One of saddest transitions in life is when friends or older siblings or parents say: ”There is no Santa, honey, it was US, all the time” “ we bought your presents and re-arranged the furniture and hid the biscuits in the morning”…
At that moment, enchantment leaves our lives and we become cynics or “adults”, as if stepping into adulthood meant magic is over and whenever we give any indication of believing in things that we cannot see or touch, surely we must be in need of psychiatric help.
Yet, we use our mobile phones all the time, make use of electricity daily and most of us don’t have the slightest idea of how these two things work.
Women, we know that our periods coincide with the Moon cycle, but are afraid to ask if that could be something other than a coincidence.
We then wonder why we spend most of our adult lives battling against anxiety and discontent.
By willingly eradicating mystery out of our lives we agree to live in a world without fairy tales, without sparkle, without magic.
Yet, even ignoring it, mystery is all around us.
It is a mystery that we can think of someone before they ring us, or before they come to see us. It is also a mystery that we keep making friends that share the same birthday, or that we dream of someone who we meet next day unexpectedly.
We live daily with these mysteries and yet we are so eager to want to explain everything “scientifically”. As if we could.
The best one is that we, so familiarly, speak of God as if we knew what it was.
Yet, we become so righteous about Astrology being not true, as if we knew better.
So every once in a while we have to go the Psychiatrist and ask for Prosac or something that will alleviate our disenchantment with life.
The Birthchart and Astrology puts us in contact with our lost paradise, with Mythology, with the mystery of our lives, without necessarily trying to explain it, but merely helping us live with it, in a more creative and accepting way.
Most psychological sickness is an enactment of a pathologizing fantasy, so archetypal psychological Astrology proceeds to search for the archaic, the governing principle or root metaphor of that fantasy. Every fantasy, every experience has an archetypal reason.
Through Astrology we are reminded of the
governance of the Gods, and it brings us in touch with the feeling of acceptance.
Acceptance, this is the big word within Astrology. How much is free will and how much is about acceptance of one’s own Fate or Moira?
If we take the free will bit too far, we can be in Hubris and yet, we are compelled to prove to ourselves that acceptance is our last resort.
The Greeks seemed to obey and worship the Gods, and who are we to think that we may do without obeying?
The point I am trying to make is that believing in Mystery isn’t necessarily a thing of primitive ignorant people, but existing all around us, all the time, and it deserves our respect or at least, our recognition.
In fact, living with it is inevitable, so why fight it, pretend that is not there or try to explain it all?
Astrology is one of such mysteries that we Astrologers try to decipher but with utmost respect to its mysteriousness.
In today’s talk we will be able to journey through some of Astrology’s mysteries, to try to make some sense of the delights of its mythological meaning and its relation to everyday, life to find out a way of living with it in a creative way, as a mean of enriching our quotidian experiences and make the most of it.
Thomas Moore says:
“Traditional Astrology, East and West, is an intricate mythology of the soul, requiring a wealth of information and skill for its practice and far deeper and more solidly based than superstition in its power to animate the imagination.
Astrology is a form of imagination emerging from nature and having a direct relevance for everyday life. It’s an applied poetics, a vision of life on earth stimulated by movements in the heavens, which can take us into areas of self-reflection as no other system of symbols and images can. Astrology, based on one of the most fundamental of human experiences – the feeling of wonder occasioned by celestial movements – is among the few self contained symbols systems that can help make sense out of the chaos of life. When we feel confused and lost, we can use the sky for guidance.”
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