How does astrology work?
When I took a deep dive into astrology initially it was because I wanted to see if there is an inherent orderliness to our lives or if everything is random and chaotic. Whether there is a more particular purpose to our lives which could be discerned over and above witnessing and experiencing. It quickly became apparent that one person’s astrological chart could not be another person’s astrological chart, that they were indeed reflecting each person’s individual’s experience of their own life, with very different potentials shown.
The astrological tradition has continued over the centuries, although at times due to prevailing doctrines, often religious in nature, it has gone underground at times, becoming part of esoterica. There are so many well-known proponents such as Newton, and C.G. Jung who famously wouldn’t start analysis with a new patient until he had cast their astrological chart.
But how does astrology work? Throughout the centuries there have been many different explanations concerning the way the cycles of celestial bodies affect us and at first glance it does seem preposterous to suggest this is possible. Yet even in recent times scientists have been registering the direct effect of the sun’s activities upon our physical health, discovering that significant solar flares increase the number of migraines, heart attacks, strokes etc. and more than this that the activity of the sun modulates the incidence and severity of human mental illness. It is perhaps easier to acknowledge that the sun and moon directly affect us due to their proximity to earth, but scientists are also coming to the ancient idea that space is not an empty vacuum, rather it is an information field connecting everything together, containing flowing pathways of vital energy. Nothing exists in isolation, it is all connected.
This reminds me of the ancient concept of Indra’s Net. Stephen Mitchell in his book ‘The Enlightened Mind’ states “The Net of Indra is a profound and subtle metaphor for the structure of reality. Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell or an atom. [or planet!] Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe"
In this way the universe likely has a kind of holographic nature where every point within the hologram contains the information of the whole, and non-local connection is inevitable.
We can see that ancient cultures have always looked to the sky, with massive megalithic monuments carefully aligned to the stars and there have been hidden references to the stars in the ancients myths and stories, and if we take it that everything is ultimately one massive system with everything linked, then it cetainly makes sense that these ancients would have turned their attention to the one thing that seemed to be moving in a predictable way knowing that 'as above so below' i.e. the macrocosm would be playing out in the microcosm of our lives....
Pretty cool!
“We need not feel ashamed of flirting with the zodiac. The zodiac is
well worth flirting with.”
D.H. Lawrence