Ancient Tower Press

Preface to the Astropoetic Series - Part Six

 

 

THE FOLLOWING IS COPYWRITTEN MATERIAL

NO PART OF IT MAY BE REPRODUCED

WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR

 

This is Part 6 of an 8-Part Series

Previous posts in this series include:

 

In the Face of Glacially Slow Paradigm Shifts

In the Face of Cultural Inertia

Within the Astrological Community

Against the Astrological Community

Tracking the Soul Armed With An Astrology of Consciousness

 

Tracking the Soul Astropoetically

 

The natal chart predisposes us toward a default position, while subsequent transits and progressions provide the opportunity to shift beyond the default to encompass a wider range of responses to life’s challenges.  Knowing where we are in any given moment with regard to the various possibilities for interpretation of a chart also allows us to see where it is possible to go from here, transforming what would otherwise be a merely diagnostic tool into a strategic tool for intentional change.

If, for example, I am conditioned by my natal chart – say through a square between my natal Sun and a Saturn/Mars conjunction – to approach life as a competitive arena in which I must fight for my place within the larger scheme of things (expressive of a 3^rd chakra mindset), then I can see that part of my challenge in relation to this aspect, might be to move into a more cooperative and synergistic frame of mind where I see others, not as rivals, but as colleagues and collaborators toward common goals (expressive of a 4^th chakra mindset). 

At certain points in the various possible cycles between Sun, Saturn, and Mars (Sun-Saturn, Sun-Mars, Saturn-Sun, Saturn-Mars, Mars-Sun and Mars-Saturn)[i], I will have the opportunity to experiment with shifting my default pattern.  The more consciously I take advantage of these opportunities – and an understanding of my birthchart as a map of my soul’s journey will allow me to do this – then the more I can begin to transmute my relationship to this square from one that is potentially problematic to one that serves to bring more divine intelligence into my life experience.

My understanding of this opportunity for growth that is embedded in my birthchart becomes an astropoetic experience to the extent that I can map it to images, feelings, memories, events, and processes from my life that bring the symbolism to life. 

In May, 2000, for example, when both transiting Sun and transiting Saturn were in position to trigger a 4^th chakra experience of this 3^rd chakra pattern in my natal chart, I found myself playing a game – invented by a friend of mine – of 6-sided chess.  The game was so complex that the only way a player could win was through collaboration with other players to gradually eliminate the competition.  Thus within the context of the game, those who were ostensibly rivals (in the arena of 3^rd chakra) became temporary allies (in the arena of the 4^th). 

At the time, this game became an astropoetic metaphor, mirroring a political campaign in which I was involved that brought together left-leaning environmental activists and right-leaning Libertarians – strange political bedfellows aligned around an issue that provided common ground.  This experience taught me a great deal about assuming that the line between enemy and ally was cut and dried, and gradually allowed me to relax my rigid 3^rd chakra boundaries around the exercise of this difficult square in my natal chart to encompass 4^th chakra possibilities.

It was to explore the interface between consciousness and astrological symbolism that makes any birthchart a potential map for soul growth that I wrote Tracking the Soul as the first book in The Astropoetic Series.  It remains my goal throughout this series to expand the context in which astrology is understood, so that the full range of possibilities underlying the symbolism can be explored.  All of this gets lost when astrological configurations are simply assigned meaning. Assigning meaning to anything is an exercise in consciousness that adds as much to the symbolism as it derives from it.  When consciousness is applied to the symbolism of astrology with a poetic imagination, then there is no limit to the range of possible expression through which the meaning of this immensely rich and protean mirror to the soul can reveal itself.  This is the compelling wonder and focus of astropoetics.

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[i] The astro-logic that suggests this aspect has 3^rd chakra implications revolves around the placement of my Sun in the 12^th house conjunct the Ascendant square to Mars.  The presence of Saturn in this square suggests a 3^rd chakra pattern of deficiency in which my challenge is to rise to the place of awareness where I have enough energy, self-esteem, and confidence to take my place within the world without struggle, or apology, or awkwardness. 

The difficulty inherent in the natal square is lessened when these same planets are in softer aspect to each other.  The possibility for making a shift from the 3^rd chakra to the 4^th exists when a soft aspect forms between two or more of these planets by transit from a succedent house.  The reasoning behind the astro-logic in these statements is spelled out in detail in Tracking the Soul and would be too lengthy to repeat here.

Preface to the Astropoetic Series - Part Five

 

 

THE FOLLOWING IS COPYWRITTEN MATERIAL

NO PART OF IT MAY BE REPRODUCED

WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR

 

This is Part 5 of an 8-Part Series

Previous posts in this series include:

 

In the Face of Glacially Slow Paradigm Shifts

In the Face of Cultural Inertia

Within the Astrological Community

Against the Astrological Community

 

Tracking the Soul Armed With An Astrology of Consciousness

 

The key to an open-ended and ongoing exploration of a birthchart, and to the sense of meaning derived from it, is consciousness.  What the birthchart reveals depends upon who is looking at it, and the consciousness – the belief systems, attitudes, worldviews and patterns of conditioning – the individual astrologer brings to the symbolism, as well as the level of psycho-spiritual development he has attained in his own life.  Training in one or more systems of astrological practice will color the astrologer’s work, but not as much in my opinion as the consciousness with which he approaches his work.  Techniques are secondary; consciousness is primary – in the same way that consciousness is primary in the use of any language, and will determine what is being said.  Two astrologers trained in the same approach to astrology will not necessarily be equal in their capacity to offer insight of value to their clients, nor will they necessarily “see” the same thing looking at the same symbolism or communicate it in the same way.  Although hotly debated by astrologers, studies of this phenomenon have borne this out (Carlson, Vidmar, Phillipson Chapters 9 & 10).

Corollary to this understanding is the realization that the same birthchart can mean different things when applied in different contexts.  The same chart, for example, can describe the birth of a child or of an orangutan in the zoo across town; the signing of a marriage certificate or the finalization of a divorce settlement; the beginning of a war or a baseball game, or a horary question posed to an astrologer about a set of lost keys.  Even where the same chart describes two individuals born side by side in the same hospital at the same time, it is not likely that their personalities or their lives will be identical, because the consciousness that each brings to life will be different.  As astrologer Steven Forrest has pointed out, Christ and a cockroach born under the manger at exactly the same time would have the same birthchart (Measuring the Night 2).  Yet obviously, we would not interpret these two identical charts the same way.

Even within the experience of a single individual, the same natal birthchart will not mean the same thing at age 8 as it does at age 48, or at age 88, since the life experiences, the choices made, and the lessons learned by the native over the course of a lifetime, or an astrological cycle, shift the context in which that lifetime or cycle must be understood.  As we evolve in our capacity to embody divine intelligence and live in harmony with natural law, work toward the healing and transmutation of our core wounds, and actualize our creative potential at increasing levels of complexity and sophistication, so too does the meaning to be derived from the symbolism of our birthchart.  This shift in meaning can only partially be ascribed to the successive movement of planets from birth by transit and progression.  Mostly, it will be a matter of evolving consciousness – a factor that transcends the birthchart itself, and that dictates how the birthchart must be understood.

Lastly, in any given moment, the focus of our attention will determine the level of insight it becomes possible to derive from a birthchart.  The same symbolism will mean one thing when we are struggling to survive in intensive care in the wake of a car crash, another when we have newly fallen in love, and another when we are intentionally reflecting on the lessons to be derived from a lifetime of experience.  Again, to some extent current transits and progression will account for these periodic shifts in focus.  But beyond whatever correlation between focus and symbolism we might recognize will be the consciousness brought to bear in the moment – the mindset that we bring to our astrological inquiry.  Put another way, the chart can be understood as a multidimensional oracle of sorts, and to a large extent the question that we bring to it will determine the kind of answer we get as we explore its symbolism.

Because of the primacy of consciousness in determining what a particular birthchart means, the chart itself can be understood to be devoid of meaning until consciousness is brought to bear upon it.  Who looks at the chart, what the chart represents, where the subject of the chart (assuming it is a human being) is in his psycho-spiritual development, and what the current focus happens to be for approaching the chart in this moment all determine what the symbolism of the chart means.  

If the birthchart is interpreted for someone by an astrologer, then there are two sets of perceptual filters that must be taken into account.  Although many astrologers imply or state outright that astrology offers an objective point of view, the truth in practice is that the consciousness of the astrologer – her own belief systems, attitudes, worldviews, patterns of conditioning and state of psychospiritual development – is not a neutral factor in the outcome of a reading.  Nor can the interpersonal chemistry between astrologer and client be ignored. 

The best astrologers are those who can, to some extent, suspend their perceptual biases in order to see the world through their client’s eyes.  Better still is the astrologer who can use the learning they have derived from their own experience to shed light on their client’s predicament, in a way that honors the client’s unique soul journey, their fundamental right to make their own decisions, and the possibility for transcending not just their own patterns, but any possible interpretation the astrologer could give their birthcharts.

Still, the necessity for doing all this is still one step removed from a direct experience of one’s own birthchart – which in the end is the only experience that matters.  For this reason, the focus of my work as an astrologer these past 20+ years (half my astrological career) has been to teach others to read the language of astrology for themselves, rather than to read it for them.  When one understands the language, and can think and feel their own way into the poetry at the heart of the language, then the chart becomes an exquisite multi-dimensional map of the soul’s journey – filtered only by the limits of one’s own perceptivity and imagination. 

Within the chart can be read both the interior landscape the psyche must negotiate on its journey toward wholeness, and the time frame in which the journey will unfold.  Because consciousness is key to both the ability to read the chart at all, and the evolutionary context in which the chart must be read, I made an exploration of the interplay between consciousness and astrological symbolism the subject of my second book – Tracking the Soul With An Astrology of Consciousness. 

The model I used for this exploration is the chakra system, derived from yogic philosophy, as a sophisticated way to assess the motivational filter that colors what can be seen through the chart in any given moment.  The natal chart predisposes us toward a default position, while subsequent transits and progressions provide the opportunity to shift beyond the default to encompass a wider range of responses to life’s challenges.  Knowing where we are in any given moment with regard to the various possibilities for interpretation of a chart also allows us to see where it is possible to go from here, transforming what would otherwise be a merely diagnostic tool into a strategic tool for intentional change.

Preface to the Astropoetic Series - Part Four

 

 

THE FOLLOWING IS COPYWRITTEN MATERIAL

NO PART OF IT MAY BE REPRODUCED

WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR

 

This is Part 4 of an 8-Part Series

Previous posts in this series include:

 

In the Face of Glacially Slow Paradigm Shifts

In the Face of Cultural Inertia

Within the Astrological Community

 

Moving Toward an Astrology of Soul Against the Astrological Community

While there is a fair amount of support for a language of soul within the astrological community, there is also a contingent of astrologers who seem to take a scientific model as their point of departure, not seeming to realize that philosophically science is uncomfortable with the very idea of soul, and has been a primary catalyst to the de-souling of modern life.  Even those who suggest that the advent of quantum, chaos and other post-quantum theories are not incompatible with the astrological worldview fail to realize that that these theories – themselves largely beyond the reach of scientific methodology – do not contribute to an astrology of soul unless they are extracted from the scientific mindset that produced them, and then applied metaphorically in a way that science itself would not do.  These astrologers[i] mostly work from a statistical model, and focus on astrology’s predictive capacity and the correlation of events, measurable behaviors or personality traits with astrological patterns. 

None of these objective measures are particularly useful to an understanding of soul that is subjective and often beyond the reach of quantitative measure in its emerging essence – for reasons I have documented in The Seven Gates of Soul.  Yet, it is not uncommon for such astrologers to refer to soul in their writing, as though it were something measurable by the rational tools of quantification that science has to offer.

A third stream of astrologers of soul harkens back to the glory days of the Hellenistic era (circa 200 BCE – 200 CE) when astrology and the mythopoetic worldview that informed it were the bedrock of the Greek worldview[ii].  This stream informed largely by Stoic sensibilities understands astrology to be primarily a signature of Fate, and is laden with judgments about “good” and “bad” placements, aspects, and transits that mirror the limiting moral judgments rooted in religious conditioning that I mentioned earlier as being antithetical to unencumbered soul development.  Parallel to this Hellenistic focus in the West is the increasingly popular Vedic astrology of the East[iii], in which similar judgments of “good” and “bad” are endemic to the system. 

The more enlightened proponents of these views do not necessarily understand “good” and “bad” in moralistic terms, but instead ascribe levels of difficulty to various astrological placements and configurations – subtly assuming that “bad” means “difficult” at best, and “bordering on impossible” at worst – in my view, still under-estimating the capacity of a conscious soul to use the energy of “bad” to transmute intransigent patterns with greater commitment, perseverance, and ferocity of spirit.

To distinguish my approach to an astrology of soul – outlined in The Seven Gates of Soul and the books of The Astropoetic Series – from these others, I started calling what I do “astropoetics[iv]”.  Astropoetics is a hybrid word meant to describe a poetic approach to astrology, applied to the human quest for meaning, purpose, and a deeper sense of connection to all of life. 

Like poetry, and unlike science, astropoetics approaches the literal facts of existence as portals through which the imagination can explore interpenetrating layers of meaning.  These layers – derived from astronomy, mythology, and as we shall see in this book, number – are infused with sensory data, emotion, memory, fantasy, individual and collective longings that are at once universal and intimately personal in their archetypal potency.  Unlike poetry, these layers – which are in effect, layers of the human psyche – can be explored astro-logically, that is to say, in relation to various astrological cycles through which the meaning and purpose of both the ascending and descending dimensions of the soul’s journey reveal themselves. 

There are no good or bad placements, just a constellation of opportunities perfect for the evolving soul, despite their outward appearance.  The process of soul-making described by an astropoetic approach to the birthchart is not always rational or objective, but often irrational and subjective, and it can sometimes be painful.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  There is no separation between the external events and circumstances of life, the deeper psycho-spiritual lessons to be learned, and the soul’s journey toward Wholeness and depth of authenticity.  The astropoetic birthchart is not meant to be interpreted, but rather to serve as the point of departure for a lifelong, open-ended, and multi-dimensional exploration.

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[i] See The Scientific Basis of Astrology: Myth or Reality by Michel Gauquelin (New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1969), Harmonics in Astrology: An Introductory Textbook to the New Understanding of an Old Science by John Addey (Green Bay, WI: Cambridge Circle, 1976), The Combination of Stellar Influences by Reinhold Ebertin (Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers, 1972), and Astrology for the 21^st Century by David Cochrane (Gainesville, FL: Cosmic Patterns Software, 2002).

[ii] See Astrology and the Authentic Self: Integrating Traditional and Modern Astrology to Uncover the Essence of the Birthchart by Demetra George (Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press, 2008), the work of Robert Schmidt, Ellen Black and Project Hindsight at http://www.projecthindsight.com, and the work of Robert Hand and Arhat Publications at http://www.robhand.com.

[iii] See Light on Life: An Introduction to the Astrology of India by Hart Defouw and Robert Svoboda (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books, 1996), The Essentials of Vedic Astrology by Komilla Sutton (London, England: The Wessex Astrologer, 1999), and Astrology of the Seers: A Guide to Vedic/Hindu Astrology by David Frawley (Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press, 2000).

[iv] I first started using this term in 2001 – as I was writing The Seven Gates of Soul.  In 2014, as I was in the middle of writing this book, I learned that Michael Mayer had also used the word, and may have been the first to use it in his book, The Mystery of Personal Identity (San Diego, CA: ACS Publications, 1984).  His intent in writing this book (originally a Ph.D. dissertation) was to create “an astro-poetic language by using celestial metaphors to speak of personality . . . (as) a possible alternative to the current medical terminology” (xix).  We share this intent, although our approaches are necessarily somewhat different, since our usages of the term “astropoetics” were developed independently of each other, and without prior knowledge of the other’s work.  Having since read Michael’s book, I would recommend it as a complement to The Seven Gates of Soul.

Preface to the Astropoetic Series - Part Three

 

 

THE FOLLOWING IS COPYWRITTEN MATERIAL

NO PART OF IT MAY BE REPRODUCED

WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR

 

This is Part 3 of an 8-Part Series

Previous posts in this series include:

 

In the Face of Glacially Slow Paradigm Shifts

In the Face of Cultural Inertia

 

Moving Toward an Astrology of Soul Within the Astrological Community

 

The idea that astrology can and does function as a language of soul is, of course, not a new thought.  Quite the contrary, many psychological astrologers, from a number of persuasions, discuss their work as a language of soul.  In the wake of pioneering astrologer Dane Rudhyar (1895 – 1985) – who integrated basic tenets of Jungian, humanistic and transpersonal psychology with Theosophical sensibilities in the 1960s – the birthchart is today routinely discussed as a map of the soul’s journey.  As I see it, however, astrology in general has become conditioned in theory and practice by the same cultural paradigm that has led to the disenchantment and alienation of post-modern humans. 

While there are many bright lights within the astrological community, those who push toward a more coherent language of soul must do so against a widespread undertow of cultural inertia informed by outmoded religious, scientific, and psychological biases many of which are antithetical to a true cultivation of soul – one marked by the subjective quest of authentic individuality, psychological complexity, spiritual identification with divine intelligence, and a deep ecological sense of rootedness in natural law.  As a rule, our culture does not honor the soul or even discuss it outside of the narrow confines of formalized religious thinking on the one hand, or the broad and vague hyperbole of New Age thought on the other.  Both extremes, I feel, miss the point of the embodied soul – which is simultaneously limited by its embodiment and catapulted toward more evolved possibilities of conscious creativity by these same limitations. 

Astrologers of soul, who bring together the psychological, spiritual, mythological, and imaginal realms as a philosophical underpinning to the unique language of astrology are often caught between the two extremes.  On the one hand, we are conditioned – like everyone else – by the entrenched cultural biases of religion, science, and psychology that make any discussion of soul in general, an awkward affair.  On the other, we tend to gravitate with uncritical relief to emerging ideas from cutting edge and controversial science, New Age thought, and our own tradition – ideas that ultimately do little to add to our credibility as a viable discipline in pursuit of greater understanding of what it means to be human.

Following in the footsteps of Rudhyar, most current astrologers of soul lean in the direction of New Age thought – speaking of soul in terms of reincarnation and past life theory[i] or in neo-Theosophical terms as an ascending entity subject to a series of esoteric initiations on the way to more evolved being[ii] or as a spiritual quest for enlightenment experiences[iii].  Some speak of soul in psychological terms – in keeping with the original meaning of the word “psyche” – with greater[iv] or lesser[v] reference to the spiritual dimension of psychology.   Some speak of soul in mythological terms[vi] as a synonym for the human being subject to archetypal forces embodied as the gods and goddesses of antiquity to which many astrological references – particularly the planets – are correlated.  Many astrologers pick and choose eclectically from these diverse sources to fuse together their own hybrid approach to a discussion of soul.

All of these voices are important in a post-Rudhyarian world, where the possibilities for integrating astrology, spirituality, psychology, metaphysics and mythology are as intriguing as they are rampant.  Most, in some way, combine an understanding of the psychological descent into the heart of core issues, wounds, and the embodied experience in general with the understanding that the soul is also simultaneously ascending toward ever-increasing capacity to embody the light of consciousness, the healing compassion of an open heart, and the living wisdom of life lessons learned and integrated.  At best, all are blind men and women circling an elephant that critics of astrology (mostly scientific debunkers) either consider extinct or actively seek to exterminate.

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[i] See, for example, Measuring the Night: Evolutionary Astrology and the Keys to the Soul, Volumes One and Two by Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green (Chapel Hill, NC: Seven Paws Press, 2000, 2001)

[ii] See Soul-Centered Astrology: A Key to Your Expanding Self by Alan Oken (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1990).

[iii] See Astrology and Spiritual Awakening (Berkeley, CA: Dawn Mountain Press, 1994) or Astrology and Meditation: The Fearless Contemplation of Change (London, England: The Wessex Astrologer Ltd., 2002) by Greg Bogart.

[iv] See Astrology, Karma & Transformation: The Inner Dimensions of the Birthchart by Steven Arroyo (Reno, NV: CRCS Publications, 1978) and An Astrological Guide to Self-Awareness (Sebastapol, CA: CRCS Publications, 1994) or Astrology and Spiritual Development (San Rafael, CA: Cassandra Press, 1988) by Donna Cunningham.

[v] See Psychological Astrology: A Synthesis of Jungian Psychology and Astrology by Karen Hamaker-Zondag (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1990), An Introduction to AstroPsychology by Glenn Perry (available through the author’s web site at http://www.aaperry.com), Alignments: How to Live in Harmony With the Universe by Laurence Hillman & Donna Spencer (New York, NY: Lantern Books, 2002) and The Astrological Imagination: Where Psyche and Cosmos Meet by Brad Kochunas (New York, NY: iUniverse, Inc., 2008).

[vi] See The Astrology of Fate by Liz Greene (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1984), Mythic Astrology: Archetypal Players in the Horoscope by Ariel Guttman & Kenneth Johnson (St. Paul, MN: Llewelln Publications, 1993), and Asteroid Goddesses: The Mythology, Psychology and Astrology of the Reemerging Feminine by Demetra George (San Diego, CA: ACS Publications, 1986).

Preface to the Astropoetic Series - Part Two

 

 

THE FOLLOWING IS COPYWRITTEN MATERIAL

NO PART OF IT MAY BE REPRODUCED

WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR

 

This is Part 2 of an 8-Part Series

Previous posts in this series include:

 

In the Face of Glacially Slow Paradigm Shifts

 

Toward an Astropoetic Language of Soul

In the Face of Cultural Inertia

 

Although Kuhn was speaking about paradigm shifts in hard science in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, his ideas also apply to changes in soft sciences such as psychology, religious attitudes, social mores, and culturally conditioned belief systems as well.  Thus more than one hundred years after women first received the right to vote – in 1893 in the then British colony of New Zealand – the ordination of women as priests or ministers is still considered controversial in most mainstream religious institutions, and Shar’iah law still relegates women to inferior status in Islamic culture.  Currently in the US, women’s reproductive rights are under radical unprecedented attack (Carlton Veazy, “Insurance Coverage for Abortion in Health Care Reform Threatened,” RD Magazine, http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/4435/insurance_coverage_for_abortion_in_health_care_reform_threatened.).  Racism – though perhaps less overt than it was in the days of slavery – still abounds; genocide worldwide appears to be on the increase.  Despite great strides toward feminist goals, increased civil rights for minorities, and multi-cultural tolerance of ethnic differences, fundamentalism of all stripes and persuasions still holds the dominant hand in many cultures around the world, including the United States – and presents a filter of distortion through which we view the human soul in all of its exquisite variety. 

Similarly, despite the advances in humanistic and transpersonal psychologies over the course of the last generation – both of which assume a more tolerant attitude toward the quirks and inconsistencies of human authenticity – the Bible of the psychiatric profession, now in its 5^th edition, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) still documents in excruciating detail every possible aberration of the human psyche.  According to the editor of the current edition, David Kupfer, "One of the raps against psychiatry is that you and I are the only two people in the U.S. without a psychiatric diagnosis" (Ron Grossman, “Psychiatric Manual’s Update Needs Openness, Not Secrecy, Critics Say.” Chicago Tribune. Qtd. in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#cite_note-9.). 

Although Kupfer is ostensibly taking this criticism into account, editorial decisions affecting the latest edition (DSM V, published in May 2013) were made largely behind closed doors by a Task Force of 27 research scientists from psychiatry and other disciplines, 70% of whom had ties to the pharmaceutical industry (Lisa Cosgrove, Ph.D. and Harold J. Bursztajn, M.D. “Point/Counterpoint: Toward Credible Conflict of Interest Policies in Clinical Psychiatry.” Psychiatric Times. Vol 26 No 1, http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/dsm-5/content/article/10168/1364672.). This does not bode well for a non-judgmental approach to the human soul, since there is money to be made where individuals are judged to be psychologically or socially defective because of maladies amenable to chemical treatment. 

As suggested in The Seven Gates of Soul, the soul thrives in a nonjudgmental environment where it is encouraged to cultivate its idiosyncrasies as an integral part of its authenticity, and to explore the psychological and existential roots of its suffering as a pathway to cultivation of spiritual depth.  Meanwhile, increasingly informed by an insurance-driven evidence-based approach, the psychological profession as a whole is leaning toward a medical model of intervention, aimed at chemical management of symptoms, rather than the more creative care of the soul encouraged by Thomas Moore, James Hillman, Robert Sardello and other post-Jungian therapists.  Certainly there are extreme psychological conditions that require some medical intervention, but one must remain suspect when the $300 billion pharmaceutical industry dominates the discussion about what needs treatment and what doesn’t.

As Hillman describes the problem posed by the medical model of psychotherapy (The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, New York, NY: Warner Books, 1996, pp. 30-31):

So long as the statistics of normalizing developmental psychology determine the standards against which the extraordinary complexities of a life are judged, deviations become deviants.  Diagnosis coupled with statistics is the disease; yet diagnosis coupled with statistics is the very name – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (or DSM) – of the universally accepted guide produced by the American Psychiatric Association and used by the profession, the health care providers, and the insurance payers.

Because the scientific, religious and psychological paradigms that govern how we think about ourselves change only very slowly – often only long after incontrovertible evidence overwhelms institutionalized resistance – culture as a whole tends to be rooted in outmoded truisms, many of which aim toward control or even suppression of soul rather than its cultivation.  On the one hand, the age of broadband Internet has made possible a virtual maelstrom of new ideas.  On the other hand, newly emerging pockets of willful ignorance – insisting that Creationism be taught alongside Darwinian theory as bona fide science; or that climate change is political fabrication; or that the existence of a 13^th sign in the zodiac discredits an astrology based on a division of the zodiac into equal segments having nothing to do with actual constellations – all gain equal footing in the popular imagination with more carefully constructed arguments.  Within such a world, a concept such as soul gets bandied about carelessly, and an astrology of soul develops with cultural bias deeply and uncritically embedded into it. 

It was to examine this impact of cultural bias – not just on astrology, but also on our collective understanding of what it means to be a soul, a human being, or an authentic individual (choose your own synonym) – that The Seven Gates of Soul was written.  This discussion, ranging back to Paleolithic times (50,000 BCE) and still in progress today serves as a working philosophical foundation for the ensuing discussion of astrology’s role as a language of soul that I am developing further in The Astropoetic Series.