he believed regardless of popularity. Neptune made its first exact crossing to his Moon a month before the Iraq War, and since then has squared his Sun and is now in the final stages of opposing his Pluto. As it was Neptune that was activating his chart, we can see what happened in terms of what he would have felt to be an Enlightenment, a waking up to his true mission of battling evil in the specific form of Islamic ‘terrorists’; from the outside, many of us would see Neptune as having created delusion and guru-inflation. As an astrologer, my job is to describe both sides rather than say which is ‘correct’. As an opinionated blogger, I have no doubt which is correct!

They say there is no-one so ‘ex’ as an ex-Prime Minister, and I was slightly taken aback when I realised that Tony Blair still has transits going on, that he is not in suspended animation. Neptune is still finishing with his t-square, and what it seems to be creating is this mad fundamentalist, reminiscent of his hero Margaret Thatcher after she had finished as PM.


Her time as PM was characterised by a series of major Pluto transits, and there were more to come in the 5 years following her demise. The same applies to Tony Blair, who will have Neptune squaring his Mars-Jupiter-ASC in 5-6 years time. It will probably mark his appointment as Archbishop, on his ascent towards the Papacy! At any rate, it would not surprise me if, like Thatcher, we see him becoming more rigid, more of a caricature of himself, over the coming years.

DID THE FOUNDING FATHERS USE ASTROLOGY?

The other day I wrote about the stars relating to the inauguration of the US President, which occurs every four years at 12pm on Jan 20th. From 1793 to 1933 (with the occasional exception), the date was 4th March. Diana Rosenberg wrote that she’s always reckoned changing the date was a mistake. Matthew the Astrologer commented that he’s always reckoned the Founding Fathers used more astrology than they were letting on, because they made the date a fixed thing.


I reckon they could both be right.

The star that rules a day, the Heliacal Rising Star, is the one that is last to rise over the eastern horizon before the Sun rises.

For the 4th of March in Washington, the Heliacal Rising Star is entirely appropriate: Deneb Algedi – the Ancient Law Giver, which is to be found in the tail of the constellation Capricornus. Bernadette Brady says: “Deneb Algedi is linked to the symbolism of the law-giving, justice orientated ancient god who is trying to civilise his people. Therefore, matters of justice are a theme of your life, and you are a person who is trying, in some way, to use wisdom and knowledge to protect and help the people around you.” Yes, there is a good case that they were using astrology!

Then we move on to 1933, and those foolish people who no longer consulted the heavens. And what do we find for 12pm Jan 20 every four years? Menkar conjunct the ASC - one of the most difficult stars, that makes the President vulnerable to the worst of the collective. And the Heliacal Rising Star is Acumen: ‘Suffering at the hands of others; subject to rumours.’ “Aculeus and Acumen are the tail of Scorpio, the sting, and are linked to attacks, not only physical, but also mental, verbal or spiritual. Acumen leans towards the small, irritating attacks that can slowly weaken you. So with Acumen in such an important position on the day of your birth, you will feel that your life-path may be filled with attacks or hindrance. It is therefore imperative that you learn to overcome obstacles on your path, whether placed there by yourself or others.”


I think Acumen accurately describes what it’s like being a leader in a modern democracy. You are constantly subject to attack through an up-to-the-minute media that reaches everyone’s home. Indeed it is seen as a healthy part of the democratic process that the leader is constantly under such attack. And you are ‘weak’ if you can’t handle it. Which means having a skin so thick that there isn’t much room left for a brain.

OF PRESIDENTS and SEA MONSTERS

The President of the USA is inaugurated on the same day and at the same time every 4 years, giving certain enduring qualities to the institution that are possible to analyse astrologically. The date and time are 20 Jan at 12pm in Washington DC. There are occasional exceptions, and before 1937 the date was the 4th March.


This consistency of time and date gives almost the same Angles and Sun for every inauguration. The fixed Sun (c.1 Aquarius) and ASC (c.14 Taurus) suggest the stability and endurance of the institution. Aquarius indicates the democratically-elected nature of the job, that the President is not there as a tyrant but as someone who ideally works with all the different groupings of people and interests. America is known for its wealth, which it does not have by accident, and Taurus Rising shows the importance of the President managing the economy well, perhaps also a need to express (ASC) his polices in economic, even materialistic terms. And the Capricorn MC shows that the President is there to achieve something and to leave a legacy. (Hence e.g. the Presidential libraries).

This consistency in the chart means we can also bring some of the stars into the equation. The strongest stars are those which are found on an Angle, and in this case, since the 1949 election, the star Menkar has been conjunct the ASC (using a 1 degree orb).

So more than any other star, Menkar describes the modern US Presidency. It is the brightest star in the constellation Cetus, the Whale. In ancient times, whales were not eco-friendly super-intelligent beings, but human-eating monsters from the depths. The Babylonians referred to this area of the sky as "the chaos of the deep". It is known as one of the most difficult stars to live with, because it makes you so open to the unconscious depths, to collective forces.

Menkar, or Alpha Cetus, is in the nose or jaw of the whale

All leaders tend to be an expression of the fears, desires and aspirations of the people, but Menkar here suggests that in post-war America this sort of identification has been unusually close. Positively, this can be a leader who is aware of, tuned into the collective but not unconsciously identified with it, and able to move it in a creative direction. An example of this is perhaps Roosevelt, who managed to get the economy out of the Great Depression and win two major wars with the country coming out thriving, as well as lay the groundwork for a really intelligent and successful reconstruction of Germany and Japan (cf Bush and Iraq). Menkar was just out of its 1 degree orb during this period, but you could argue that it was actually very active, with the wideness of the orb providing the possibility for self-awareness in a President, allowing him to be aware of and creatively use the collective forces.

The other possibilities with Menkar are that the President becomes an expression of the worst of the collective, or is a victim to it. Since 1949, the orb of Menkar to the Presidential Ascendant has been narrowing, and around 2041 it will be exact. You could argue that the narrower the gap, the more likely it is that Presidents will manifest the negative potential of Menkar.


And I think we have seen that with both Clinton and Bush, both of whom interestingly have an outer planet on their ASC – Clinton has Neptune and Bush has Pluto – making them personally open to collective forces, for better or for worse. Clinton, via the Monica Lewinsky scandal, became a victim of the collective, of the right wing Republican mentality that could not stand him. But he was also able to use his connection to the collective more positively, so that he became known as ‘The first black President.’ Whereas Bush’s connection seems more one-sidedly negative, through his appeal to the rednecks and his ability to whip up the fears and prejudices of the collective to serve his own purposes.

With Menkar closing in over the next 34 years, it is possible that we will see much more of these types of President, who are tuned into the collective and become either victims of it or who manipulate it. It will probably be a good thing, therefore, if the Presidents are not personally too open to the collective, if they do not have Neptune or Pluto Rising, for example. With the Uranus-Pluto square just around the corner, and with the forces for change gathering pace in the world, and with all the insecurity that brings, these are the sort of times we are most likely to see the collective rising up from the deep like the sea monster of old, and electing leaders that suit its purposes.

BUSH, BLAIR, BROWN and their 12th HOUSE SUNS

George Bush was born 6 July 1946, 7.26 New Haven, Connecticut. His Sun is in the 12th House, which is a secretive, withdrawn place for the Sun to be, and strange to find in a national leader. Gordon Brown, the current UK Prime Minister, also has Sun in the 12th House, as did his predecessor Tony Blair. Very strange!

Robert Hand has some interesting things to say about Bush’s Sun. The main point he makes (coming from the viewpoint of a traditional astrologer) is that Bush’s Cancer Sun is in aspect to its ruler, the Moon, and is also in aspect to Jupiter, which is the exaltation ruler of Cancer (i.e. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer). This strengthens the Sun considerably, and the fact that both aspects are squares does not matter. So there it is!

Furthermore, Bush’s Sun is square to a Moon-Jupiter conjunction in Libra. The Moon square is separating, but it is applying in its conjunction to Jupiter, so it is pushing the power of Jupiter onto the Sun. This is another strengthening factor.

His Sun is given further prominence by the fact that it rules his Leo Ascendant, and is the exaltation ruler of his Aries MC. Being a day chart, the Sun is also the triplicity ruler of both his ASC and MC.

So despite being in the 12th House, George Bush’s Sun is pretty powerful. Of course, he still has some strong 12th House characteristics, the secrecy of his government and his messianic tendencies being amongst the most obvious.

I wondered if this sort of analysis could apply to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Tony Blair: 6 May 1953 6.10 Edinburgh, Scotland.

In this case, his 12th House Sun in Taurus is square to its exaltation ruler, the Moon, which sits prominently in the 10th House. So, though his Sun is not as strong as Bush’s, it is still strengthened to a degree. (On the other hand, in the case of Bush I would drag in something non-traditional, the fact that both his Sun and Moon are in hard aspect to Chiron, which I think in his case is a considerable weakening factor.)

Gordon Brown: 20 Feb 1951 8.40 Giffnock, Scotland

In Brown’s case, the Sun is not just in the 12th, it is also in Pisces, which isn’t easy at all if you want to project yourself as a leader. In traditional astrology, Jupiter is the ruler of Pisces (the outer planets had not been discovered then; and even so, being beyond ordinary visibility, they are a different kind of planet to the inner ones). What we find is that Gordon Brown has the ruler (Jupiter) and the exaltation ruler (Venus) of Pisces in the sign of Pisces along with his Sun. They don’t aspect his Sun, but there is a limited strengthening called ‘generosity’ due to them being in the same sign – and being in the sign of their rulerships presumably also helps. Venus or Mars (depending on the system) is the triplicity ruler of the Sun, and both are in Pisces, so here is a further ‘generosity’. Finally, the Sun is the exaltation ruler of his Aries ASC.

So it would seem to me that in Brown’s case, there are no major strengthening factors to his 12th House Sun (unlike Bush and Blair), but there are a considerable number of subsidiary favourable factors. So he’s not a complete washout as a leader –or he probably wouldn’t have got there – but it’s still pretty weak. And I think this is evident to anyone who has observed him over the years. He is much happier projecting a strong leader image from behind a wall of policy, than he is actually putting himself and his personality out there. He got away with this for his first few months as Prime Minister, but then the bubble burst. Though he may maintain a good handle on policy, as a leader per se he is already wounded and floundering, and his personality and astrology are such that it is hard to see him recovering from this.

David Cameron, the leader of the Conservatives, may be exactly the opponent he needs to drag him out of his shell. Cameron’s Sun at 15.26 Libra is within 10 minutes of a degree of Brown’s DESC/Neptune conjunction. The Descendant is where we encounter others, so it would seem that Cameron is just the job for Brown.

I wrote previously about the weakness of Brown’s Mars in the 12th House at 23 Pisces, and how Uranus will be challenging this Mars to wake up over the next couple of years. Using traditional astrology, Brown’s Mars is not quite as weak as it appears, because it is conjunct the domicile ruler (Jupiter) and exaltation ruler (Venus) of Pisces, in their own signs, and conjunct the triplicity ruler (Mars/Venus). So there is some hope for him when it comes to fighting Mr Cameron. And what his Mars is up against in the form of Cameron is the signature of that whole generation: Uranus-Pluto in Virgo opposite Saturn-Chiron in Pisces. He is up against the younger generation that has its eye on the future in a very particular kind of way, that embodies a new spirit in politics, and Brown is being challenged, through his Mars, to rise to this. And being so very 12th House Pisces, he can adapt, he can flow into his surroundings and become whatever is required of him. So it will be interesting, now that the honeymoon for both leaders is over, to see what happens over the next 2-3 years, because Brown and Cameron, who are so different, could affect and change each other powerfully.

CHIRON and SUPERHEROES

A few days ago, Top Ten Sources flagged up an interview with the British astrologer Dennis Elwell that is well worth reading.

Here is what he had to say about Chiron:

“On the subject of Chiron, it is as significant as any planet, but I do not go along with the 'woundedness' interpretation. Mention Chiron in a lecture, and you can see the little thought balloons go up over the audience's heads - 'Ah yes, the wounded healer.' But when you are dealing with Chiron in practical work it is better to remember that his mythological namesake conducted a school for heroes. In Cosmic Loom, back in 1987, I described Chiron as 'a provocative planet that quite enjoys giving things a stir, but which above all gives the audacity to attempt.' As old Chiron trains us up towards accomplishments we never thought we could achieve, we need to be able to take the dare, to have an irreverent disrespect for the wise ones who say this or that can't be done. Chiron's style borders on cocky impudence, but perhaps its basic function is to persuade us that nothing is impossible.

The provocative side of Chiron is apt to show itself strongly in combination with Mars. Hitler was born with these bodies in close parallel, as well as septile. There are a lot of quintiles in his chart - the signature of an effective will - and the quintile between Chiron and Mercury is relevant to how he talked his way to power.”

Last year I looked up the date of first publication for the superheroes Superman, Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk. What I found was that they all had Jupiter-Chiron aspects. Jupiter I interpreted as their superpowers, and Chiron as the incurable wound that each of them had that brought about their powers: Superman was torn from his planet and his family as a baby, and The Hulk and Spiderman had both been subject to radiation. So Elwell’s take on Chiron enriches this symbolism, even though he doesn’t accept the ‘wound’ interpretation. (Batman does not have a Chiron-Jupiter aspect, but nor does he have superpowers).

It can also be quixotic: George ‘Top Gun’ Bush has a Jupiter-Chiron conjunction. He had ‘the audacity to attempt’ when it came to Iraq, but it was foolish, and the initial victory he prided himself on had been a turkey shoot.

I emailed Dennis Elwell about his article, and in his reply he included the comments: “Like Bush, Sylvester Stallone was born with a Jupiter Chiron conjunction, Christopher Reeve had a sesquare. In Arnold Schwarzenegger's chart they are in the fifth house, exactly 15 degrees apart. I think all 15 degree contacts are valid, but of course the orbs vary greatly.

As you know I am a bit sceptical about the woundedness of the mythical Chiron playing out in astrology. Every planet has its own wounds.”

AND

ELWELL, CHIRON AND SUPERHEROES

A few days ago, Top Ten Sources flagged up an interview with the British astrologer Dennis Elwell that is well worth reading.

Here is what he had to say about Chiron:

“On the subject of Chiron, it is as significant as any planet, but I do not go along with the 'woundedness' interpretation. Mention Chiron in a lecture, and you can see the little thought balloons go up over the audience's heads - 'Ah yes, the wounded healer.' But when you are dealing with Chiron in practical work it is better to remember that his mythological namesake conducted a school for heroes. In Cosmic Loom, back in 1987, I described Chiron as 'a provocative planet that quite enjoys giving things a stir, but which above all gives the audacity to attempt.' As old Chiron trains us up towards accomplishments we never thought we could achieve, we need to be able to take the dare, to have an irreverent disrespect for the wise ones who say this or that can't be done. Chiron's style borders on cocky impudence, but perhaps its basic function is to persuade us that nothing is impossible.

The provocative side of Chiron is apt to show itself strongly in combination with Mars. Hitler was born with these bodies in close parallel, as well as septile. There are a lot of quintiles in his chart - the signature of an effective will - and the quintile between Chiron and Mercury is relevant to how he talked his way to power.”

Last year I looked up the date of first publication for the superheroes Superman, Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk. What I found was that they all had Jupiter-Chiron aspects. Jupiter I interpreted as their superpowers, and Chiron as the incurable wound that each of them had that brought about their powers: Superman was torn from his planet and his family as a baby, and The Hulk and Spiderman had both been subject to radiation. So Elwell’s take on Chiron enriches this symbolism, even though he doesn’t accept the ‘wound’ interpretation. (Batman does not have a Chiron-Jupiter aspect, but nor does he have superpowers).

It can also be quixotic: George ‘Top Gun’ Bush has a Jupiter-Chiron conjunction. He had ‘the audacity to attempt’ when it came to Iraq, but it was foolish, and the initial victory he prided himself on had been a turkey shoot.

I emailed Dennis Elwell about his article, and in his reply he included the comments: “Like Bush, Sylvester Stallone was born with a Jupiter Chiron conjunction, Christopher Reeve had a sesquare. In Arnold Schwarzenegger's chart they are in the fifth house, exactly 15 degrees apart. I think all 15 degree contacts are valid, but of course the orbs vary greatly.

As you know I am a bit sceptical about the woundedness of the mythical Chiron playing out in astrology. Every planet has its own wounds.”

BEHOLD THE PROPHET!

From an essay by Tom Wolfe called ‘Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died’:

“The story I have to tell,” wrote Nietzsche, “is the history of the next two centuries.” He predicted (in Ecce Homo) that the 20th century would be a century of “wars such as have never happened on earth”, wars catastrophic beyond imagining. And why? Because human beings would no longer have a god to turn to, to absolve them of their guilt… The blind and re-assuring faith they formerly poured into their belief in God, said Nietzsche, they would now pour into a belief in barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods: “If the doctrines… of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal, doctrines I consider true but deadly” – he says in an allusion to Darwinism in Untimely Meditations – “are hurled into the people for another generation... then nobody should be surprised when… brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non-brothers… will appear in the arena of the future.”


Nietzsche said that mankind would limp on through the 20th century “on the mere pittance” of the old decaying God-based moral codes. But then, in the twenty-first, would come a period more dreadful than the great wars, a time of the “total eclipse of all values” (in The Will to Power). This would also be a frantic period of “revaluation”, in which people would try to find new systems of values to replace the osteoporotic skeletons of the old. But you will fail, he warned, because you cannot believe in moral codes without simultaneously believing in a god who points at you with his fearsome forefinger and says “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not.”

Why should we bother ourselves with a dire prediction that seems so far-fetched as “the total eclipse of all values”? Because of man’s track record, I should think. After all, in Europe, in the peaceful decade of the 1880s, it must have seemed even more far-fetched to predict the world wars of the 20th century and the barbaric brotherhoods of Nazism and Communism. Ecce vates! Ecce vates! Behold the prophet! How much more proof can one demand of a man’s powers of prediction?"

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Nietzsche was born Oct 15 1844. He had Moon in Sag, which is philosophically inclined, and said to be found in many teachers. He had Sun in Libra opposite to Pluto in Aries. Oppositions often engage us with the world, we find one end of it ‘out there’; in Nietzsche’s case, it was a new vision (Aries) that would transform the collective (Pluto). He also had Mercury in Libra conjunct Mars, opposite Uranus in Aries, so again we have the new vision after the death of God, expressed with force (Mars) and original insight (Uranus).

One qualification on Mr Wolfe’s analysis: he suggests we can’t have a moral code without an external authority, without a god who points the finger. I think this is actually true on a collective level, for people by and large inherit their values and ethics from their families and from the society around them, their sense of authority is external. We can see this in the vulnerability of the collective to fashion, to advertising, to cries of war from the government, to witch-hunts created by the popular press. But it is not true for the minority who claw their way out of the received wisdoms and find it within themselves to stand alone, who can live without the unconscious sense of solidarity with the herd-mind. This sounds terribly patronising, but I don’t mean it to be, it’s just how things are.

ASTROLOGY AND SCIENCE

It seems to me that astrology and science pull in opposite directions, they describe very different types of truth. So that any attempt to ‘prove’ the truth of astrology by statistical means is misguided.

Scientific truth is always generalised, it goes from the particular to the universal: it sees the universe as a machine in which certain sets of conditions always give rise to certain results. A particular event is of significance only inasmuch as it is an example of a general law.

But a human being cannot be reduced to a mere instance of a general law, a human being is particular and individual and ultimately unknowable. To the extent that science tries to reduce people to generalities, it is a de-humanising influence. This occurs particularly when science is in the hands of people who have the irrational, unprovable superstition that reality is ultimately scientific and ‘rational’, and that everything must be seen in scientific terms.

For science, the Eureka! moment is when you realise a general law like E=mc2. For an astrologer, the Eureka! moment is generally when you make an individual’s chart work for them, when you are able to put into words that person’s unique and particular way of living out the symbols in their chart.

Of course astrology also deals in general ‘laws’, like the nature of the 12 signs. It also moves from the particular to the universal, but in a very different way. Astrology doesn’t try to ‘reduce’ people to the signs. It is more the nature of artistic truth. A novelist will create characters, based to some extent on his/her observations of real people. If this is done well, the characters will seem real to us, and we will feel something is being said about people in general. But that general truth is arrived at through the depth with which the individual has been observed. The individual is central, yet also mysteriously connects us to a wider truth – but not one that can be proved statistically. This would be absurd, because the novelist deals as much in felt/intuited/experienced truth, that gives us a sense of human nature, as he/she does in truth that can be put into words: and even then, how do you couch those words in scientific terms?

It is the same with the signs of the zodiac. Some artistic genius saw the underlying patterning of human nature that the signs describe. But the essence of the signs is more about having a feeling for the type of character being described than about words. It’s like can you reduce your mother to the things you might say to describe her?

Astrology is also divinatory truth. It is about making connections between apparently unconnected events – i.e. the planets and ourselves – and realising what one has to say about the other. How can that possibly be scientific?

It is the same sort of truth as when an unusual event in nature occurs, and you feel there is a particular message in it for you. Like when you see, for example, a bird of prey doing something it doesn’t usually do, and you go away and think about it, and eventually the meaning dawns on you. In the same way, the universe at the moment you were born has a particular message for you about your soul, and the astrologer’s art is to help you read that message. Scientifically, this makes no sense at all.

Astrology is a higher form of knowledge than Science, because Astrology can understand and accept scientific truth, it can be incorporated within its body of knowledge. But Science has no way of understanding Astrology, the truth of which does not lie within its narrow method.

ALBERT ELLIS

I’ve just read two obituaries of a guy called Albert Ellis who I hadn't heard of, but who was, apparently, ‘the grandfather of cognitive-behavioural therapies’. He was voted by the American Psychological Association to be the second most influential psychotherapist of the 20th century after Carl Rogers, and ahead of Freud.

“Freud was full of horseshit,” he liked to say, while Freud’s central concept of neurosis was “just a high-class word for whining.”


He used to run Friday night workshops which became legendary. “Let me tell you why people are always making you so angry,” he informed a troubled young woman in 2005 (when aged 91), “Because they’re screwed up! They’re out of their fucking minds! We’re all out of our fucking minds!”

This mantra, which he repeated regularly, was behind his 'Rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT)'. Its starting point was that we have negative emotional reactions not to events themselves, but to our beliefs about them. He rejected Freud’s focus on unpicking a patient’s childhood experiences. Instead, he advocated identifying and modifying these “irrational beliefs”, which usually take the form of a hidden demand that reality should be different than it is.

“There are three musts that hold us back,” he wrote. “I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.” We upset ourselves with the grandiose requirement that we should perform perfectly, and that others should be nice to us. But in fact we are imperfect: we fail, in love and work, all the time. And other people, often enough, “act like jerks.”

This approach led him to emphasise short-term treatment, aimed at changing one’s way of thinking, here and now. “As I see it, psychoanalysis gives clients a cop-out,” he said, “ They don’t have to change their ways or their philosophies; they get to talk about themselves for 10 years, blaming their parents and waiting for magic-bullet insights.”


Early glimmers of REBT could be seen in a nerve-racking experiment Ellis conducted as a teenager, with himself as the subject. As a 19 year-old, he was painfully shy around women. So during a month of visits to the Bronx Botanical Garden, he sat on a bench and spoke to every woman he saw. His 130 attempts at conversation did not lead to true love, but that was beside the point. He had proved to himself that rejection, though unpleasant, was not unbearable: there was no need to “awfulise” it. “Nobody vomited and ran away,” he wrote. “Nobody called the cops.”

The experience led directly to the “shame-attacking exercises” he later prescribed to his patients. “Stop somebody on the street,” he advised, “and say ‘I just got out of the loony bin. What month is it?’ And learn not to feel ashamed when they look in horror at you, and think you’re off your rocker, which they think you are. But you’re really not. You’re being very much saner than they are.”

In his final years, the Directors of his Institute threw him out and stopped paying for his accommodation and medical care. He took them to court last year and won, and ended up back at the institute. True to the principles of REBT, he insisted that the contretemps hadn’t upset him: there was no point, after all, in demanding that the whole universe fall in line with his wishes. The other board members, he said, were “ fucked-up, fallible human beings, just like everyone else.”

He probably was one-sidedly rational. I found this quote by him: "Witness, for example, the fervent testimonials that innumerable people keep giving for cults, superstitions, and hoaxes like astrology, shamanism, psychic surgery, fortune telling, channeling, witchcraft, communications from ghosts, satanism, and demonism."

Mind you, I don't necessarily think people are being unreasonable if they think astrology is nonsense. There's no reason why it should work, which makes it all the more wondrous that it does. And you can't write off people's opinions just because they haven't tested astrology: so many ideas and theories come our way, astrology is just one of them, and we have to be able to form opinions about things. Like whether we really are ruled by aliens, or whether the moon is hollow (as I was knowingly informed once). I don't think a belief in astrology is any less strange.

Back to Albert Ellis. He was born 27 Sept 1913 (no time). His chart has a powerful signature: a Cardinal t-square involving the Sun, Jupiter and a Mars-Pluto conjunction. I know someone else with a Cardinal t-square involving these planets, and this person is not pleasant! Always starting fights and plotting, and never getting anywhere.

But if you can live it, it's very powerful and creative. Ellis had Sun in Libra (relationship to other people) in a t-square with Jupiter in Capricorn (structured philosophy) and Mars-Pluto in Cancer (tough love! - or transformative care for others that goes to the root of the matter.) That Sun square Pluto demanded of him that he become authentically powerful (hence the experiment in the park aged just 19 - apparently he eventually became very good at picking up women), and with Mars involved as well, he was tough enough to stand up to the hostility of the psychotherapeutic establishment to his ideas. This tough, combative power, so necessary to his life, also led to an enduring criticism: that his tone could make him sound as though he was urging people who, for example, were severely depressed, simply to pull their socks up.

He had another side: Venus in Virgo conjunct the Moon and sextile to Pluto. So under the abrasiveness was a real sensitivity, insight and care. Venus is about how we relate to others (Don't expect others to be perfect! he would say with Venus in Virgo), and his natal placement was at 1.15 Virgo. It is an important planet for a therapist, and appropriate that he should have died on 24th July under a Venus Return, with Venus stationing at 2.41 Virgo.