*To learn more about an actual, personal astrology reading, see Astrology and You.

pictured above: a variation on  “The Flammarion Woodcut”  –  artist unknown

“Astrology!  Ha!  What a load of ya-ya mystical hooey!  How can you believe in that nonsense?  Modern science and reasonable minds debunked that rubbish centuries ago.”  A common sentiment?

Yet to this very day, astrology continues to captivate even the most brilliant scientific minds.  Not to mention those with more philosophical and spiritual inclinations.

How to explain astrology?

One.  Side-step.  Observe, and it generally appears to be accurate.  Pull the lid off and explore beneath the surface – beneath the bantering of “sun signs” –  and astrology appears to be wildly accurate.  So just play along, no explanation needed.

Two.  Very simple.  As above, so below.

But…  Looking for a more robust answer?  There are many, some more meaningful than others, and none of which is complete.  The subject is simply too vast, too deep, too mysterious.  So… Let’s try!

Now, what follows you must take with your own grains of salt.  In this era of institutional lies and “fake news,” it may be strange to hear this, but within the fullness of an individual heart, truth simply isn’t true if it’s not true for you.  Yes.  So… In a nutshell.  Astrology is a supremely potent map for reading the human psyche, for interpreting the motivations, impulses, directives, gifts, and challenges that are so often buried beneath layers and layers of our very forgivable human conditioning.  Both individually and collectively.  Because…  Because…

Well, my own explanation.  I just don’t know, and yet, with the immutable mystery aside, I’ll say…  Something like…

Astrology.   A science exploring the nature of psyche, cosmos and being.  Intimately, inextricably embedded with the human experience.  The insatiable yearnings of our limitless imaginations; the depth and breadth of our mind’s projections; the explosive recognition that life is art and that art is life, creation and dissolution, and that both are suffused with beautiful, inscrutable mystery…  These gentle tugs from within, even these cataclysmic quakes, suggest to us that astrology is as old as humanity itself, indeed as eternal as pure consciousness.  The precise celestial nature of enigmatic Stone Age monuments – Gobekli Tepe, Nabta Playa, Newgrange, Carnac, Stonehenge, Pranu Muttedu and countless others both known and lost to time – tell us that astrology is at the very root of civilization.  In the West, we are most familiar with astrology through the golden eras of Ancient Greece, Medieval Islam, and Renaissance Europe, but perhaps we are less aware that the study of astrology is intimately entwined with the foundation and flowering of Western Civilization, as it is and has been in all human civilizations…

Indeed, asssssssstrology…(!) – oh there’s that word again – by the very nature of the stars, the cosmos, our being, because of who we are and where we come from in the grandest and truest possible sense, ASTROLOGY is inseparable from human awareness, from our daily routines, from our strivings, struggles and triumphs.

The underlying premise.  Matter and the physical universe are a product of all-embracing consciousness, and not… the reverse.  Consciousness is the essence of is-ness, the essence of being – infinite, eternal, intimately aware, endlessly generative.  Consciousness is the ultimate in compassion, power and love, three qualities that are inseparable.  Unity.  One.  God.  Allah.  There is only One Being, One Consciousness.  The experience of separate, unique and discrete phenomenon – the experience of our individuality and autonomy – it may all be an illusion, but the experience is very real, deeply meaningful, and of extraordinary consequence.  A parallel, deeper and even MORE REAL and consequential reality: the Unity of Being.

Being, or consciousness and experience, is multidimensional, occurring in multiple, even infinite states simultaneously.  Embodied on earth, in our condition of separation, most of our being is left invisible to our personal awareness; that is, most of our being exists in sub-conscious and super-conscious states.  Our mundane awareness is generally absorbed within physical sensations and within their resulting mental and emotional consequences.  All material forms are dense manifestations of the more subtle, universal mind, the sub and super-conscious mind. To frame this somewhat differently, all material forms are sensed aspects of a much broader psyche, a psyche which is mostly invisible to our mundane senses.  In relation to life on earth, the movements of the luminous bodies – the sun and moon, and the  planets – the movements of these celestial bodies are the highest, deepest and most constant physical phenomenon available to unaided observation, and thus they represent and map the major elements of the human psyche.  Over time, the inner or subtle natures of these elements has been revealed through deep observation, and also through transcendent communion with the sub and super-conscious.  By transcendent communion I mean inspired, revelatory, and shamanic states of mind.  These insights and experiences become encoded in our daily activity through symbols, language, myth and culture.  And so we come to know the character of a planet such as Venus or Mars, or of the Sun and Moon, and begin to see that these are reflections of our own, inner being.

Yes, something very much like this.  More or less.  Again, in our present state of human consciousness, we have no definitive answers to the question, and really, no possibility of a certain and complete answer.  The underlying wisdom and experience of astrological phenomenon however, this has long been present with us.

A few astrologers of renown: Pythagoras, Plato, Paracelsus, Al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Omar Khayyam, Musa Al-Khwarizmi, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, John Flamsteed, Benjamin Franklin, Rudolph Steiner, and Carl Jung.  And so many more.  My apologies that these luminaries are all men; they arose in a lengthy period of patriarchal dominance during which intellectual and philosophical explorations were primarily male prerogatives.  Another irony:  many of the individuals listed are considered to be the foundational god-heads of the modern mathematics and physics, the same institutions of modernity which, in their insular blindness, dismisses astrology out of hand.  Ahhh well.  It is the last, Carl Jung, who very directly offered-up astrology as an invaluable tool in psychological analysis and counseling, the application for which I find astrology so fascinating and useful.

So.  Yes, it may feel contrary to our poplar perception, but across time and culture, astrology – with it’s attention equally focused upon meticulous sensory observation, mathematical calculation, psycho-emotional evaluation, and far-reaching spiritual implication – yes, astrology, has always been at the very root of science.  Even in our present society so mired in the mindset of reductionist materialism, behind the curtains, this essential science of the ages continues to breathe with enormous value and consequence.

Feel free to contact me for astrological conversations and readings.