Manifesto for Astrological Practice

In this piece, I want to declare my beliefs about the proper role of astrology and its practitioners in the present socio-cultural moment. I won’t spend too much time here arguing against the versions of astrological practice that I think are detrimental, exploitative, inappropriate, inaccurate or misleading. They do exist, and it may even be the case that most astrology practiced today can be accused of such inadequacies. But critique is easy and largely unproductive, so what I am instead going to do here is simply try to articulate and affirm the beliefs and values that underpin my own approach to the work. This will be of a passionate outburst than a carefully constructed essay. I do not mean to suggest, necessarily, that anybody else should practice the same way I do, even if I do harbour a quiet hope that this unsolicited soap-box sermon may serve as a provocation and an inspiration to the people who are open to it. The more direct purpose of this manifesto though, is to let you know precisely what kind of astrologer, and what kind of person I am. If, in the process, I manage to accomplish anything besides that, it will be a bonus.

At the root of all my work is the belief that every person’s experience of life—however strange—is valid, beautiful, and worthy of attention and reverent curiosity. By honouring the innate truth of our inner worlds, we can begin dismantling the modern Western myth that consciousness is a stable phenomena that “should not” overly deviate from a rather dull resting state. Consciousness is a fluid, variable, shapeshifting phenomenon, and our experience of life is richer, the more varied our experience of consciousness is. The problem comes, because the world expects and demands that we behave in a regulated, predictable, “productive” state, and so, we come to see deviations from this “norm” as malfunctions or shortcomings. But rather than problematise and pathologise the psyche, we would do better to welcome and encourage the sharing and showing of all those dimensions of inner experience which the capitalist/materialist systems demonise, ostracise and forbid; all those parts of self which so-called civilisation forces us to repress, deny or abandon. In some sense, we are born with our souls intact, and it is only the adaptations that we undertake to fit ourselves into the socio-cultural landscape that cause us to chip away at that wholeness. Astrology, though it is certainly not the only worthwhile method, is the best tool I have found for helping us to reclaim all that which we never should have given up in the first place.

Health and Wholeness in a Sick Society

Adaptation to society need not be such a bad thing, were that society healthy, but I think it is obvious to us all that our present societies are very much unwell. My astrological practice is predicated on this firmly held belief, that so-called Western Civilisation is going through a period of immense corruption and degradation, and thus becoming “civilised” is a major and universal source of suffering for human beings. Becoming a functional participant in the unravelling paradigm of industrial capitalism damages each and every person on this planet (not to mention the knock on effects for all the other beings who also make their homes here). In the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a sick society”, yet adjust to it we must, especially when we are young, simply in order to survive.

As children, and throughout our lives, we are coerced into adapting ourselves to the sick society, and discouraged from asking too many hard questions that would make it hard for us to function within it. To begin with, it tends not to matter too much whether we are naive and subservient or radically opposed to the culture we are born into. Even those of a rebellious and questioning disposition often have no choice but to participate in society’s sickness and to become complicit in civilisation’s crimes, forced to take up damaging dissociative strategies in order to cope with the dissonance between what we know to be good, and the harm we are forced to enact, directly or otherwise, on a daily basis. Without necessarily even meaning to, our peers, parents and teachers exert pressure to conform to societal values, which are further reified by the media, and forced upon us by the “rule of law”.

If I seem angry about all this, it is because I am—I am outraged. Like emotion, anger is a worthy experience and should not be avoided. The question is, what am I to do with it? After all, it is all to easy for outrage to turn to hate, whose final recourse is always to violence. So though this anger is alive in me, it is not the kind of anger that seeks a target for retribution; it is not the kind that pursues the destruction of structures in the outer world, at least, not directly. Even the billionaire CEOs and corrupt politicians of this world are human beings, born into the context of a disenchanted cosmos, passengers—to begin with—carried along on a surge of heartless inertia that has been building up for centuries. One of the ways that I know that my astrological practice and philosophy is worthy of my commitment is precisely that I can see how it helps me to transmute my (wholly justified and appropriate) anger into compassionate action.

The beauty of archetypal astrology is that it functions as a compass and map, helping us to place our attention and care on areas of the psyche which might otherwise remain lurking in shadow and unconsciousness forever. To move towards wholeness, we must overcome the biases of Western cultures: the illusions of singular identity, absolute individuality and developmental linearity, and take on a multifaceted, omnidirectional approach to living; acknowledge the multitudes that we are and begin the work of dignifying and reconciling all the parts of Self that the culture’s pathology has forced into exile. It might sound complicated, but it is truly the most natural way to live, and miraculously, the cosmos itself stands ready to assist us. With a just a little readjustment in perspective, the ways forward become quite simple.

Each of the planetary archetypes represents a facet of experience, and by forthrightly engaging with them, we can begin to rediscover and reclaim the wild and unrestrained beauty that is the birthright of every living being. The archetypal system leaves nothing out. For us human beings, it illuminates a vast and vibrant array of experiential possibilities. Some are familiar to us, and some feel more foreign, but all of which represent parts of Self that are inherent within every being. I think of the ten planetary bodies of the solar system as directions of travel, or vectors of growth; invitations, paths laid before us by the Universe to be followed all at once, where every step brings us into a deeper relationship to the great mysteries of life, and a livelier and more tangible connection with the Sacred.

Determinism—Modernity’s Defence Against Enchantment

To the uninitiated, the birth chart may seem like a deterministic cage that limits the possibilities of a human life. If the chart is a blueprint of the psyche, isn’t astrology just another demeaning personality typology that claims to know what a person’s “essence” is, thereby diminishing their potential by stating in advance what is possible for them? In fact, the leap to this conclusion is another artefact of our internalised cultural programming. If you have been taught, in many different ways, that the universe is a soulless void, containing mostly only unconscious matter that is moved around purely by mechanistic forces, it is then natural to understand astrology within that context: fatalistic and disempowering. Were it not such a tragic tale, it would even be comical to note the accomplished mental gymnastics of those who dismiss astrology on the grounds that it is fatalistic, even all the while, implicitly (and, albeit, simplistically and often unconsciously) subscribing to a metaphysical paradigm that denies the existence of free will on the basis that the Universe is little more than a complex machine. If we look closely, we can start to see that it is relatively new (and highly dubious) concept of an absolutely mechanistic Universe that provides the cages in which our souls have come to be imprisoned. As I have already argued, in the right hands, astrological charts actually provide a means of liberation—a way to escape the narrow confines of a hopelessly blinkered world.

I will not attempt to resolve the arguments about free will and determinism here. Nor will I declare a specific and final allegiance in the debate between materialism and idealism. But I will say that all beings, at the very least, appear to have some agency, and have very little to gain by attempting to live as though everything is absolutely predetermined. Additionally, the idea that the agency of conscious beings is itself illusory only makes sense if you are a committed philosophical materialist, and believe that consciousness is only a bi-product of interactions between physical particles. If one leaves the door even slightly open to the idea that consciousness has any type or degree of more fundamental role in the makeup and/or origin of the Universe, then one has to concede that the consciousness of individual beings appears to afford them the ability to make decisions which at least may not be absolutely limited by physical constraints.

To make it simple: We don’t know the extent to which the future is predetermined. I am confident that it is neither absolutely predetermined, or absolutely open. But the debate, for my purposes, is absolutely unnecessary. You and I might as well act as though our participation in life makes a difference. Frankly, if you told me you planned to do otherwise, I wouldn’t believe you to be capable of it, leading as it would, to an utterly nonsensical mode of being that would be extremely difficult to maintain for any length of time.

The important point of all this is that despite what anyone may tell you, astrological charts are not blueprints which are merely built up into reality throughout your life. They are so much more mysterious than that, and these kinds of mystery are not meant to be solved. The Universe was not written by Agatha Christie. There is no neat little bow at the end of the story; no satisfying cadence that collapses all uncertainty and returns us to a comfortable state of certainty. It is better to aim for a more comfortable and contented relationship to uncertainty, a greater willingness to be in the presence of unknowable complexity, a deepening of one’s hunger for life, a more vital sense of curiosity, and a more profound ability to surrender to the wonder and awe of existence.

Instrumentalism and the Problem with Maps

Another way in which the typical Western mindset distorts the purpose and potential of astrological practice has to do with control. Without intending it, it can be very easy for us to slip into an instrumentalist definition of value, where the value of a thing is defined purely in terms of what we can get out of it—another sorry artefact of our colonial history that we carry around in our psyches. It can be all too easy for us, then, to imagine that all kinds of esoteric knowledge and divinatory methods, once learned, are to be used as tools to help us on our own personal mission to control and master the world around us. Perhaps I can use astrology to predict the future, become wealthy and/or powerful, and avoid hardship, we may think to ourselves. But this is not the way I want to use astrology. I want to use astrology to help myself and others meet the future with open arms and open hearts; to welcome joy and welcome sorrow; to experience the full cornucopia of life’s challenges and gifts, and to remember, as often as possible, that this entire spectrum is not only necessary, but beautiful and filled with wonder at every point. The way I see it, the purpose of astrology is to make available a wider, deeper, higher and more vital engagement with the present moment. This moment…and now this one…and now this one…

Of course, even on its own terms, the astrological path is not without its pitfalls. Very often, the problem with maps is that we become obsessed with them. Especially when we are trying to map consciousness, or create a mental model of the universe, we confuse our models of reality with reality itself. We can easily waste too much time and energy tinkering with maps and models, adding detail to them, trying to perfect and complete them, forgetting that their true purpose is to help us live and thrive in the territory that they were created originally to describe. Part of being an astrologer is having the wherewithal to know when to put the chart to one side and focus on the subjective reality of the person sitting across the table.

Any method of healing, growth, development or self-improvement should, in my opinion, be only as complex as it needs to be in order to serve the purposes of the person engaged in the process. Any additional complexity is likely only to be serving the purpose of bolstering the ego of the practitioner. What good is an infinite buffet of cosmic insight, when any one of us only has the capacity to digest the particular piece of wisdom that the soul is hungering for at the time? Obviously, there are many benefits to analysing the birth chart and transits in full, but perhaps the deeper art is to discern, whether by reading the chart, or by simply holding space for and witnessing the real person that the chart belongs to, what is that one thing that they need to hear at this time? Be it validation or encouragement; a call for humility, or a call to adventure; a safe place to soften, or an invitation to ground; permission to grieve, or to celebrate; the confidence to follow intuition, the willingness to entertain uncomfortable questions; the tenacity to see something through, or the decisiveness to walk away.

The art of the astrologer is not only to provide an overall picture of the client’s life, but also, with great caution, humility, selflessness and care, to tune into a refined awareness of the nature of their present moment, the quality of their time and place in the Universe, and firstly, to try and inhabit that moment with them, and only then offer the a nudge that might help them to move in accordance with the wisdom of their own inner healing intelligence, their own voice, their own soul’s craving.

Thank you for reading.