Astrologers are constantly trying to work out why astrology works and how it does so. They are equally in a quandry about why it doesn't always work, or not in a clearly repeatable pattern. The answer is surely that our world is not a controlled experiment. Once we assume that all people are individuals, different in make up and experience, the idea of a controlled experiment involving human consciousness appears impossible. We have just enough in common to foster communication and relationship. We are not exactly the same, creating endless permutations; the need for communication, in order to constantly re-connect.
Our sense of what is going on around here is bound to inform our astrological interpretation. Without some notion of the nature of experience or of what is real, our interpretations will be buffeted this way and that by the encounter with the ambiguities of experience.
Many people approach astrologers as if they were 'barefoot counsellors' on a par with the barefoot doctors of the Chinese cultural revolution. They are often looking for meaning and certainty. Frequently they have run up against situations that disrupt their world view. Things are not the way they thought they were. The medical doctors offer only physic for the body. Astrologers, in offering meaning, offer physic for the soul.
This is dangerous territory. The astrologer, being only human and wanting to be popular and earn a living, is tempted to offer a certainty they do not possess and a confidence in the person's future that owes more to wishful thinking or the desire to instil confidence, than to careful analysis.
So what is really going on?
The birth chart is human and consciousness centric. Charts for situations and places are equally human and consciousness centric. They depend, not only on the time and place when this subject came into being, but on the time and place of the astrologer making the interpretation. Astrological reality in participative. We cannot stand outside our skins any more than we can stand outside the earth or solar system. The system is essentially anthropocentric and cannot be otherwise.
The interpretation of a chart essentially, brings the astroloer into relationship with their subject. Relationship is perhaps a rather hackneyed word so we should unpack its implications here. Relationship in this sense implies knowledge and understanding. If we are fortunate, the astrologer is a person who knows themselves. The chart components, planets, signs, houses and so on, are common to all charts of all beings, all places and all times. The self aware astrologer therefore has a wide field of view. They are capable of knowing all things through the extension of their knowledge of themselves. No other knowledge is possible.
This knowledge is essentially interior. Consciousness casts its view out into the world. The world in turn reflects back the observer in the observed. All efforts at objectivity are challenged by this sense that we are the creators of the world we see.
Again let us be careful of our words. the 'world' is frequently used only to refer to the world of human society. It is not necessarily used to refer to the earth or the planet. A child who is the apple of someone's eye, born in joy and raised in love, will be drawn to the things of this world the earth, soil, sky trees, animals, water and so on, as playthings and partners in delgiht. This world reflects the beauty of attraction and creation that is the innate property of all energy forms in the universe. Movement, unfoldment, a vivid fractal geometry, awaken in us a sense of living, changing and evolving beauty that evokes our desire for engagement and understanding.
For right relationship a further attribute is required. That is respect. If all things arise from the same energy matrix, represented astrologically and sympbolically in the chart, all things express the same desire for the free, creative unfoldment and self expression that we desire for ourselves. We are all of a piece with our world. Our creative self expression therefore demands the creative self expression of all earth forms in a dynamic equilibrium. Only this is the pathway to abundance. To diminish even the stones we walk on or the waters in our rivers is ultimately to diminish ourselves.
Relationship therefore depends upon appreciation of the beauty of the world. This in trun evokes the movement of desire which unlocks the unfoldment of the world. Noticing this awakens our observation and understanding. The realisation of our deep kinship with the world is the foundation of our respect for it and our desire, through honourable living, to earn the respect of all living things.
To put it in a Christian context, the matter distils into goodness (honour and respect), beauty (desire, loving appreciation) and truth (understanding and knowledge creation).
To put it in a Moslem and mystical context
"I was hidden treasure
and I desired to be known
so I created the universes
so that I might be known"
May this knowledge be made easy for us all.
OK, here's my best guess just now for the start of the conference. Of course the build up has been happening for months but it should be coming together at this point. Notice the Jupiter, Chiron, Neptune conjunction opposing the moon. The moon gives the whole situation a strong emotional tone. Mars is closing in but turns retrograde and does not complete the opposition until May 2010; putting promises into action could take time!
