Astrology

A Science, a Belief, a Useful Tool?

Good morning beloved reader,

To those of you who have been reading this Substack for a while — Thank you! and you may have read this chapter from my book, Chapter 32: Impermanence — so you may be aware that my now 86-year-old mother, Jocelyn, has been interested in astrology since she was in her early twenties.

Born in 1937 in Cobram, a small country town in Victoria, Australia on the Murray River which forms the border between Victoria and New South Wales, she grew up in a few different country towns due to her father being transferred in his work as a bank manager. Jocelyn graduated from teacher’s college in Sydney in the late 1950s and set off, as many young Australians do, to go walkabout. After traveling through Europe, she ended up living and working in London for a while, where she met an astrologer called Ingrid Lind.

Jocelyn told me that when she first met Ingrid, she walked into the room and thought to herself, Oh I wish I’d had a mother like her.

Ingrid greeted her and said, “Hello dear. Yes, I have been a mother of yours in a past life.”

Oh my God can she read my mind too? This blew my mother’s mind.

And ever since then, my mother has been a devoted student of astrology.

source: Britannica.com

As I wrote in the chapter quoted above, over the years, my mother’s fascination with astrology has been met with plenty of mocking and scoffing. But that didn’t stop her from enjoying all that it has to offer. She was not interested in anyone else’s approval, she simply enjoys the insights it provides: insights into the human condition and how it helps her to understand herself and her loved ones.

And I have to say that lately, it’s doing the same for me. Perhaps I’m more like my mother than I often care to admit😁

I recently discovered The Pattern app¹ which has been dazzling me with its astrological brilliance. Not only does it provide accurate and useful psychological insights, but also I find the information it gives about transits insightful and deeply helpful.

If you don’t know anything about astrology beyond the Sun sign, transits are how the present planetary positions interact with your natal astrology chart. And a natal astrology chart is essentially a map of exactly where the planets were at the moment you were born in a particular place on our planet — i.e. kind of a snapshot of the heavens from the perspective of that exact vantage point, at that exact time.

What it boils down to for me is WHO CARES if Astrology can be scientifically proven or not? If you find it to be of benefit, then why not use it?

As an aside, I feel the same about holistic medicine — allopathic medical doctors will often scoff at chiropractic or osteopathic medicine, but if healing transpires, isn’t the allopathic doctor simply only focusing on the physical aspect of a human body, and forgetting that as human beings we’re comprised of body, mind, emotions, and spirit?

Allopathic medicine has come a long way in at least finally recognizing that STRESS can cause ILLNESS. And stress is simply caused by our emotional reaction to not wanting a situation to be as it is. Any investigation or exploration into stress and what it is, may lead you on a path towards mindfulness, or Buddhism, or what some may call a spiritual awakening — all of which point towards the same spiritual principles, that can be incredibly helpful.

I’ll get off my soap box now, but I’m truly astounded by how intelligent people can simply dismiss astrology in the same way that anything that was not traditional Western medicine (i.e. allopathic medicine) has been dismissed during the past thousands of years during dominance by the patriarchal hierarchies.

And remember, through growing up in the Patriarchy, we women have had to develop our own Inner Patriarch to survive and thrive — the trick now is to become conscious and aware of when our Inner Patriarch is activated and engaged.

But back to astrology — it’s also worth mentioning: Dr. Carl Jung, the world renowned Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology, reportedly drew up an astrology chart for each of his clients.²

All this to say that presently my transits are that I am going through my 2nd Saturn return. Saturn takes 29.4 Earth years to orbit the sun, so you have your first Saturn return in your late twenties, and your 2nd Saturn return in your late 50s.

The Pattern app says that the 2nd Saturn return is about maturing into who you were born to be, and embracing all aspects of your rising sign. My rising sign happens to be Leo but what the Pattern app says about this could perhaps apply to all:

It's having the courage to make your life up any way that you desire, and ultimately it's a path of learning to love yourself unconditionally.

Leo loves itself so authentically that it inspires others to love themselves.

So essentially you're meant to be an example of true self-love, unconditional love, un-selfconscious love, meaning, full radical acceptance of who you are moment to moment. 

Okay, so this is not an easy thing to do, no matter who you are, we're not saying this is easy, but we're laying it out there so that ideally it gives you permission to love yourself.

Because often we're taught very early, or in childhood, or in our environment that, that kind of love is arrogance or wrong, or we're taught to compare ourselves so that there's no way we could be okay... there's no way we could be lovable, because there are so many comparisons that it feels we're not living up to them.

And yes, my dear reader, I do feel right now at this stage of my life, this is exactly what I’m working with.

Perhaps you needed to experience all these spectrums of emotions, and self doubt, and lack of control, and insecurity to get to that deeper place of trust and acceptance of who you are.
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And really, we look at the whole chart as the universe expressing itself through you in that moment, and that there's an intention, and there's a path the universe is trying to help you move along in terms of a soul's journey.

And this brings me back to my last post where I wrote about the idea that Life is happening THROUGH us, which is also known as SIDDHI consciousness.

Perhaps our astrology chart simply helps us to understand who we incarnated to be in this lifetime — so it gives us pointers towards what is our soul’s journey?

And when we have an intimate knowledge of our soul imprint this lifetime, then we can more easily allow Life to happen through us. A kind of co-creating with the Universe as we live our life purpose.

But I don’t want to portray myself as someone who has everything figured out, because it is in writing this kind of article that I get to figure things out, and I gain a sense of making meaning. So it’s a co-creation with you, my dear reader, as well.

And like everyone else, I am a work in progress.

And to complete this post I want to share this beautiful invitation from the astrologer, Rob Brezsny:

I invite you to say these things:

I love everything about me.

I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain.

I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing.

I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers.

I love my surprising power, my sweet mysteries, and my unknown freedom.

1. If you’d like to read about The Pattern app’s creator, Lisa Donovan, this January 2022 article in Bustle.com is informative: Lisa Donovan Doesn’t Need You To Believe In Astrology.

2. “Jung’s Understanding of Astrology: More than just defining astrology as art, technique or science, Jung recognized that astrology provides a “psychological description of character,”[19] with the planets corresponding “to the individual character components.”[20] He felt “the horoscope is the chronometric equivalent of individual character, through all the characterological components of the personality,”[21] and that a person’s natal chart could provide insights into “what her [the patient’s] soul intended for her to achieve.”[22] Our natal chart, in other words, is like a mandala of our soul’s plan for this incarnation.”

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P.S. I was sad to learn I did not gain admission to the Grub Street Memoir Incubator program. I observed the feeling of disappointment arise, I gave it space, and then it passed.

And I love how Life works. While waiting to hear if I got in, I’ve been so enjoying reading Beth Kempton’s book Kokoro, and also doing a free online class with her that I was given when I bought a copy of her book through Blackwell’s in the UK. I enjoyed her Spring Light class so much, I decided to treat myself by enrolling in her River of Words online class which will begin soon and run for 7 weeks. I’m very excited, and I have a sense that I will learn more about getting a book out in the world in physical form, than I would have learned in the memoir incubator, and I also have a sense that I’ll have more fun too. Nothing against the incubator, but it obviously was not the right thing at the right time for me.

And a kairos moment I want to share: one of Beth Kempton’s genius visualization exercises is to imagine yourself in a bookstore, find your book on the shelf, and take notice of the section of the bookstore in which your book has been shelved. The visualization is a whole scenario, and I won’t give away the full details as it’s a brilliant thing to do if you take her class.

But the part that’s pertinent to this story is that this week, Jamie and I were at a local Barnes and Noble store in Nashua, NH, and I realized that the books I’m interested in are shelved in their sections labeled: Personal Growth and Self-Transformation. Not Memoir.

So I’m getting a sense that I will be writing a new book about spiritual principles and it will be located in either the Personal Growth or the Self-Transformation section of a bookstore.

I can write about the spiritual principles that light me up and have changed my life, and this is sharing my original medicine in the world. By sharing the truth of my own experience, I get to shine the light on the spiritual principles that some of the stories from my life happen to illustrate.

Thanks for reading!✨🌟💖🙏🕊️