The ancient Greeks, to whom Western culture owes so much, taught astrology alongside astronomy as part of the 7 liberal arts, and as a veritable science. Only in recent times has a rift, and subsequent degradation of astrology as dubious mumbo-jumbo, occurred. Contrary to such views that have originated within an extremely narow, hyper-materialistic framework, astrology is a coherent and beautifully logical system, tried-and-tested over millennia, which is now experiencing a new surge of interest from people who feel dissatisfied with a strictly mechanistic, ultimately soulless view of the cosmos and human beings as not much more than flesh bots in a sea of dead matter. “We are stardust…“ says the 1960s song (and some modern scientists), but we are more than merely the dust of stars – “All the gods, all the heavens…are within you“ (Joseph Campbell).
Originally devised for predicting the fate of nations and emperors, today’s understanding of astrology is mostly concerned with individual life paths and characteristics – unfortunately, this has engendered a lamentable descent into a rather juvenile popularity contest for zodiac signs. One of the most prominent traits of the New Age or “pop astrology” school of thought, aside from a fairly polarizing categorization of the signs’ supposed attributes, is the emphasis on “the light” and “love”. However, it appears to me that New Age astrologers tend to over-emphasize the positive, disregard what they don’t personally favor and occasionally outright bash certain zodiac signs, which I find quite noteworthy for a philosophy that proclaims to be all about loving everyone. It also speaks for a lack of understanding what the zodiac actually is: Put simply, with this post’s introductory purpose in mind, the signs of the zodiac are 12 steps on the soul’s path to individuation, 12 basic natural drives, archetypes or “seasons” whose qualities must be understood, incorporated and balanced among each other in order to become a human being approaching the often-praised state of integration. Along this path, there are no good or bad signs, and the interaction of each sign’s qualities with the planets therein and their ruling planets in other signs in aspect to other planets and points, with implications for every area of life,…etc ….makes it a much more complex and multi-layered field into which a “this sign has better attributes than that sign” view is perplexingly ill-fitted. ... READ MORE
Comments