Your Very Own Astrology

Yes. Astrology.

Believe me, I am at least as surprised as you are.

But since you’re here, and wondering what on earth I could be thinking…

Maybe let’s start with a couple of our most basic needs, and how, to my total surprise, astrology has turned out to be a playful and imaginative way to engage them…

Every part of us has an innate need to be seen; to make itself known. We might call this need authenticity: the ability to consciously experience our feelings, thoughts, and instincts, and to act in meaningful relationship with them.

We also have another need. We might call that need attachment: the ability to stay connected to the adults on whom we depended as children.

The trouble is, as children, in the Paper-Rock-Scissors game of attachment vs. authenticity, attachment beats authenticity nearly every time. For the sake of survival, we all had an inner default towards outer attachment.

As a result, something-in-us sensed that if we showed up fully as ourselves, we would lose relationships.

And so, as a matter of survival, many of our thoughts, feelings, and instincts were pushed down, buried deep, often in the earthy cells of our bodies (where they can show up as symptoms). This happens both personally and collectively.

Still, these buried affects remain a part of us, even if we think they’re safely locked in the basement. They are there. They appear in our dreams and in fairy tales as swamps, forests, dungeons, toilets, kitchens, closets, and locked rooms, and…

They, too, have an innate need to be seen, accepted, and related to. This is true of all the parts of us that were pushed down: our inner lead, our inner gold, and everything in between.

PROJECTION

Thankfully, these hidden parts are constantly in motion. They are alive and seeking to be known.

For a while, these basement-dwellers might knock on the door at the top of the stairs, wanting to be let into the living room. But if we remain unconscious of them long enough; if we don’t open the door and let them in, they will eventually sneak out of the basement, and attach themselves to the people, events, and objects in our lives. They do this so that we have the opportunity to make them conscious again.

Carl Jung called this projection.

How do we know when we are projecting?

1) Anytime our emotional response is way bigger than the situation really merits. A friend doesn’t respond to a text, and suddenly we find ourselves swimming in a story of how unlovable we are. Or our boss asks us to do something differently, and we find ourselves terrified that our heads are on the chopping block, questioning our validity as professionals and humans. (Not that I’ve ever experienced either of these…)

2) Anytime we think the behavior of one person applies to an entire group of people. If you can think of a group of people who you instinctively dislike (or instinctively love), you’re in projection-land.

That stuff you see in “them?” Sorry, friend. It’s not just “out there.” That’s your very own basement critters. (It might also be “out there,” but it’s not exclusively “out there.”) Cute and cuddly, or genuinely scary, they are a part of you, and they’d like you to invite them home and care for them.

Projection is unconscious. No one projects their basement stuff onto someone else on purpose. No one “chooses” which  parts of themselves are projected.

What’s more, because projection is unconscious, it isn’t bad or good.  It just is.

Until we learn to recognize our projections consciously, they remain unconscious, which means they will keep showing up in our outer lives as actual people and events.

We experience this as patterns and habits that we don’t understand or can’t seem to shake. The next time you find yourself repeating a familiar pattern, you might pause and reflect: something in you is giving you chance after chance to meet it.

As Jung famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Let’s recap.

1. Every part of us has a need to be seen, known, accepted, and related to.

2. Many authentic parts of us have been hidden or buried inside. This is true of everyone.

3. These hidden parts are constantly trying to communicate with us. Projection is one way they do that, whether onto people, places, events, objects, or our dreams.

METAPHOR: OUR FIRST LANGUAGE

But here’s the catch: Our hidden parts communicate in a language most of us have forgotten. That language is symbol. Image. Metaphor.

The word metaphor can be understood as “a carrying across;” as in a bridge. If we don’t speak the language of metaphor, then we have no bridge to the buried parts of ourselves.

Put another way, our split-off parts will continue to experience the wounding of abandonment until we see, hear, and relate to them in their own language.

So where do we start?

Where might we begin to relearn the human psyche’s first language of image and metaphor?

If only we could find a space where, for tens of thousands of years, humans projected their inner realms onto the same objects across the globe.

If we could find such a site of shared projection, wouldn’t it be thrilling to uncover those mysteries, those maps of our inner terrains, and the languages they speak?

THE NIGHT SKY AS A MAP OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE

Enter the stars. The night sky.

Imagine what it was like for our ancestors to look up at the cosmos in the night sky, that mysterious order that could not be seen by light of day.

Imagine seeing the veil pulled back, as blue sky fades to reveal cosmic black, alive with lights and what appears to be Ananke’s Spinning Wheel, or Hera’s Milky Way.

Now imagine noticing that a few of those lights—7 to be exact—moved differently than all the others (Sun, Moon, and the five inner planets).

7 planets. 7 days of the week. 7 chakras. 7 steps to heaven. 7 gates of descent. 7 gods and goddesses. 7 archetypal forces or patterns, alive within us and the natural world.

Out of the movements of those “stars,” myths were born in an ancient dance with the human psyche; the secret language of our dreams; a primal cartography of the human soul.

So begins our adventure in the playground of astrology, myth, dream, poetry, and lore. It is an adventure that can open us to experiencing the buried parts of ourselves, on their terms, in their language.

For me, astrology is a way of re-learning this language of metaphor; of inhabiting a world beneath, behind, between, and beyond the literal.

The planets, signs, houses, and aspects, to me, personify archetypal patterns or forces within the psyche and in the world, and grant me the opportunity to imaginatively engage them.

From this perspective, the birth chart becomes a tool for exploring archetypal patterns within ourselves and in our lives.

A CAST OF CHARACTERS

First, it shows us that we all have a cast of characters alive in us, represented by the planets and their placements in signs and houses.

Psychologist James Hillman suggested that many of us feel fragmented because we were told that we are supposed to be a single, unified person when, in fact, we all have many characters (read: patterns/forces/energies) alive within us.

To use a garden metaphor, instead of identifying with a solitary plant or shrub, there may be wisdom in viewing ourselves as an entire garden, an entire ecosystem, where every part of us is essential to that ecosystem.

If this is a more accurate view of our inner life, then you and I, as ecosystems, are absolutely teeming with life. We can trust that completely. “Why do we have more trust in an amethyst bulb than in ourselves?” Marion Woodman once asked.

This means wholeness is no longer something to achieve; no longer something that involves feeding the “good” parts of us and lopping off or overcoming the “bad.”

Rather, wholeness and healing become an unfolding process of compassionately and honestly relating to every part of ourselves with understanding and courage.

No compost, no plants; no dirt, no life. “No mud, no lotus.” (Thich Nhat Hanh)

A favorite folk tale of mine tells the story of a person whose demons live in a nearby cave. For much of her life, she gathers the courage to go to the cave and confront her demons.

Sometimes she battles them; other times she tries to outsmart them.

But every time, they win; every time they seem to grow in size and strength and outright scariness.

One day, she goes to the cave to try something new. Once inside, she sets a table and invites her inner monsters to tea. And that is when transformation begins.

Astrology can be a playful and profound way to invite your inner characters, monsters and all, to the table for tea; a way to wander and explore what’s growing in your inner garden.

CYCLES OF RENEWAL

Second, I love the way that cyclical rhythms are embedded in the language and myth of astrology.

I feel drawn to astrology’s exploration of rhythms and cycles.

To paraphrase Demetra George, these cycles remind us that within every ending is a mysterious realm, a dark phase of the moon, where endings are distilled into seeds and seeds give birth to new life. Or, to invite a music metaphor, “The music happens between the notes.” (Yo-Yo Ma)

This mystery of rebirth lives at the heart of every myth I have read; every season or cycle I have experienced; and every planetary or stellar movement I’ve seen in the night sky.

Astronomically, we know the planets have elliptical orbits. But astrologically, from the perspective of this earth, the planets’ movements appear to wander.

The word “planet,” after all, means wanderer. Maybe that’s why Astrologer Liz Greene speaks of the “circuitous meanderings” of our souls.

First off, don’t you just  love that word, “meanderings?” I mean, your mouth has to meander just to say it!

Second off, to her point, perhaps our soulful meanderings are not so random as they at first seem…

Maybe they are circuitous.

Maybe they are cyclical.

Maybe they point to what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls the “Life/Death/Life nature” of the psyche or soul.

And as images go, I feel an exhale in my bones when I hold a space for these ones; dear, spiralic cycles of Life/Death/Life.

THE “JUST NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE”

Maybe you will find a kind of depth and enjoyment in exploring this astrological playground of myth and symbol, in a symbolic language at least 5,000 years old.

Maybe you will notice a budding, quiet curiosity as you consider the ancient tales that were alive in the sky at the moment you took your first breath.

And as you hold those living tales within, perhaps you’ll sense something-in-you, gently tracking the “just-noticeable difference” inside of you, as ordinary and simple as dew’s appearing.

Sometimes, healing begins within the smallest of movements…

Ryan