Astrology is subjective… and that’s why I love it
Everything we say about astrology is a story. Every interpretation is an artifact of a moment in time, created by a person who is a creature of that moment. Every astrologer is a person like you and me with wisdom and wounds, talents and flaws. And that’s the way it’s always been, even back to the beginning when the astrologer priests of Mesopotamia looked to the sky whenever something went wrong searching for patterns.
The subjectivity of astrology is inescapable. This idea is fundamental to the astrology I practice.
If astrology is always filtered through the lens of someone’s perceptions, I believe we should always be questioning it:
Is that assertion true?
Does this interpretation of that symbol resonate for people who have that symbol in their natal charts?
Was that transit prediction accurate? Did the thing predicted actually happen?
What are the assumptions and blindspots of this particular astrologer or astrological school?
Does this interpretation even make sense, or is the language too vague to mean anything at all?
These are hard, critical questions, but one of my most persistent biases is a natural skepticism. I believe that astrological forecasts that claim to predict concrete events (or how everyone will feel) are suspect. There are an infinite number of ways astrological symbols can express themselves, so there is an inescapable rolling of the dice that happens when predictions are made. Concrete predictions are rarely accurate.
For the same reason, I’m suspicious of astrologers who claim to be able to tell someone else who they are. As an astrologer, I believe my job in astrology readings is to use the symbols to ask good, open-ended questions that help us both understand you better.
Overall, I try to keep an open mind, but these are hills I will die on. Still, when I play the critic, I try to do it with the humble awareness that I am also a storytelling creature of my time. Skepticism is, itself, a story with the same limitations and challenges as the stories it criticizes, and it’s dangerous.
Criticism is a destructive tool. It tears stories and ideas apart. I know this first hand because my journey with astrology began with the destruction of a narrative that I had built my life on. I know how it feels to have the metaphysical ground ripped out from under you.
Today, I believe the astrological weather is wild the way the physical weather is wild. A hurricane doesn’t destroy a house because it is part of some grand plan. It doesn’t secretly have the best interests of the owners of the house at heart, and it isn’t following the orders of a perfect, all-powerful God.
The storm just is and acts according to its nature. The hurricane spins, howls, and blows and it will continue to spin, howl, and blow until something makes it stop.
I believe the planets are symbols that represent similarly wild forces. We talk about the planets as if they choose to act according to their nature because it’s easier for us to understand, but their actions are their nature. They do what they are.
Mars divides. Venus unites. Saturn contracts. Jupiter expands. The sun illuminates. Mercury communicates. The moon waxes and wanes.
This is the nature of the planets, but we have our own natures, too. We don’t have to like everything the planets do. We don’t have to like what they represent. They may (or may not) be more powerful than us, but we don’t have to just go along with the program.
If the planets are wild, we don’t have to take transits personally. In fact, we probably shouldn’t. Your Saturn transit may hurt, but, like a hurricane, it isn’t really about you. Even if your story about that transit is all about you.
I didn’t always believe in the wildness of things. I was raised to believe in an all-powerful God who carved the oceans with his hands like a child digging holes at the beach. In that worldview, everything was personal. Each experience was dictated personally by that god to you, for your benefit, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time.
It takes a long time for a foundational belief like that to unravel. I had dreams in my early days as an astrologer in which I was a character looking over the shoulder of the author of my story. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone at the time, but I hoped that astrology would allow me to translate the author’s language. If only I was fluent enough, I hoped to see the grand design. Maybe then, I could negotiate with God.
I never really lost that hope. Not really. What changed is that I no longer expect to find justice in the weather. I don’t know everything. I don’t need to know everything. The storm that is bad for the tree that falls gives life to the sapling struggling in its shadow. I don’t need to decide if the storm was right. And I’m glad. I no longer carry that weight around with me. I no longer have to dig to find the ultimate, positive meaning in everything that happens. I can just be with the hard things, or sit with someone who’s having a hard time, and let it be hard.
Ultimately, this is what seeing the world through the lens of stories does: It allows the tree, the sapling, you and me, ancient Mesopotamian astronomer priests, and the gods to have their own stories. Stories as wild as a hurricane or as comforting as a nest. Or both, at the same time, depending on who you are and who is telling the story.
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