#25. Christianity, Astrology, and All Spiritualities

Recently I noticed that a couple of my Christian friends that go back to my childhood were thinking of me as opposed to Christianity—because they think Astrology is opposed to Christianity. Not so. In fact Astrology points the way (and aids in the journey) to the Christ Power.

Astrology is not sectarian. It’s a tool that helps Christians, Hindus, New Age thinkers, believers in Reincarnation, and some scientists who think there’s no God.

However, Astrology’s foundation is the identical substrate and symbol as Christianity’s—and for the same reasons. Astrology’s a tool that aims spiritually (when properly used this way) to join us human Souls back to God. And it shows how—what’s in the way and how to remove the obstacles.

I got inspired to write this Post when I received emails from my friends mentioned above and also an article from a Christian M.D. about Laminin– a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue.” He said “Laminins are what hold us together…. LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart.

Then he showed a picture of a Laminin:

The ——————– (horizontal part of the Cross) is the mundane Plane, the daily consciousness of the ego. The vertical portion is the spiritual Movement of the Soul to the “heavens”—the Inner state of the Christ Power/God/SPIRIT POWER of the top of a chart. Usually we act this out in our “careers,” but the fundamental movement and implication is to our Souls.

See/Scroll down to #Post 18 below to see what our tilted Earth shows for our Cross:

|

|

__________

|

|

|

|

We have constant choices which aspect of the Cross to put our attention on; and even when we place it on the Horizontal, we have choices within that to uplevel to Spirit or Jesus. For example on the right of the Horizontal beam is the place of relationships. Secular love gets hung up in sex, divorce, conflict, blame, and the lack of a spiritual marriage.

Yet we can always go vertically to achieve a relationship that gets past the ego melodrama and rises to the “career” of developing your Soul’s true love. We strive for and live in the level of the Christ Power (Heaven on Earth).

Astrology points to what is in the way. Then suggests ways out and UP.

The foundation of Astrology, Christianity, our bodies, the universe requires the Spiritual Path for any real gain or growth, and this Astrologer Soul believes this trek is what we’re on this planet to do.

#24. Song of Concern

Out of Body Planes

Will you sing your song of satisfaction, joy, fulfillment?

Does the Universe serve us the notes to make our Preferred Music?
With reservations for what’s karmically best for us–it’s my experience
the Light completes our prayer, focused desire, and unconscious compulsions.

I want to help you understand your present and past
to make your future manifest in line with your now’s potential.
To make your love expand like a seed.

Together, we can do these things.

Screaming for the Dawn

#23. 14,000 Asteroids (or at least 70 or so)–Putting Mythology in Its Place

Did you know there are Asteroids called Child, House, and Industria? You can already imagine what they correspond to in meaning and impact in your life—just from their names! And in fact they very much do tell us valuable information about those subjects. Why?

Perhaps because they enter our consciousness via the process of human Naming. Perhaps because those cosmic rocks are imbued with energies that correspond to experiences in human life. We don’t really know.

The point is that Stars, Planets, and Asteroids (or dwarf Planets) are Astrological constructs for our behaviors and events!

As you know most of these bodies are name after Mythological figures—gods and goddesses of Greece, Rome, India, Egypt, Babylonia, and so on. Those stories shouldn’t logically or scientifically have anything to do with human events and behaviors. But they do!

In fact the stories from 2500 and 7500 years ago frame the nature of the corresponding celestial bodies and our bodies, along with our minds, feelings, and events. This truth has a very spiritual foundation. It unifies the ancient past with all of humanity. It ties the Greek Psyche hunting for her Eros to you and your seeking. It blends your ambition (or the lack of it) to the driving concerns of Saturn and time.

Well over 14,000 Asteroids have been given at least numbers and quite a number of identifying names, and these remnants of some cosmic body or bodies play significant roles in our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not—just as the sun affects a blind person who has never seen anything of it rays and blaze.

Aesculapia, Asclepius, Askalaphus, Hygieia all deal with health and well being, along with other healing energies like Hekate, Circe, and Medea. We know this from 1) their myths, and 2) empirical evidence that you can do yourself. Just watch the positions and aspects speak out in natal, transit, progressed, Solar Return, Lunar Return, and Key Cycle charts. (Well okay, you don’t have a computer or the Astrology programs, and you haven’t even heard of these asteroids….) Still the evidence is verifiable, and that’s what I’m here for.

We can just notice that when the Asteroid Aesculapia was within a degree of your Libran Ascendant, you suffered pains in your lower back. Libra corresponds to the kidneys, and Aesculapia deals with illness and remedy to your personal self, your body), so we might suggest you speak to your doctor about a possible kidney infection, especially if Saturn or Hades is aspected.

We can track what happened during the last passes to this place or to your 6^th House of health with the astro-computer’s dynamic abilities.

Actually with midpoints and 70 Asteroids there are dozens and dozens of points that yield specific and accurate information on this and any subject.

PS For those of you in Southern Oregon. You didn’t miss the Grants Pass Body, Mind, Spirit Faire for May at the Fairgrounds! It’s this 2nd Saturday this month (May 10th). I’ll be speaking and showing slides on this Asteroid-Star-Astrology-Spirituality subject at noon. Do join me!

#22. Myth in Ancient Times and Now: Mother and “Death”

Each of us lives out many myths in our events and days. Several of them are directly transported intact for 2000 to 7500 years ago, roundly speaking into your psyche in many ways.

Consider the giant Archetype of the Mother. You either are a mother, and/or have a strong imprint of your physical mother within your psyche, powerfully shaping your life! She is symbolized on our Astrological Map by Moon, Venus, and numerous Asteroids.

She is symbolized by Isis, Inanna, Ishtar, Erishkigal, Persephone, Demeter, Ceres,… in Mythology. The Mother is a double Goddess—of life and death. Mother Demeter and daughter (other Queen) Persephone of the Underworld of “death”—meaning the other world of Inner/Higher Planes of Consciousness.

She is the Mother of the Hero and/or the Minotaur monster. One part of her rules in the Here Plane (Physical Plane); one part of her rules in the Beyond (heaven, hell, Astral Plane). One part of engenders dedicated spiritual Seekers; another part fosters selfish, dominators—cruel to women, children, and the planet.

She is Glinda, the kind Godmother; she is the Wicked Witch who called you unkind and untrue names; she is Medea gone crazy and trying to kill you; she is sorrowful Isis trying to put back together the pieces of her husband/child and having to go to the World of the Dead to do so, just as Inanna did.

What mother myth(s) do you live? There are many more than these of course, and you are contributing your story to the Planetary Akashic record. Knowing these details can help you alter your life story and increase your touch with the Beyond (“Death”) of the Greater Planes of Consciousness.

Be aware of the symbols, especially in your periods of katabasis.

#21. Greek Katabasis—Descent for Our Gain–evil misunderstood

I remember a Thomas Hardy scene in a 1967 film of Far from the Madding Crowd in which sheepherder, Gabriel Oak (played by Alan Bates), having invested everything he had into the animals, watches them fly over a cliff to their deaths in a great storm.  That’s katabasis.

The Greeks understood  the plaything of Fate–each man and woman; they considered humans to be receiving a raw deal of the cards.  Life is hard.  Arachne in the Myth out-weaves Athena but still gets punished with death.  Prometheus gives fire to humanity, and gets his guts torn at by an eagle every day.  The gods prohibit spiritual growth (perhaps hubris) as seen when Bellerophon tries to ride the winged horse Pegasus to Mt. Olympus where the gods reside.

However, long before our time of greater recognitions 18th Century Alexander Pope wrote in “Essay on Man”:

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.”

Basically evil is good misunderstood.  Basically catastrophes and unpleasant experiences work for our benefits spiritually, and probably psychologically and emotionally too.

As many spiritual teachers and writers (like Robert Bly) have pointed out, katabasis is a requisite for Spiritual growth.  The Greeks saw catastrophe as a result of divine meanness and hubris which is our pride, our thinking, and our Karma that invite disaster.

Today we think of the gods as planetary energies like Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn. Astrology has recognized that these energies convey Karma to us in connection with our beliefs, values, and, attitudes. but they also prepare us for the next octave levels of the outer planetary energies of Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. These demand our attention to be directed to the higher planes of consciousness.

#20. We’re in Great Company. Jung used Astrology with Mythology too.

Astrology is the Baby that the scientists threw out with the bathwater. They know not what they do. I forgive them. For Astrology helps us on our tortuous and usually torturous paths of self-development and movement towards Awakening.

Did you know that the great psychologist, Carl Jung, who saw Astrology representing the “summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity,” also trained himself to interpret Astrology charts? Astrology and Mythology mutually describe each other.

He wrote in his letters, “Astrology, like the collective unconscious with which psychology is concerned, consists of symbolic configurations; the ‘planets’ are the gods, symbols of the power of the unconscious.” He saw astrological charts as inroads to the archetypal forces (planetary influences) at work inside ourselves, and can help us to know and realize the Divine Self.

All right! Just the sort of thing we want!

Jung and I have seen proper work with these mighty symbols bringus back in touch with ourselves and Spirit—through Dialogues. First you and I dialogue to identify what’s going on; then you and I together dialogue with your inward forces and through a study of your myths and possibly through your dreams. The Astrological symbols and Myths guide us (just as a Tarot Archetype will) to an image language of powers of the psyche to be recognized and integrated in your life.

The Archetypes (perhaps Emanations) of Spirit address us regularly in simultaneity or synchronicity or coincidence, and often in dreams symbols. Perhaps what’s wanted is for us to climb to our mountaintop in recognition and acceptance of the divine as seen in Johfra’s Capricorn from 1974.

#19. The Bitter Pill of Apparent Defeat—How Do We Cope with our Instinctual and Human Selves?

Remember the Centaur we saw in Sagittarius? Aiming always towards the heaven of our mental and spiritual worlds as we know them, honing his eye towards the true mark Sagittarius makes us forget the lower animal passions that writhe below, yet they do issue forth when they’re least expected. The hidden 12^th House of the Unconscious for Sajj is Scorpio.

Those capturing emotions, whether Scorpionic or some other Sign’s ardor, drench us in the mysteries of the dark side of ourselves—invoking the screams of jealousy, and bitten lips of revenge, the chicanery of theft, diabolism of cruel words, and the tart pleasure of sarcasm and insult. They all stem from the dark part of our personality and negative Unconscious that Carl Jung dubbed the Shadow, or the unintegrated part of our Animus or Anima, or even the unnurtured Child who’s so angry about his past.

The grand Archetypes and their myriad splintered lesser ones have become deeply symbolized in our psych to the degree that we have scant therapeutic access to them. Of course revelation of them and their nature has been catalyzed by mythology, therapy, mediation, and Astrology.

Yet always we ask, How can there be anything good in a brutal murderer? Where is there a hero in that person?

And when we go more deeply and see our own capacities for maliciousness and hatred, we’re forced to question whether we possibly can have any heroic stuff in ourselves? I might get myself not to judge the stupid killer, but I can’t let go of my own mayhem inside. I can’t buy that I can be a hero.

Good. Keep that thought, because the arrogance of the self-satisfied hero creates barriers to opening the Stillness of the Light. I don’t want us to think of ourselves as heroes but merely to act every second as though this might be true.

I want us to take on the dark forces of our anger by being kind as much as is spontaneously possible, forgiving when it seems impossible, in thinking tenderly and compassionately about every person whom we see in our eye and mind.

That can become easy when thinking of JFK, or MLK, but what about their cold-blooded killers?…

Putting that difficult thought aside for a second, I want to remind ourselves that our most heroic act usually isn’t in giving our life for someone else (we seldom get that chance), but in saving ourselves. In walking bravely into the breach of our own pain and choosing love, in preferring Jupiterean paths of expansion, and trine aspects of harmony. When we do that we can look at the cold-blooded killer with different hearts. Then we become heroic.

The ever present aspect of our animal side may haunt us to the end, but the saint has his past and the sinner his future. There’s definitely hope (often found incidentally where the Asteroid, Pandora, sits in your chart..

The real heroism requires the bravery, dedication, love, purity, and, resilience to cross the inner threshold of the limitations of Saturn to the out-of-body Realms to accelerate our Divine Journey to the Spiritual Planes.

#18. Your Role as Personal Hero Unfolding in Your Life and Chart

So here we are. Here you are, caught in the middle of your r riddle which may’ve stopped being amusing, strewn as it is with dead friends and family members that you loved and needed in your chaotic trek across the marshlands of some destiny you don’t seem to be endorsing.

From what I’ve so far said, you can surmise I think all it—the pain, loss, temporary joys, marvelous or disappointing children—has profound importance for each of us. Krishna, Buddha and Jesus all showed us our paths in their lives. They revealed the vicissitudes of the hero-task, and “its sublime import when it is profoundly conceived and solemnly undertaken” (as Campbell eloquently puts it)

My point is that each of is the Christ, the Buddha in a pre-aware state but working just as hard sitting under the Bo Tree or carrying the cross—like the cross and crucifixion of JFK, a hero like yourself.

The horizontal plane is the earth Buddha sat on, the crossbar Jesus hung from, and the ego axis of the Astrology Zodiac. All of us have this cross. All of us have our mission or jobs. All of us seek to bring out that Christ power or Buddha Power in ourselves so that we can rise above our egos and belief in this Physical Plane.

Mythology shows that the effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world. Unlike the heroes of religions, literature, and film, most heroes may not be successful—in one particular incarnation.

But in the long run (many lifetimes) . . .

#17. If I’m My Own Mythic Hero, Why Don’t I Feel or Act Heroic?

#17. If I’m My Own Mythic Hero, Why Don’t I Feel or Act Heroic?

Of our Hero within, both Campbell and major historian Arnold Toynbee speak of our Soul “in coun­teraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back” cries out in anguish at some point along the way like Dante for a hero to come and give battle to our “nursery demons… and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what C. G. Jung has called “the archetypal images.”

This battle may be with our inner Mother or Father; it may take the form of our Anima (our wife), or Animus (boyfriend) who have assumed roles that we can’t stand because we’ve disowned those parts of ourselves; but the battle is always with ourselves, and each of us has to assume the hero role to wield the sword.

When I align my self-image to take responsibility for my situation and blockages, then I start my journey consciously and in deadly earnest.

Although I’ve waited for myself I must draw on Help (prayer, mythology, astrology) which often comes in forms like the Wise Old Man, the Wise Crone, or even a Child (though the first two generally appear in a persistent manner somewhat like “Socrates” in Dan Millman’s The Peaceful Warrior.) These Archetypes may manifest (one could say are sent by God) as a passing stranger at a bus stop, a taxi driver, a figure in a dream, my therapist, the eight-year old girl next store. My job is to pay attention—and avoid resisting which listens to the mind’s thoughts and feelings.

The point is that I must be born anew. I have to kill the Gorgon. I have to actualize the positive aspects of my solar and planetary energies to replace or minimize the negative aspects. The goal is to rise beyond the body to see the Reality of who we are and Who our Source is.

Anything else than this Work is playing in the Sandbox or just surviving.

When do you feel heroic? Probably never. The ego wants to feel heroic and proud. The awakening Soul has too much humility from the recognition of how things are and how blind it has been.

“The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his [or her] personal and local historical limitations” [Campbell].

Throughout all this and other Soulutions, Astrology plays a vital role in guiding and working with your mythic self-images and Archetypes, capable of in Dialogue identifying blockages, strengths, Archetypes, mythologies, paths of response. . . .

#16. The Incurable Wound that Can Lead to Wisdom and Spiritual Liberation

“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in coun­teraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back,” says Joseph Campbell in talking about the hero (with a thousand faces). “Apparently, there is something in these initiatory [mythic] images so necessary to the psyche that if they are not supplied from without, through myth and ritual, they will have to be announced again, through dream, from within—lest our energies should remain locked in a banal, long-outmoded toy­room, at the bottom of the sea.”

Hence my question in an earlier Blog: Are you fulfilling your life’s intentions? Just surviving? Just playing?

Another way of asking this question when trying to assess your growth and Spiritual Path is What mythic story am I living in?

The celebrated painter, Johfra, painted a famous series of the 12 great Astrological Signs. Johfra’s mythic Sagittarius uses the Centaur (perhaps Chiron) to symbolize the Archetype of wisdom, strength, and spirituality. While Jupiter of course has these qualities, Sagittarius is an archer, and Chiron fits all the criteria (though not discovered until 1977, three years after the painting).

Sagittarians work hard and play hard too, especially at sports—until they get caught up with a study or philosophy that captures them, but they seldom just survive. They’re usually shooting for some goal.

Are you Sagittarian? I don’t mean necessarily your Sun sign. Do you have Moon, Mars, Uranus, or an Asteroid there? You may be more Sajj than you think.

And where is your Chiron? The Greeks prized Chiron; this mythic half-horse being symbolizes the half-animal, half-divine hero who is so wise that he teaches the sciences and arts to the gods and heroes. However, after a life of kindness and help to all, he receives an incurable wound from a poisonous arrow sue to no fault of his. Being half-immortal as the son of the great original deity Kronos (time), he begs for release from his torment, so Zeus permits Prometheus, another benefactor to humanity, to trade and have immortality while Chiron greets the welcome Afterlife of the Unconscious.

What’s your Chironic wound that doesn’t heal, perhaps your core wound from childhood and pastlives? What House, Sign and aspects describe your Chiron? What can you do to transcend it?