In Defence of Sun-sign Astrology

Sun-sign astrology isn’t always taken seriously by astrologers, as it takes just one part of the personality – the Sun – to make its predictions. Astrology, we may think, is far more complex than that, and it gives the subject a bad name when it is used in such a seemingly superficial way. After all, how could a single set of predictions apply to 1/12 of the population? It is an argument frequently used by non-astrologers to debunk astrology.

The answer, I think, is not to say well Sun-sign astrology is just superficial, and ‘real’ astrology uses more complex, individually tailored models.

Of course you can say more about someone if you have their full chart. But that is a retreat from what the real issue is here. At the backs of people’s minds – and even astrologers’ minds, we can’t help it – is a model of causation, a causal relationship between the planets and people’s lives, and making it more complex doesn’t make that risible notion disappear.

Non-astrologers are right to laugh at astrology if the causative model, which is central to modern understanding, is not addressed. And I think saying the relationship between planets and people is synchronous does not go far enough either. Synchronicity, which understands the workings of astrology as non-causal correspondences between planetary positions and people’s lives, is an improvement. It is an attempt to rationalise the subject, but it still begs the question as to why there should be these correspondences.

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Like any ‘spiritual’ tradition, astrology is essentially esoteric rather than exoteric. At its heart is an experience – the Secret Fire – which does not belong to the realm of rationality. Rationality is what we use to talk around this experience. Note I say talk ‘around’ rather than talk ‘about’. ‘Around’ is the most we can hope to do.

This is what is so difficult for the modern mind to understand, because rationality has become the ultimate arbiter of what is real. The servant has become the master, and no longer knows when to shut up, that this is where words end and all we can do is stand in awe.

Astrology that works and that has power always comes from this other place. The planets and their positions are a framework for this to happen, and as symbols they have earned their effectiveness, gained depth, through millennia of repeated use.

So Sun-sign astrology is a direct assault on the modern way of thinking. It does not have the complexity of the chart, with its illusion of rationality, to fall back on. For Sun-sign astrology to work, it has to be divinatory. Sun-sign astrology does use the other planets, there is a degree of complexity there, but the issue remains of how the hell can what you’re saying be true for 1/12 of the population – or at least, 1/12 of those who will actually read your column?

Rationally, it can’t work. But as divination, who are we to say what is and what is not possible, who are we to set limits on the powers of the gods? When you start calling on those other powers, you don’t know what is going to happen. And if something does happen, you have to trust it. Yes, this really will say something useful to that 1/12 of my readers born under the sign of Pisces.

Not that I have tried it myself, but having Moon in Sag, not knowing what I’m talking about doesn’t always stop me! Not all astrologers will have a gift for it. And often when I read the Aquarius ones, a lot of it seems to sail over my head.

And there’s certainly some stuff out there that isn’t very good. It is easy, for example, to look at the symbols and crunch out points that are too generalised and couched in ‘maybe this but maybe that’ – which critics rightly seize on as being widely applicable and probably not that useful. The Sun-sign astrologer needs to dare to be specific, and trust in the voice that says well technically it could be this or that, but I’m telling you it is this!

Think of a chart as a Tarot spread, and Sun-sign astrology as the Tarot card at the centre of the spread. Of course you can say more, and be more specific, with a whole spread. But you can also say a lot just from that single card, once you let go and let it speak through you. Maybe I’ll give Sun-sign astrology a go myself?

What is an Astrology Reading?

I've just updated the intro to this site (on the right of the page). Here's what I said:

Astrology has its roots in ancient augury, in reading the intentions of the gods. It contains truth, but not in a literal, scientific way. It is a way of thinking, natural to human beings, that has been largely forgotten today. An astrology chart cannot be ‘read’ like any other text: rather, the astrologer uses the stars and planets in a ritual way that allows his or her intuition -  the daemon, the gods, the unconscious - to speak. And the emphasis is not on foretelling the future but on how to live well, what attitude to take to life, how in other words to live in accord with the intentions of the gods.

I mainly do readings by skype. If you’re interested, email me at bwgoddard1@aol.co.uk.

 I was born 12 Feb 1958, 18.50, London

The Moment of Astrology

After 25 years of learning astrology, I have just read my first book on the subject from cover to cover. It’s The Moment of Astrology by Geoffrey Cornelius. What gripped me was that the author was questioning and re-assessing the whole tradition as it has come down to us. He uses a fair bit of scholarship, but in the service of his central thesis, which is that astrology is a form of divination: the ‘moment’ of astrology occurs when the daemon gets involved with your reading of the symbols, and an inspired and unique interpretation takes place.

An authentic reading involves both skill in the craft AND this other, hard-to-define element.

I think it’s the most important book out there on modern astrology.

In no sense is it scholarship ‘from the outside’ to prove a theory ‘about’ astrology, in the academic sense. No, this is astrology from the inside: he uses chart interpretations as evidence, and proposes that a non-rational means of knowing lies at the heart of our craft. Scholarship is used to clarify and affirm, rather than ignore, this non-rationality.

Ptolemy

While admiring the work of Ptolemy, the 2^nd century definer of horoscopic astrology, Cornelius also to some extent deconstructs his work, and shows where later astrologers contradict him. In particular, he is concerned to de-literalise the moment of birth: the fact that an exact time is often impossible to ascertain suggests the necessity for a re-think. The birth of something is essentially a powerful IMAGE that astrologers use, powerful because that moment is held to contain the seed of all that comes after. But that is just one form of astrology.

Horary astrology, for example, which has often been treated as an outcast, is not like this. It is about asking a question and finding the answer in the chart for the moment the astrologer understood the question. And Cornelius gives some striking examples of horary working.

So the chart as the seed of something is not essential to what astrology is. Nor is even getting the right time for either a birth chart or a horary chart. As we all know, wrong charts often work!

The effect of this deconstruction is to remove the illusion of objectivity that is often there when we are dealing with a chart: when we learn astrology, it involves real planets with real meanings and rules of interpretation. And this gives the impression that astrology is ‘out there’ in the stars for us to read and interpret. Cornelius’ thesis, as I understand it, is that this is not the case. What we have is a set of symbols, on which the astrologer brings his divinatory consciousness to bear. And because astrology is not ‘out there’, each reading of a particular chart is unique, as many of us have experienced.

This is The Moment of Astrology, this unique, divinatory situation. And I think the title is a play on The Moment of Birth, which is what is usually understood as the moment of astrology: that exact moment that defines everything that is to follow, according to the Ptolemaic model, and which therefore suggests something ‘objective’ in astrology.

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The opening chapters of the book thoroughly chronicle the history of the attempts to prove or disprove astrology scientifically. And while there are some results that are worth a second look, by and large the proof that emerges is that astrology is NOT scientifically verifiable. One of Cornelius’ strengths is that he looks at facts in the face, and this is one of them. And he turns it around to lend weight to his thesis that astrology is divinatory rather than ‘objective’.

Another fact he faces is that Science has good grounds for not taking astrology and other divinatory arts seriously, in that the standard is often so lamentable. I think that if astrology were recognised as essentially divinatory, rather than vaguely 'objective', it could take steps to develop more of an understanding of, and training in, this elusive, yet all-important, faculty.

Cornelius brings in the post-modern position of current thought, which relativises and denies the possibility of solid, irrefutable foundations to knowledge. And consistent with this, maintains that his is not the only way of looking at astrology.

My view on that is yes, providing that our understanding of astrology is mythological rather than literal. So you may take the view that there really are energies ‘out there’ associated with the planets – why not? – but if that becomes literalised into ‘that lump of rock is causing events on earth’, then I think the nature of astrology has been misunderstood.

This is not a comprehensive review of the book, just a few central points. Another area that gets raised, for example, is time: we usually assume that astrology involves a coming together in time of heavenly and earthly events. But this is not so. It is another case of ‘wrong charts working’. Even, in one case, a horary chart from several hundred years ago casting light on a similar situation now. And the modern divide between subject and object is also explored.

The cumulative effect of Cornelius’ deconstruction of some of the foundations of astrology is liberating: it frees us to fully acknowledge the divinatory element that, I suspect, is what drew us to astrology in the first place. And it connects us back to the origins of the craft in omens and augury and dreams. BUT, he says, that was never about foretelling the future, it was about how to live well, how to live in accord with the gods.

And paradoxically, another effect for me of this deconstruction was to make the foundations of astrology more solid. And the reason is that it brings astrology back to divination, or inner knowing, which in my view is the only solid foundation there is in life.

The IC, the Shadow and Fate

The 4 Angles of the Chart – the Top, the Bottom, the Left and the Right – are our 4 main points of connection to the world. The MC, the IC, the Ascendant and the Descendant respectively. If someone has major transits to all 4 them, you often see their whole life change.

And I think the IC particularly can get overlooked compared to its more glamorous counterpart, the MC: career, vocation, how the world sees us, our place in the world.

The IC is hidden, it is the sign directly below our feet at the moment we are born, and is therefore invisible. (Imum Coeli means 'Bottom of the Sky'.) If any point can lay claim to the personal unconscious, it is surely the IC (Just as the Moon, the natural ruler of the IC, is the planet associated with the personal unconscious).

Planets and Angles are different things: the emphasis with planets is on what is within, whereas the emphasis with Angles and the other house cusps is that which is without, our connection to the world. The distinction, though, is not rigid. So the IC becomes those aspects of our behaviour which are invisible to us – unconscious - but often visible to others.

We’re on shadow territory here. The things your friends think about you but tell you at their peril. The way it comes out of course also involves the Asc/Desc axis, but I'm proposing it starts here, in the hidden recesses of the personality. 

With Aries on the IC, are you a pushover, underneath your reasonable front? With Taurus, do you put your own comfort before emotional commitments (as Mr Obama is alleged to do)? Gemini: do you see the world in black and white terms and polarise around that? Cancer: are you, like Tony Blair, secretly narrow and partisan in your outlook? And Leo, do other people feel life has to revolve around you and your needs? Virgo: are you secretly judgemental of others? Libra: do you, like George W Bush, present a decisive front to compensate for an inner uncertainty? With Scorpio, are you quick to take offence, and less reasonable than you like to think? Sagittarius: Do you wander from teacher to teacher, unable to find your own sense of meaning within? With Capricorn on the IC, do your friends find you rigidly attached to the ‘proper’ way of doing things? Aquarius: have you really thought about those groups you’re involved in and whether they’re doing more harm than good? Pisces: do you put up a sign saying 'do not disturb' and project your aggression onto those who break your rules?

There are any number of ways the shadows of these signs could be put, this what I have ‘divined’ for now, maybe you’ll find they apply!

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But the IC isn’t just the personal shadow, it is much more than that. It is the foundation out of which a healthy MC can grow. It is childhood, it is family. It is where we are private and personal. It is the place where we regroup, 'downtime'. (It is not the solitude of the 12^th House, which has a more collective and imaginative emphasis.)

The MC-IC axis is like a tree, with the IC as the roots and the MC (Medium Coeli: the Middle of the Sky) the branches. If you like, it is the World Tree of Norse tradition, Ygdrassil, on which we each have our place; or rather, among whose 9 worlds we are spread. At the top is the eagle, with his broad vision of the world. And underneath, among the roots, is a dragon, a symbol of the hidden power of strong foundations.

At the base of the tree are the Norns, the Fates who water Ygdrassil from the Well of Wyrd and who allot each child his or her future. The Norns are therefore associated more with the roots of the tree, with the foundations and the beginning of life, than they are with the branches.

Norns

So maybe in that hard-to-know place within, the Fates are at work, the pattern of our life is woven, and the MC is the expression of that pre-existing weave. The IC is in one sense our Fate in a psychological sense: often that which seems to ‘happen’ to us is a consequence of that which is within, but unexamined. As Jung said, Character is Fate. But the roots of Ygdrassil are very deep, they are not just ‘personal’. The IC takes us way back to a place we can only think about mythologically: past lives, timeless patterns, the Mind of the Creator – powerful archetypal images that we can connect with more consciously through the solitude of the 12^th House. And the idea of Fate has these sort of resonances. Who knows what the gods have dreamed up for us? For Fate is also a dream, with all its multi layers and fluidity, and always with a mystery at its heart.

So encountering the IC is a matter of how deep do you want to go?

Moirai: the Greek Fates

I don’t want to get into a discussion of Fate and Free Will here. But I think Fate is best considered as an image rather than as an idea on its own. Those Norns are a very powerful image, and they suggest Fate as something living and human rather than dry and deterministic, which is something most of us reject. They suggest some bigger pattern that we are all part of. It is outside of time, and therefore in a sense ongoing, rather than set in stone at birth. Free Will doesn’t seem to have the same powerful imagery around it (try googling an image of it!), maybe because it is a more recent idea, and maybe because it suggests an autonomous humanity, freed from the ‘deterministic’ shackles of the gods who we imagine we have become, and who are the source of such powerful, archetypal imagery.

A transit to the MC is also a transit to the IC. In a way, the transit to the IC needs to be considered first, for any growth in the MC will emerge from the heightened self-knowledge that the transit to the IC will bring.

And a starting point with the IC is, like the Moon, an awareness of what it is that nourishes us, and the gaps we have that tend not to get nourished. This can be looked at not just through the sign on the IC, but through the condition of its ruler, the natal planets aspecting the IC and any planets in the 4^th House.

But with the IC there is more emphasis on connection to the world than there is with the Moon: so it is not just about exploring feelings, it is about looking at home and family and the way that is an expression of what is most personal and close within ourselves.

The IC is much harder to ‘get hold of’ than the MC, but in a way it is more important, in that the MC flows naturally out of the foundation of the IC. The MC as career is one thing, and it is usually tied in with the necessity of earning a living. But the MC as vocation is another, and I think the MC in this sense is not something to worry about, to scratch your head over its absence and feel somehow inadequate for not knowing what it is. 

That fretting itself is a sign of gaps and holes in the IC, along with modern notions that we need to be able to define our life and have a direction to it. That is the shadow side of Saturn, the natural ruler of the MC. Why not just live? say the IC and the Moon. Who says we need a ‘vocation’? 

Who are we to judge that our lives are inadequate if ‘all’ we do is muddle along reasonably happily?

On the Norse World Tree a squirrel scurries between the Eagle and the Dragon, carrying malicious messages. Maybe there is an inherent tension in human beings between the MC and the IC, between the things we can imagine doing and what, if we consult ourselves, is the right thing to do. Through the MC we can do amazing things, but we forget the foundations. For the Greeks, this was hubris, and nemesis was the gods' way of restoring the balance.

In a way the MC and IC are not separable. The source of the IC is ultimately timeless, and the MC reaches to that same place, but in a way that has been lived. If we pay attention to that hard-to-know IC place with a wide, mythological perspective, what to do with our lives will tend to present itself to us.

The End of the World?

In the run-up to major astrological alignments, the word gets out and people start to get worried. And then…. Nothing happens. Or not much more than usual happens. And the fact that very little happens gets forgotten about, and people get worried all over again the next time there are some major alignments.

We’re in the middle of one of those periods right now. There is a Cardinal Grand Cross in the sky that will peak on 23^rd April [1], and there are lunar and solar eclipses in the middle and at the end of the month respectively.

Astrology is not a mechanical thing. This is my beef with the way mundane astrology – the astrology of countries and politics and world events – is often practised, as though it can be reduced to a set of rules.

Astrology is essentially divinatory. In spirit it brings us back to ancient times when the seer would be posed a question or a problem, and he or she would head off and go into a trance or go to sleep and dream and would consult with the gods or whatever powers there were, and then would come back with advice. And the advice from that sort of realm is always about how to live well, maybe you are given some insight into a situation, or get told how to go about something, or given a cure for a medical problem.

That kind of consciousness, which is opaque to much of modern thought, is the context in which astrology arose.

With that perspective, it becomes absurd to separate the astrologer from the chart being read, and reduce it to a set of rules that can predict the future. We do not need to be told the future. What we do need as humans is to be reminded of the wider forces, natural forces that surround us, which we tend to forget but which need to be taken into account and which can also guide us.

That way we will live well. We forget those powers because the business of everyday living can be so demanding, or because we get inflated or depressed. So part of our job as astrologers is to remind people of that, not in a pedagogic way, but through the experience of those powers at work.

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So when some major planetary alignments come up, they do not necessarily mean anything at all. You need an astrologer functioning beyond the rules to see their meaning, and his or her job is not really to portend catastrophic events, which is what people get most worried about. (It’s not just worry though, is it, we also want interesting, dramatic events to happen.)

I looked up an interpretation of the 2 coming eclipses by Bernadette Brady, and she writes: “… wasted energy or misdirected motivation… There can be sudden inspiration but this is potentially unfulfilling. No real action should be taken.” [2]

That was kind of synchronistic for my theme. Some of her interpretations have a lot of action around them. But this one could be summarised as not a lot is going to happen!

I had someone ask me if they should be worried about the Cardinal Grand Cross, and my answer was well it doesn’t interact with your personal chart, so you can probably ignore it!

To some extent, of course, astrology can be reduced to rules. We need them, they are the launch pad. And to some extent astrology-as-rules works. But what tends to happen when you use those rules repeatedly to generate a particular meaning is that it gradually stops working!

There is a trickster at work: Mercury, the messenger between the gods and this world, gets in the way. I suspect it is the same with homeopathy, for example: you cannot separate it from the practitioner, the who and the how is just as important as the pill itself, the diagnosis is not in that sense ’objective’. 2 homeopaths could prescribe the same pill in the same situation, but one pill may work better than the other because of where the homeopath ‘went’ to find the cure.

And for astrology to work well, there needs to be a real question, or a real issue. We know that through doing readings. You can be coming out with good standard interpretations of a chart, but somehow it’s not really going anywhere, you’re not connecting with the other person, and you’re interpretations aren’t that good as a result. And then bam! you find why the person is there for the reading, you connect with them on that level, and the chart opens up. I had an experience recently where I hit the issue, and it was exactly what the other person didn’t want to talk about, and wouldn’t give me information on it, but I kept coming back to it because that was where the chart was pointing.

So this brings me back again to the major alignments that people get concerned about, which I suppose belong to mundane astrology, because it is world events, floods and earthquakes and military invasions that vaguely seem to worry people.

Are people really worried, or just enjoying the thrill of potentially ‘interesting times’? Is there a real question? And where the worry is real, is that because of a particular way of looking at astrology and the heavens, as though the will of the gods is a mechanical thing that exists independently of the participation of the astrologer/seer/priest/witch doctor?

OK, many of us are prone to superstition at times, which is a kind of determinism. And astrology as it has come down to us is maybe the worst offender in this respect among the divinatory arts. And the offence comes from the idea that the heavens have a meaning that can be divined, that exists independently of the divinatory consciousness of the astrologer. And this is not the case. Why else would every astrologer have a different take on a chart? But nor is it just a ‘subjective’, whimsical act on the part of the astrologer. Every reading is particular and individual and dependent on the astrologer being able to go to that place in him or herself that the divination emerges from, and being able to bring the other person along.

It is an experience that you and the person you are reading for and the planets are all ‘inside’, it is a particular message from the gods, and if you try to stand ‘outside’ that – as we moderns tend to – then that essential sense of participation is lost. [3]

[1] As Mars moves from applying to separating in its opposition to Uranus

[2] Predictive Astrology p332

[3] Some of the ideas in this piece have been augmented through reading Geoffrey Cornelius’ ‘The Moment of Astrology’. I didn’t know about him until recently, and my response has been wow, at last, an astrologer who thinks like I do!