From Ancient to Postmodern Astrology

Toward A New Synthesis

Astrology & Consciousness

• Astrology is culturally determined

– Culture = prevailing level of consciousness

• Consciousness evolves over time

– Reflected in artifacts and doctrines

• Astrology is an artifact of consciousness

– Is best understood in evolutionary context

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

• Less evolved states…– Relative unawareness (unselfconscious)

– Time-space constriction (me, here, now)

– Fusion with the environment

• More evolved states…– Higher, more inclusive levels of awareness

– Time-space extension (expanded view)

– Differentiation from the environment

Lower Consciousness

• Primary determinants of behavior are…– Survival, security, ego-gratification

– Short term focus, immediate gratification

• Self-awareness is shallow– Lack of self-reflection

– Psychic fragmentation and acting out

• External locus of control (“the gods”)– Fearful resistance to change

– Preoccupation with issues of control

Higher Consciousness

• Higher levels of self-awareness– Greater capacity for containment & control

– Self more differentiated, integrated, whole

• More attunement within and without– Compassion, empathy, altruism

• Internal locus of control– More freedom, choice, resilience, and openness

• Participatory trust in a higher power– Conscious evolution & accelerated growth

Traditional Astrology500 B.C. – 1600 A.D.

• Oriented toward the ego (practical)

• Focus on fate (event oriented)– Concerned with survival and security

• Relatively unaware of psychological realm – Temperament/No psychic depth or complexity

• Fear based with short-term focus– What is going to happen and when?

• Utilized for control over life, nature, death – Emphasis on certainty and accuracy

Modern Astrology1900 - Present

• Psychologically oriented

• Focus on character delineation

• Intrapsychic depth & complexity

• Faith based with long term focus on growth and development

• Healing and self-transformation

• Ego-transcendence

Archaic Astrology10,000 B.C. – 2000 B.C.

• Equinox and solstice -- Stonehenge

• Seasonal synchronization with sky gods

• Human awareness dim & primitive

• Participation mystique

• Superhuman sky gods ruled all

• Imitation via ritual and blood sacrifice

Babylonian Omen Astrology2000 B.C. – 500 B.C.

• Prophetic signs correlated to events of collective significance – war, famine, disease, abundance -- centered on King– Simple “If, then…” statements

• Emergence of ego during this period– “an evolutionary psychological mutation”

– Independent, rational, willful center

– Hero myths and Sun worship began

Birth of Horoscopic Astrology500 B.C. – 1 A.D.

• Wilber’s middle egoic period (to 1600)

– Decisive emergence of the self

– Pride, arrogance, self-inflation

– “the world was never the same…”

• Goal was to utilize astrological foreknowledge to personal advantage

– To avert or exploit the will of the gods

– Tropical zodiac of 12 equal signs

– Greater differentiation of astrology

Focus on Fate

• A force determines an unalterable outcome

– Obvious in nature – cycle of seasons

– Foreknowledge gives one an advantage

– “Conducive of superiority or success”

• Prediction augments control

– Assists in attainment of desired goals

– Relieves anxiety about the future

– Protects against dreaded outcomes

Terminology and Practice Reflects Cultural Ethos

• Planets are gods, lords, or rulers– With dominion over sublunary realm

– Metaphor of dominance and submission

• One can either submit to heavenly rule– Align personal will with planetary dictates

– Or suffer the consequences…

• Non-democratic, non-participatory cosmos– Like a Theocracy of the Middle East

Subordination of Free Will

• External locus of control

– Free will was outsmarting the cosmos

– “Forewarned is forearmed”

• Aquinas argued against astro-fatalism

– Celestial determinism undermined moral responsibility

• Astral magic provided a means of influence

– Countermeasures included apotropaic rituals, blood sacrifices, sigils, prayer, yagjas

Petitionary vs. Participatory

• Petition is to invoke the power of the gods through ritual, rite, or prayer

– To pacify, appease, and secure favor

– Power & ultimate responsibility is outside

• Participatory relationship is co-creative

– Divine powers are grounded, integrated, and actualized within the self

– Aim is to transcend ego & identify with the divine

Ego-Centered Concerns

• Practical, real-world concerns re: key events

– Profession, wealth, health, marriage, death

– Maximize opportunity and potential

– Two questions: What? and When?

• Primary values: prediction and control

– Analogous to gathering intelligence

– Maximize pleasure; minimize pain

– Exploiting foreknowledge for personal gain

The Modern Perspective

• Human beings are free, evolving, and indeterminate beings (charts)– Uncertainty of choice & behavior is a given

– Varying levels of integration and actualization

– Concreteness inversely proportion to reliability

• Adversity serves a purpose– “All neurosis is born from a failure to endure legitimate

suffering” (Jung)

– Modern astrology governed by different values

– Precise prediction can be disempowering

Temperament Is Permanent

• Fixed, inborn, and non-evolving. Answers, “what?”– Choleric, Melancholic, Sanguine, Phlegmatic

– Descriptive typologies, but no explanatory processes

• Modern explanations of character answer “why?”– Underlying drives, conflicts, and beliefs

– Innately self-organizing and self-transcending

– Like a documentary film versus a snapshot

• Alter your character, and mutate your fate– No chart-person conflation; free-will rules

– Horizontal and vertical dimensions of interpretation

Value Judgments

• If there’s only fate and no purpose, then judgment– Evaluating the fitness of a planet

– Strong/weak, benefic/malefic, good/bad, dignity/detriment, exalted/fallen, affliction, debilitation

– Zeroing in on the final judgment (outcome)

• Primitive black and white thinking = “splitting”– Characteristic of toddlers (no self or object constancy)

– Undeveloped capacity for ambivalence

– Flat, static, two-dimensional experiencing

– Leads to negative extremes – fear mongering

“After direful and bloody Comets...there

shall remain nothing for the future safe or healthy amongst Men...and nothing remain but Night, Destruction, Ruine,

Damnation and Eternal Misery."

~ Typical 16th century prophecy

If fear of impending doom is the hallmark symptom of anxiety, then traditional astrology may be less a predictive art

than a mental disorder.

A Modern Non-Judgmental Perspective

• Ambiguity means chart configurations can be good and bad for different reasons

– Outcomes evaluated in terms of meaning and purpose. “Challenge” not “affliction”

– Based on a learning model

• Goal is to discern the event’s intention

– Not what is going to happen, but what is leading toward? What is it requiring of the individual?

– How is it a catalyst for new levels of functionality?

Rigid Traditional Technique

• Hallmark is logical formulas– Explicit, precise, and repeatable

– Clear, unequivocal judgments analogous to fixed, immutable laws, “If, then”

• Based on chart-person equivalence– Time honored rules

– One-size-fits all interpretations

– Detailed, irrevocable, chart-induced fates

Overgeneralizing

• Drawing dogmatic conclusions from ambiguous, limited data– Faulty inductive logic

• Simplistic, one-dimensional interpretations– One cause, one outcome thinking

• AstroMyopia– Reasoning from the part to the whole

A Typical Interpretation

“Venus in Capricorn with Saturn in opposition *in a man's horoscope] makes the natives hated by their

wives…They will be despised in sexual relations yet objects of scandal for their base desires…The Moon,

Saturn, and Venus in the 7th house makes for effeminate perverts, and for sodomites if squared by

Mars.”

~ Firmicus Maternus

(4th Century, late Hellenistic Technique)

Research Disadvantages

• Lack of reliable charts to study– Chart calculations took an hour or more

– Unreliable birth dates and times

– Different calendars in different countries

– No formal research methodologies

• Technologically impaired– No clocks before the 14th century

– No telescopes before 17th century

– Inaccurate ephemeredes – Jupiter/Saturn conjunction of 1563 off by a month

Modern Research Advantages

– Millions of reliable horoscopes

– Relatively accurate birth data

– Search features in computer programs

– Biographies of famous individuals

– Documentary films and television shows

Bottom Line

Modern astrologers can study more reliable charts in a week than a 1st century astrologer

could study in a lifetime.

Modern Tolerance for Uncertainty & Ambiguity

• Archetypal astrology holds that…– The same configuration can result in many and varied

outcomes

– the same outcome can be expressed by different configurations

• Multiple dimensions of meaning– Subjective and objective manifestations

– Horizontal (quantity or breadth of outcomes)

– Vertical (quality of outcome on a hierarchy of integration)

– Historical/Process (meanings change over time)

– Synchronistic (coincidence between inner & outer)

Questionable Validity

• Precision not the same as accuracy– Dignity (strength) can be assessed, but with dubious

consequences

– Exaltation, sect, triplicity ruler, and term appear to be arbitrary assignments and value judgments

– Example: Is concept of “sect” testable?

• Mars at 3 degrees Cancer above horizon– Is in its fall ( bad), in its triplicity ruler (good), out of sect

(bad), in its own bounds (good)

– Jack Lamotta, Robert Mitchum, J.F.K., Al Capone, Jean-Claude Van Damme (opp Saturn exactly)

Qualities vs. Judgments

• Qualities of expression based on empirical observation

• Judgments based on subjective opinion– Example: exaltations and detriment

• Venus in Pisces in the 8th

– Negotiates financial transactions deceptively

– Exalted in Pisces but in house of detriment

Emphasis on Certainty

• Obsession with accuracy (certainty)– Goal of perfect foreknowledge (omniscience)

– Compensatory to radical uncertainty

• Selective reasoning and confirmation bias– Ignoring inaccurate predictions

– Exaggerating the significance of accurate predictions

"It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be

more moved and excited by affirmatives

than by negatives."

~ Francis Bacon

Ptolemy’s Warning

"It is not possible that particular forms of events should be declared by any person, however scientific; since the

understanding conceives only a certain general idea of some sensible event, and not its particular form.“

~ Claudius Ptolemy

2nd Century

Pretensions of Omniscience

“All things are known to the astrologer. All that has taken place in the past, all that will happen in the

future—everything is revealed to him, since he knows the effects of the heavenly motions which have been, those which are, and those which will be, and since he

knows at what time they will act, and what effects they ought to produce.”

~ Guido Bonatti

13th Century

Unintended Consequences

• Narrowness of interpretation

– Collapsing a multidimensional symbol into a concrete, singular outcome is a rape of meaning

• Possibility is sacrificed on the alter of certainty

– Accuracy is not the same as utility

– The most you can be is right

– Possibility has been truncated

Determinism Versus Indeterminism

• All living systems are indeterminate– Not fixed or known in advance

– Not leading to a definite result or outcome

• We are self-organizing systems– Free to choose and to grow

– Fixed rules and flexible strategies

– Chart factors fixed, but choice in how to express

• Chart symbols display multivalence– Every astrological symbol has multiple meanings

– Capable of interacting, reacting, and uniting in multiple ways with variable outcomes

Descriptive And Prescriptive

• What and When questions predominate

– What is going to happen to me”

– When is it going to happen?

– What am I like as a person?

– What are my strengths and weaknesses?

– What should I do?

– When should I do it?

Astrology’s Decline

• 18th through 19th century

– Classed under vagrancy laws

– Outlawed in England 1736 & 1825

– Laws against fortune-telling in U.S.

• Rise of modern science, empiricism, and mechanism

• Books survived, but no innovations

Birth of Modern Astrology

• Began with Alan Leo & Theosophists

– Downgraded prediction, upgraded psycho-spiritual dimension to avoid prosecution

• Karma, reincarnation, and soul evolution introduced to astrology

– Charles Carter, Marc Edmond Jones

– Precursor to humanistic astrology of Dane Rudhyar, Richard Idemon, Liz Greene

– Foreshadowed by Marsilio Ficino

Primary Characteristics

• Descriptive vs. Predictive/Prescriptive

– Descriptive but not explanatory

– Broad superficial trait descriptions but no underlying psychodynamics

• Subjective & objective inadequately related

– The primacy of character over destiny

• Mushy, vague, and unsystematic

– Anything can mean anything

– Cookbook interpretations

Facing New Challenges

• The intrapsychic realm is intangible– Drives, affects, beliefs, defenses, complexes

– How do chart symbols explain complex, developmental processes?

• Dubious equivalencies with psychology– Sun is ego, Mars is id, Venus is anima

– New chart components plus myth – Ugh!

– A jumbled, puffed up, chaotic mess

PostModern Astrology

• What astrology might become– An ideal model that integrates the best of pre-

modern and modern approaches

– Resolves the problems of prior models

• Key is “PostModern” – Death of certainty, acceptance of relativity

– Truth is a matter of perspective

– Reality contains an inescapable ambiguity

Implications for Astrology

• Precise structure at the intrapsychic level– Fixed rules for psychodynamics

– Process can be delineated, but content indeterminate

– Underlying drives & beliefs produce behavior

– Content is a vehicle for process (circular causality)

• Allowing for uncertainty of outcome– Flexible strategies for behavior

– Uncertainty implies creativity and growth

– Accuracy inversely proportional to concreteness

Inherent & Consequential Factors

• Inherent factors are psychodynamic

– Clear definitions of chart variables

– Fixed rules for chart synthesis

• Consequential factors refer to level of awareness and integration

– Level of awareness/integration produces behavioral strategy and outcome

Venus Square Neptune

• Attachment/intimacy needs in conflict with impulse for transcendence

– Behavioral strategy: Choosing a mate who requires sacrifice, e.g., an alcoholic

– Selflessness expressed at expense of intimacy, fairness, and partnership

– Outcome: guilt and resentment

A Higher Level Outcome

• Attachment/Intimacy needs are able to contain needs for transcendence

– An education (healing) through suffering

– Integration allows for mutual satisfaction

– Behavioral strategy: marry a meditation teacher and go on retreats

– Outcome: relationship as spiritual path

A Final Word

To the extent that astrologers recognize that we are not puppets of planetary

forces, but rather can engage them in a co-creative, participatory relationship, we

do astrology and our clients an indisputable service.

For Further Information on Tapes, Articles, or Books

Contact: Glenn Perry

Phone: 415-479-5812

E-Mail: glenn@aaperry.com

Website: www.aaperry.com