People change.
Yet one assumption runs like a virus through most astrological writing: people do not change. “Scorpios are sexy, but cannot be trusted; Capricorns are industrious; Pisceans are cosmic, but too spacey to balance their checkbooks.” Even in advanced texts we find similar assertions. . . . Changeless, rigid statements. From Ptolemy right up through Linda Goodman, the astrological symbols have been interpreted as pieces of psychological machinery. We are blessed or cursed with them at birth and stuck with them until we die.
It is a lie.
There is an indeterminacy, an unpredictable element in life. This wild card may be a thorn in the side of the fortune-tellers, but it is the keystone of any positive, evolutionary approach to astrology. Or to any accurate approach, for that matter.
Astrology has been so misunderstood, so misrepresented, that the real meaning of the word has almost been lost. Some of this we can blame on the usual bad guys, but the bulk of the guilt falls on astrologers themselves. Through conventional interpretations of the symbolism and through an obsession with predicting the future, much of modern astrology has become a parody of what it could be. Much of it is rightly laughable. To admit, in intelligent company, to being an astrologer has become like admitting you watch soap operas or have a subscription to the National Enquirer. We who practice the art can lament and protest, but ultimately we must own up to one fact: as embarrassing as that situation is, we have earned it.
Astrology is just a finger pointing at reality. Like any other language, it only provides a way of ordering our perceptions. At its best it aids us in seeing ourselves more honestly. At its worst it drops a wall between us and the rawness of our own experience. To be of value it must not only reflect the actualities of living; it must hone the cutting edge of our growth. If astrology does not give the mind the sharpness of a laser and leave the heart an open nerve, then it has failed.
How can such drama be generated? Certainly not through droning a list of “traits” associated with each celestial configuration.
We are not robots. We are men and women. We are not inalterably programmed at birth, predestined to run off our astrological tapes until our batteries run down. That choice may be available to us: we are free to be mechanical and boring, to ritualize our behavior into a haze of dullness and predictability. But we can do so much more. To be human is to be mutable. To be capable of change. To be indeterminate. To know growth.
There may be an Everest of inertia within us, but it is to that single atom of mutability that astrology must speak. It must address the life in us, not the stasis.
Each astrological symbol represents a spectrum of possibilities; each birthchart contains the roots of ten thousand personalities. This is the key to the system.
An individual can respond to a birthchart in an unimaginative way, or vibrantly and creatively. His or her response can never be known in advance. There is no such thing as a good birthchart or a bad one. There are no evolved charts or unevolved ones, no sane ones, no schizophrenic ones. Whatever measure of virtue interests us, we must look elsewhere to find it.
Astrology can help us in only three ways. It can vividly portray the happiest life available to us. It can tell us what tools we have available for the job and how best to employ them. And it can warn us in advance about how our lives will look when we are getting off the mark. From that point on, we must affirm that all choices lie in our own hands and that no planet or sign ever preordains a specific fate.
Once those points have been made, we can listen to the message of the birthchart or we can ignore it. That is our own business. And even if we do choose to ignore it, life itself will get the same message across to us sooner or later.
Then why do we need astrology at all? No reason. Many people live very well without it. Nothing can be learned from a birthchart that could not be learned someplace else. Go into psychotherapy, meditate in a Tibetan monastery, fall in love, discover a lost city — any of those might do the same thing. Astrology is just one more path to self-knowledge. And like all other paths, it has certain advantages and disadvantages.
Astrology’s principal advantage is speed. Without it, we may stumble around for years trying to sort out good information about who we are from all the phony truths and empty dreams with which we have been programmed. Psychotherapy may accelerate the process. So might a dynamic marriage. So might an adventure that pushes us to the limits of endurance, stripping away everything but the barest essentials of our character.
But all those processes take time. And each has pitfalls of its own. On the other hand, an astrological reading, or reading this book, consumes only an afternoon. In a matter of two or three hours a level of self-awareness can be generated that might take years to put together in any other way.
Astrology’s disadvantages? All that fine information can go in one ear and out the other. Astrology does not change people any more than psychotherapy changes people. People change themselves.
What About Metaphysics?
Go ten minutes into any discussion of astrology and chances are good you will collide with some imponderables. “My astrologer says I need to face all this stuff. Why? What if I don’t feel like it?”
Those questions quickly escalate into the major leagues: What is the purpose of life? Why am I here? Who (if anyone) put me in the world in the first place?
Metaphysics and astrology seek answers to the same questions. There is a difference, though. Unlike metaphysics, in astrology the emphasis is on the seeker rather than on what he or she seeks. Astrology is not theological; it is direct, real, experiential. It tries only to help us get our personalities into running order. To make us happier. Clearer. Behind that process we can drape any metaphysical or philosophical curtain that pleases us.
Let’s try a couple of them just to see if it really makes any difference.
Curtain Number One: We are not protoplasm. We are spirit. Pure awareness. Immortal beings, incarnating in a succession of physical forms, slowly evolving toward a state of union with God. Our current existential circumstances reflect our inward condition. We select them consciously before birth, choosing the optimal astrological configurations for our evolutionary work. We may not like everything about our lives, but there is nothing random about them. Everything can be used. Everything is a blessing. Our jobs, our relationships, our hang-ups, the entire tableau is a conscious, purposeful choice.
Curtain Number Two: The universe is completely random. Fifteen billion years ago, hydrogen clouds condensed into stars, and stars began cooking heavier elements. Lumps of carbon formed and the lumps learned to reproduce themselves, slowly evolving into specialized relationships with their environments. What we call consciousness is an electrochemical phenomenon, utterly dependent on the physiology of the brain. When the brain dies, consciousness dies. In the meantime, we can enjoy it. But that isn’t easy. Consciousness is inefficient. It produces a lot of static: neuroses, guilt, compulsions. If we want to get maximum pleasure from our consciousness in this random universe, those energy leaks have to be eliminated.
See any practical difference?
The two models are light-years apart philosophically, but in practice they are identical. If there is a cosmic joke, this is it: no matter how we mentally construct the universe, the universe in which we actually live is unchanged. We can shift the conceptual furniture in our heads until we turn blue and still come up against the same psychological conundrums — hang-ups are hang-ups, whatever our philosophies might be.
Pick either paradigm. Our work remains the same.
Are we spirit or are we flesh? Astrologically, the proper answer is — who cares? If we are depressed or jealous or lonely or in any other unpleasant state of consciousness, changing that condition is our work whether we are nuclear physicists or Hindu pundits. Metaphysical perspectives may help us. If so, fine. But it is not the business of astrology to supply them. That is up to us.
The intensification of a person’s self-awareness: in astrology that is all that matters. In promoting that intensification, anyone who interprets a birthchart must have absolute respect for the independence and self-determination of each mind he or she touches. No would-be gurus need apply. The relationship between astrologer and client must be one of equality. We all face the same labyrinths and nobody has the master plan.
What astrology does provide is a blueprint of the lens through which we must peer into those labyrinths: the personality.
From the astrological perspective, each personality has an ideal form, a form that is indicated by the positions of the planets at the time of our birth. And while we may draw upon culture and experience in grooming that form, its flesh and bones arise elsewhere. They are rooted deep within us, at a level of consciousness far more profound than our mannerisms and styles. We can call those roots the soul, shaped and twisted by the events of a thousand lifetimes. Or we can see them as a random alignment of the genetic roulette wheel. It does not matter. The roots are there, and they represent a certain pattern of needs and predispositions that the social personality must always reflect if there is to be peace in the mind.
And peace is the objective. But peace does not arise automatically. We must work toward it, aligning our outer personality with our inner essence. We must let go of those social scripts that upset us. We must grow.
Astrology is hedonistic. Pleasure-seeking. It is immediate and amoral. All that matters to it is happiness. A mirror reflecting life, it observes but does not interpret. Fact: we hurt. Fact: we would like to feel better. Astrology helps us do that.
How? By reminding us of who we are. Ever since we learned how to turn on the television set, we have been besieged. Our society has been trying to stick us with a set of values, heroes, and mythologies. No need to criticize them. It is enough to know that many of them are unnatural to us. In the hands of a sensitive, skilled, articulate astrologer, the birthchart can catapult us beyond those traps. It helps us avoid becoming just another character out of central casting. In a flash, the whole pattern of creative tensions, blind spots, and aspirations that makes up our own unique personality comes to a focus. And it stands distinct from those unnatural values, heroes, and mythologies.
What do we gain? Glimpsing our essential self fills us with vitality. It helps us make better choices. We take care of ourselves more effectively. We learn to separate what we really want from what we feel compelled to want. And that makes us happier.
No need to talk about enlightenment or self-actualization. Happiness is enough. This, then, is the real purpose of astrology: to hold a mirror before the evolving self, to tell us what we already know deep within ourselves. Through astrology we fly far above the mass of details that constitutes our lives. We stand outside our personalities and see for a moment the central core of individuality around which all the minutiae must always orbit.
We witness ourselves.
The Seven Principles
Seven fundamental ideas form the backbone of any growth-oriented vision of astrology. Any individual or text that diverges very far from them is probably more a part of astrology’s bad karma than part of its future.
- Astrological symbols are neutral. There are no good ones, no bad ones.
- Individuals are responsible for the way they embody their birthcharts.
- No astrologer can determine a person’s level of response to his birthchart from that birthchart alone.
- The birthchart is a blueprint for the happiest, most fulfilling, most spiritually creative path of growth available to the individual.
- All deviations from the ideal growth pattern symbolized by the birthchart are unstable states, usually accompanied by a sense of aimlessness, emptiness, and anxiety.
- Astrology recognizes only two absolutes: the irreducible mystery of life, and the uniqueness of each individual viewpoint on that mystery.
- Astrology suffers when wedded too closely to any philosophy or religion. Nothing in the system matters except the intensification of a person’s self-awareness.
Each of these seven principles is basic. Subtract or distort even one of them and the whole edifice crumbles into a ruin of fortune-telling.
We are free. Celestial forces and the human will function together in an open, synergistic relationship. The results of their union cannot be foreseen any more than a child’s nature can be seen in advance through a knowledge of his parents.
It comes down to this: astrological symbols are not nouns, they are verbs. I am not “a Capricorn.” I am Capricorning. Growth. Change. Evolution. That is the heart of astrology. Leave fatalism and rigidity to the fortune-tellers. Our work is elsewhere.
Reprinted from The Inner Sky: The Dynamic New Astrology For Everyone (Bantam, 1984).
© Copyright 1984 by Steven Forrest.
