Student of Astrology

Astrology and the Catholic Church Calendar

I am writing this on August 5th, which in the Catholic church calendar is the day before the Feast of the Transfiguration. This seems like a good day to write about the connections between the symbolism of the astrological year and the Church’s calendar of feast days.

During the two years that I took off from practicing astrology I became very involved with the worship cycle of the Catholic church. Now that I am back to astrology, integrating its symbolism in with the symbolism and calendar of the Church is of great interest to me. I have both the astrology calendar and the Church calendar wired into my system by now, and the links between them are important.

I am currently working with the symbolism of the World Chart and the solar cycle of the year, with the cardinal ingresses and the cross points at 15 degrees of the fixed signs. There should be connections between that eight point cycle and the Church calendar, along with Christmas and Easter – and sure enough, there are. Continue reading “Astrology and the Catholic Church Calendar”

World Angles in the Personal Chart

In this essay I am picking up on some concepts that I first began exploring in this piece I wrote back in 2021 – World Angles and the World Chart.

The key idea is that the four cardinal ingresses mark the axis points of the world, that are defined by the relation between the Earth and Sun. The are the four critical points on the Ecliptic, the circle marking the Sun’s apparent path of rotation around the earth.

The cardinal ingresses, especially the Aries Ingress at the Spring Equinox, are traditionally used as points for Mundane astrology.

What I want to explore is not just the Ingresses as four points in time, but as four points in space, power points connecting us to the world. Continue reading “World Angles in the Personal Chart”

Cycles and the Shape of Decline

Looking back over the writing I have done here on my astrology blog over the last decade or so, I want to pick up on one particular pair of essays that I think are worth revisiting and pursuing further.

This essay is meant to put a large framework around my astrological thinking. It also ties in with the work I am currently working on with mundane astrology and the world chart.

This is important to me, because I have learned that how a person does astrology, especially predictive mundane astrology, is strongly influenced by their worldview and their political perspective. In this essay I am laying out the large-scale frame that I use to make sense of the world. Continue reading “Cycles and the Shape of Decline”

The Bloodied Head

The first part of this essay is a very brief piece I did yesterday, and I am leaving it as originally posted. I decided today that it may be a bit too brief and cryptic, so I am adding a second part where I expand on the symbolism.

Part One

I am writing this Tuesday morning July 16, 2024, one day after the Mars/Uranus conjunction perfected, and three days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

I noticed a curious piece of astrology symbolism at work here.

Not surprisingly, the past few days I have seen a couple of repostings of the meme of the comedienne holding up the bloody severed head of Trump. It looks really, really tacky and bad just now, in the light of this weekend’s events.

Do you know what that bloody severed head is an image of? Continue reading “The Bloodied Head”

Aligning with the Cycles of Astrology

Some years back I worked on a book project on the Western spiritual basis of our astrology. It made more sense to me to look to our own traditions rather than following the fashion that goes back to the influence of Theosophy in the early 1900’s, and look to the East for spiritual guidance. Much as I love Eastern philosophy, and as much as I have personally been influenced by Theosophy, especially Blavatsky, it still seems to me to be more appropriate to look to our Western tradition for our Western spiritual roots.

I took my book project as far as a finished first draft and then had to just let it sit, as it felt incomplete, fragmentary. I think I understand why now.

I was searching for a system of ideas, a philosophical system, for the base, and I have now think that is inadequate. The philosophical underpinning is very important, but by itself it lacks roots. It isn’t deep enough.

A spiritual underpinning needs to be rooted in spiritual practice and realization. It needs to be alive. Continue reading “Aligning with the Cycles of Astrology”

Guidelines On the Practice of Astrology

It has now been roughly two years since I last posted on this site. During that period I quit practicing astrology altogether; I quit taking readings and I phased out all of my classes. This was for a mix of reasons, some personal, some political and some religious. I needed to back off for awhile.

I am now convinced it is time for me to pick up doing astrology again, hopefully with a fresh perspective on what I’m doing. In order to do that I needed to think long and hard about what an appropriate set of guidelines would be to practice astrology effectively.

This essay is a set of notes that lays out my thoughts along these lines. Part of what I am doing here is pointing out mistakes that I think need to be avoided. This is an area I can speak as an authority since I have made all of these mistakes at one time or other in my astrology life.

There is some overlap between some of these notes, and I circle back to some topics a couple of times to add further detail. This also complements a post I wrote around three years ago, titled, Tips on Astrology Interpretation.

You can think of these as guidelines for practicing astrology effectively; or, you can take them as advice to aspiring astrologers; or you can view these as my talking to myself about the mistakes I have seen and have made myself, and what I have learned from them.

Continue reading “Guidelines On the Practice of Astrology”

Astrology, Perception and Interpretation

It has been a long time since I have written anything here on my astrology blog. I want to talk here about why.

I wrote a long post last month, analyzing the general astrology for 2022 using the Capricorn and Aries ingresses, and an eclipse that falls right around the US election in November. I sat on it for over a month, and I’ve decided I don’t want to publish it, for a couple of reasons.

One, what I am seeing in the astrology for the year is quite turbulent and dark.

And two, at this point, I don’t see any way that I, or anyone else, can dis-entangle general political views and opinions from the astrology I do, especially in our highly polarized world. I now think that is inevitable. I want to give a couple of instances here. Continue reading “Astrology, Perception and Interpretation”

Saturn Uranus 2 – Live Not By Lies

Live Not By Lies

This is a follow-up to my previous post, Saturn and Uranus: Bumping Into Reality. In that post I talked about how our emphasis on Uranus being a Positive Future and Saturn being a Negative Past has some serious blind spots, so I rephrased the Saturn-Uranus relationship in other ways to emphasize important things we need to acknowledge about Saturn.

Here I want to switch the focus, and talk about some important aspects of Uranus we need to pay attention to. This one is much harder to talk about than the previous post, because here I am touching on meanings that have been over-used and are now cultural cliches that mean almost the opposite of what the words are actually saying.

Continue reading “Saturn Uranus 2 – Live Not By Lies”

Saturn and Uranus: Bumping Into Reality

If you follow astrology at all you are likely aware of the Saturn square Uranus configuration that has set the tone for so much of our astrology climate this year – the first exact hit was February, the second in June, and the final exact hit is late this coming December, just a few days after the Capricorn Ingress. I want to talk about the usual way that these two planets are framed, and the limitations and blinds spots of that framing. After that, I want to take this same configuration and rephrase it in several different ways, to give us different perspectives on what is going on. Continue reading “Saturn and Uranus: Bumping Into Reality”

Tips On Astrology Interpretation

This essay was inspired by a question posed by one of my students, who asked for advice on interpretation in astrology. Aside from the technical question of knowing the range of meanings of the planets, houses and signs – which I will address later in this essay – there is the wider question of what constitutes clear and useful interpretation. I want to spend most of this essay on that point.

Here is some advice for learning to do clear and useful interpretation in astrology. In a larger sense these are all useful rules for ANY human communication.

It was a useful exercise for me to write this, as it helped me clarify my own thinking on the subject.

Avoid Jargon

Continue reading “Tips On Astrology Interpretation”