Astrology - just symbols...or energies?

[BlueStar]

I'm doing some in depth learning of astrology and one of the aspects that I've been thinking about recently is how astrology works. Are the planets just symbolic in the way that tarot cards can be seen as symbolic, so that the planet is not causing anything to happen in the same way tarot cards themselves are not?

Or are the planets causal in an energetic way. One could argue that a planet is a living being therefore has a soul or some kind of energy, just like people and animals do, and those energies interacting with each other have an effect?

Or is it a combination of both? I'm not sure yet what I think. I'm more inclined to think it's energetic or a combination of both going on.

What are your thoughts?

[Nemia]

That's a question I'm grappling with, too, and I'm not sure that my solution for myself holds water for anyone else. I've been interested in astrology since I was 12 years old, have a large collection of old and new books on the topic and although my knowledge is nowhere near the level of knowledge professional astrologers have, I'd say I'm a knowledgeable amateur. And amateur comes from the Latin word amare - to love.

I'm also a star gazer at night, and that helps me visualize the beginnings of astrology. I see the moon at night, and I see the zodiac girdle moving before my eyes. In the evening, I see Taurus set in the West, and in the morning, I see Scorpio rise. And I can easily understand that over generations, these constellations have gathered layers and layers of lore and belief.

Astrology has influenced human culture, no matter where, more deeply than any other system of wisdom. Mathematics, mythology, literature, science, psychology - nothing would have developed the way it is now without the foundation of exploration of the starred skies.

Much of modern astrology is scientifically incorrect. We're in Pisces now, and I celebrate each change of zodiac sign, but if you look at the sky, you can see the Sun is actually still in Aquarius. The shift in the Earth axis has made the old traditional dates incorrect, it will take thousands of years and they'll shift back again, but now, astrology is working with incorrect positions of the actual stars.

Everybody knows that, and it's a pity in a way. Astrologers compute the positions of the planets in a horoscope. I know mine, when I was 12, I bought a book filled with numbers and made my own horoscope. But if I take a program like Stellarium and look at the actual sky in the night of my birth, I see that there are differences. I still follow the tradition in pondering my horoscope but I know it's incorrect. It's a model.

And that's for me the key to living with astrology in peace. I don't think that our senses are enough to understand everything around us. I think our bodies and brains filter out much that we can't deal with, like over- excited children who have to learn to focus on the teacher's voice and not on the burr of the flie at the window. The world is much richer than our senses show us, and we navigate it using our senses and our rational minds. In order to understand things that we actually know little about, we construct models.

We work with models of the mind (Id, Ego, Alter Ego), models of atoms, models of the cosmos, and these models make a complex reality somehow manageable.

The same is true for Astrology imho. Historically, it's one of the most ancient ways of building a model that explains the relationship between Time and Humans, between the skies and our lives, between Gods and human Fate. It's possible that the planets influence our lives like the Moon obviously does, although some planets are quite far away. How exactly they influence us, we don't really know. Astrology tries to explain it, not always with convincing results. What are these energies, how can we make them visible, how can we prove them? We can't.

I'm sure that Astrology has its merit, and its patterns and models are deeply ingrained in human culture. I personally use my astrological knowledge as one of the crutches to get through life. I believe that the cycle of the zodiac is a supremely beautiful and amazing picture book to live by and to enjoy. I believe that the world of constellations, based on optical illusions as it is, has been the foundation of our cultures and deeply influenced us, whether there are energetical powers emanating from them or not.

maybe the strongest energy connecting us with the celestial bodies is twofold: in our bodies and our minds. Our bodies are made from materials available on this planet, the same elements other stars and planets are made of. We're literally made from the same materials as stars, only arranged differently. And our minds inherit thinking patterns and beliefs from our ancestors, based, as I said above, on the most important work of the human mind for centuries: the deciphering of the cosmos and our place on this earth.

The energy of me looking up to the skies and greeting Venus and calling the constellations by their names is the energy that connects me to them, and it's enough for me.

There is actually no such thing as a constellation - if I could see the cosmos from another place, the stars would line up differently. But I'm of this earth, and I'm content with the sky as it is. I'm grateful to live in a time when I can see pictures made by Hubble while putting up every day another weekday card on my tarot magnetic board - for each day of the week another planet card.

I don't get excited about Mercury retrograde because I know that Mercury doesn't go backwards and that the retrograde movement is a simple illusion but I do get excited when I catch the sight of this elusive planet, and then I think about the god Hermes, and Mercury, and Thoth, about the element Mercury, about mercurial people and Giambologna's statue. And about my brother, a Gemini, and a text book Gemini at that, and I wonder how it all works out sometimes.

M.M. Meleen has expressed it beautifully in the Six of Swords, Science. Science means knowledge in Latin, and what we call knowledge changes, and we can't grasp it all. But we have tools, and we have models. As I said - Astrology is a model, not perfect, but one of the models to understand this world and our lives, and that's enough for me.

That's no answer to your question but it's the way I look at it now.

[Joan Marie]

What a beautiful response Nemia.

And what a perfectly worded question BlueStar. I've been troubled by the same thing exactly, wondering if all these attributes are truly influences or "just" symbolic and I think about what symbols even are.

I can't add anything to what Nemia so beautifully described except to say that for me learning about the planets and stars and how they move and how they have been studied and perceived for thousands of years brings me closer to something timeless in the story of humanity. Maybe it's like the Tarot in that we have created a system of symbols and those symbols correspond to other symbols and it creates a kind of language for us to express ourselves, to become more expansive in our experience of our own lives.

This might seem a digression, but thinking about symbols made me think of it. I saw a thing somewhere recently where there was a diagram with the symbols of all the planets and it said, if the symbol for the planet Venus means female, and the symbol for the planet Mars means male, then we sure have a lot of extra symbols for all the other possibilities of how people experience gender. I guess I thought of that because it is an example of how studying planets and symbols and correspondences can really open up your mind to new ideas and ways of perceiving things.

I guess what I am saying is that whatever the study of astrology is, I don't think it's all just fixed. We can still bring a lot to it by observing, studying and by connecting to it personally and bringing our own sense of wonder and search for meaning to it.

[BlueStar]

I'm also a star gazer at night, and that helps me visualize the beginnings of astrology. I see the moon at night, and I see the zodiac girdle moving before my eyes. In the evening, I see Taurus set in the West, and in the morning, I see Scorpio rise. And I can easily understand that over generations, these constellations have gathered layers and layers of lore and belief.


Much of modern astrology is scientifically incorrect. We're in Pisces now, and I celebrate each change of zodiac sign, but if you look at the sky, you can see the Sun is actually still in Aquarius. The shift in the Earth axis has made the old traditional dates incorrect, it will take thousands of years and they'll shift back again, but now, astrology is working with incorrect positions of the actual stars.

Thank you for your thoughtful response:) I think Astrology like any other divination practice will always leave us with many things to ponder and questions (which I enjoy!)

I've never learnt where to see which constellations are which - I really must get to that.

Regarding astrology being incorrect (if I understand correctly what you mean, please correct me if I'm wrong) - my understanding is that that's not quite true. If you are referring to Siderial zodiac, then yes, due to the earth's procession there is a drift between the 12 divisions of the ecliptic we call the signs and the actual constellations (which were never fully aligned in the first place because the actual constellation sizes have different sizes - the 30 divisions were an idealized division of the constellations into the 12 divisions). The tropical zodiac however is not based on the constellations but aligned to the the equinoxes and solstices, a sun earth relationship rather than a relationship with the constellations. ( Aries begins at the vernal equinox). So the tropical zodiac has not changed over centuries whereas you can argue that the Siderial one has. I don't want to to get too off track here though. I have a link to a great discussion regarding this but don't want to embed the video (not sure how to do that).

[JudyK]

I saw a thing somewhere recently where there was a diagram with the symbols of all the planets and it said, if the symbol for the planet Venus means female, and the symbol for the planet Mars means male, then we sure have a lot of extra symbols for all the other possibilities of how people experience gender.

I love how some people's brains work. (Thank you for sharing that.)

[ZhanThay]

Regarding astrology being incorrect (if I understand correctly what you mean, please correct me if I'm wrong) - my understanding is that that's not quite true. If you are referring to Siderial zodiac, then yes, due to the earth's procession there is a drift between the 12 divisions of the ecliptic we call the signs and the actual constellations (which were never fully aligned in the first place because the actual constellation sizes have different sizes - the 30 divisions were an idealized division of the constellations into the 12 divisions). The tropical zodiac however is not based on the constellations but aligned to the the equinoxes and solstices, a sun earth relationship rather than a relationship with the constellations. ( Aries begins at the vernal equinox). So the tropical zodiac has not changed over centuries whereas you can argue that the Siderial one has. I don't want to to get too off track here though. I have a link to a great discussion regarding this but don't want to embed the video (not sure how to do that).

I was going to post along these lines but you have put it quite succinctly and accurately. The full cycle of the precession of the equinoxes takes about 26,000 years so to get through one sign is a bit under 2200 years. As you so rightly point out, the constellation figures as we know them are irregular and overlap each other (especially if you look at the areas of sky attributed to each constellation by the International Astronomical Union) making determination of a start and finish point almost impossible. That is one reason that astronomers measure the sky from the 0 point of Aries, being the point represented in the sky where a line from the centre of the Earth passes through the centre of the Sun on the vernal equinox of the Northern hemisphere. That zero point is the beginning of ecliptic longitude and also right ascension which is measured along the celestial equator rather than the ecliptic. Adherents of tropical astrology use exactly the same measuring stick as astronomers.

So, getting back to some of the themes of your original post, there are a few concepts that are worthy of consideration and meditation. "As above, so below" is an ancient axiom of astrology which implies that what is occurring in the heavens is a reflection of what is occurring on earth - they are both manifestations of the same cause. This is similar to the assertion of Kalachakra (Wheel of Time) practice in Tibetan Buddhism: "As within, so without". Which principle is applied on many levels from the positions of the planets to the consciousness of beings to the fluctutaion of psychic energies in the body and therfore is embodied in astrology, medicine and other fields.

"The stars incline but do not compel" is also an ancient axiom implying that even were there to be influences coming from celestial bodies they are not strong enough to overcome the exercise of free will. If someone says that they have become dull and forgetful because of Mercury going retrograde, it is not due to that planet's influence or its apparent motion against the backdrop of the stars, it is because of what that person believes its influence to be and they have tuned their awareness to perceive symptoms that support their belief. In effect, they have used their will to choose a reality and their prophecy may well become fulfilled.

This leads towards Carl Gustav Jung's theories of collective consciousness and cultural archetypes. If a group of people think in similar ways about a set of concepts, such as the meanings of the zodiac signs, over an extended number of generations, those meanings become a truth for those people because they are congruent in their thinking and beliefs and reinforce each other's understanding. So, if a group of people from Northern Hemisphere Europe, holding certain beliefs about astrology and it being linked inseparbly to the equinoxes, solstices and therefore the seasons, migrate and colonise areas of the Southern Hemisphere (where the seasons are in exact reverse to the Northern Hemisphere) how should we resolve this seeming paradox. Leos are born in the height of Summer in the North but the depths of Winter in the South and yet a Leo is a Leo is a Leo regardless of where they are born. Collective consciousness may be in effect here.

I'm doing some in depth learning of astrology and one of the aspects that I've been thinking about recently is how astrology works. Are the planets just symbolic in the way that tarot cards can be seen as symbolic, so that the planet is not causing anything to happen in the same way tarot cards themselves are not?

Or are the planets causal in an energetic way. One could argue that a planet is a living being therefore has a soul or some kind of energy, just like people and animals do, and those energies interacting with each other have an effect?

Or is it a combination of both? I'm not sure yet what I think. I'm more inclined to think it's energetic or a combination of both going on.

On a personal level, I remain unconviced that there is direct influence on a person's consciousness coming from the planets, constellations and stars. That said I believe that there are people who may perceive such psychic messaging. I cannot claim to have much, if any, clarvoyance or psychic ability. However, when I cast my own chart and started the journey to try to understand what it meant, it was apparent that it represented what I believed about myself, that it was a roadmap I could refer to and achieve a sense of the connections and interactions between the different aspects of my life, my awareness and my activities. It has been a tool of self-discovery and comprehension for me and that is ongoing. The symbols and patterns on a chart, for me, are mnemonics, memory joggers and the challenge, similar to a tarot reading, is to synthesize an overall story that encompasses sometimes disparate or contradictory concepts and explains their interrelationships.