Category: Philosophy

Modern astrology is built on the foundation of the psychological meaning of the 12 signs of the zodiac. This is where most modern astrologers start, and we still refer back to it as a kind of quick astrology shorthand.

Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs is a good and typical example of modern sun sign astrology, and her book still reads quite well. Full modern astrology is quite a bit more complex and nuanced than that book, and yet there is a certain core of meaning there that is a kind of foundation, a simple base.

We describe or identify people with their Sun Signs – Hi, I’m a Leo, what are you?  At an astrology gathering you might then be asked to add your moon sign and rising sign, but the core is still the meaning of the Sun sign. That is what you are.

This is very much a twentieth century phenomenon.

I want to take a walk through the history of astrology, looking at how the meanings of the signs has changed and evolved over the last few centuries. I am going to focus on the sign Aquarius for my example, since this sign has Saturn as ruler for traditional astrologers, and a different ruler, Uranus, for modern astrologers.

My premise is that the meanings we give the signs changes as we associate different rulers with them, and as we put astrology in different spiritual or psychological contexts.

Continue reading “The Signs They Are A-Changin”

This is  a personal piece.

I have Sun and Mercury both in Pisces, and five planets in water signs in my chart. I think by emotion, and I feel my way into things. When I am dealing with ideas in astrology I am feeling for a certain sense of symmetry, balance and wholeness.

I’ve always been bugged by the usual definitions of Pisces, traditional and modern both. In some of the older material Pisces is the garbage bin of the zodiac, dissolute wastrels destined to come to an ill end.

In more modern material you will often read about how Pisces is a sign of self-sacrifice, giving oneself over to the larger whole. Part of me completely rebels against that idea. Inside I do not feel like the self-sacrificing type at all.

If anything, the inner feeling is the opposite.

Continue reading “Pisces and the Meaning of Sacrifice”

On this coming March 19 I am going to be participating in an on-the-web conversation as part of Kepler College’s celebration of International Astrology Day. The theme for the day will be, astrology and spirituality.

That got me thinking.

I am just off doing a couple of blog posts on rethinking Saturn as feminine and Saturn as Crone, and what that entails. A commenter on one of the posts asked if I had considered looking at how viewing Saturn as feminine works out in chart interpretation.

That also got me thinking, and the two topics dovetailed.

To really get a sense of how Saturn as feminine changes how we do chart interpretatation, I think we need to have a very good grasp of the deep knowing compassion of age – in my last post I labeled that quality, Understanding.

That is the subject of this meditation.
Continue reading “Wisdom of Saturn”

This is the second post in which I am exploring the ramifications of viewing Saturn as feminine, and also considering symbolism related to Saturn as Old Crone.

In my previous post on Saturn as Feminine I quoted a passage from the Hellenistic astrologer Dorotheus, in which Saturn is classified as one of the feminine planets. This created some striking arrangements of Saturn with the other planets, having some of the distinctive symmetry and balance of much of traditional Western astrology.

In this post I want to consider further how the symbolism of Saturn is linked to feminine symbolism.

Here is the quote from Carmen Astrologicum by Dorotheus:

“…the feminine planets are Saturn, Venus and the Moon, the masculine ones are the Sun, Jupiter, and Mars.”

When I first saw this quote I wondered if Saturn might originally have been associated with an Old Crone goddess figure or figures, that then was turned masculine in a later cultural development.

What I want to do in this post is to consider the nature of Saturn and feminine symbolism, and see how they combine.

Continue reading “Saturn as Feminine and Crone”

This is the first post for calendar year 2016, so it seems like a good time to rethink for myself the purpose of my writing here.

Credit where credit is due – this piece was triggered by reading a phenomenal blog entry by John Michael Greer on his occult blog, The Well of Galabes. This particular piece is titled The Twilight of the Neopagan Era.

He chronicles how we are at the end of a pop culture version of the Neopagan and Occult communites, and as that fades, serious committed followers of neopagan paths will need to weed out the core of their practice from the pop trappings, the candles, unicorns and medieval costumes.

I am a child of that era.

Continue reading “What I’m Trying to Do Here”

This post was triggered by an incident a friend of mine told me. (*Please see the note at the end of this post.)  She had a sense of foreboding and ill fortune, and visited an astrologer. She found out that the transit going on was Pluto opposition Sun, and the astrologer told her, Don’t worry, you’re just having a spiritual transformation.

It turns out that “spiritual transformation” was a diagnosis of stage 2 breast cancer.

The point I wish to make here is that the astrologer was correct in what my friend ended up experiencing, and completely false and misleading in the statement she was trying to make.

What the astrologer meant was something like – oh, don’t worry, nothing bad is going to happen to you, this is just a Spiritual Experience.

She meant Spiritual as opposed to something real or physical. No threat there.

Continue reading “Rethinking Spiritual Transformation”

I was a philosophy and religion major in college, and that shaped my perspective on the world. Whenever I examine any subject at all, there is always a part of my mind that is standing back, observing and asking all kinds of questions.

What kind of worldview does this imply? What kind of ethical values does it hold up as desirable, and what is considered undesirable?

In working with astrology I am fascinated by asking the same kinds of questions of our astrology tools and language. We use sets of words and concepts here – what kind of value system do those words imply?

It is very, very important to me to attempt to become aware of the assumptions and implications of the language I use.  I want to make sure that the message I am giving really matches the kinds of values I hold.

The tools we use in our astrology imply a worldview, and that changes as our tools change.  For instance, when the three outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, were added to the pantheon of the Sacred Seven, this was more than just the addition of three new rulers to divide up among the sign rulerships.

This is a whole new world, a whole different cosmology – and, a whole different set of values.
Continue reading “A Change in the Cosmos”

This is the fourth in a series of posts, in which I am examining the implicit mind/body dualism in our modern world, and ways to move towards a more consciously integrated set of values that affirms the worth of our mortal selves.

Last week I talked about reclaiming the spiritual value of the body along with the mind, matter along with spirit, emotions and desires along with the detached and dispassionate parts of our minds.

That was framed mostly in terms of being alive – the incarnation, the feelings, the passions, the movement.

This week I need to consider the necessary other half of the process. When we reclaim our connections with our bodies, desires and emotions, we need to recognize and reclaim our experience of sickness, decay, decline, mortality,  and death.
Continue reading “Reclaiming Mortality”