Rowling is author of the Harry Potter books, which have sold more than 400 million copies in several languages. In an article posted on his website British astrologer Robert Currey points out that astrology “lurks in the background” in all the Harry Potter books.

“Astrology provides the structure and basis of the characterization for the Harry Potter series.  One of the first clues is that the author provides every major character in the books with a birth date,” he points out.

Like his creator J.K. Rowling, Harry was born on July 31.  He is a Leo and personifies the heroic qualities of this Sun sign, Currey says.

“The Potter books cover Harry’s heroic inner and outer battles to find his courage and destiny and to ‘own’ his own fame.  Along this journey he undergoes a gradual process of individuation as he learns to accept his serpentine ‘shadow’ side.”

Currey says Harry’s friend Hermoine was born on September 19.  Her “studious, brilliant, observant and critical nature is in line with her Virgo Sun sign.”

Devoted sidekick Ron is poles apart.  He was born on March 1.

“Ron’s emotionally volatile and sensitive nature complies with Pisces. He feels insecure about his lack of recognition compared to his illustrious friend,” Currey says.

Early on, few suspected Rowling’s novels had anything to do with astrology.  But

Currey was among the first to publicly comment on this possibility.

The sale of a rare unpublished work by Rowling on the BBC TV series Antiques Roadshow a few years later confirmed his suspicions.

The rare “book” offered for sale on the TV program was an illustrated 12 page type-written natal analysis (horoscope reading) Rowling prepared for the son of a woman she befriended as the pair awaited the births of their first children.  At the time, astrologer Rowling was otherwise preoccupied writing her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which published in 1997.

“While J.K. Rowling may not be an accomplished astrological consultant it is clear that she has a deep understanding of astrology and mythology well beyond her studies of the classics at Exeter University. And she has used this knowledge to great effect in her novels,” Currey believes.

For example, in the Harry Potter books the protagonist is taught by Firenze, a Centaur who foretells the future using his observations of the heavens.  According to an article in the Sunday Mirror newspaper Rowling said the Firenze character was inspired by real-life astrologer Steve Eddy, co-author of The New Astrology: The Art and Science of the Stars with Dr. Nicholas Campion.

Eddy was Rowling’s English teacher when she was ll years old at Wyedean comprehensive school in Sudbury, Gloucestershire.  At the time she wasn’t using initials to mask her given names.

Eddy was quoted in the Sunday Mirror article:

“Joanne’s work always showed impressive imagination and in class she was always bright and enthusiastic, much in the way of Hermione in the Potter books.  But when it came to her stories, they were always about elves, pixies or fairies.

“I was constantly telling her that she was at an age where she should be writing about grittier, more real-life things.  Thank goodness she never heeded my advice.”

Currey says anyone familiar with J. K. Rowling’s style of writing will know that every detail has meaning.  “She writes about a magical Neoplatonic world, not a random, meaningless, muggle universe.”

Astrologers will identify with the four school houses at Hogwarts because their qualities seem remarkably like the four astrological elements: fire, air, earth and water.

Also, members of the Black family are all named for fixed stars or constellations.

“Harry’s godfather Sirius Black is able to transform into a dog (his animagus).

Ancient Egyptians called Sirius the Dog Star after their god Osiris, whose head in pictograms resembled that of a dog.”

But Rowling’s subtle, nuanced references to astrological symbolism will not be apparent to most readers.

“Perhaps wisely, the author didn’t hook her wagon to stargazing from the start as there is plenty of prejudice and ignorance that could have adversely affected sales of her outstanding books,” Currey said.

Nevertheless, he thinks Rowling joins the ranks of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind) and C.S. Lewis (Narnia)  “in an illustrious group of writers who were inspired by astrology.”

More information and birthdates for characters in the novels can be found at:   www.astrology.co.uk/news/News.htm.

When you say that you’re a Gemini or a Leo, what you are saying is that the sun was in that sign of the zodiac when you were born. The kind of popular astrology that people are familiar with from newspapers tells us that the signs change with the calendar. Capricorn is from December 22nd to January 19th, for example. But the real situation is a bit more complicated…

For one thing, the sun moves into each sign at a slightly different time each year with respect to our calendar. There are years when the sun enters Capricorn on December 21st, and years when it enters on December 22nd. And it doesn’t enter at midnight on those days, so it could be that if you were born at 11:00 a.m. on December 21st you would be a Sagittarius, while if you were born at 11:30 a.m. – just a half hour later – you would be a Capricorn

Let’s not forget time zones! If the sun enters Aquarius at 4:52 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, as it did this year, that would mean that it would be 1:52 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Cross the International Date Line, and things could get a bit complicated, with the sun changing signs on different dates.

Now, really, the sun isn’t moving through the signs at all, it’s just the way it appears from our planet. But it’s more convenient to say, “The sun is in Libra” than “Libra is the background of the sun from our perspective.” In fact, in the kind of Western astrology most people are familiar with, the sun doesn’t have the stars of the constellation Libra as a background, but a segment of the sky based on the spring equinox. The astrology most common in India does use the constellations, although even there the starting points of each sign are not based on the stars.

So, if you’re born in the middle of a sign, rest easy – you know what your sun sign is. But if you were born “on the cusp” you might need to do a little research to find out exactly what sign you are. There are many free sources for making a horoscope available on the web, and all you need is your birth date, time, and place. And in the process you’ll also get to see where your moon, Venus, and other planets were when you were born.

For example, Albert Einstein came up with his world-changing Theory of Relativity before his 27^th birthday.  But career success and visibility didn’t arrive for master chef and television personality Julia Child until much later in life.

Astrologer Edith Hathaway says a system of astrology based on methods from seers or “enlightened beings” in ancient India gives modern astrologers a predictive tool – the Dasha systems – that can be used to determine which planetary influences will be most pronounced, for better or worse, at different times in an individual’s life.

Hathaway is author of In Search of Destiny: Biography, History & Culture As Told Through Vedic Astrology.  In her book she provides more than 30 biographical studies of individuals whose careers sequentially peaked at different times based on planetary periods unfolding from their moment of birth.

She says there are more than 55 different Dasha systems in the ancient Vedic astrology system. The most important of these is called the Vimshottari Dasha, or 120-year cycle.

The 120-year Vimshottari Dasha assigns a specific number of years to the sun, moon and the five planets visible from earth with the naked eye. Also included in the sequence are the moon’s north and south nodes, known as Rahu and Ketu in the Vedic system.

The nodes are sensitive astronomical points defined by the moon’s orbit around the earth.

“The order or sequence for the planets comes from the rishis, or ancient seers, as do the number of years assigned to each,” Hathaway explains.

The same planetary sequence is repeated with smaller time increments during the sub-periods.  How the period of the featured planet plays out depends greatly on its original placement in the individual’s birth chart – where the planet was situated in the heavens at the moment of birth.

For example, Albert Einstein was born in 1879 and died 76 years later in 1955.  From his Vimshottari Dasha sequence it would be apparent to Vedic astrologers that by far the most creative years of his life would occur during the 20-year Venus Dasha when the planet Venus was most involved in shaping his individual destiny.  This Dasha began in December 1895 and ended in December 1915.

It would also be apparent that major recognition most likely would come during the following 6-year Sun Dasha, when the sun’s energy was most pronounced.  For Einstein this period ended on December 14, 1921.

In March 1914 Einstein became Director of Physics at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin.  He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for work he had done in 1905-06 during his so-called “Annus Mirabilis” or miracle year, when he was an unknown 26- year old.

Though he was revered and recognized for the rest of his life, all of his scientific work after this 26-year period (December 1895 to December 1921) is considered to be of less importance, Hathaway says.

Julia Child was on a much different timetable.  She was born in 1912 and died in 2004, but at age 49 her long public career as America’s most renowned expert on French cuisine was only just beginning.

A significant 16-year Jupiter Dasha between April 1941 and April 1957 found planet Jupiter asserting its influence.  This period brought her foreign travel and residence and her first meeting with husband Paul Child, a career diplomat in the Foreign Service.

Child began testing and collecting recipes for her now famous cookbook during this period.  But her career remained in the shadows until her Saturn Dasha, the next planetary period in the sequence dominated by Saturn.

Hathaway says this 19-year period began in April 1957 and held sway through April 1976.

“Saturn’s results do not come to fruition quickly.  However, after some initial delays and setbacks, Alfred A. Knopf published Child’s 734-page cookbook in 1961, an event that coincided with the couple’s return to the U.S.,” she said.

Child’s television series began in February 1963 and went on to become the longest running program in the history of public television.  Child continued to do the program until shortly before her death at age 92.

Hathaway says the Dasha system produces valuable insights for the famous and not-so-famous alike.

“If the most auspicious Dashas occur early in life it’s sometimes difficult for a person to accept what comes next.  If they come later in life the challenge is to not lose faith that one’s gifts and goals will come to fruition at a later date,” she said.

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Editor’s note:  This news feature is based on an article, Mysteries of the Vedic Dasha System, published in the NCGR E-News Commentary by the National Council of Geocosmic Research on April 14, 2013.  This article and more information on the author can be found at www.edithhathaway.com

Although several sources about the sounds of the universe have appeared online and in print over the past few years, a very nice reminder that we can hear the universe was featured recently on the Huffington Post online. As they do each Friday,  the Huff Post and TEDWeekends joined together on February 22, 2013 to share a “powerful idea worth spreading.”

In this case, the “powerful idea” was described in a mesmerizing video presentation featuring a talk by curator and artist Honor Harger.  In her talk, entitled Tuning into the Universe, she points out that we can both see and hear the stars and planets. And she illustrates that although they are not directly audible, we can hear them thanks to breakthroughs in radio technology.

Ms. Harger’s presentation provides a penetrating understanding of the resonating forces of our lives.  Using stunning visuals from outer space to accompany sounds, the presentation evokes an enjoyable voyage. Among other things, we can hear powerful sounds from our own very bright Sun, along with sounds from other heavenly bodies.

The larger problem, as I see it, is that astrology has not yet joined the scientific revolution. The difficulties here lie more in the definition of the subject itself and the language in which it expresses itself. These problems both have origins in the 17th and 18th centuries when other subjects, i.e. astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and geology adopted democratic methodologies to test the veracity of their subject material.

The scientific method is a democratic, knowledge-generating process in which nature is studied closely and experiments are conducted in order to discover the rules by which it works. The method was actually applied to astrology in a few instances but these studies were weak because measuring the effects of astrology in units was more or less impossible in the 17th century.
The science of those times was completely reductionist and required units of something to do a proper analysis. Units of temperature, pressure, velocity, distance, etc. are easily applied to most natural phenomena and astronomy, physics and chemistry were well-endowed in that regard. Geology and biology presented more difficult problems but eventually became solid bodies of knowledge through close observation and testable theories. And, very significantly, all of these subjects eventually shed any theological explanations for their interpretations. Without a solid database reducible to units and explanations that were unprovable, astrology fell by the wayside.

A Clear Definition Lacking

A subject can be both a science and an applied art or practice. The lack of a clear definition of astrology as a subject is primarily due to the overwhelming dominance of astrological practice. This is like the field of psychology putting all its focus on just psychotherapy and ignoring research, scientific studies, theory, and its own history. There are close overlaps between applied psychology and applied astrology and it could be argued that natal astrology was the earliest system of psychology. It is true to anyone that bothers to investigate the matter that astrology as a consulting or counseling profession can offer people as much, and in many cases a lot more, than licensed psychotherapists. If psychotherapists really knew what astrology can do, and it wasn’t a taboo subject for them, probably many would learn something about it. And then realize that the subject matter it is a lot more sophisticated, and difficult, than they ever imagined. But not to digress, the point here is that practice is just one facet of the subject of astrology, the study of connections between the larger cosmic environment and the Earth. And practice should be based on scientific research.

Probably the single most important overall problem for astrology is that of a mechanism, that is how does it work? Not everything is explained by a simple mechanism. But in subjects similar to astrology, such as psychology and economics, there is an effort made to distinguish clearly between what is known and what is not known. Hypotheses are proposed and then they are tested; ideologies and beliefs based on opinions or assumptions are not considered explanations. This is the critical-thinking approach that astrology will need to take in order to more fully rehabilitate itself because the very nature of the astrological effect is complex, not easily reduced to units and therefore not applicable to conventional scientific inquiry except in regard to some correlation studies. Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence, which is abundant in astrology, does not carry much weight in the scientific world.

The astrological effect is a phenomenon that probably requires a multidisciplinary approach using system science, the general term for cybernetics, complexity and chaos theories, to unravel its workings. In a sense, astrology has been waiting for scientific methodologies to evolve to a point where they can be applied to the subject. This is also true for other fields, such as meteorology (long-range weather forecasting), biology (what exactly is life), and geoscience (how the Earth remains chemically stable).

Progress is Being Made

Despite the difficulties inherent in these big topics, scientists are methodically chipping away at the problems, in many cases using system science. And they are slowly establishing reliable foundations. Most importantly, these subjects use the common language of science and don’t defer to unprovable metaphysical notions. They are therefore recognized as legitimate subjects by the global cultural institutions of our time. In part because of its intrinsic nature, and in part due to the lack of scientifically-educated students and practitioners, astrology currently uses a highly specialized language and entertains unprovable metaphysical notions that are often taken as truth and not stated simply as hypotheses. This needs to change.

This prescription for the field of astrology (getting with the scientific program and speaking in a language the other fields can understand) is one the astrological community will find controversial- and expensive. Because of its marginalization, astrology gets close to zero funding. In fact, I’d bet that the total amount of funding received by a typical university science laboratory for a month is greater than the total amount of funding put in the hands of research astrologers during the entire 20th century. This is the circular dead end here: no funding equals no progress and no respectability, which in turn equals an inability to attract the brightest minds and funding for worthwhile projects. However, despite these difficulties, astrologers have steadily made progress in rehabilitating their subject and deepening their understanding of it. Astrology has essentially been reinterpreted for modern times without losing its core principles.

So what is to be done regarding the disconnect between astrology and the rest of the world?

Actually, quite a lot has already been done and credit must be given to those who have studied astrology scientifically, excavated its ancient history, and explored its theoretical dimensions – mostly for no pay. In recent years some well-educated astrologers (who we should note had to get advanced degrees in subjects other than astrology) have been interacting with professionals in other fields, mostly history and psychology. There are a few astrology journals today that publish papers on the subject, some of a high caliber and comparable with publications in history and psychology journals. Also, some of the larger astrological organizations and some private schools have created education programs and offer certification. However, most education programs are primarily concerned with how to read a horoscope. And none of the certification programs are particularly difficult by the professional standards of other disciplines that require first a four-year degree and then some serious graduate work. But at least some boundaries are being established and this is a step towards modernization of the field.

To build on this the astrological community would benefit by raising its standards in much the same way the other subjects did centuries ago. This adjustment would include distinctions between professionals and amateurs, unified education and certification standards, and recognition that the scientific method is the best method for democratically generating knowledge. If this were to happen, astrology would be looked at very differently by the rest of the world and may actually begin to once again participate in and contribute to the ongoing evolution of our culture.

In In Search of Destiny: Biography, History & Culture As Told Through Vedic Astrology, Edith Hathaway has written an intriguing account of recent world history – focusing mostly on Western culture – from the perspective of Indian astrology. The astrology of India, variously called Vedic, Hindu, or Jyotish, is one of the oldest continuously existent kinds of astrology, reaching far back into the history of the Indian subcontinent, and it is rich with methods of interpretation and ways of understanding. Indian astrology uses yogas or links between planets that are virtually unknown in the West.  And it has a different method – the dasha system -for predicting opportunities for future changes in a person, group, or nation. It also uses a zodiac based on the constellations, rather than the tropical zodiac used in the West, which is based on the seasons of the year.

The book does what it promises, covering history, culture, and biography through the lens of Vedic astrology. The sections that present biographical sketches of people from Bill Gates to Maya Angelou are especially interesting and will be accessible to most readers. The analyses of cultural and historic transformations are equally interesting, and readers will find themselves nodding along with Hathaway’s insights. It’s rare to find a book of any sort that is able to incorporate such a wide range of topics, and rarer still to find one that actually manages to integrate them into a cohesive whole, yet Edith Hathaway has managed to accomplish both goals.  In Search of Destiny does with Vedic astrology what Richard Tarnas’ Cosmos and Psyche did with Western astrology, allowing us to view our history and prominent figures in our culture from a perspective that gives cohesion and meaning to our shared experience.

Although Vedic astrologers will learn a great deal about their art with this book, In Search of Destiny will present a few challenges to the reader who is not also an astrologer – in fact, even Western astrologers will be challenged to learn new terminology and at least learn about some Vedic techniques. Yet no one should be put off by this, as it is possible (and perhaps necessary for some of us) to take the essential meanings from the book while leaving the astrological details in soft focus. It is easy enough, for example, to think about a ten-year period in someone’s life as being characterized by a particular kind of energy that is consistent with a set of opportunities and a general mood. Hathaway facilitates our understanding by describing Vedic astrology in plain-English terms, allowing the reader to access ideas that might otherwise seem too complicated or obscure.

Anyone who has an interest in astrology or Indian culture, or who simply wants a unique take on how astrology can help us to understand our individual and collective lives, can benefit from reading In Search of Destiny.

And one of the most prestigious sculptors of the day, John Quincy Adams Ward, sculpted a statue of Garfield that was placed on an ornate pedestal on the road island to the southwest of the Capital.

Perhaps only a few in the immense crowd gathered for the Garfield statute dedication noticed what appears to be an entire horoscope cast in bronze and depicting planets in astrological signs on the northwest side of the statue’s plinth or base.

David Ovason, author of The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital, believes this may be the only such astrological figure on any public statuary in the U.S. But, inexplicably, astrological symbolism is everywhere on display in public buildings and elsewhere in the nation’s capital.

The city is teeming with zodiacs and zodiacal images. Many are in official buildings, including the Capitol Building itself where one would never expect to find such symbols of the spiritual world.

In Ovason’s 1999 book he says, “There are 23 important zodiacs in the city and at least 1,000 zodiacal and planetary symbols.”

Kenneth McGhee, an Arlington, Va., astrologer who lectures on the subject, suggests the number of important zodiacs in the city is higher. By his count there are 30 zodiacs with 12 of these located in the Library of Congress Building alone.

A tour of this building turns up a zodiac dome and zodiac clock in the main reading room. There’s a floor zodiac in the Great Hall and zodiacs also are found in marble columns, in a granite arch, on the arm rail of the main staircase and in a hallway painting of Urania, who in mythology is the muse of astrology.

“There is even a zodiac in the wallpaper of a meeting room,” he says.

The Library of Congress Building was completed in 1860. But there also are zodiacs in buildings completed much later in the 20th century, such as the ceiling zodiac found in the Senate Dirksen Building, completed in 1958, and a light fixture at the Ariel Rios Building, built in the 30’s.

McGhee says astrological zodiacs are visually prominent on armillary spheres located throughout the city in such diverse locations as the Air and Space museum, the Reston Town Center, Friendship Heights, Montrose Park in Georgetown and U.S. National Arboretum. These spherical sculptures are modeled after the instruments used by ancient astrologers to determine the location of celestial objects before telescopes were invented.

According to McGhee, the staid Federal Reserve Building and the Freer Art Gallery have zodiac light fixtures. And there are zodiacs on the Mellon Fountain and in the Hillwood Museum garden.

“But nothing is more bizarre than the arch zodiac above the alter at the Catholic Church’s National Basilica on Michigan Avenue. Or the zodiac symbols embedded in an entry door at the National Academy of Sciences,” he said.

So why do we find so much astrological symbolism in the nation’s capital city today?

In his book, Ovason addresses the issue:

“The more I have explored the city and the more I have been touched by the many zodiacs it contains, the more I have marveled that so little research has been done into the arcane aspects of its design. One consequence of the scholarly silence is that the majority of my questions have remained unanswered,” he writes.

But Ovason describes the Founding Fathers’ flirtation with the esoteric ideals of the Freemason movement in the late 18th century. And he suggests this may somehow be connected with the proliferation of astrological symbols we find in the capital city today.

The city itself was planned by George Washington and was initially surveyed using stars as guides. The nation’s first President was also leader of a Masonic Lodge, and Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and many of the nation’s other founding fathers were part of the Freemason movement.

In this era Masonic elders used astrology to time the laying of foundation or corner stones for every significant new structure rising in the district, including the White House and Capitol Building, he points out.

McGhee thinks the birth chart or horoscope he uses for the capital city provides some clues to the mystery.

“The city’s birth chart has a lineup of planets (including the Sun) all clustered in that section of the horoscope astrologers identify with mysteries and the occult. Which fits with all the secret symbols found in the city today,” he said.

In an article for TheNational, the leading English-language newspaper in the Middle East, author Robert Matthews says there no longer is any doubt that celestial bodies affect our planet as a whole.

Matthews is a visiting reader in science at Aston University in Birmingham, England.  He says these links go beyond the obvious, such as the role of the sun and moon in the tides.

“The biggest climatic upheavals experienced by our planet are now known to be under the influence of the other planets in our solar system,” he says.

Through their gravitational tugging, the moon and planets distort the shape of the Earth’s orbit and the tilt of its axis to its orbit, causing subtle changes in the intensity of sunlight reaching us.

“By altering the level of heating reaching different latitudes, these changes are now thought to play a key role in triggering the huge expansion in polar ice characteristic of an Ice Age,” he explains.

“Now astronomers think they may have uncovered another astrological connection between the Earth and its fellow planets – one that beggars the trivia of astrology..”

More than 150 years ago astronomers noticed that the number of sunspots appearing on the solar disk followed a distinct pattern, rising and falling over a period of about 11 years. This is curiously close to the 11.9 years that it takes Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, to complete one orbit of the sun.

“It’s hard to know what to make of such coincidences.  But in 1852 the Swiss astronomer Johann Wolf showed that despite its great distance Jupiter had more gravitational effect on the sun than any other planet,” Mathews said.

Wolf went on to develop a theory that seemed to account for sunspot numbers via the influence of Jupiter and other planets.  However, because sunspots are a symptom  of  solar activity, and this in turn directly affects the earth, Wolf’s ideas “sounded uncomfortably close to astrology,” Matthews said.

He speculates that this is probably the reason why Wolf’s ideas were hastily dumped at the start of the 20^th century following the discovery of a link between sunspots and the magnetic field of the sun,

For whatever reason, Wolf’s evidence linking the gravity of planets with the magnetic field of the sun wasn‘t believed to be compelling. But a team led by Dr. Jose Abreu of the ETH Zurich Institute for Geophysics in Switzerland has rekindled the controversy with impressive new evidence for precisely such a link.

To make its case, the team examined records of solar activity far more extensive than those used by Wolf, who could only go back as far as the mid-17^th century and the first telescopic observations of sunspots by Galileo.

Dr. Abreu and his colleagues exploited the fact that changes in the sun’s magnetic field affect the levels of cosmic rays smashing into the earth’s atmosphere – which in turn creates isotopes that get trapped in polar ice and tree rings.

By analyzing the rise and fall in levels of these isotopes the team was able to reconstruct the peaks and troughs in solar activity covering more than 9,000 years,

“Armed with so much data the team has been able to look for patterns in the activity far more subtle than those found by Wolf.  And what they have found broadly confirms his idea of a planetary influence on the sun,” Mathews said.

Published in the current issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the team’s findings stress that the planets cannot be the prime driver for the 11-year cycle of solar sunspot activity.  If that were so, the orbits of the planets would change noticeably through the energy needed to drive the activity.

“But the planets can and do seem capable of affecting the processes that generate the sun’s magnetic field,” Mathews says.

Analysis of the isotope data has uncovered a set of cycles of solar activity ranging from about 85 to more than 500 years, each of which appears to be linked to planetary cycles.

“This sounds pretty esoteric until one ponders the implications.  Every so often, these cycles combine to produce periods of especially high or low activity.

“When this happens the effect on the earth can be dynamic” he noted.

Astronomers have identified several periods in recent history when unusually high or low solar activity coincided with anomalous conditions on earth.  Among them is the Medieval Warm Period lasting from about 1000 to 1250.  And the so-called Little Ice Age, which lasted between about 1350 to 1850.

Each coincides with peaks and troughs in solar activity triggered by the planets, and to events of major historical significance.  For example, the bitter winters of the Little Ice Age caused mass starvation and social upheaval in Europe during the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

“The emerging evidence for planets influencing the sun and thereby global events suggests that the real problem with astrology is that its claims were simply too modest,” Mathews concludes.

So, if astrology isn’t Sun-sign columns, then what is it?

“Astrology can tell you what, when, where, and how. However, something else will have to tell you why.” – Dr. Joseph (Deepak) Vidmar.

Astrology’s Ancient Roots

Astrology is inextricably interwoven throughout our social and cultural history. In fact, it’s part of the soul of culture – every museum, every city, in either its buildings or monuments has some Zodiacal representation. Museums the world over hold evidence in artifacts of the value society has placed on astrological symbolism since the earliest times of human history. Some remarkable physical remnants also remain, the most notable being Stonehenge in England, said to have been constructed in phases between 3,000 to 2,000 BCE. It may have had several functions, as a healing and sacred burial site, and also as a huge clock or celestial observatory to measure the Sun’s movement and interaction with the Earth, enabling its designers to precisely predict eclipses, solstices, equinoxes and other major celestial events.

Astrology initially developed as a symbolic language for understanding and managing various natural phenomena for agricultural purposes, and to elicit meaning from the contradictions of life. Observing celestial cycles, (most obviously the Moon traveling through its phases monthly) established early on the recognition that there is an inexorable link between the environment around us (including the space above us) and the patterns of our daily lives.

Real astrology is a much more complex process than the simplicity of sun-sign columns. Natal astrology, for example, involves a map of the sky at the time, place, and date of one’s birth. It includes analysis of a minimum of 10 celestial bodies and several other mathematical points derived from the calculations of one’s birth data. The logic behind this is that we are all influenced by the environments into which we are born, both physical and social.

Astrological Symbols Explained

Dane Rudhyar, one of the most respected astrologers of the twentieth century, now deceased, brilliantly explained astrological principles in this article from Horoscope magazine 1971:

“More simply stated: the astrologer observes the interrelated motions of the closest factors in the cosmic environment of a particular locality on the earth’s surface – i.e., the ten astrological planets – and having identified these planets with the most basic functions and drives in the total organism of a particular human being, he deduces from the interrelationships of the planets at a particular time what the interrelationships between the constituent parts of this human being will be…

“In other words, ten variables are considered sufficient to interpret and to attribute meaning to all past and present events and personal crises and to enable the astrologer to predict future developments. Moreover, the relatively simple formula which a birth-chart constitutes is said by the astrologer to define the very character of the “native” – even though human character is quite a complex affair! Obviously, it can only do so if the ten variables represent the basic qualities of existence which may manifest at any and all levels of human personality.

“We, therefore, are leaving altogether the scientific realm of quantitative measurements and in astrology we are operating in terms of the organic interplay between universal qualities or life rhythms. Each of these ten qualities – modified by their positions within frames of reference like zodiacal signs and natal houses – must, therefore, cover a multitude of cases.

“Astrology deals with individual persons; it is meant to help these persons to live a more harmonious and significant, a richer and fuller life. In pursuit of such a goal, quantitative factors are of little value, for what is at stake is the quality of each of the persons’ ten basic bio-psychic organic functions – the Sun function, the Moon function, the Mercury function, the Venus function, the Mars function, etc.

“The specific genius of astrology resides in the astrologer’s ability to relate every trait of character, every mode of behavior, every form of intelligence, every vital feeling-response to merely ten variables. The more complex human existence becomes, the more each of those variables has to be loaded with possible meaning – a process which seems to be in direct opposition to the ever more refined type of analysis developed by modern scientists so specialized that indeed they come to know more and more about less and less.”

Rudhyar clearly expresses what all astrologers know so well, that there are as many ways of measuring as there are of understanding phenomenon. The scientific, mechanistic way is not the only one, even though it professes to be and appears to have a firm grasp on modern society – I sense this loosening, as the times we are in demand that we take a deeper look at our place in the universe and what we have been led to believe.

It is the distinction and definition of measuring which caused astrology to lose its place of previous honor during the so called Age of Enlightenment, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the concept of a relationship to the divine or a holistic world view was seen by scientists as associated with religion and therefore rejected by the rise of scientific measurements. The words, astrologer and astronomer were one and the same until the advent of mechanistic science in the seventeenth century. After all, it was Galileo, an astrologer, who rocked the world with his theory, proven true, that the Sun was the center of the solar system and not the Earth. He was imprisoned for that discovery and made by the Catholic Church to recant it.

Astrology is a symbolic language and a testament to our humanity as it seeks not to divide but to harmonize and holistically understand the entire system we live within (earth and cosmos) and not only select parts.

World View Challenged

Bernadette Brady explains it well:

“You know how they [science] once thought that the planets’ orbits were circular – they had to be, because of the eight spheres. It was a whole world-view, which was a world-view of God as well; theological astronomy, really. If they weren’t perfect circles then they couldn’t have the eight spheres and the whole theology broke down; so there was tremendous resistance to changing the concept of the perfectly circular orbit…So the whole thing disintegrated with Kepler – and the whole theology had to go, the whole world-view had to change to incorporate the ellipse.

“That’s where we are at with orthodox science now – there are many band-aids stuck on in order to make things fit. I think what is going to happen – fifty or a hundred years from now, I don’t know the timing – is that the whole lot is going to collapse, and the major philosophy is going to be based on fractals and Mandelbrot theory – and the interconnectedness of everything, and the cyclic nature of everything – and how things are reproducing at many levels without scale, time or size.

“I think that then science as we know it will change and we’ll get a world-view based more on fractals; and when that happens, I believe astrology is going to be totally at ease. The big problem astrology has had is that it’s the only ‘science’ (in inverted commas) that couldn’t go over to reductionism. You couldn’t do it, because if you went over to orthodox science – well, astrology is destroyed if we break it into little parts. The very central standing stone of astrology is the interconnectedness of things, so it cannot be reduced to parts, you may be able to play around with positive coding for football matches but not a person.

“Astrology therefore could not go over and jump on the new bandwagon or reductionism, so when a philosophy can’t comply with the orthodox view it tends to be labeled as evil – but I think that’s going to shift, but maybe not in our life time.

“I therefore don’t think that astrologers have to go to science and prove themselves. I think astrologers just have to stand where they are, because I think science is coming to us.”

Paraphrasing Sir Isaac Newton – it’s important to research a topic, or at least delve beneath the surface veneer, before discounting its value or voicing an opinion. As it turns out, astrology is a rich symbolic language with a history that spans all of human existence from the very first time that mankind looked upward at the sky and observed changing celestial phenomena. It has much to offer to the discerning (and open) mind. Astrology is not a science but all its data is based on the sciences of astronomy and mathematics, the calculations of which are used for the interpretation of charts. The best way to determine the personal value of astrology is to experience a professional astrological consultation and then make your own informed evaluation.

Endnotes:
p. 1 – Dr. Joseph “Deepak” Vidmar from his article “Astrologer asks: What if astrology is real” posted on www.astrologynewsservice.com

p. 2 - Statistical Astrology and Individuality by Dane Rudhyar. First Published in Horoscope Magazine, 5/1971.

p. 3 – Bernadette Brady has a MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology from Bath Spa University, UK. Quoted from an interview by Garry Phillipson, 1998. Her newest book is Astrology a Place in Chaos.

p. 3 – From Wikipedia: Mandelbrot believed that fractals, far from being unnatural, were in many ways more intuitive and natural than the artificially smooth objects of traditional Euclidean geometry:

p. 3 – “Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.”
  —Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature

p. 3 – Mandelbrot has been called a visionary and a maverick. His informal and passionate style of writing and his emphasis on visual and geometric intuition (supported by the inclusion of numerous illustrations) made The Fractal Geometry of Nature accessible to non-specialists. The book sparked widespread popular interest in fractals and contributed to chaos theory and other fields of science and mathematics.

p. 4 – Sir Isaaac Newton reportedly said to Edmond Halley, “Sir, I have studied it, you have not.”

It may be difficult to accept, but what we think of as going on outside our bodies – and even inside them – is a complex construction entirely subjective in nature. We gravitate toward family, friends and colleagues, sharing our opinions and absorbing theirs, thereby completing the web of illusion that makes up our daily lives.

Our body of opinion that has shaped our experience of reality over the last few hundred years is scientific materialism, which is directly concerned with the perception and measurement of the objective world. Instruments have been developed of greater and greater sensitivity to measure more and more subtle effects. When a new force is perceived and measured, it seems to have philosophical repercussions, which slowly sift down through society, until the fabric of collective consciousness is subtly reconstituted.

Perhaps this is due to the vocabulary that invention generates. When Newton’s laws of motion were expounded, the vocabulary of push, pull. Leverage, attraction, action and reaction became a way for us to represent reality, and these laws and words spawned a mechanistic view of understanding nature.

While Newton’s heritage was a vocabulary of gravity Einstein’s was a vocabulary of light and of relativity that has profoundly reshaped collective consciousness. Relatively sounded the death knell for scientific materialism because it made experience of the object dependent on the perception of the subject. Subject and object are a continuum. And just as subject and object are interrelated so too are body and mind, and matter and energy – with consciousness free to dwell at any point on this duality spectrum. Where before the whole crux of scientific investigation was to be as detached as possible from the object, relativity theory has shown this to be an ineffective and inaccurate means of investigating subtle nonmaterial forces.

Where Astrology Comes In…

This is where astrology comes in as a tool for perceiving reality. Dealing more with the mind and senses of the subject, or individual, there is an intrinsic acceptance that the object – that individual’s experience – is mutually interrelated and interdependent. Rather than life simply happening to us we are constantly evoking events in a complex dance between our character and our fate, or between our consciousness and the object of our consciousness.

An astrological consultation I once gave may serve to illustrate this phenomenon. It was for a middle-aged lady who had a very tenuous grasp of reality, with powerful delusions about being followed by men. I did my best to persuade her that she was probably imagining most of the incidents, based on the astrological fact that she had the astrological sign Pisces rising on the ascendant (where the sun comes up in the East) and the planet Neptune on the descendant (where it sets in the West). In astrology speak, Neptune is the planetary “ruler” of Pisces and has been negatively identified with illusion and delusional patterns of behavior. Simply, this particular configuration might be expected to evoke a tendency for the woman to be confused in her relationships with others if other elements of the birth chart confirmed this possibility.

It was an unconvincing consultation undermined by my inability to deal with her mental state. A few minutes after she left my office I decided to go out shopping but on opening the door I found the lady on the stairs studying a bus timetable and muttering to herself. Not wishing to appear to be following her, I smiled weakly and retired to my office, waiting until she had proceeded on her way.

Acutely aware that I might confirm her fantasies if I crossed her path I walked into town using a circuitous route. Twenty minutes later I arrived in the town square and as I did so the bus pulled up alongside me and my client stepped out. She took one startled look at me and started walking rapidly in the other direction.

Experience had vindicated my client and proved to her that her version of reality was the correct one. The extraordinary thing was that my own behavior had been altered, and events had conspired to bring about that which I had wanted to avoid. This scenario plays out in all our lives as our personal character stamps its impression on a reality that is constantly adjusting to who we are and what we do.

The corollary of this is good news in terms of free will. By adapting our behavior, we can alter reality and our experience of it. And everything in our world will alter in it, including the people we relate to.

Herein lays the power of astrology, which can be released by judicious work with the energies reflected in the horoscope. And herein lies the possibility of transformation.