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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.
[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 21st 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.