September 4, 2016

Why are so many people dismissive of astrology and question the integrity of astrologers?

Many of us simply do not believe in the divine, or the soul, or an after-life. But, even many spiritually minded people doubt astrology's validity. Perhaps, it is because they have looked into it and found many things questionable. To name a few:

1. Traditional astrology systems such as Hellenic, Horary, and Vedic are strict and rule-bound, viewing life in black and white. They over-simplify astrological symbolism with notions of good and evil and propose to know a future that does not even exist. They also use dysfunctional house systems that path the daily cycle in reverse.

2. Sun sign astrology greatly over-simplifies our nature, proposing that only the Sun's zodiac sign (and none of the planets) has any importance to the individual's character.

3. Chinese astrology does not use any planetary cycle at all. Instead it simply uses a 12 year loop* where the beginning of each year is determined by the first New Moon in Aquarius. (Yet, Aquarius is not even a part of their system!?)

4. There is even a system called Uranian astrology where a number of planets that do not actually exist were totally fabricated and imagined to be real. These astrologers went as far as to actually invent pretend orbits of these pretend planets and do entire chart readings with them.

In order to make astrology an accepted field of study, it must make sense and be verifiable. It also must serve people's spiritual needs, improve our self-awareness, connect us to our life's purpose, and not imprison our minds in fatalistic thinking.

In response to this, a new form of astrology is being developed. The emerging Western Astrology proposes that each planetary body represents a type of consciousness that beings can display. The more complex the being, the more types it can simultaneously embody. Each type of consciousness has a spectrum of possible expressions, which can be narrowed by a planet's placement at the time of birth. 

This system understands that our exact individual expression can not be known by our birth chart alone and that we determine our choices and self-expression in each moment of the present. Just look at how different the personalities of twins can be and how divergent their life paths often are.

*There are five 12 year loops, each dominated by one of five elements. So the cycle is actually 60 years long. The 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac are the same signs of the Western zodiac, with their names changed and reordered.