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Rediscovering Astrology
by Thomas Moore
It is generally assumed that ecology is most closely related to science. But there are other ways to be in relation to nature. For aeons, for instance, people have found their place in the natural world by closely watching the movements of the planets and stars. They have planned their lives according to these cycles and developments, beginning important projects, for example, on the first day of spring, and harvesting their crops during a waning moon. They have charted their fates and their complex personalities in the characteristics of the planets and the relationships among the heavenly bodies at their birth. In short, they have lived a thoroughly astrological way of life.
Today, astrology is not in favour among the scientifically minded. We assume that it is more important to study the physical characteristics of the planets and stars than to live by their symbolic meanings. We prefer the technical language of psychology to the imagistic vocabulary of the planets. We consider astrology superstitious and completely unrelated to science. We honour the astronomer and ridicule the astrologer.
But could it be that our cool, distant, materialistic approach to the sky keeps us from being fully tuned to nature? Are we out of sync within ourselves and among each other because we are out of tune with the movements in the universe? The sky is as much nature as are the woods and rivers, yet I never hear an ecologist talk about a planet or the moon except in purely physical terms.
Many people react with disgust to astrology because they approach it with a modernist point of view. They ask, how can those parched bodies and massing gases affect life on Earth? If you look with materialistic eyes, you will see a materialistic reality, one in which astrology makes no sense. But if you look for the beauty, meaning, and magic of the universe, then you might allow the ancient idea that the sun, moon, planets and stars represent the archons of existence. They are the guiding lights that keep us in touch with the movements in our local environment and indeed inside ourselves. The theologian Origen said, "We each have a sun and a moon within us."
Do you have a lunar nature? Do you have a rhythm of fullness and emptiness? Do you sometimes live in emotional and intellectual darkness, with only a dim light for guidance? Do you have a Mars rage or chronic anger? Do you entertain Venusian fantasies? Do you enjoy the beauty of a garden? Do you have a Mercurial way with words? Do you suffer Saturnine moments of sadness? Can you be Jovial? Is there something Uranian in your view of the world?
I would not discount the value of newspaper horoscopes, but the range of astrology is infinitely greater and more sophisticated. It begins with a way of life that takes account of developments in the sky and tunes life accordingly. You may simply sit in awe at a magnificent sunrise or sunset. You may go out of your way to see an eclipse or a comet. You may feel the emotional tug of a large, orange moon rising unexpectedly on a still horizon. You may stop and wonder, allowing the beautiful manifestation in the sky to stir your thoughts and feelings. That is the beginning of an astrological sensibility.
With this immediate, sensual, personal background, you can then take note of the position of the planets and the phases of the moon. You can live your life in shadows and sunshine. You can keep in mind what was going on in the sky the minute you were born, as though that instant marked the appearance of your identity in a world that is meaningful to you and you to it. You can imagine yourself into the sky and in that way discover your own vastness. The alternative is to be a function in a social machine or a problematic personality shrunken to a psychological ego, which is hardly a star.
Such a point of view can accomplish important things. It can bring you closer to nature's life, binding your fate to the lifeline of the universe. It can exercise your imagination, just as you might exercise a muscle. It can help you reflect on your basic nature and the unfolding of your own vital stuff. It can render the whole of your life poetic and symbolic. It can help you cultivate life as a varied, changing, beautiful thing rather than a system of blood vessels and a set of genes.
Incidentally, an appreciation for astrological images can help you understand a great deal of art and religion, which have long referred to the sky for fundamental imagery. The sky, being so massive and out of our control, gives mythic dimension to the imagination of who we are and where we live. It can also offer a complex model for a polycentric view of life - each planet qualitatively special and yet part of an overarching musical rhythm. Marsilio Ficino, the fifteenth-century Platonist, said that you should make or obtain a stunning mobile model of the planets of your birth and meditate on it daily, discovering the universe in which you live, your particular microcosm parallel to the vast and common macrocosm.
Our life on Earth is not so different from the life of the sky. Even here, a particular person, like an earthly planet, might serve as mother, father, lover, friend, enemy, mystery. A particular place might suggest home, adventure, spice, calm, distance. The whole of life is symbolic, anyway: why not allow the sky its imagery?
An astrological sensibility lies at the bottom of the Renaissance idea of 'natural magic', the idea that we could draw immense power and efficacy from nature if we knew its imagistic qualities. In the hands of remarkable thinkers like Ficino, the Abbot Trithemius, John Dee, and Robert Fludd, nature offers real power through its imagistic qualities. This vision is difficult for a modern person to understand, and the difference is whether or not you grant nature a soul. Is nature alive and meaningful, or is it mere raw physical material for human exploitation?
The story was told several years ago of Soviet cosmonauts travelling into space, seeing the vast emptiness, and returning to say, "There is no God. We didn't see him." Today's astronauts and astronomers 'travel' among the planets, see dust and gas, and say, "There is no soul." It takes a soulful eye to see the soul of the world - the eye of an astrologically awake and sophisticated person, someone who notices when the moon is full and wishes for his own waxing fullness, someone who can regard nature's vast music and discover the pulse and tonality of his own life.
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