Apollon - Issue 6

Apollon

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Chiron-Pluto ~ Liz Greene

Leaving Home ~ Glennys Lawton

North Node as Numinosum - Laurence Hillman

The Dalai Lama: Priest-Politician ~ Freda Edis

Pluto, Shamanism, and the Dance of Power ~ Kay Stopforth

The Portent ~ a short story ~ Richard Leigh

Issue 6

January 2001

£6

The Journal of Psychological Astrology

Issue 1 - Creativity Issue 2 - Relationships Issue 3 - Healing Issue 4 - Fate & Prediction Issue 5 - The Child

Apollon

Brother-Sister Marriage ~ Brian Clark

The Eternal Triangle ~ Liz Greene

The Sacred Marriage & The Geometry of Time ~ Robin Heath

Eros & Aphrodite, Love & Creation ~ Erin Sullivan

Neptune and Pluto: Romance in the Underworld ~ Sophia Young

Issue 2

April 1999

£6


Apollon

The Sun-god and the Astrological Sun - Liz Greene

Creativity, Spontaneity, Independence: Three Children Of The Devil - Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig

Whom doth the grail serve? - Anne Whitaker

Fire and the imagination - Darby Costello

Leonard Cohen’s "Secret Chart" - John Etherington

Issue 1

October 1998

£6


Apollon

Astrology As A Healing & A Wounding Art ~ Anne Whitaker

Spirit Child - Melanie Reinhart & Isabella Kirton

Wounding & The Will To Live ~ Liz Greene

The Saturn-Uranus Duet ~ Charles Harvey

Wilderness Transformation Trails ~ Marilyn McDowell & Philomena Byrne

A Fatal Vocation To Witness ~ Suzi Harvey

Issue 3

August 1999

£6


Apollon

The Oracle & The Family Curse ~ Liz Greene

Thinking Magically & Critically ~ Erin Sullivan

The Golden Age ~ Nicholas Campion

Measuring the Daimon ~ Lynn Bell

The Progressed Moon ~ Brian Clark

An Encounter With “The Ambassadors” ~ Simon Chedzey

Issue 4

December 1999

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To order back issues of Apollon, see centre pages

Cover PictureSilenceOil on gesso on paper, painted in 1911 Museum of Modern Art, New York, Lillie P. Bliss CollectionOdilon Redon, b. April 20th 1840, d. July 6th 1916

“Like music”, he declared, “my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeter-minate.” ...Redon's art was always commanded by his dreams, but the thematic content of hiswork over his last twenty years is more densely mythical, brimming with newfound hope andlight which rose quite unexpectedly out of the depths of the artist's personality. This is par-ticularly apparent in the various canvasses depicting the chariot of Apollo, the god of the sun."

Symbolism, Michael Gibson, Taschen

PPublished by:The Centre for PsychologicalAstrologyBCM Box 1815London WC1N 3XXEnglandTel/Fax: +44-20-8749 [email protected]/cpaDirector: Dr Liz GreeneAdmin: Juliet Sharman-Burke

Distribution:John EtheringtonMidheaven Bookshop396 Caledonian RoadLondon N1 1DNEnglandTel: +44-20-7607 4133Fax: +44-20-7700 [email protected]

Advertising:Anne Whitaker74 Victoria Crescent RoadGlasgowG12 9JNScotlandTel/Fax: +44-141-337 [email protected]

Edited by:Dermod Moore4 Midhope HouseMidhope StreetLondon WC1H 8HJEnglandTel: +44-20-7278 9434Fax: +44-20-7209 1648www.astrologer.com/[email protected]

Back Issues:Please see centre pages

Thanks:Anne, for services angelic John & Ruth for patienceLiz, for window-openingBrian, for stone-rolling

Printed by:The Magazine Printing Company PlcMollison Avenue, Enfield EN3 7NTUnited Kingdom

Copyright: ©2001 Centre for Psychological Astrology

All rights reserved

Table of Contents

Editorial 4

Dermod Moore

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 5

Liz Greene

Pluto, Shamanism and the Dance of Power 15

Kay Stopforth

Leaving Home 21

Crossing the Threshold to the Outer World

Glennys Lawton

North Node as Numinosum 27

Laurence Hillman

Film: Gladiator 32

Liz Greene

The Dalai Lama: Priest-Politician 34

A Kabbalistic and Astrological Perspective

Freda Edis

The Portent - A Short Story 48

Richard Leigh

Recollecting our Soul 54

Erin Sullivan

The Hierophant in the Tarot 62

Juliet Sharman-Burke

ApollonThe Journal of Psychological Astrology

Apollon

polon he who causes the heavenly bodies to move together in harmonyhaploun the simple, a euphemism for the complexity of the oracle, which is also honestiepaieon to heal, also to throw or strike (with consciousness)

from Greek and Egyptian Mythologies, compiled by Yves Bonnefoy, transl. Wendy DonigerUniversity of Chicago Press, 1992

CPA Seminar Schedule and CPA Press Order Form - centre pages

page 44 Apollon Issue 6 January 2001

Dermod Moore is aDubliner. A former actorwith Ireland’s NationalTheatre, the Abbey, heholds the Diploma inPsychological Astrologyfrom the CPA, where heteaches. He is a writer,columnist, and Psychosynthesistherapist. He has moderat-ed the discussion group onthe Internet on psychologi-cal astrology since 1995, andruns the Metalog Directoryof Astrologers atwww.astrologer.com.

1 The Man Watching, RainerMaria Rilke, Rag and BoneShop of the Heart, trans.Robert Bly, Harper Collins

EditorialCrisis - what crisis?

Ok, ok, this issue is impossibly, ridiculously,extravagantly late. My apologies. I blame

my chart. I’m Pisces. I’m too spiritual for thisworld, I can’t cope with mundane things likepublishing deadlines - I’m an artiste. Leave me todance naked in the forest under the harvestMoon, thank you very much, I’ll come out whenI’m good and ready, and not a moment sooner.There’s a charming sycamore who’s been onmy dance card all night.

Spiritual emergencies are respected in somecultures - times to reflect, to look within, to

heal, to rest; to discharge the demons that havegathered like static-crackling stormcloudsaround a church steeple, needing to run toground, to earth their crazy energy.

In our Western culture, these periods of deepchange, prior to a deeper acceptance of spiri-

tual values, are frequently pathologised: depres-sions, breakdowns, phobias. Even mourning hasbroken into a suspect, unproductive state, to be“remedied” with medication. Astrologers, ofcourse, can be just as reductive, hiding behindjargon to describe someone engrossed in asoul-forging pilgrimage to the unknown andback: oh, he’s just having Pluto square hisJupiter-Moon midpoint. Well, that’s alright,then. That explains everything.

In attempting to describe the ineffable qualityof spirituality, even the most skilled word-

smiths are often silenced. But it’s always worthtrying. This issue, spirituality is our theme.

To start, Liz Greene sets the tone by lookingat the challenges to our philosophical and

spiritual worldview that the Chiron-Pluto con-junction in Sagittarius has brought. Then, KayStopforth introduces us to the modern practiceof shamanism, and a brief look at its history. Shesuggests that Pluto is the main significator of theshamanic journey, and looks at the charts ofshamanistic practitioners to support her view.

As a counterpoint to this issue’s theme, wehave Glennys Lawton addressing the astro-

logical and psychological issues relating to leav-ing home. Then, we have Laurence Hillmanshining some light on the often nebulous con-cept of the Moon’s Nodes, in a clear andinsightful way.

If you subscribe to the idea that spirituality is alllove and pacifism and fluffiness, there’s Liz

again, urging us to share her enthusiasm forRussell Crowe’s heroic Martial characterMaximus in her review of the film Gladiator.

Freda Edis joins us to offer a Kabbalistic andastrological perspective on the life of the

Fourteenth Dalai Lama, one of the more attrac-tive of the world’s spiritual leaders, who is alsotreading a difficult path leading a political move-ment to free Tibet.

Richard Leigh then offers us a beguiling andatmospheric short story, entitled The

Portent - ripe with mythic resonances. ErinSullivan then examines the issues raised by thenumber of clients asking for spiritual guidance;what it means on a personal and societal level.And, lastly, Juliet Sharman-Burke completes thisissue with her customarily informative look atthe Tarot, this time introducing us to the priest-ly figure of the Hierophant.

As a recidivist Irish Catholic, spirituality hasnever been an easy thing for me to digest.

Having grown up in a theocracy, where all sortsof crimes were committed in the name of so-called “spiritual” values, it requires a special leapof faith to start believing again. Religion is themost profound divider of humanity, as well asunifier. I would hazard a guess that those whoare reading this journal are on a quest forsomething far subtler than religion - perhaps afine tuning in to that subtle melody of lovingserendipity.

And that’s all we have time for this issue.We’re taking a break from publication,

hopefully not for too long, to see if we canregroup, and establish a firm enough containerto hold all this Apollonian light - it burnspotently, and attracts maenads. But it’s alwaysworth the attempt to get it right, for therewards are sublime. Spiritual growth, or Self-love, is described beautifully by Rilke, whospeaks of an Old Testament angel:

Whoever was beaten by this Angel(who often simply declined the fight)went away proud and strengthenedand great from that harsh hand, that kneaded

him as if to change his shape.Winning does not tempt that man.This is how he grows: by being defeated,

decisively, by constantly greater beings.

1

LLiz Greene holds aDoctorate in Psychologyand the Diploma of theFaculty of AstrologicalStudies, and is a qualifiedJungian analyst. She works asa professional astrologerand analyst, and teaches andlectures extensivelythroughout Europe. She is aPatron of the Faculty ofAstrological Studies. She isthe author of many bookson astrological and psycho-logical themes, includingSaturn, Relating, Astrology forLovers, The Astrology of Fate,and The Astrological Neptuneand the Quest forRedemption. She lives inSwitzerland. The MythicJourney, written with JulietSharman-Burke, has beenpublished by Gothic Image.

For those of us who are inveterate planetarycycle-watchers, the limelight was stolen for

much of this year by the Jupiter-Saturn conjunc-tion - with which we may associate not onlyrecent stock market wobbles, but also the per-vasive sense of an old era ending and a new onebeginning. There has been a lot of anxiety about.Much of our millennium hysteria, crystallising inprophecies of the end of the world and rampantoverstocking of tinned food and toilet paper, wasenergised not only by the solar eclipse in August1999, but also by the gradual approach of thisgreat cyclical conjunction which made its exactaspect at the end of May 2000. In ancient andmedieval astrology, the conjoining of Jupiter andSaturn signifies the death of the old king and thebirth of a new one; and in many arenas we arecontinuing to observe the gradual ending of oldvalue systems and outworn structures, especiallyin political and economic spheres.

However, there is another major planetaryconjunction which has been within orb for

over a year, largely ignored by astrologers: per-haps subtler in terms of related worldly events,but equally relevant to our “state of mind” and,more importantly, our “state of spirit”, as a col-lective and as individuals. This is the cyclical con-junction of Pluto and Chiron, which is presentlyoccurring in Sagittarius. Chiron enteredSagittarius in January 1999. It dipped back intoScorpio during July, August and September, andre-entered Sagittarius in October. It made itsonly exact conjunction with Pluto in the last daysof December, 1999. Although these two planetsmade no more exact conjunctions, theyremained within orb of conjunction throughout2000, and will not part until February 2001. Theirinteraction will have lasted for a full two years.

As astrologers, we tend to look first at world-ly events to make some sense of major

planetary aspects in the heavens. But this maynot be the only, nor even the most helpful, wayin which we may grasp the deeper meaning ofsuch aspects and what they have to offer us. Wecan certainly get insights from events; but eventsare difficult to define. When, for example, doesa marriage end? When the two people divorce,

or when the relationship dies on the emotionallevel? These two “events”, one concrete and theother emotional, may occur years apart. Or wemay look at five different automobile accidentsin which the driver has died, and say that theyare the same “event”. But the first occurred dueto drunken driving, the second occurredbecause the driver was speeding, the thirdoccurred because a flat tyre threw the car outof control, the fourth occurred because ofanother driver’s idiocy, and the fifth occurredbecause the driver had a heart attack at thewheel. These apparently identical events aredeeply different in cause and meaning. Or wemay say, “When Saturn and Uranus formed aconjunction in Taurus and Gemini during the20th century, World War II occurred.” But warshave always occurred, with or without Saturn-Uranus conjunctions. What matters is thenature of a particular war, its “motives” and“purpose”, its effects on the people involved,and, ultimately, the archetypal backgroundwhich infuses that particular conflict.

Transiting planetary aspects do not describeevents. Events describe aspects. These

aspects in turn reflect archetypal patterns whichmight or might not manifest as events, in partdepending on the choices of all those who arereceptive to, or identified with, the pattern.Transits such as Jupiter-Saturn or Chiron-Plutoreflect something “inner”, something which isactivated in the psychic life of the collective as itunfolds and reaches critical junctures and trans-formative stages. These transits are inside us. Forthe first part of 2000, we all discovered a little ofhow it feels to have a natal Jupiter-Saturn con-junction in Taurus; and we are continuing to dis-cover how it feels to have a natal Chiron-Plutoconjunction in Sagittarius. We all share in theresponsibility of dealing with these planetarymovements as creatively as possible. How wefeel, what we experience, and how we ourselvesenact and embody these transits, knowingly orunknowingly, is as relevant as what “happens” inthe world outside. We are not the victims orpawns of planetary movements; we are, each ofus, creative participants in the shaping of thefuture course of events.

Apollon Issue 6 January 2001 page 5

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:The Chiron-Pluto conjunctionLiz Greene

If Liz Greene’s writing were edible, this article, on the current Sagittarian ferment, wouldtaste like pickle; a sharp sauerkraut, or an edgy borscht with sour cream - for this is the flavourof the Chiron-Pluto conjunction. An acquired taste, perhaps, repellent to some, but rich, nutri-tious soulfood for those who are digging in and are here to stay.

Olivia & George Harrison

1 There is, admittedly, a lotof confusion about GeorgeHarrison's birth time.According to Taeger'sInternationales HoroskopeLexikon, Harrison was bornon 25 February 1943 at00.05 local time (23.05GMT on the 24th) inLiverpool. Taeger classesthis data as Group 2P,which means fairly reliablebecause it is an autobio-graphical statement. This isthe chart data I have usedabove. However, accordingto Frank C. Clifford inBritish Entertainers: TheAstrological Profiles (FlarePublications, London,1997), Harrison, in aninterview with Tashi Gradyin Billboard, stated that hisastrologer had rectified hischart to 23.52 local time or22.52 GMT, giving him anAscendant of 0º Scorpio.The progressed Ascendantfor this birth time would be7º Sagittarius, although thePluto-Chiron conjunctionwould still have been oppo-site his progressed Saturn.

Although able to freely offer that piece ofgood advice, I of course disregarded it myself

when first observing this important planetaryaspect, and initially I tried to see if I could identifyany worldly events with what I understood to bethe meaning or flavour of the Chiron-Pluto con-junction in Sagittarius. This is, in the main, a fruit-less exercise, for we see what we want to see.But Chiron’s peculiar relationship with the suffer-ing of the “outsider” seemed clearly enactedwhen, on a trip to London at the end of April1999, I arrived just in time to hear about theSoho pub bomb, a little piece of atrocity target-ing the London gay community, killing a numberof people and injuring a great many more. Thiswas the third in a series of bomb attacks whichtook place within a two-week time span, the firsttargeting blacks and the second the Bangladeshicommunity, organised by one psychopath deter-mined to terrorise “minority” groups in the city.Terrorist bombs are an everyday occurrencethese days. But these attacks had a differentflavour from most. They were not political innature, but revealed that most frightening anddangerous of human propensities: the fanaticalintolerance and destructiveness which arise whenwe project the despised and feared “outsider” inourselves on others around us, and see them asa threat to our survival.

In December 1999, when the conjunction wasexact, I waited to see what might appear in the

papers over the next few days. Lo and behold:the stabbing of the George Harrison, the “quietBeatle”, occurred on 30th December 1999.What, I wondered, could this event possiblymean in terms of the collective psyche? Harrisonwas always the least obtrusive of the Beatles. Helives a private, introverted life, as befits his PiscesSun, Scorpio Ascendant, and Scorpio Moon. Didthis strange event mean anything at all, except toGeorge himself? It did smack of scapegoating:there was George innocently minding his ownbusiness, and horror intruded from the worldoutside. In George’s progressed chart, theAscendant had moved from 2º 23’ Scorpio to 9º14’ Sagittarius, with the transiting conjunction(Chiron at 11º 13’, Pluto at 11º 20’) sitting closeto this progressed Ascendant and within a degreeof orb of opposition to progressed Saturn. Thissuggested that George was inadvertently serving

as a kind of lightning conductor for the energiesof the Chiron-Pluto zeitgeist, and would be likelyto meet, in his immediate environment, anembodiment of the meaning of the conjunction.On 31st December, the day after the attemptedmurder, The Sunday Times produced the follow-ing headline, and another noseful of Chiron-Pluto’s distinctive odour wafted by on the breeze:

“STABBING SUSPECT THOUGHTBEATLES WERE WITCHES”

The components of the conjunction

Pluto reflects the instinctive survival mechanismof the collective, and of nature itself. It is

impersonal and ruthless, as nature herself is; oneextinct species, one dead animal, is as nothing inthe overall sweep of the evolution of organic life.When we are threatened with extinction, physi-cal or psychological, we discover that we havePluto in our chart. That which wishes to survivemust destroy or transform what is life-threateningor no longer viable, internally and externally; andthe process of cleansing of dangerously outwornand useless survival mechanisms, regeneratingnew survival mechanisms, is reflected by Pluto’s246-year transit through the zodiacal signs. OurPluto generation - the age group born with Plutoin a particular sign - shares fundamental ways ofdefending itself in the face of what we perceive asa survival threat. Pluto moving through eachastrological sign describes the changing spheresand ways in which the collective weeds out thoseelements which threaten its survival. None of uswill live to see a complete Pluto cycle; we are partof something larger, in which our individual livesand deaths are embedded. Therefore we have totake it on trust.

Since Pluto entered Sagittarius, we have beenforced to confront what threatens our physi-

cal and psychological survival in the spheres ofmorality, religious beliefs, spiritual aspirations, law,our concepts of right and wrong, and our defini-tions of the “highest good”. So far, we have runthe gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime:from the pantomime of Monica Lewinsky and theimpeachment of the US President to whether weintervene in the bloodshed in Kosovo or SierraLeone, and whether the death penalty is any kindof solution at all to the problem of humandestructiveness. We have been told by theVatican in no uncertain terms that consulting anastrologer or a psychoanalyst constitutes a sin asserious as contraception. We are being facedwith a barrage of moral questions which are notas simple to answer as they might once haveseemed. Behind these moral questions are deep-er spiritual questions: What God do we, as a col-lective and as individuals, believe in? Do webelieve in anything at all any longer? Slowly but


Inner Chart: George Harrison25 February 194300.05 local time(23.05 GMT on the 24th) Liverpool(See note opposite re time)Middle Chart:George HarrisonSecondary Progressions attime of attackOuter Chart:George Harrison attacked3:00 am GMT30 December 1999Henley-on-ThamesSource: BBC

TropicalGeocentricTrue Node

inexorably, Pluto reveals to us our dangerous reli-gious blindness, our naivety, our infantile belief inthe “goodness” of authority and the moral right-ness of the legal and spiritual systems we havecreated, and our desperate allegiance to politicaland spiritual gurus who promise quick fixes andan over-the-counter antidote to the condition ofbeing human. Pluto in Sagittarius also raises issuesof the foreigner and what is foreign, forcing us torecognise that, for some, survival depends oncrossing the borders - physical, mental, emotion-al, spiritual - to find a new life, while for others,survival depends on keeping the borders closed.

Chiron, pursuing its erratic orbit betweenSaturn and Uranus, stands at the interface

between the individual and the collective. Wesuffer as individuals, not only because of personalconflicts, but also because we are part of thehuman species, and our human collective is

inevitably torn between the animal and the divine.We make terrible mistakes through our emo-tional and instinctual compulsions, and equallythrough our intellectual arrogance; yet we needto understand why we suffer, and are foreverseeking ways of healing our wounds. Chirondescribes the compassionate impulse to pursueand offer wisdom, and to heal ourselves and oth-ers - not from a Neptunian vision of oneness, butbecause we all, somewhere, experience a senseof irrevocable wounding or damage through fac-tors over which we have had no control. Oururge to heal the world’s pain is always, sooner orlater, doomed to disappointment, becausehumans are what they are and life is always unfair;and there are some things we cannot fix. Yet wepersist in trying. The myth of Chiron describes awise teacher and healer who is caught in thecross-fire of a battle between Herakles, the solarhero, and the wild and savage centaurs. Chiron is


good and wise, yet he is injured and suffers - per-haps because he is good and wise, and under-stands both sides, and thus will not join the bat-tle. The archetypal struggle between light anddarkness, through which, over aeons, we gradual-ly civilise ourselves, inevitably breeds casualties,reminding us that our aspirations can only be ful-filled within mortal human limits.

The 50-year cycle of Chiron through the signsdescribes those changing spheres in which

we experience our greatest wounding, disillusion-ment, and bitterness, through encounters withdestructive impulses in ourselves and in the col-lective about which we can do nothing, andwhere we may feel blameless and scapegoated.Our Chiron generation group describes thoseways in which we experience ourselves as injuredirrevocably - rendered permanently alien and“outside” - and where we are most likely to expe-rience disillusionment and bitterness. This is alsothe arena where - if we remain unconscious - weare likely to project what is most injured in our-selves. It also describes those spheres where ourquestioning, born of suffering, can lead us todeepen and mature in our beliefs and convictions,and can open our hearts in compassion for allcreatures which suffer through the condition ofbeing mortal. While Chiron transits throughSagittarius, we are, as a collective, compelled toexperience disillusionment and loss of faith as weare faced with our moral errors and hypocrisies,our spiritual gullibility, our misjudgements andprejudices, and our impossible hope that life willalways be fair and the good guys on white hors-es will always win.

Where Chiron is concerned, healing seemsto involve relinquishing any claim to

immortality or divine power. When he is wound-ed, the mythic Chiron retires to his cave in agonyand begs for death, which is granted to him; thushe descends from an immortal to a mortal form,and is freed from his suffering. This myth suggeststhat Chiron’s healing is not about “fixing” things,but about relinquishing the fantasy that we aregodlike and capable of changing everything. Theacceptance of mortality is also the acceptance ofhuman limits, and the recognition of our vulnera-bility. We all partake not only of heroic solar aspi-rations, but also of the savage centaurs’ destruc-tiveness; and in Chiron’s world, no amount ofself-purification can purge us of our humannessor heal the wounds of our disappointed ideals.Only an acceptance of imperfection and unfair-ness, in ourselves and in life, can allow us to for-give and make peace with those things we can-not alter or redeem. It may be that the passageof Chiron through Sagittarius is presently reflect-ing a profound impetus for us to mature, in termsof both our God-image and the ways in whichwe define good and evil.

CChiron-Pluto on the individual level

Because we are still in the middle of this con-junction, it is hard to get a clear perspective

on it in global terms. When I began to work onthis article, I had no idea what I would find in theway of historical parallels for earlier Chiron-Pluto conjunctions, and I had no collection offacts with which to “prove” any preconceivedhypothesis. I do have experience of manyclients, however, who, born under the last con-junction of Chiron and Pluto in 1941, and alsounder the long opposition between them duringthe 1960’s, seem to carry or have carried -- atsome point in their lives - a very particular senseof alienation and scapegoating, of rage againstlife, of feeling at the mercy of collective forcesthey cannot cope with. Deep mistrust and bit-terness are sometimes characteristic of both theconjunction and the opposition, but often thiscannot not be linked with specific childhoodissues. Also, the bitterness may be unconscious,like an unhealed abscess, drawing hurtful situa-tions which seem to come from “outside”.Chiron and Pluto together form a coalitionwhich, if unconscious, believes that offence is thebest defence in the face of a survival threat, andthat life is an unsafe place in which the weak, the“different ones” who do not belong, are wound-ed and victimised, and only the powerful survive.I have found that healing, for many born withthese aspects, seems to begin first with recog-nising the bitterness, and accepting that some ofthe mistrust is valid and true, given our sorryhuman history. This may involve relinquishing afalse spirituality which masks considerableanguish underneath; and it may also require fac-ing one’s own savagery and complicity, oftenunconsciously enacted. Opening this secretwound can help the individual to discover,through real experience, that, despite life’sunfairness, individuals and collectives can also bemotivated by good will and compassion; and thiskind of realism can help the individual to makepeace with the past.

Those with planets in the first two decanatesof the mutable signs have been experienc-

ing the Chiron-Pluto conjunction very power-fully. When this conjunction makes hard aspectsto personal planets, the individual is challengedand awakened, in the sphere of the natal plan-et, through painful memories, re-enactments ofpast suffering, and a recognition of the darkerelements in human nature. External events suchas losses and separations are possible; illness isalso possible; but more common are innerevents such as depression, a sense of failure,and a feeling that the past is repeating itself andone is trapped in something which cannot bechanged. Confrontation with the inevitable mayinitially fill the person with feelings of impo-


tence, powerlessness, and victimisation. Theeffects of such experiences, because the transit-ing conjunction is in Sagittarius, make a pro-found impact on the individual’s world-view,spiritual convictions, definitions of “right” behav-iour, and trust in the future. I believe the poten-tial this transiting conjunction brings to natalplanets is to mature them, making them deep-er, subtler, and wiser, and bringing about anacceptance of life’s limits which allows a greaterpossibility of joy and compassion because one’sexpectations are no longer impossibly high.Through one’s personal experiences of pain,one joins the human race. This transit reflectschildhood’s end, and challenges our innate nar-cissism. We may experience sadness, grief, andmourning for what is irrevocably lost: on a per-sonal level, and in the spheres of hope, faith,religious beliefs, spiritual aspirations, and trust inlegal and religious institutions and systems ofknowledge. Pluto in Sagittarius precipitates seri-ous rethinking and re-evaluation in thesespheres. But the presence of Chiron hereteaches us that some things cannot be fixed,and that our determination to survive may blindus to the ways in which we injure others as wellas ourselves.

TThe peculiarities of the Chiron-Pluto cycle

Certain oddities occur in this planetary con-junction cycle which do not occur in the

cycles of other pairs of planets. The conjunctionsof Chiron and Pluto occur roughly 60 yearsapart. But due to their elliptical orbits, the con-junctions only seem to occur in four signs of thezodiac: early Sagittarius, early Gemini, early Leo,and late Pisces. Our present Sagittarian conjunc-tion echoes the previous Sagittarius conjunctionin 1752-1753; the Leo conjunction in 1941-42repeated the earlier Leo conjunction of 1697;the conjunction in Gemini in 1881-1885 repeat-ed the earlier one of 1642-43s; and the 1818-1821 conjunction at the end of Pisces repeatedthe 1579-82 conjunction. What this patternmight mean in terms of the evolution of the col-lective baffles me; but it is a very succinct pattern,as though we only experience the challenge, suf-fering, and potential healing of the Chiron-Plutoconjunction through very particular spheres ofexperience. We cannot assume that events of aclear and unambiguous kind, easily attached tothe meaning of the two planets, will occur underevery conjunction. In fact, we have to admit that,contrary to popular expectation, nothing espe-cially enormous “happened” at the dawn of themillennium, except irrational exuberance on theNasdaq, some very exciting parties, and a gener-al sense of disappointment because the worlddid not actually end. Yet we are facing particularmoral and spiritual challenges at the momentwhich are affecting individuals and collectivesvery powerfully.

The 20th century conjunction cycle

Historical research can, however, sometimesgive us glimpses, if not answers. A brief

exploration of the previous conjunction ofChiron and Pluto might be useful at this point.Chiron entered Leo in October 1940. It joinedPluto for an exact conjunction in July 1941, in 4ºLeo. Although they made only one exact con-junction, they were within orb of conjunction, ini-tially out-of-sign, through the second half of 1940,and continued within orb through the summer of1942. During the closest phase of this conjunc-tion, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, andHitler invaded Russia, resulting in the debacle ofStalingrad and the loss of millions of German andRussian lives. The Chiron-Pluto conjunction land-ed exactly on Hitler’s natal MC at 4º Leo, andwidely conjuncted his Saturn in the 10th house -perhaps reflecting an activation of the Leoninearchetype of imperial grandeur and dominationand the divine right of kings as a mode of survival,but with dark roots that fed on long-forgottengrievances harking back to ancient Teutonic/Slavicconflicts of the past. The mythology of a superiorrace destined to rule the world perhaps alsobelongs to this Leonine archetype, and was, itshould be remembered, adopted by many peo-ple in many nations during the time of the con-junction. This was a universal Zeitgeist, and notmerely the creation of one mad Austrian with afunny moustache; and the sound of marchingjackboots could be heard in America and Britainas well as in the streets of Berlin. Sir OswaldMoseley and George Lincoln Rockwell were notGerman exports. They were home-grown.Transiting conjunctions of outer planets reflectsomething happening in the collective psyche,which means that they happen within each of us.Until we understand this, we will continue to seekanswers to life’s barbarity in isolated individualswho, although we deem them evil, could neverwield such psychological power over so manyunless they were mouthpieces for some spirit ofthe time moving in the depths within all of us.

When Chiron and Pluto meet, an ancientsurvival mechanism is activated, some-

times quite savagely, rooted in memories ofancestral wounds. Also, perhaps most important-ly, the theme of the scapegoat - peculiarly con-nected with Chiron - is invoked. This was playedout, under the exact conjunction in 1941, in thesetting up by the Nazis of the first exterminationcamps, and the beginning of the systematic mur-der of “outsiders” - Jews, gypsies, Slavs, andhomosexuals - throughout Russia and Poland.Hitler also invaded Yugoslavia under this Chiron-Pluto conjunction, on 6th April 1941, with,according to recent reports, the encouragementand support of Pope Pius XII. This is a sad andhorrific judgement on the leader of a great reli-


gious institution, only revealed - with awful apt-ness - during the present conjunction of Chiron-Pluto in Sagittarius. And under the same aegis, inAugust 1941, Slobodan Milosevich was born,with the Moon conjunct Pluto conjunct Chiron inthe 4th house. When, later in this particularChiron-Pluto cycle, Chiron moved into Leo in1992-93 and formed the incoming square toPluto in Scorpio, Milosevich began his policy of“ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia. The themes of theChiron-Pluto conjunction of 1941 have contin-ued to reverberate over the 60 years betweenthat conjunction and the present one, revealingto us what we are capable of when our woundsbecome survival issues and feed on a centuries-old past; and also pointing toward a potentialchange in consciousness that might allow forgive-ness and a letting go of the past.

The first square of the 1941 cycle occurredwith Chiron in Scorpio and Pluto in Leo.

They were in exact square only once, inNovember 1947, in 14º. The oppositionbetween Pluto and Chiron occurred betweenChiron in Pisces and Pluto in Virgo. This opposi-tion lasted for a long time. Chiron entered Piscesin April 1960. The two planets made eight exactoppositions between July 1961, in 6º, andNovember 1965, in 18º. Uranus was alsoinvolved in this configuration in its later phases,and Saturn was likewise involved in the last twooppositions as it transited through mid-Pisces.Many people are born with these double oppo-sitions. It is a generation group signature of a par-ticularly powerful kind. The oppositions coincidedwith the height of social unrest during the 1960’s,with Kennedy’s assassination, with student riotsand “flower power”, and also with the outbreakof the Vietnam War. The disruptions of the1960’s are usually blamed on Uranus conjunctPluto. Yet the elements of bitterness and disillu-sionment, present at the very beginning, are, tomy mind, characteristic of Chiron’s involvement.This was a time when the scapegoats, the “out-siders”, rose in rebellion against what they expe-rienced as life-threatening power structures, inpolitics, society, and religious institutions. Manyborn under this opposition feel victimised, orcarry immense bitterness at life’s unfairness, andbattle against oppression, sometimes violently, ona deep, instinctive survival level; and they havefew illusions about the good intentions of others.Many of them also feel impelled to change theworld, to cleanse the wounds, to heal the bitter-ness. It is perhaps worth noting that PrincessDiana was born under the first exact oppositionof Chiron in Pisces and Pluto in Virgo, in July1961.

The final square of the 1941 Chiron-Plutocycle took place with Chiron in Leo and Pluto

in Scorpio. They were exactly square for the first

time in 22/23º during November/December1992, and they were exactly square for the sec-ond and last time in 23º in July 1993. It was dur-ing this period that the marriage of Prince Charlesand Princess Diana broke down; this was onlyone surface sign of a general sense of pain anddisillusionment around issues of sexual fidelity andloyalty, sexual promiscuity and the transmission ofAIDS. With Chiron again in the sign connectedwith the divine right of kings, disillusionment withall those Leonine emblems in the outer worldwas perhaps inevitable, and enacted, on one smallstage, by the British royal family.

The Chiron-Pluto conjunction of the late19th century

It is worth briefly mentioning the Chiron-Plutoconjunction at the end of the 19th century,

although it is long ago and we have less personalassociations with it than we do with the 1941conjunction. Yet it, too, echoes the themes ofcollective suffering and a powerful survival instinctunleashed through the finding of a scapegoat -this time justified by “scientific knowledge”. Thisconjunction occurred in the early 1880’s, at thebeginning of Gemini - directly opposite our pre-sent Chiron-Pluto conjunction in Sagittarius.During this period, colonial expansion of theEuropean powers (especially in Africa) was at itspeak; perhaps it is dreadfully fitting that now,under the present Chiron-Pluto in Sagittarius, weare observing the inevitable backlash, as scape-goat becomes scapegoater in places such asZimbabwe. Also rampant during the Gemini con-junction was the promulgation of the concept of“inferior” races; indeed, the scramble for the rawwealth of Africa was justified on this basis.Pseudo-scientific doctrines issued by theUniversity of Vienna, and subsequently spreadingacross Europe, proclaimed that some races wereinnately inferior, which included not only the Jews,but also the Swiss - for it was believed that theinability to speak correct and properly pro-nounced High German indicated a congenital fail-ing signifying racial inferiority. This insidious doc-trine eventually worked its way into Nazi propa-ganda, and is still believed by many. Yet also dur-ing this time, major discoveries were made inmedicine: Koch discovered the TB bacillus,Pasteur developed preventive immunisation foranthrax and then successfully innoculated againstrabies. The colonial expansion and accompanyingassumption that the white man had to bringenlightenment to the “heathen” inferior races,and the doctrines of racial superiority, encapsu-late the destructive expression of this Chiron-Pluto in Gemini, which equated survival with sci-entific knowledge utilised against the “outsider”.The scientific discoveries of this time encapsulatethe healing potential of the conjunction: disease,itself an “outsider”, can only be fought if it isrecognised and understood.


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The millennium conjunction

With Chiron-Pluto now in Sagittarius, one ofthe archetypal themes which has been

activated is fear of the foreign (xenophobia,toward both people and “outside” influences).Our compassionate impulse to welcome the out-cast stranger is polarised with our fear of thepotential destruction wrought by those who donot respect our own values and social structures.An immense influx of wanderers is polarised witha rising xenophobic spirit. Sagittarius is a dual sign,and is often self-contradictory in its morality; it isboth the originator of the “Do as I say but not asI do” ethos, and the quickest of all the signs to per-ceive and decry such hypocrisy in others. This iswhy the Monica Lewinsky episode was so hilari-ous - even, eventually, to Americans themselves.To illustrate the strangeness of this Sagittariandichotomy, I would like to quote a man who hadthe Sun conjunct Jupiter in Sagittarius: HeinrichHimmler, who said, “We must be honest, decent,loyal, and comradely to members of our ownblood, and to nobody else. What happens to aRussian, to a Czech, does not interest me in theslightest.” The thorny issue of immigration ispresently heating to boiling point in the collectivepsyche, and clearly linked with the Chiron-Plutoconjunction in Sagittarius; and realistic fears areinflamed in otherwise reasonably inclined individu-als by ancient memories of invasion and thedestruction, and transformation, of culture andsociety by the “outsider”.

We are painfully polarised, both outside andwithin ourselves. This ancient fear has

erupted notwithstanding the demographic evi-dence of population drops in all the Europeancountries, including Catholic Italy; despite this,there is resistance against making up the numberswith those of foreign origins. Political correctnessis part of this strange constellation, an attempt topresent an unprejudiced stance; but it is frequent-ly sadly ineffectual, often grossly hypocritical, andtends to constellate its opposite. Humans arewounding other humans badly at the moment; weare confused and bewildered when we find our-selves capable of blind hatred and prejudice, andequally confused and bewildered when we dis-cover that our compassion and generosity may becoldly and ruthlessly exploited. Political leaderssuch as Jörg Haider (who, born on 26 January1950, has Chiron in 18º Sagittarius in close trine toPluto in 17º Leo) use emotional methods toachieve power, playing on our ancient atavisticfears, and many decry such tactics; yet we wouldnot respond so powerfully, pro or con, if we didnot experience, somewhere within, ancient ter-rors being aroused. Beyond the economic andsocial issues lies a much deeper issue: What is theright thing to do? How deeply do we believe ourown religious tenets? Gullibility and cynicism vie

within us, depriving us of clarity of thought andaction, and undermining our confidence in ourown decency.

Under Chiron-Pluto, our dark collectivesecrets can no longer be kept; they burst like

boils for all the world to see. Scandals in the polit-ical arena are forcing us to rethink our values. Filmslike Erin Brockovich present us with the issue of theindividual’s power or lack of power to challengethe destructive irresponsibility of large companiesand institutions, yet also reveal that, even if wesucceed, we cannot heal what has already beenirrevocably destroyed. And where, in the midst ofour stone-throwing, is our own collusion?Compensation money will not raise the dead, noreradicate the horrors of the past, nor address theroots of the dilemma; we have yet to discover thisin the midst of our new-found fervour to take ourmisery to the law courts and barter it for cash.Communication, now global and instantaneous,may be used as a means, not only of revelation ofthe truth and a release of ancient suffering, butalso of inflammation of ancient grievances: thetransformation of the scapegoat into the scape-goater. We know, from a psychological perspec-tive, that the perpetrators of crimes against “out-siders” usually experience themselves as painfully,irrevocably, incurably “outside”. Do we police theinternet to root out “hate” groups, or do we hon-our our belief that freedom of speech is one ofthe fundaments of a democratic society? Do wepillory a nation which has democratically electedan extreme right-wing leader, while condoning theequally repellent excesses of the extreme left?The exposé of the collusion of Pope Pius XII andHitler comes, appropriately for Chiron-Pluto, atthe moment when the present Pope has seen fitto offer his version of an apology for the Church’spast wrongs. It should come as no surprise thatmany individuals question the sincerity of suchapologies, and the moral integrity of the edificewhich has offered them; and, once again, we arethrown back into the painful questioning and disil-lusionment which accompany this Chiron-Plutoconjunction in Sagittarius. And, finally, our painseems to be making us question, rather thanmerely blindly exterminating.

What is important for us, as individuals, is theways in which these factors operate with-

in each of us. We all have our struggles with thatwhich is foreign, and we may identify either withthe foreigner or the native, the scapegoat or thescapegoater. We need to avoid projecting thisstruggle outside, and deal with its implicationsinside. Otherwise we simply wind up signingextremist petitions against immigration, or peti-tions against right-wing extremists, without havinglearned anything at all about where extremes canlead. Chiron-Pluto raises ancient hurts which makeus polarise in a highly emotive way, because we



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remember, in our blood and bones, the centuries-old wounds which cannot be redressed.

Milosevich, as I have pointed out, was bornunder the conjunction in Leo; he acted out

its most devastating dimension by perpetrating onothers the savagery he and his people had experi-enced themselves. Yet many people born underthis conjunction see all too well the destructivepotentials inherent in nursing past grievances, andthey commit themselves deeply to the path ofhealing and teaching. This is the positive face ofChiron-Pluto. Yet the enlightened healer may him-self or herself also suffer, or be victimised by forcesbeyond any individual’s control. The good guysmay also be casualties in any war, inner or outer.Chiron-Pluto gives us the opportunity to see ourown evil as a collective, to peer deep into the poi-son of our ancient wounds, and to find a new per-spective which can allow us to make peace withthe flawed nature of our human inheritance.

Forgiveness and humility are essential for this con-junction, and we badly need it now; without thesequalities, at least in some small degree, we polariseand find ourselves acting out the savagery in big orlittle ways, without consciousness and withoutmoral reflection. We may well feel bitternessabout the unfairness or corruptness of the law, orof our politicians, or of our religious institutions.We may be furiously frustrated by the fruitless pur-suit of Serbian war criminals, or the endless trials ofgarden-variety thugs who walk free because alawyer’s cleverness has proved more powerfulthan the blatant truth. We may sometimes aban-don hope for Palestine, for Kosovo, for NorthernIreland, for Rwanda, for Chechnya, for Zimbabwe,for Sierra Leone. We are likely to be disappointedin all of these things because even our best effortswill give us only compromises, not solutions, andthe dead will not rise again. Yet we have to find away to live with these things, and keep our faith inwhatever we define as the highest good.

Even astrologers often do not want to lookat these issues; they come up uninvited,

personally and collectively, when Pluto andChiron are in aspect, and they are then forcedupon us. In “New Age” circles, such themes areoften not spoken of, because they are deemed“negative” and “unspiritual”. We are thinkingnow more than we did in 1941, and perhapsmore than in 1883 when we assumed ourracial superiority. We have, perhaps, a littlemore consciousness at present than we didduring earlier Pluto-Chiron conjunctions. Thewanderer, the scapegoat, the wounded healer,the healing wound; these are Chiron’s themes.Survival, fight to the death, the end of thatwhich has outlived its usefulness, the cleansingof the past, the desperate need for a newworld-view: these are Pluto’s themes. This is

not a cheerful conjunction, yet it could free usfrom so much, in our personal lives and as acollective. The myth of Chiron concerns hisfinal acceptance of death, because he can nolonger bear his pain as an immortal. Perhaps,under this conjunction, we need to relinquishour infantile dreams of immortality, of beinglooked after by a divine, caring State, or bybelieving that, in our personal lives as well as inthe world outside, goodness is always immedi-ately recognisable and rewarded, and evil pun-ished. Healing, for Chiron-Pluto, comes with amysterious blend of hard realism and profoundcompassion: accepting the world as it is, whileavoiding bitterness, passive resignation, and thestance of the victim. This, I believe, is the deep-est meaning of the Chiron-Pluto conjunctionand what it is presently offering us.


KKay Stopforth is a shamanicpractitioner, writer andastrologer. She has trainedin shamanism for about fiveyears and is committed todeveloping a grounded spir-itual practice relevant topeople today. She has ashamanic practice inLondon, offering workshopsand individual sessions. Kayis the author of the UniverseCards, a new divination packbased on images of the uni-verse.

The Shamanic Universe

Shamanism is probably the oldest spiritualpractice known to humanity. It is also uni-

versal; some form of it has been practised allover the world at some point in history. In thiscountry, shamanism lies in the distant past. Ourshamans were known as druids and witches,and their practices were eventually eradicatedor driven underground. In the rest of the world,however, many shamanic societies remainextant today, mostly traditional tribal culturesthat are assumed to be primitive by the west-ern world. These tribal cultures practise what isoften called traditional shamanism, where thespiritual activities of the shaman are a centralpart of daily tribal life. Shamanic practice takeson many different forms, but there are certainattributes that all shamanic cultures share. Firstand foremost is animism, the belief that every-thing in our world is alive and has spirit. Thisincludes not just people and animals, but rivers,rocks, mountains, volcanoes, the wind, theEarth itself. The shaman also believes that thereare many levels of reality beyond what we cansee, hear, taste, touch or measure and the spir-it of all living things exists in all realities. The roleof the shaman is to journey to these other real-ities, or other worlds as they are known, to findinformation, assistance or healing. In theseother worlds, the shaman has allies or helperswhich act as intermediaries in this work. Theallies play a vital part in the work of any shaman,for without them the shaman is helpless to act.

In order to apprehend the other worlds, theshaman must alter his or her consciousness.

This can be done in a number of ways,including the ingesting of mind-altering sub-stances. Unfortunately, it is this face ofshamanism that has become most familiar tothe uninitiated, through the works of CarlosCastaneda. The image of the shaman takingpsychotropic drugs and going on fantastical“trips” is a distortion and a hangover from the1960s. Some traditional shamans do usemind-altering substances, but in a very differ-ent cultural context to ours and usually witha different intention.

Traditional shamans do not choose theshamanic path, they are marked out for this

vocation in some way, usually by a life-threat-ening or debilitating illness. In the process ofhealing their illness, the shaman faces death insome way, and is changed. The illness is oftenbrought about by the shaman’s refusal of theirvocation, for becoming a shaman is not takenlightly in traditional cultures, and is seen as adangerous and extreme profession.Interestingly, many modern western shamanicpractitioners have also come to shamanism inthis way, often through an illness or conditionwhich western medicine is helpless to treat.

The Modern Practice of Shamanism

Akey figure in the re-introduction ofshamanic practice to western culture is

Michael Harner, the creator of the U.S.-basedFoundation for Shamanic Studies. Harner is ananthropologist who studied with traditionaltribal shamans. He developed a format where-by westerners could safely practice shamanism,which he calls “core shamanism”. This compris-es a set of basic practices which are common tomany shamanic cultures and which have beenshorn of their culture-specific attributes. A keyaspect of core shamanism is the shamanic jour-ney, which enables the western shaman to jour-ney to other realities safely, without using drugsor indulging in any inappropriately dangerousactivities. The shamanic journey involves listen-ing to a steady drumbeat, which helps theshaman to alter their consciousness in a safeand controlled way. To begin the journey, theshaman will allow their consciousness to shift toan inner gateway or entry point to the otherworlds. He or she will then move through thegateway and journey to a landscape. This land-scape is a representation of the other realitiesin a way that the shaman can comprehend.Here, the shaman will encounter his or herallies and carry out any shamanic “business”,such as asking for help, advice or healing.

Psychologically trained people may recogniseelements of the shamanic journey in such

techniques as active imagination. The two tech-


Pluto, Shamanism and the Dance of Power

Kay StopforthKay Stopforth explores the practice of shamanism, and suggeststhat Pluto is the primary significator of those who are attracted tothis ancient way of being - and that shamanism demonstrates the“highest potential” of the Plutonian personality.

niques are similar in many ways, but there is akey difference: active imagination focuses onthe personal unconscious and the symbols itproduces, whereas the intention with theshamanic journey is to engage with other reali-ties directly. What one experiences on ashamanic journey is not a projection of one’sown unconscious (although the activities ofone’s unconscious can sometimes intrude andget in the way of shamanic practice!). This isoften a difficult hurdle for psychotherapists andcounsellors who enter shamanic training. It isnot something that can be proved or writtenabout in any rational way. It is only by the expe-rience of working with shamanism and thedeveloping of trust in the information given byone’s allies in the other realities that the differ-ence can be truly understood.

The proof of the pudding with the shamanicjourney is its use for healing. Probably the

most common use of shamanism in the west-ern context is for healing work with clients. Theshamanic practitioner journeys to retrieve lostenergy on behalf of a client and then returns toordinary reality and restores this energy to theclient. In the shamanic model of reality, person-al energy or power can become lost in other

realities. This is usually due to some physical orpsychological trauma where the person’s ener-gy remains attached to the event. In a very realway, the trauma is still happening for the client.These traumas can range from the severe, suchas childhood abuse, to the seemingly trivial,such as a minor physical accident. This loss ofpower is often termed “soul loss” by theshamanic community and is seen in terms of afragmentation of one’s soul. The return of thelost energy, or “soul part” by the shaman iscalled “soul retrieval”. We all suffer soul loss tosome degree in our lives, and it is possible tolook at all human illness, both physical and psy-chological, as resulting from varying degrees ofsoul loss.

Pluto and the Shaman

In the course of his or her training, the shamanlearns to be familiar with energy, or power, in

all its manifestations. This energy is invisible inordinary reality, but is the seat of our personalpower, and underpins ordinary reality like aweb. The shaman is a traveller through the webof realities and gradually learns to apprehendthe unseen. There are many reasons - andmany chart factors - involved in a decision toenter shamanic training. However, entering


shamanic practice in any serious way is always aprocess of death and rebirth; one must relin-quish one’s old beliefs about the nature of real-ity in order to truly embrace shamanism. It ismy feeling that shamanism is, astrologicallyspeaking, Pluto’s realm. From an astrologicalperspective, unseen power is represented byPluto. In Greek myth, Hades is rendered invisi-ble by his magical helmet whenever he entersordinary reality. The shaman’s universe, theweb of realities, the allies, all are invisible inordinary reality. Although Chiron bears many ofthe classic characteristics of the traditionalshaman as wounded healer, I feel that Pluto, ona collective level, embodies the shaman’s path.The price of this is that one is often consideredto be on the lunatic fringe of our culture, wherethis kind of animism is seen, at best, as primitiveand naïve. The modern, western shaman must

also be prepared to relinquish any sense ofbeing part of the mainstream and become, atleast culturally, a Plutonian outsider. At a deep-er level, one must surrender one’s personal willto the will of the universe. One must trulyunderstand that the shaman acts as a conduitfor the power of the universe; it is not theshaman who heals, the shaman merely acts as achannel for healing energy. This soundsNeptunian, but the shaman does not surrendertheir consciousness in the way that a mediumdoes; the shaman must remain aware and incontrol of the proceedings at the same time asallowing themselves to act as a bridge betweenthe worlds. This is a tough balance to maintain,and requires a true Plutonian commitment totransformation, to riding the waves of powerwithout becoming either overwhelmed or ego-inflated. My own view is that shamanism

Individual chart details

Chart No. Major Pluto Aspects

1 Mo/Pl, Ju/Chi opp Pl, MC in Scorpio2 Mo opp Pl, Pl/MC in Leo, Ve tri Pl3 ASC/Pl in Leo, IC in Scorpio, Me sext Pl4 Mo sq Pl, Pl sq ASC, Ju/Chi opp Pl5 Sun sq Pl, Ve tri Pl, Chi opp Pl6 Sun opp Pl, Mo sq Pl, Me opp Pl, MC in Scorpio sq Pl7 Sun opp Pl, Mo tri Pl, Ju tri Pl8 Mo/Pl, Ve opp Pl9 Sun sq Pl, Pl/MC, Ju tri Pl, Sat sq Pl10 Mo/Pl/IC, Chi opp Pl11 Mo in Scorpio sq Pl, Ve tri Pl, Chi sq Pl, Sat/Pl12 Mo/Pl, Su tri Pl, Ve sq Pl, Pl sq MC13 Ve tri Pl, Me quincunx Pl, Sat/Pl, Chi sq Pl14 Mars/Me/Sat/Chi opp Pl, Ju sq Pl, Pl tri MC, Scorpio IC15 Pl/MC in Leo, Scorpio ASC, Me tri Pl, Ma sext Pl16 Mo quincunx Pl, MC in Scorpio, Pl sq MC17 ASC/Pl in Leo, Mo tri Pl, Ju/Pl, Ve sext Pl, Sat sq Pl, Scorpio IC18 Su sq Pl, Me tri Pl19 ASC/Pl in Leo, Mo quincunx Pl, Ve sq Pl, Ju/Pl, Sat sq Pl, Scorpio IC 20 Ma in Virgo/Pl in Leo, Pl tri MC

Breakdown of Pluto Aspects

Planet/Angle AspectsSun 6 2 oppositions, 3 squares, 1 trine Moon 12 4 conjunctions, 1 opposition, 3 squares, 2 trines, 2 quincunxesASC 4 3 conjunctions, 1 squareMC 8 3 conjunctions, 3 squares, 2 trinesIC 1 1 conjunctionMercury 6 2 oppositions, 2 trines, 1 quincunx, 1 sextileVenus 8 1 opposition, 3 squares, 3 trines, 1 sextileMars 3 1 conjunction, 1 opposition, 1 sextileJupiter 7 2 conjunctions, 2 oppositions, 1 square, 2 trinesSaturn 6 2 conjunctions, 1 opposition, 3 squaresChiron* 7 5 oppositions, 2 squares

* I would consider these to be generational aspects.


Kay Stopforth2nd August 19628pmHavant, Hants.TropicalGeocentricTrue Node

demonstrates the highest potential of thePlutonian personality. The people who are seri-ously attracted to shamanism are often thera-pists or alternative practitioners who havespent many years working on their nitty-grittyPluto issues. Many will have encountered deathin an up-close-and-personal manner, such as abereavement, a near death experience or theexperience of a life threatening illness. The“lower” manifestations of Pluto are familiar andhave been faced, if not eternally vanquished.What is left is the essence of Pluto - the powerof the unseen, the ability to travel between therealities and to transform oneself and to act asan agent of transformation for others.

A Survey

For the purposes of this article, I carried outan ad hoc survey of 20 charts of shamanic

practitioners to see if my feelings about Pluto’slink with shamanism are borne out in the chartsof individuals. In this very unscientific study, Iprioritised Pluto conjunct, square, oppositionand trine the luminaries, and Pluto conjunct theangles. I think these contacts are the strongestindicator of an essentially Plutonian personality.However, I also considered Pluto in aspect tothe personal planets, other Pluto aspects to theangles, and Scorpio ascendant, MC and IC. Theresults were surprisingly definite. Sixteen out ofthe twenty charts had Pluto in a major aspectto a luminary, or conjunct an angle. Six chartshad Pluto in aspect to either both luminaries orboth a luminary and an angle. The most com-mon aspect was Moon-Pluto, appearing intwelve charts. Of the four charts that did nothave Pluto in major aspect to a luminary orangle, three had aspects to Pluto from person-al planets, and one had Moon quincunx Plutoand Pluto square MC in Scorpio (charts 13,14,16 and 20). I am particularly struck by the

prominence of Moon-Pluto aspects. Pluto inaspect to the Moon deepens and

sensitises the instincts, and per-haps sharpens our ability to

sense other realities.Moon-Pluto people

may tend to pick upinvisible energiesand manifest themthrough physicalsymptoms, orthey may just“know” some-thing, withoutbeing able toexplain why.

They may beattracted to

shamanism becauseit gives them a frame-

work for what theyalready know but have

never been able to express.

Idon’t know if one can draw any more definiteconclusions from this information, apart from

the fact that this select band of shamanic prac-titioners is strongly Plutonian. They are all peo-ple who are known to me, to varying degreesof intimacy. My own Plutonian nature (I amchart no. 1) may be an influencing factor - I maysimply attract Plutonian shamanic practitioners!However, I have attempted to draw on a vari-ety of sources, and many of the charts are thoseof people I do not know well. Any study of thiskind has a subjective element and I invite thereader to draw further conclusions from thedata I have presented.

A Case Study

Here’s a brief look at Pluto in action in thechart of a practising shaman. Caitlin

Matthews is not only a shamanic practitionerand teacher but also an accomplished musicianand Celtic scholar. She has written over 30books about Celtic shamanism and spirituality.Her chart shows Pluto in close conjunction toher Leo MC, Scorpio rising and Venus inScorpio in the first house. Her Mercury inSagittarius also trines Pluto. This is a stronglyPlutonian chart. I am particularly struck by herPluto placement, perhaps signifying a personwho embodies Pluto in a very public way.Caitlin uses her musical ability in her shamanicwork. For her, sound and singing are an essen-tial part of the healing process - a mediation ofPlutonian healing energy through Leonine cre-ative expression. Caitlin’s initiation into shaman-ism came in the form of a classic healing crisis.She suffered from a debilitating illness betweenthe ages of 20 and 28, which effectively endedher ambition to become an actress (a moreobvious expression of that Leo MC) and even-

Caitlin MatthewsData withheld by requestGeocentricTropicalTrue Node

tually brought her to shamanism. During thisperiod, Pluto transited no less than seven of hernatal planets, including the Sun. At age 20, Plutowas in early Libra, creeping up on Caitlin’s natalChiron-Jupiter square. This square forms part ofa cardinal grand cross, with a wide Saturn-Jupiter opposition squaring Chiron conjunct theSun in Capricorn, which in turn opposes Uranusin Cancer. Over the following eight years, Plutowould touch every planet in this grand cross. Byage 28, Pluto was at around 21°-22° of Libra,just completing a transiting conjunction of hernatal Mars-Neptune conjunction in Libra. It isinteresting that the first planet to be touched inthis long process is Chiron, the planet of theunhealed wound, and it was in physical illnessthat this transit expressed itself. Pluto’s slowmovement across such a vital area of her natalchart indicates Caitlin’s death and rebirth strug-gle to heal, a struggle that marks her initiation asa shaman. Physically immobilised, Caitlin wasforced into a period of introspection and redis-covered the contact with the spirit world thatshe had naturally as a child. Shamanism gave hera framework to express this natural ability.Transiting Pluto has recently completed atwelve-year transit of her 1st house, a period inwhich Caitlin has built a shamanic healing prac-tice and developed her reputation as a teacherof Celtic shamanism. During this time, transitingPluto also squared the natal Pluto-MC conjunc-tion, underlining that this was very much a pub-lic process. Caitlin describes her spiritual path as“making visible the unseen” and she has indeedbecome a very visible advocate of the unseen inher teaching and writing.

AA Personal Perspective

At this point, it seems right to confess myown vested interest in this subject. As a

shamanic practitioner withan interest in astrology,and a natal Moon-Pluto conjunction,you might say thatthis theory ofmine comesfrom a certainamount of per-sonal experi-ence. My owninitiation intos h a m a n i s mcame as transit-ing Pluto squaredmy natal Moon-Pluto. As a natalPlutonian, I alreadyhad some experience ofPluto’s dreaded death-and-rebirth process, so my discov-ery of shamanism was a kind ofcoming home. I instinctively recognised thetruth of this process, although I also foughtagainst it - naturally! I entered shamanictraining in November 1996, as Pluto was 2°away from the transiting square to mymoon. At this time, I had attended somebasic workshops in shamanic journeying, andread some books on the subject. I felt animmediate affinity for journeying and Idecided to undertake a training course inshamanic healing. I was unprepared for theprofound effect that this work would haveon my life. Although I had faith in theshamanic journeying process, I still believed,in my heart of hearts, that maybe I was justmaking it all up (a common fear amongnovice journeyers). In February and Marchof 1997, as the transiting square became

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exact, I did a series of shamanic journeys aspart of my training that has altered my life,and that continues to act as a foundation forpractically everything I do. These journeystook me beyond death, taught me about myancestral inheritance, and revealed to me avision of a larger reality that was awe-inspir-ing. I was shown a vision of the Earth and Ifelt a true sense of its uniqueness and itspreciousness amongst all the other wondersof the universe. This vision was the initialinspiration for the “Universe Cards”, my div-ination pack. All this sounds wonderful, andit was, but it also demolished all my oldideas about myself and about reality. In aslow, creeping, irresistible way, all the oldsureties of my life became empty, and I wasleft with a sense of being in a void, a darkplace where the only reality, the only truth,was my continuing awareness. Over the pastthree years, as Pluto has ground its waythrough this transiting square to both myMoon and my natal Pluto, I have exploredthe darkness, and have been slowly (far tooslowly!) reborn, with a new awareness ofthe universe and my place in it. Shamanicpractice has given me a framework for mak-ing the inner journey, and my power animalsand guides have accompanied me on thisperilous voyage, offering wise counsel when

it was most needed. Shamanism has offeredcontainment for the powerful emotions of aPluto transit. It has helped me to stay withthe process without “acting out” Plutoniandramas all over the place. For me, the voidhas not been a barren place. It has been -and continues to be - a fruitful darkness thathas become a place of retreat and inspira-tion. So much so that I now think of thisplace not as a void but as the “cauldron ofbeing”.

In my experience, shamanism is aboutrebuilding one’s own relationship with the

universe. An awful lot can be learned from agood teacher and from books, but ultimate-ly one must trust one’s own allies and theuniverse itself. To work with shamanism in adeep way is to surrender to one’s ownprocess of spiritual unfolding. This is not anecstatic, Neptunian giving up of self, but aconscious, Plutonian divestment of the trap-pings of the earthbound ego as onedescends into the cauldron of being. Astrong, balanced sense of self is an impor-tant requirement for the shamanic practi-tioner. The influx of power that comes fromworking with shamanism can merely serveto inflate the ego if there are unacknowl-edged issues in that area. This is a commonpitfall on the path. Every shaman learns theold Plutonian lesson that power comes withresponsibility. This lesson can rebound onthe unwary and inexperienced practitionerin all sorts of unfortunate ways. Shamanismis not something one can learn in a coupleof workshops and then decide to practice.Like the movement of Pluto, the path toshamanism is a slow and often frustratingone. However, in time, and with the deeplevels of courage and commitment that onlyPlutonians can summon, the doors of per-ception can open and the highest expres-sion of Pluto can manifest.


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GGlennys Lawton is one ofthe main tutors in the fouryear program in appliedastrology, Astro*Synthesis,at the Chiron Centre inMelbourne Australia.Besides her full time astro-logical practice, Glennys isalso a family therapist, regis-tered as a clinical memberof the Victorian Associationof Family Therapists, as wellas an accredited bereave-ment counsellor and educa-tor. She has lectured atmajor astrological confer-ences overseas, as well aslecturing at family therapyconferences and conductingspecialised workshops onareas of grief in Australia.

1 Lyrics quoted from PaulMcCartney and JohnLennon, She’s LeavingHome, from the Beatles’album Sgt. Peppers LonelyHearts Club Band.2 Throughout the text,lyrics from She’s LeavingHome are quoted.3 For amplification on thissee Liz Greene and JulietSharman-Burke, The MythicJourney; The Meaning ofMyth as a Guide for Life,Eddison-Sadd (London:1999), pages 74-90.

Silently closing her bedroom doorLeaving a note that she hoped would say moreShe goes downstairs to the kitchenClutching her handkerchiefQuietly turning the back door keyStepping outside she is free1

Lennon and McCartneyShe’s Leaving Home

The Beatles’ lyrics to the mid-60’s hit encap-sulated the desperate way many of the

Pluto in Leo generation left home. Turning herback on her parents, without any goodbyes, shesneaks away into the early morning darkness torendezvous with her destiny. Her parents, whoclaimed to have given her “everything moneycould buy”, are in shock. They are left with dis-belief, feeling abandoned and betrayed. Theheroine leaves the stifling atmosphere of herparents’ home for the promise of more funwith the “man from the motor trade”;2 whorepresents a new and exciting liberated life.Unprepared for the road ahead and unaware ofthe grief her separation from home will stir, sheis at risk of having no security or safety net onceher relationship fails. The familial environmenthas failed to help her prepare for the initiationof “leaving home”. Without the encouragingmessages that will support her in crossing thethreshold to the outer world, she is at risk ofrecreating the stifling home atmosphere shedesperately wants to leave. Astrologically she isat risk of regressing to the 4th house, unable toseparate from the powerful and archaic pat-terns that underpin her foundation stone, theIC. Her future security rests on this base, whichhas been constructed with the material sup-plied by her family and ancestors.

An earlier, more light-hearted tune, sung bySue Thompson, James Hold the Ladder

Steady, tells of elopement as the only option leftafter both mother and father had rejected andridiculed the daughter’s pleas to marry her

sweetheart. Leaving home for the Pluto in Leogeneration was often a traumatic experiencefor everyone involved in this stage of separa-tion.

One of the most common ways for thisgeneration to leave their parents’ home

was into a marriage, romantically being carriedover the threshold of their new home, yetpoised to recreate the same familial scenariothey had vowed to leave. Or into the arms of alover who held the promise of a new life, oronto an aeroplane or ship that took them to afaraway adventure. Naively there was anassumption that the world would provide nour-ishment the way the parental home shouldhave. Unfortunately this important transitionwas often poorly executed, with no rituals orconscious process of separation, so those left athome often felt abandoned or betrayed, whilethose who left felt guilty and unworthy.

However, it was not only this generationthat struggled to cross the straits between

the familial home and the outside world. Thisstage of the life cycle is an archetypal experi-ence, a passage myth often detailed.3 Mythicheroines also left their parents’ home leavingbehind them a storm of feelings of betrayal.

Ariadne fell in love with the shining faceof the young hero Theseus, who had

been sent to her Minoan palace from Athensto face the Minotaur, her half-brother.Besotted, she arranged to help him slay theMinotaur. Fleeing the palace with him, sheescaped into the dark Mediterranean nighton his Athenian ship, betraying her family bytransferring her loyalties to the foreign hero.She colluded in killing her half-brother andabandoned her younger sister. Phaedra, onthe threshold of puberty, watches the courseher older sister takes to leave home, beingimpressed and influenced by her actions andchoices. Having betrayed her family, Ariadneis herself betrayed, left abandoned on the


Leaving HomeCrossing the Threshold to the Outside WorldGlennys Lawton“Until we have psychologically left home, we can’t return home” writes Glennys Lawton.If we see “returning home” as a metaphor for spiritual experience, it is perhaps salutary forus to take a look at the first time we cross the threshold, for it may be that the same sym-bols are echoed on our journey back “home”.

4 Brian Clark “Gemini: TheSearch for the MissingTwin”, The MountainAstrologer (May/June 2000).5 John Bowlby and MaryAinsworth are the pio-neers in delineating attach-ment styles. See JohnBowlby, A Secure Base:Parent-Child Attachment andHealthy HumanDevelopment, Routledge(London: 1988).

island of Naxos, the first port of call aftertheir departure from Crete.

Similarly, Ariadne’s cousin, Medea, betraysher father, kills her brother, and abandons

her homeland to help a foreign hero. WithoutMedea, Jason could have never completed hisquest. Like Theseus, Jason also turns his back onhis helpmate/lover.

Betrayal is recreated in both relationships.The partner, who has been the impetus for

leaving home, is now the one to leave. Thetrauma of the severed relationship with familyand homeland is a haunting and powerful force,which will reverberate throughout their life andbe replayed at other endings. The success ofthis transition from the homeland not only sig-nifies the end of childhood and parental depen-dence, but also is a pattern that reemergeswhenever old ways of being are no longer valid.During major life changes, the unfinished busi-ness of “leaving home” is revealed, emotionallycatapulting the individual back into the earlierpatterns of separation turmoil. To leave homeemotionally requires not only the heroicimpulse, but the support and encouragement ofthose we leave behind.

Leaving home represents a transitional timein every family member’s life. This pivotal

time is crucial, as leaving home represents themovement away from the safety and security ofthe familial womb out into the world beyondthe family. Astrologically, the crossing of thethreshold between the 4th house of family andthe 5th house of the heroic self represents thisliminal phase. Developmentally, the 4th housemarks the ending of the first four houses of thepersonal initiation, ideally ending with the 4thhouse sense of inner security. The 5th marksthe first of the four inter-personal houses andthe beginning of the labours of forging identityoutside the family, as well as the beginning oftransferring the loyalties away from the familialmatrix out onto the beloved. The 5th housecusp, which separates the homeland from theworld beyond, is the threshold crossed whenleaving home:

“The hero leaves home and often the 5thhouse cusp is a vivid indication of the process ofleaving home.”4

Like the other cusps of the “houses of life” (1and 9) the 5th house cusp represents the

emergence into new worlds of discovery. TheBeatles’ heroine turns the “back door” key andsteps across the threshold into the arms of herlover. Like Theseus and Jason, he is theembodiment of the hero who stimulates theurge to leave and venture into the world

beyond family. Lamenting, the chorus realises“fun is the one thing money can’t buy”. The 5thhouse represents a world of exploration thatno longer can take place in the familial home.The heroine falls in love with the foreign hero,the representation of the world outside herfamilial container. The lunar world of the 4thhouse and the symbiosis with the family matrixare left behind in the transition towards thesolar hero. The 5th house constellates themythic hero who battles the dragons of theGreat Mother and who ventures outside hiscomfort zone. When the 4th house environ-ment is polluted with the toxicity of secrets,lies or repressed monsters (like the Minotaurand the Dragon) then the heroic impulse is to“kill off” the monster which sets the circle ofbetrayal in motion.

Underpinning this change is an enormity ofgrief invisible in the excitement of separa-

tion. Childhood is finished. Unconditionalacceptance is threatened. When the leavinghome process is complicated or threatenedthe individual indiscriminately places their trustin the outsider. The assumed reality is that theworld outside will be supportive.Disillusionment often follows, shattering theassumptions that the external world will bemore welcoming. The misplaced loyalties andlove rebound. Mourning is generally not ritu-alised at this stage and sits as a hollow feelingof emptiness under the upwardly mobile urgesto discover the world outside. Without theproper mentoring the mourning can turn todespair, self-destruction, at worst self-loathing.The courage to leave what is familiar is oftenprojected onto another who then must betrayus in order for us to find the interior courageembedded in the 5th house.

Attachment and Separation

Separation is intimately linked to bonding.The ability to separate without destructive

emotional undertones is a product of secureattachment. Broadly we could categorise thisinto three groups.5

Bond – Separate

Secure attachment facilitates a healthy sepa-ration. If the individual’s needs are met, then

the feeling of being well-nourished and a senseof belonging promote the ability to be separate.This can only occur if we have been encour-aged to explore beyond what is familiar, tohave been acknowledged for that explorationand applauded on our return. Our secure basesupports our explorations outside. This helps tocreate mastery over our environment, which isan essential component of secure develop-ment. Astrologically, this would suggest a well-supported Moon, or similar themes.


Bond – Can’t Separate

This attachment style promotes dependencyand symbiosis, or suggests the inability to

separate due to the high level of rigidity andpressures to conform. Both promote a chaoticatmosphere, which engenders fear and anxietyat the juncture of separating as no secure basehas been developed. When astrological arche-types prone to enmeshment, chaos or rigidity(Neptune, Pluto & Saturn) are in difficult aspectto the Moon, the tendency towards this style ofattachment is heightened. Examples might be:Neptune square Moon, where separation couldconstellate fears of not being able to surviveoutside the alembic of the family, or the fearthat those we leave will be weakened by ourdeparture. Pluto quincunx Moon may evoke adread of betraying those we leave behind, orbeing betrayed by those we are trying to trust.Saturn opposite Moon may evoke guilt whenwe feel we are not caretaking those we haveleft, or self-criticism and fear of how we willmanage to provide for ourselves. Difficult lunaraspects will highlight separation issues.

Won’t Bond – Can’t Separate

An inability to bond promotes disconnec-tion, separation being more a dread of

connection than authentic separateness.When attachment has not been successfulthen the individual may instinctually sense dis-connection, which interferes with the processof bonding. Astrologically this could bring theprinciples of freedom and separateness intocontact with the Moon; for instance the sim-plistic statement of the Moon in Air couldidentify this dynamic. Brian Clark in The SiblingConstellation suggests this:

“Having the Moon in an air sign implies thatthe drive for emotional security is constantlyfiltered through an experience of disconnec-tion. The earliest feelings, recorded by theMoon, include an innate sense of separate-ness, space and distance. Hence there may bea strange sense of dislocation: a feeling ofbeing disconnected from where one is orwhere one settles. The gulf between thesense of closeness and separateness propelsthe Moon in air to swing back and forthbetween extremes.”6

Other astrological indicators would bederived from Moon/Uranus themes. This

astrological combination suggests the tendencyto amputate security systems due to an anxietyor dread of being trapped or suffocated.

6 Brian Clark, TheSibling Constellation:The Astrology andPsychology of Brothersand Sisters, PenguinArkana (London:1999).

Attachment is a necessity in human devel-opment, as it instinctually develops the

ability to discriminate between the protectorand the predator. When the familial home hasbeen violated by abuse or the atmosphere isclouded with violence, then the world outsideis also unsafe. Without secure attachment theindividual is often at risk of making the wrongchoices, trusting the wrong individual and there-fore constellating betrayal. At the transitionalpoint of leaving home, our sense of secureattachment becomes a primary indication of thetransition’s success.

Astrologically, attachment styles are recog-nised in a myriad of ways connected to the

lunar archetype (the Moon, 4th house, andCancer), the other “houses of endings” (8th &12th houses) and their derivatives of Scorpio,Pisces, Neptune and Pluto. However a defini-tive way of delineating attachment styles beginswith examining aspects to the Moon. When theslower-moving planets are in a difficult aspectto the Moon, then the “leaving home” processmay be fraught with incomplete feelings andambiguity. Complexes, which complicate thetransition, may be organised by their aspects tothe Moon. These are potent aspects, whichreverberate through the system of the family.Following is a short synopsis of these aspects,however I would encourage you to delve moredeeply into these images reflecting on your sep-aration process and attachment style. Thesethemes will also be evident with the planets inor ruling the 4th house.

Saturn

Saturn/Moon aspects could constellate famil-ial themes of rigidity, authority and rules.

When the parental values and rules are at theexpense of the young, then the individual maybe fixed in a system, not of their choosing,which keeps them bound to the old system.Compelled to live out the unlived life of theparent, they may feel trapped and fearful ofleaving the only structure provided for them.Predictability and controllability are vital allies tosecure development, however if they engenderfear and anxiety, then the rigidity of the familysystem suffocates development. Hierarchy isessential in early childhood, however this bal-ance must loosen if we are to develop a senseof personal autonomy. Otherwise structure andsafety, predictability and controllability becomerigid and imprisoning threatening the creativityof the individual.

Chiron

Themes of abandonment, estrangement, ordisplacement may have permeated the

family atmosphere to the extent where theindividual feels unsafe and unfamiliar outside the

family culture. If the family is the outsider in thesociety, then the individual may feel that safetycan only be sustained in the family. Often withthis aspect, the familial myth may suggest thepain of living is great, wounding the will and thespirit that promotes adventure and explorationoutside the family and culture. With aChiron/Moon aspect, we are also alerted to thepotentiality of a familial wound which cripplesthe young person’s attempt to leave home.

Uranus

Disengagement and separation are themesthat resonate when the archetypes of

Uranus and the Moon combine. The possibilityof a fractured or dislocated family atmosphere,or lack of unconditional bonds is suggested,whether perceived or real. A cold family climateor an unconscious memory of feeling aban-doned or cut off from security could emphasisethe need to be disengaged, so freedom andseparateness are always at the expense ofcloseness and togetherness. When the safety ofour childhood atmosphere has been puncturedby a sudden or unresolved severance, then ourown ability to sustain relationship and our adultfamily unit will be compromised.

Neptune

With both Neptune and the Moon, the urgeto merge is dominant. Therefore themes

of enmeshment, sacrifice, abandonment and ill-ness may be part of the familial inheritance whenthese two planets are in aspect. The individual’ssense of self is sacrificed for the family well being,often rendering the young person invisible.Leaving home may place others at risk, thereforethe individual could feel compelled to stay to carefor the parent who is in need, increasing the dan-ger of becoming psychologically stranded. Theyoung person may become ill as an unconsciousattempt to delay the leaving home process.

Pluto

Family secrets, shame, unexpressed grief,power and control may dominate the family

atmosphere with Pluto aspecting the Moon. Ifthe family atmosphere is polluted with a familysecret or unexpressed grief then the young per-son feels unable to be intimate with outsidersfor fear of betraying their family. In this casePersephone’s “leaving home” process may beemulated, where the Underworld God isevoked to abduct us into another atmosphereof control and domination. When the family isbonded through an inappropriate secret orshame this “protects” the family as a unit andanyone leaving is at risk; the message becomes“if you leave us we will be destroyed”.Transferring of loyalties to a lover or partneroutside the family is seen as a betrayal, whichconstellates the fear of being disinherited.


7 These four messages areinspired by the work of JayHaley. See Jay Haley,Leaving Home: The Therapyof Disturbed Young People,Second Edition,Brunner/Mazel, Inc. (NewYork: 1997)

The Moon is systemic in nature as it alsodescribes Mother and her feeling life, per-

haps her experience of her familial atmosphere.In this way the Moon describes a legacy fromthe ancestors, especially Mother’s line. Quite lit-erally, it may also describe the route Mothertook to leave home, a roadway we may haveinstinctually traveled. Young people often repeatthe leaving home pattern of their parents.

The lunar statement in the horoscope sug-gests how we bond, and how our urge to

bond was met in the atmosphere of the home,directly shaping the way we separate and leavehome. When the lunar constellation or 4thhouse is too difficult to deal with, we may splitoff from that aspect in favour of a more sup-portive one. Perhaps our Beatles’ heroine lefther Saturn-Moon constellation to pursue amore favourable aspect of her horoscope,however without the support to help her crossthe threshold that leads to the outside world,she is destined to carry this Saturn-Moon imageinto her relationships.

LLeaving Home Messages

Jay Haley, one of the pioneers of the FamilyTherapy movement, suggests four important

messages to help us leave home without guilt,shame or feeling encumbered by parental grief.7

The roots of these messages are held in ourearly experiences of attachment and separationand are important for encouraging the devel-opment of ego strength. Mythically this is simi-lar to the commencement of the heroic trial orlabours where the gods offer the hero impor-tant gifts for their forward journey. These fourmessages are:

1: You can go

Released by the parent’s love and encouragedto pursue their life away from home, the indi-

vidual is free to explore themselves away fromparental control. Their journey forward is buoyedby memories of approval, support and encour-agement. However often the unconscious mes-sage is “you should not go”, which hovers as aghost over every successive adult relationship.With this negative message the individual feelscompelled to seek freedom from every relation-ship, and to be constantly reassured that they willbe free.

2: We believe in you

Armed with faith in themselves, instilled by theparents, the hero is free to learn by his mis-takes. But when the parents do not trust theirchild can make their way in the world the mes-sage is toxic. If the message is “we don’t believein you”, then the individual constantly strugglesto believe in themselves, driven to prove them-selves in the world at large.

3: We will miss you

Leaving with the sense of feeling valued helps freeourselves from the compulsive need to be lovedby another. Knowing we are loved allows us tolove. When the message fails and “we won’t missyou” is internalised, then the feelings of not beingvalued seep into each successive relationship, cre-ating the need for the partner to provide constantreassurance that they are desired and needed inevery new relationship.

4: We will be fine

The young adult is launched into the world freedfrom feeling responsible for those they are leaving.They leave home with feelings of completion andan authentic knowing that this phase of their lifehas ended. Failing this the individual may fear “ifyou abandon us, we will be destroyed”. The indi-vidual then feels unable to cope, with others rely-ing on them or unable to leave difficult situations.Without the freedom to go, the individual mayfeel imprisoned in a situation they cannot leave.

With security in their attachment to the fam-ily, the crossing to the world beyond fam-

ily is accompanied by memories of encourage-ment and applause. These internalised memoriesform the foundation of ego strength, an anchorfor future separations or times of fear and despair.This strong base enables the person to movethrough the dark nights of their lives, rather thanbecome paralyzed and impotent. The solidity ofthe IC and the 4th house provide the launchingpad for the solar and heroic impulses, explored inthe 5th house.

The prominent factors in the familial environ-ment that place the individual at risk of a

rough crossing include rigidity, enmeshment,chaos and disengagement. The individual whofinds him- or herself swinging between being tight-ly bound by the rigidity of the familial container orcompletely unbound and uncontained, lacks acentre, a secure base. The foundation stone at theIC is weakened, and the lunar container is vulner-able. Another continuum stretches from one pole,where the individual’s personality may be engulfedand smothered by the family, to the other pole,where the individual could feel cut off from theheart of the family. Both extremes complicate theleaving home process. In a healthy familial envi-ronment, we feel more centred and less dismem-bered by these extremes. Astrological themesthat combine the lunar archetype with other plan-ets sketch the landscape of the familial terrain.

When the Saturnian archetype is overem-phasized, the family structure probably is

rigid. Family members may be at risk of dis-avowing their authenticity in favour of an exter-nal authority. Important in the rigid family are


8 For amplification on fam-ily systems see ErinSullivan, Dynasty, TheAstrology of Family Dynamics,Penguin Arkana (London:1996). Pages 53-60 explorethe archetypes of Uranusand Neptune in light of thedisengaged-enmeshed fami-ly system.

accepted traditions, rules, and authority, notindividuals. When Saturn is weakened, a chaot-ic family atmosphere may be present and noform or structure is present to contain thedeveloping individual. No safety net is avail-able to help the individual feel secure inexploration and discovery outside the familialstructure and rules. At the other extreme, ina chaotic atmosphere, hierarchy is non-exis-tent, and the young child may feel responsi-ble for their parents or siblings, and feel theneed of take charge of the situation.

Within a disengaged familial atmosphere,or with a feeling of parental distance,

then the separation process is weighed downwith anxiety. Here the archetype of Uranus isconstellated. At any sign of dependency oremotional bonding, the individual instinctivelypulls away. The urge to bond unconsciouslybeckons others; however, when theyrespond, they are pushed away. This engage-ment-disengagement dynamic sabotages boththe attachment and the separation processes.

High enmeshment between family mem-bers also inhibits the process of separa-

tion. Astrologically, this can be describedthrough the archetype of Neptune.Statements like Neptune in the 4th house,the Moon in Pisces, or Neptune-Moonaspects are a signal for the individual’spropensity to sacrifice themselves for thecommunal wellbeing of the family. If this isthe case, the webbing of the family traps theindividual and leaving home is difficult.Plutonic enmeshment could also occurthrough family secrets, or the threat of famil-ial betrayal, binding the individual to thefamilial unconscious.8

Time to Leave

The optimum time to leave home varieswith each culture, the familial environ-

ment, and the current social and economicclimate. Family therapists suggest that, inWesternized cultures, the optimum time forthe launching of young adults is late adoles-cence, between the ages of 18½ and 24.Astrologically, this embraces the period fromthe first nodal return to the second Jupiter

return, and includes the other importantplanetary cycles, which cluster around theages of 21/22. Currently this passage is beingjourneyed by the Pluto in Libra (withNeptune in Sagittarius) generation.

When the leaving home process isenacted too early, there is a danger of

being ejected from the family home, whereasif this occurs too late, the individual may feelimmobilized. The leaving home process is ashift from the familial to the social world andthe developmental cycles of the planets rep-resent this transitory period. Each generationredefines this process in its own way.

Until we have psychologically left home,we can’t return home. We continue to

take the incomplete “leaving home” issuesinto every aspect of our lives, especially dur-ing transitional periods when we are about totraverse another important threshold. Ofcourse, in later life, home leaving does notnecessarily mean we go anywhere: some-times someone leaves us. What remains is areminder of what once seemed secure. In thechasm that opens with the separation, we arechallenged to draw upon our skills of mas-tery, as our assumed reality is once againshattered. Our ability to handle the “blackholes of despair”, a developmental processfirst strongly tested in adolescence, will con-tinue to inform our leaving home experi-ences. We are challenged in adolescencewith the task of reducing our attachmentschema to the externalized images of motherand father in order to develop our internalsense of autonomy and ego strength. Thisreforming of identity carries implications fromour earliest sense of belonging and separate-ness. Although this template at adolescencecan only ever be superimposed over the ini-tial statement of attachment, it provides areinforced base that creates the platformfrom which we can effectively leave home.

The astrological threshold crossed in leav-ing home is symbolically the 5th house

cusp, the gateway to our creative self. This isa world beyond family, yet informed andshaped by the experience of the family oforigin. Leaving the familial environs (of the4th) is an archetypal experience, which,when poorly executed, leaves its scar oneach successive transition. The Pluto in Leogeneration typified this difficult transition inleaving their Pluto in Cancer parental home.Having “quietly turned the back door key”perhaps this generation is in a more con-scious position to launch their own childreninto the extra-familial world of adventureand self-discovery.


Leaving Home Optimum Time: Late Adolescent Phase

First Nodal Return Approx 18.6 yearsWaning Progressed Moon Square 20.5 yearsNeptune Waxing Semi-Square 20.5 yearsUranus Waxing Square 21 yearsSaturn Waning Square 22 yearsSecond Jupiter Return 24 years

LLaurence Hillman moved to theUnited States in his twenties.After acquiring a degree inArchitecture, he earned MastersDegrees in Business and inEngineering Management fromWashington University in St.Louis. He has been anastrologer for over 22 years.Laurence specializes in helpinghis clients understand theirdeeper purpose or life "calling."He is at present deeply involvedin exploring the deepeningmerger of astrology with con-temporary psychology. He haslectured internationally, and con-ducted such conferences as StarCross’d Lovers at the GlobeTheatre in London onShakespeare and Astrology, andVenus in America, a workshopat the 1997 "Cycles andSymbols Conference" inCalifornia both co-presentedwith his father James Hillman.Laurence speaks five languages,and has travelled to over 40countries. He lives in St. Louis,Missouri with his wife and twodaughters. He is now focusinghis full attention on his astrologi-cal practice, a forthcoming bookand on teaching what has beenhis greatest passion - astrology.

As an astrologer at the Millennium, I amconsulted for different reasons than in

previous decades. Whereas earlier, the ques-tions mostly concerned the Big Three –work/money, sex, and health – there is a dis-tinct shift towards asking astrology to direct aclient’s spiritual quest and to describe thenative’s place and purpose in a larger cosmos.Over the past twenty years, I have startedmost every astrological reading with the ques-tion: “Why are you here today? What wouldyou like out of this reading?” The issues raisedby this inquiry have hitherto centered largelyaround the aforementioned emotional issues.

Also at the Millennium, there is a prevalentlooseness with philosophical terms. While

science and the language of the politically cor-rect seem to be getting increasingly specificwith new words added all the time, in thephilosophical community, old words such assoul, psyche, collective unconscious and spiritu-ality are being re-applied and peddled to thepublic en masse. Let me therefore define theterms spirituality and spiritual quest. I will usethe term spirit – loosely meaning filled with air– as that which is opposed to matter, thatwhich transcends the physical form. Whilewhen many speak of reality they are referringto scientifically measurable earth matters, thespiritual reality I am referring to here is thatlightness of being we enjoy when we step out-side of our body and transcend the physical: inmemories, in daydreams, and in fantasies.Because we are not limited by the hardness ofmatter, in this spiritual, airy world there are nolimits to our flights of fancy. There is no gravi-ty, for instance. We can conjure up ideas, jug-gle them in the air, and have anyone we pleasedrop in for a chat like Mary Pop-in-s. We areconnecting to an unlimited experience beyondthe physical world to which we are attached,quite literally, by gravity, or gravis, and whereour body ends up in the grave. We are able tofeel connected to what is beyond us and this,like a breath of fresh air, fills us with a sense offreedom. While some term these escapadesflights of fancy, others call these experiences

religious. No matter the label, they are experi-ences of transcending.

The way to this “other” realm has, throughthe ages, been linked to the element of

each particular Age. Going back to the Age ofearthy Taurus, (very roughly 4000-2000 BCE),the post mortem voyage into the unknown wasaccompanied by a plethora of objects,entombed in large earthy vaults, and hidden in- or beneath - huge earthy structures. In theAge of fiery Aries (very roughly 2000 – 0 BCE),burning bushes, fiery rituals, and myths aboutlightning bridged us to the other world. At theMillennium, as we leave the Age of wateryPisces, we are only beginning to awaken fromthe emotional, blurry era from which we arebarely emerging. A time where symbols of fish,the discovery of the unconscious and a climaxin unbridled capitalism that uses watery sym-bols – liquidity, banks, frozen assets, and cashflow – copiously. Now, at the dawning of theAge of airy Aquarius, the philosopher is seek-ing to go beyond by reaching towards the starsand thinking about things in new ways. Airyconnections are now made between previous-ly unrelated issues and between hitherto unre-lated individuals, peoples, and galaxies. Toolssuch as the Internet, mass transportation byplane and an unprecedented access to infor-mation and places is freeing great masses ofthe shackles that governments and religiousinstitutions once held over them. No longerare we bound by place, tied to our homeland,and rooted to the family. One of the many flipsides of this latest revolution is a delirious highfrom information overload, a guru-infestedmega mall of ideas where hyperventilatingmasses pass out.

Astrologers must keep up with the shift inAges that is reflected in the shift of the

collective consciousness. Mostly, we havecounselled in a muddy, earth-watery, and emo-tional world thereby working side-by-side withpsychologists, clergy, and others in the helpingprofessions. By delineating a person’s personal-ity, how her inner characters are combined and


North Node as NuminosumLaurence HillmanThe meaning of those pesky nodes often escapes us, as they do not carry easily-identifiedmythic personae with whom we can dialogue, metaphorically speaking; and most Westernastrologers get a little shy in the presence of oriental dragons. Here, Laurence Hillmanhelps to demystify the Moon’s Nodes for us.

Guggenheim MuseumBilbaoFrank Gehry

interacting on her inner stage, we astrologershave provided a service for a long time. Wedescribed how the native was best to handlemoney, where her strengths and weaknesseswere in relationships, and how best to dealwith that difficult health issue.

At the dawning of the Age of Aquarius - asits symbols are appearing virtually, literally,

artistically and architecturally (c.f. Gehry’sBilbao Guggenheim Museum and the newRose Center for Earth and Space in New YorkCity) - we also had a significant conjunction ofUranus and Neptune in Aquarius in the midnineteen-nineties. While Richard Tarnas hasaptly described the Uranus-Neptune conjunc-tion cycle as an indicator of times for the imag-inal to break through to the masses, a simpleanalysis of the answers I get to my introducto-ry questions before readings may serve as hintof what the latest conjunction is trumpeting.

Increasingly, people are searching for spiritualmeaning. They are seeking to connect with

their spirituality. They want to move beyondthe physical where the world is awash withcapitalism, and where organized religion isdrowning in a sea of skepticism. Slowly, theidea is sinking in that perhaps happiness is notfound in a new car. Increasingly, individualhuman beings are awakening to the realizationthat something is not good simply because itmakes money. Therefore, the more we arethreatened to drown in pop-psychology, reli-gion, and capitalism, the more perhaps weyearn to be lifted beyond into the world ofspirit, of air.

The new answer I am getting in my briefinterview is: “I am here to talk about my

purpose in life, why I am here, what my placeis in the larger order of things.” A recent articlein a national publication asked the question: ifyou could talk directly to a higher power, God,infinite being, the Divine, whatever, and askone question, what would you ask? The topquestion, hands down, was: “What is my pur-pose in life?” Perhaps, as astrologers, we nowhave a new task to perform and a new set ofanswers to provide. But, are we equipped?

For over twenty years, I have focused myastrological practice on precisely this ques-

tion. While I am interested in personality andhow we psychologically create and interactwith the world around us, I have always beenmost interested in the question of what a per-son’s purpose is here in life, their calling. Therehas always been, I figured, a place where yoursoul wants to go to in this lifetime. I define soulhere as that part of us which is immortal andextends beyond our physical life, both beforeand after. Soul: a backpack into which we gath-er experiences along our lives paths. This is aview of soul that extends its existence throughmany lifetimes and comes to the westernworld from India and Buddhism. Twenty-five-hundred years ago, Gautama Buddha awak-ened many to the ancient mysteries that heldanswers to life’s most basic question when hedescribed life as an episode, what theOrientalist often refers to as a bead on a stringof pearls.

Here is an image: let me describe a set oftrain tracks to you. Suppose your soul is

traveling on a train track. It comes from infinityand goes to infinity. If you are so inclined, youmay call this infinity the divine, God, theUniverse, whatever. This reminds me of thewords of T.S. Eliot:

And the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time

The important part is to see a continuumwith ever increasing knowing along the way.

Not information, knowing: those numinousmoments that fill you with awe because theirsacred power has been experienced by you.Like great sex, where you know the other per-son (in the biblical sense, so to speak), or whenyou know a symphony. On this train track, in acertain time and place, the soul bursts througha membrane stretched across the track andgains a physical body. You are born. At anoth-er point along the track your soul breaksthrough another membrane and releases yourbody. You die. The period between these twopoints we call life on Earth and we are here inlinear time. The process is repeated severaltimes until – following ancient esoteric teach-ings - we have learned all our lessons on thecross of life (described by the intersection ofthe MC-IC and ASC-DES axis in astrology) andbecome enlightened or once again part of theplace I loosely call the divine. The two keyparts of this image are a place of learningtowards where your soul needs to go, and aplace of gathered experiences from whereyour soul originates. This place of origin carries

Rahu, the North Nodewww.hindugallery.com

with it experiences and knowing from previousincarnations.

There is also a train on the track. In the din-ing car of the train, there is a group of char-

acters. Some call them “parts of me,” some callthem planets, some call them archetypes, somecall them actors on a stage, and some call thempersonality traits. No matter what you callthem, they are interacting in distinct ways.Some are at war, perhaps having a food fight;some are flirting in the corner. One characteris perhaps even turned away and not wantingto talk to anyone. This scene is described inyour natal chart: all the struggles, harmonies,rifts, feuds, romances, seductions, and anyother human emotion you can name.Behaviorists study what the characters do andtry to change the script by offering chocolate.Gestalt therapists buy a ticket, get on board,and get emotionally involved in the ongoinginteractions.

But remember the train is on a track. Thesoul has laid out a specific direction for you.

There is a calling to be hearkened, a purposeto be fulfilled, and a mission impossible to betackled. At birth, the train leaves the birth sta-tion and is immediately on its way to your finaldestination – destiny. The question is, do thecharacters on board know where your train isheaded? Perhaps you are approaching yourmid-life crisis; do you know where your track isgoing? There are also switches along the traintrack. Sometimes there’s a choice betweentwo directions; sometimes there are elevenchoices. There are also signals along the way.Some are quiet and we zoom by, others areloud and flashing neon signs. We call thesesigns calamities and dreams. We may or maynot change direction. We may be so caught upwith our personality that we simply have noidea what the soul wants to learn.

The soul’s learning is described by the endstation of the track. It is the description of

a place, not a personality trait. Your life pur-pose is not a specific career, you are not calledto be something particular. You are called toexplore a place. If I say Paris or Florida, you willconjure up different images of these places.Your soul is here to learn what is indicated byits place of destiny.

Such becomes now the millennialastrologer’s task: to conjure up the descrip-

tion of places that the soul needs to learnabout, thus answering the predominant ques-tion of our time. But how?

Enter the Moon’s Nodes and the power thatthese curvy glyphs in the chart hold. The

NorthN o d eis a signthat qui-etly indi-cates yourcalling, whereyour soul wantsto go, your purposein life. It is as powerfulas that, seemingly as simpleas that, and immediately ascomplex as that statement. Rather thanattempt to make a case here for why this worksby going back to Indian mythology, Rahu andKetu, and dragons, I instead challenge the read-er to an experiment. Seasoned astrologers willperhaps find it worth their while to look overa dozen familiar charts under this proposedlight. Novice astrologers or laypeople interest-ed in their purpose may find it beneficial tohave someone tell them where their Moon’sNodes are, and to guide them in the integra-tion of the chart as described below. In caseafter case and story after story, I am repeated-ly humbled by the power of the North Node.I have focused my entire practice on learningabout how a native’s personality – traditionalmakeup of the chart – helps or hinders the soulin its quest to get to the North Node. Forinstance, having three planets on the SouthNode might translate into a giant rubber bandthat pulls your train back to where you were atbirth. As such, this constellation can remindyou of issues that you have dealt with in previ-ous lives, things that come easily, naturally butwhere you “can’t get no satisfaction” in this life-time. Or, Neptune conjunct your North Nodecan put the train station of your destiny intodense fog, leaving you lost about your purpose


and demanding of you special courage to headforward into the fog, trusting that the trackswill roll into the station in due time.

Because of our physical anchoring in theearthy, material and sensual world, the

house position of the North Node is moreimportant than its sign. This is misunderstoodin many texts. Because you need to have thebirth chart to describe the North Node’shouse position and a simple table can let any-one find their North Node’s sign position eas-ily, there tends to be a focus on the sign beforethe house in the textbooks. I cannot emphasizeenough how much more important the houseplacement is when helping a client understandtheir destination. The house points out wherein the world your soul wants to go, and if youalign your personality with this place, there is asense of contentment, of being in the zone, ofbeing congruent with your purpose, a sensa-tion that is hard to describe but recognizableby most. There is also a certain reverence oreven fear inherent in this place. It is the sensa-tion of stage fright. You know you have to doit but you resist. The serenity you feel whenyou do go is in part due to the overcoming ofthe fear and the awe-some feeling of doingthat which you must. The astrological sign ofthe North Node then adds flavoring to thedescription of the place: is it Libran/Venusian?Cancerian/Loony?

Once I know my purpose in life asdescribed to me astrologically by the

house position of the North Node, I have onlyjust begun. There is not a quick formula toanswer the complex question of purpose.There are not twelve callings because there aretwelve houses. The variable is the personality.What kind of gear do I have to get there?Anyone on board know about trains? Is therean engineer in the house? As a psychologicallyaware astrologer, I must learn to integrate thecomplete chart into this one place. Is this a wildman traveling to Paris? An Eskimo going toFlorida? The overriding idea here is to createcongruency between personality and purpose,between what you want and what your soulneeds. The ride is neither a straight line nor aquick journey. At times, we backtrack, are side-tracked, get off track or even loose sight of thetrack. Mostly, I tell my clients: this is a life longtrip; it may, in fact, take more than one lifetimeto fully explore the destination indicated. Thegrand photographer Ansel Adams was onceasked what the most important item was in hisdark room. His response was simply, “Thetrash can.”

There are also those who prefer to reversethe train to the place of departure and not

to set off in any direction at all. I have foundthis to be true particularly for natives with avery harmonious chart. This is what some havepoignantly called a “cruising life.” On the otherhand, natives with much tension in the chart,with experiences of pain, separation, death,and other milestones along their tracks seemmore akin to exploring their North Node.Most often, when I describe the North Nodeto these natives, they have an intense emo-tional reaction, frequently including tears ofrelief. How many times have I heard, “I knewit!”? As some astrological callings go against thecurrent dictums of society, this alone may pre-vent a person from following their track. Forinstance, a 1st house North Node may call youto explore being more selfish and saying, toyourself and the public, this is I. This is not avery Piscean, self-sacrificing purpose. However,for every 1st house North Node native, thereis (at least statistically), a 7th house NorthNode native whose purpose is to be less self-ish and take her cues from the Other.

Perhaps the reader will allow me to share afew observations I have made over the

years. First, it is quite often the case that theNorth Node is in the element (by sign orhouse) that is the least represented in thechart or that is otherwise not present at all.This observation cements the importance ofthe North Node. Here the North Node alsoindicates the place to explore the element youlack. Second, the native must learn how tounderstand the South Node. This place showsan area of refuge, of illusions, of quick fixes.For instance, I can help a desolate client feelbetter if I offer them activities indicated by theSouth Node. By moving, even temporarily, tothe place of comfort, the South Node, we canquickly feel OK but in the long run our lifeseems to lack meaning in that place. We feelas though we have been sitting on a couch toolong in need of a good stretch. Say, forinstance, I have the North Node in the 6thhouse. I am thus called to service and to workdiligently in my surrounding world. If I am incrisis and feel overwhelmed with the busy,busy life I find myself in, going off to sit in iso-lation in a place of worship (12th house SouthNode) would give me an instant sense of reliefbut would not, in the long run, fulfil me. And,third, transits to the Moon’s Nodes are to beseen as shining light at the areas indicated. Forexample, if transiting Saturn is conjunct aclient’s South Node (and therefore opposinghis North Node), I tend to explore with himthe meaning of his South Node. This may notbe the best time to travel towards his pur-pose, but instead this is an excellent time tofocus on and resolve what is keeping him fromgoing there.


So, finally, how does the North Node relate tothe spiritual world? If the purpose in life is to use

our personality as best we can to travel to the soul’sdestiny, then we are learning the greatest possiblelessons in this lifetime. The North Node becomesa numinous awe-inspiring place, because of theintense knowing we experience when we operatein that part of our chart. The German TheologianRudolf Otto in his 1917 book, The Idea of the Holy,describes the numinous as a fundamental and dis-tinguished experience common to all religions. C.G.Jung was much inspired by him and later developedthe idea of the Numinosum, which some claim is theessence of his whole work. Otto says that thenuminous creates in us a feeling of being created.This, he says, is a feeling not just of dependency butalso of the creature’s nothingness in the face of itscreator. The presence of the creator is experiencedas a mysterium tremendum that is a feeling of aweand shuddering. This is what I refer to as a feeling ofawe before that which is unspeakable. But, saysOtto, in contrast to the tremendum, the numinousis simultaneously experienced as a Fascinans, that isas something that attracts and fills with blissful exal-tation. The numinous is also felt as a confrontationwith an unsurpassable value, to which absoluterespect and obedience are due out of a feeling of

inner obligation. It is precisely to this inner obligationthat I hope to awaken my clients: an inner obliga-tion to stretch to the maximum towards that whichis to be learned here in this life. To get as uncom-fortable as necessary and to dare to go forward. Justhow much effort will have to be expended to trav-el to the numinous North Node will have to beseen in the rest of the chart.

There are also other needs to be met in thechart. The personality can not be ignored.

There is sometimes something in our heart thatcalls out to us and that may be different fromour node. Our personality can be quite noisy.James Hillman, in his book The Soul’s Code ele-gantly describes this inner push to that whichmust be unfolded. If you have six planets in the4th house of roots and home and your NorthNode is in the 2nd house of money and values,we can not ignore your real need for family, asecure home, roots and ancestors. But, perhapsyour way there is by getting a job where you getpaid well, by buying a nice home and by hiring agardener and a genealogist. An effort to inte-grate the chart into the numinous experience ofbeing part of a bigger picture, this gives us theawesome experience of being on track.


Embedded amongst these articles whosethemes concern various dimensions of spir-

ituality, the opening sequences of Gladiator,with their violence, cruelty, and display of themight of a ruthless war machine, will no doubtseem grossly out of place, if not glaringly politi-cally incorrect. Where, one may well ask, is thespirituality, let alone ordinary human compas-sion, in a Roman commanding officer whoseobjective is the utter destruction of a recalci-trant tribe? This film, whose visual magnificenceis tainted with a simplistic script and a charac-teristic Hollywood laissez-faire about the factsof history, is nevertheless a remarkable portray-al of a particular kind of spiritual fervour - thepassion of the war-god, whose divine inebria-tion once sent the Norse berserker invincibleinto battle and catapulted a small tribe of Italicnatives into supremacy over the whole of theknown world. We might do well, as astrologers,to understand the enduring attractions of thewar-god, for in an epoch when war has demon-strated its more horrifically Plutonian face andlost the nobility and honour which were onceessentially part of Mars’ array of attributes, wehave lost our comprehension of why somepeople love to fight. Myth can teach us a greatdeal about the divine nature of prowess andhonour in battle; the Norse Valhalla and theElysian Fields of the Greeks are only two exam-ples which bear testimony to the afterliferewards which lie in store for those who liveand die honourably by the sword. Figures likeNapoleon and Alexander continue to hold apowerful fascination for those who seek ahuman model for an archetypal pattern oncedeemed to be a god. Gladiator can teach us alot about this god; and despite its Hollywoodpyrotechnics and unabashed sentimentality, itmay also help us to understand why thosewhose birth charts are Mars-dominated needto honour what they are made of, and find con-structive outlets for it, rather than being madeto feel they are bad, unspiritual, or “unevolved”.

The figure of the Roman general Maximus,played by the delicious Russell Crowe, is

distilled essence of Mars. He is manly and beau-tiful. His physical body is an expression of theenergy and instinctive grace of a deity born notof the upper ethers of the sky-gods but of thedark blood-flow of the chthonic realm. He isnot afflicted with the need to display gratuitous

cruelty; that is the emblem of a blocked ortwisted Mars, not a healthy one. He lives toserve his empire and his god, and his honour isworth more than his life. He is passionate,devoted, fearless, honest, and loyal. He is also arealist; he does not whinge and whine aboutthe spiritually superior merits of pacifism whenfaced with the stark necessity of winning ordying. In a time when we are virtually muzzledby the collective idealisations of Neptune inAquarius, Maximus is refreshingly unhypocriti-cal. Even the eye-for-an-eye principle ofrevenge, also part of Mars’ nature but so appar-ently un-Christian and unfashionable these days,is portrayed here as noble. That is undoubted-ly part of the film’s enormous popularity: it pre-sents us with emotions we secretly feel but areafraid to articulate. Maximus is not stupidenough to think war is anything other than abrutal necessity. But he chooses to fight withdiscipline, clarity, nobility, and skill. This is the“night side” of Mars with its Scorpionic devotionand self-disciopline, reflected by the SephiraGeburah in that other great symbolic system,the Kabalah. Here too, Mars is recognised as adivine principle, not a random display ofdestructiveness and chaos.

The film’s “feminine interest”, as it iseuphemistically known in Hollywood, is

token. Maximus’ Spanish wife, and the Romanprincess to whom he is passionately attracted,are both stereotypes. It is a man’s film, which isnot to say it cannot be thoroughly enjoyed andappreciated by women. The relations betweenMaximus and Commodus, the cowardly, neu-rotic and deeply damaged young Emperor, arefar more important, and hint at (perhaps inad-vertently, but nevertheless suggestively) a pro-found human issue concerning the distortionsof Mars. Commodus is a rejected son, andwhile the film is not overburdened with psy-chological sophistication, nevertheless this fig-ure is common enough in everyday life - theyoung man who is a disappointment to hisfather and who, rather than fulfilling thestrengths of his own nature, settles into a goodnasty seethe about those whom his father lovesmore. Commodus hates Maximus becauseMaximus has the qualities the old EmperorMarcus Aurelius would have wanted in a son.Commodus is not a warrior, and he knows it;he is sensitive and indolent rather than brave,


Film: GladiatorLiz Greene

Russell Crowe© 2000 Dreamworks SKG

sensuous and self-indulgent rather than disci-plined. So he begins to hate. He is eaten upwith jealousy, and this turns him destructive.We may see this dynamic at work in many fam-ilies, between father and son and also betweenmother and daughter. When Mars is notexpressed constructively, with honour andrespect, it may turn poisonous and emerges asa kind of cowardly cruelty and malice aimed atundermining all those who trigger the individ-ual’s sense of impotence. Many instances ofchild abuse and domestic violence owe theirexistence to just such a dynamic. In its simplisticway, the relationship between these two malefigures in the film gives us a succinct image ofhow destructive envy arises, and how it can soeasily slide into unmitigated evil. Although thefilm does not purport to be either deeply philo-sophical or deeply insightful into human charac-ter - it is, after all, a Hollywood spectacular - itcan, nevertheless, make us think philosophicallyabout the nature of evil, the roots of violence,and the undeniable magic and mystery of aclean and shining Mars reflecting the divinity ofthe archetypal warrior.

In some ways, the second half of the filmcould be dispensed with, because the plot

loses its way and the script becomes increas-ingly trite and simplistic. This film is not a workof art. Yet the filming of the great battlesequence between the Roman army, withMaximus as its commander, and the Germanictribes who “refuse to admit they have beenconquered”, is a cinematic masterpiece. At theend of the film, when Commodus is finallykilled by Maximus in the arena and the Senatedeclares that the Roman Republic will berestored, those of us who respect sound his-torical research may fall about laughing. TheRoman people in the 2nd century CE were notremotely interested in the restoration of theRepublic, and this anachronistic plug for an

essentially modern concept of democracy isutterly absurd. Commodus was in fact mur-dered in his bath by a slave, and rather thaninaugurating the dawn of a new republic, themurder of the Emperor simply ushered in therule of yet another Emperor. The Americanmovie-making machine, with a little help fromMel Gibson, seems intent on turning histori-cal fact into sentimental proselytising. But theperformances in Gladiator are convincing, andthe recreation of the Roman world, Mars-imbued and steeped in glory, is vivid and real-istic. There are many kinds of war and manykinds of heroism; and if we are fortunateenough to live in a culture which has, albeitonly recently, begun to work out what a badidea it is to rush blindly into battle, we maystill exercise the unique spirituality of Marsthrough battle with our own inner demons aswell as the demons unleashed around us, andstill maintain the courage and loyalty whichallow us to live our lives with honour. Thefootball hooligan and the lager lout, the con-scienceless mercenary and the corrupt dicta-tor, are deformed Mars, not Mars parading inhis full beauty and potency. Rather than lessMars, we may need more. Deity withoutMars means a castrated deity which deprivesus of our capacity to maintain our integrity;then we run the risk of becoming horriblysimilar to Commodus, in thought and feelingif not in actual deed. Gladiator, although nodoubt too violent for the tastes of many film-goers, too simplistic for the intellectually-minded, and perhaps too overtly and spec-tacularly brutish for the refined sensibilities ofmany spiritual souls, can make us questionsome very fundamental issues we ordinarilytake for granted. Every planet has its ownform of spirituality as well as its own form ofbaseness and destructiveness. The next timewe interpret Mars in a birth chart, we mightdo well to think of Maximus.


FFreda Edis is Head Tutor ofthe Faculty of AstrologicalStudies. She is the author ofThe God Between: a Study ofAstrological Mercury. Sheteaches classical Kabbalahand kabbalistic astrology.She works as a counsellorand astrologer in Glasgow,continues to write and lec-ture and gives workshops inboth astrology and kabbal-ah. Her special interests arepolitical astrology, mytholo-gy and the history of astrol-ogy and astronomy.

Wider Perspectives

Why a Kabbalistic perspective? Isn’t theastrological world-view enough? In truth,

no. Essentially, astrology can only encompassthe psychological and material aspects ofhuman life. It can supply information indicatingpossible spiritual development and a sense ofthe divine, but, of itself, it does not offer a per-spective which encompasses the whole of exis-tence. Kabbalah does. So does Buddhism. Sodoes the mystical heart of any world religion.

I’ve chosen to study the chart of the DalaiLama from a Western perspective bacause, in

the last fifty years of the Tibetan Diaspora,Buddhist precepts have become increasinglyavailable to the West largely due to the indus-try of Tibetans-in-exile. As such, Buddhism isentering the Western collective unconscious ata very fast rate and there is a current debate inTibetan Bhuddhist circles concerning whetherBuddhism should be adapted to “fit” the west-ern psyche, or whether it can stand on its ownprecepts, with the West adapting to Buddhism.

My own view is that both apply, mainlybecause any perennial philosophy which has

the whole of existence as its main focus cannot,in essence, exclude what seem to be extremesand opposites. The same applies to Kabbalah,particularly the form of Kabbalah which I adhereto, the Platonic and Neoplatonic ToledanoTradition, which has been revived and re-visitedby Warren Kenton, the London Kabbalist.

The Toledano Tradition has its roots in earlymedieval Spain, where the confluence of

Judaic, Islamic and Christian thought was influ-enced by the Platonism and Neoplatonismbrought back to Europe by the Arabs duringwhat was the Dark Ages. Dark in the rest ofEurope they might have been (though that isdebateable), but in Spain there was a gloriousintellectual, spiritual and artistic flowering whichinfluenced the development of European cul-ture up to and beyond the Renaissance and isstill with us today, not least in astrology.

All strands of culture influence all othersthroughout the whole course of history. As

an example, Tibetan astrology is based on boththe Chinese and Hindu forms. Hindu astrology,as we know, has many similarities with that usedin the West. Locked as they were behind theirmountains for many hundreds of years, theTibetans still had access to India, China, theMiddle-East and the Mongolian steppe lands.We often forget, too, that the Greeks andRomans and, later, Middle Eastern andEuropean merchants and traders had com-merce with India and the lands running alongthe North-Western edge of what is now Tibet,and that the great Silk Route from the Lebanonto China ran just north of what are the Tibetannomadic lands. Where human beings travel,ideas are exchanged and take root, sometimesin a form which is adapted to the cultural andintellectual seedbed in which they find them-selves. Then they seem to become separateand different intellectual outcroppings.Examined carefully, this is not so, and there ismore overlap between astrology, Kabbalah andBuddhism than cultural dress and trappingswould sometimes allow.

Icould have taken, with some validity, the sep-aratist astrological view in this article, but have

chosen to attempt a more syncretist viewpoint,bringing together, if possible, strands of astro-logical, Kabbalist and Buddhist thinking in exam-ining the Dalai Lama’s chart.

At the core, Buddhism and Kabbalism exam-ine the same phenomena – the totality of

existence, encompassing both what is seen andwhat is not seen. The diffence between them isthat Buddhism states that there is enough to doby knowing what happens within existence;speculation about what remains beyond exis-tence is just that – speculation. TheNeoplatonic form of Kabbalah allows for suchspeculation: what lies beyond existence is theAbsolute from which all existence springs.Unprovable though it is, it attempts to makesense of where and how existence came into


The Dalai Lama: Priest-PoliticianA Kabbalistic and Astrological PerspectiveFreda Edis

Offering a wonderfully catholic variety of perspectives, Freda Edis weaves an insightful por-trait of one of the most prominent spiritual leaders of our time, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

(continued on page 39)

21st January Clare Martin Relationships - Finding ourselves in the crowdEvery house in the horoscope describes a specific type of relationship whether

this is with ourselves, with other people or with the outside world. Paradoxically,

it is through relationships that we discover who we are, and an exploration of the

projected, denied or devalued parts of our horoscope, whether by planet, house or

sign, will provide valuable information about the kinds of relationships we will

find ourselves in. This seminar will explore the powerful influence of archetypal

relationship patterns at work in our lives, operating at each of the developmental

stages, from parent/child to adult/adult to anima/animus relationship patterns, and

the problems which can arise when these levels become confused. Attention will

be paid to the transition between astrological ages and the corresponding collec-

tive shift in consciousness which, along with the transits of the outer planets dur-

ing the last century, have profoundly altered the dynamics of relating. The CPA is

delighted to welcome Clare Martin who has been teaching astrology for ten years,

and has Diplomas from the Faculty, CPA and in Psychotherapy and Counselling.

Currently President of the Faculty of Astrological Studies, she is completing a

masters degree in Integrative Psychotherapy and works as a consultant astrologer

and counsellor. Her particular interests are the history of astrology, alchemy and

the esoteric and mystical traditions.

28th January Juliet Sharman-BurkeTarot Study DayWe will use this day to deepen experience of the tarot. It is intended for

those who have a working knowledge of tarot, especially those who attend-

ed the Beginners’ Course, and wish to further their understanding. We will

concentrate on practical work such as readings and exercises in the group.

4th February Karen Hamaker-Zondag Plutonic Themes: Pluto and the 8th HouseFew people understand what they do with their own Pluto, it seems as if he has

his mythological cap of invisibility on his head when we try to look at ourselves.

How is Pluto acting out in your chart, and in which ways you are confronted

with it? What can you do with Pluto in the houses, in aspect to planets and

house-rulers? What kind of pain does he cause and how does his transforma-

tion processes work? The 8th house has a special dynamic, and we feel a kind

of love and hate at the same time towards its contents. We’ll explore why this

is the case, and how we can understand its dynamics to cope with our problems

in daily life. We’ll learn how to delineate planets in the 8th and in aspect to the

ruler of the 8th house. Pluto in transit very often brings us things we don’t expect

but we have to pay a certain price for it. We’ll look at what Pluto tends to bring,

and what would be the best attitude to work with what shows up.

11th February Darby CostelloThe Moon and Mercury as Natural and Cultivated Memory

Memories well up from the past when least expected, and sometimes

least desired. Yet when we try to remember something that seems

important, we can feel it hovering just out of reach, out of conscious-

ness. Often we remember events with others that they remember quite

differently - and many of us have memories that go farther back in our

lives than is possible. This seminar will look at the Moon and Mercury

and what role each plays creating and weaving the story of our lives.

We will look at natural memory (the Moon) and cultivated memory

(Mercury) - their actions, interactions and role in our lives. We shall

look at signs, houses and aspects to the Moon and Mercury to discov-

er habits of mind that block our own and our children’s ability to

learn, and ways of clearing the pathways as we go along.

18th February Lynn BellSaturn In GeminiWhenever Saturn enters a sign, we begin to notice areas that need extra atten-

tion, that have become a bit run down and worn out; issues that demand focus

and conscious support to keep going. Gemini has to do with deep splits in our

nature, with our duality, with our trickiness. It is not only our relationship to

words and what we do with them, but also our connection between the dark and

light within ourselves. What kind of tests and choices come when Saturn tran-

sits through this sign? Saturn in Gemini will oppose Pluto several times over the

next two years adding a more powerful underground dimension to Saturn’s

transit. We will look at the larger issues of this mundane cycle and how they illu-

mine the inner, individual passages of the Saturn-Pluto opposition.

25th February Alexander von SchlieffenThe Fixed Houses How do we choose the things we need in order to define who we are and to

assert ourselves in the world around us? These questions are of major impor-

tance for us, when we have planets in the fixed houses. The fixed cross seems

to symbolise major stations in the development of a distinct identity, personally

as well as culturally. In our present "age of globalisation", personal and cultur-

al "territories", our boundaries, are challenged in new and unforeseen ways. In

this seminar we will look at the developmental challenges of planets in the fixed

houses, the axes in Taurus/Scorpio and Leo/Aquarius, and the dynamics of

aspects between planets, transits and progressions through the fixed houses. The

CPA is delighted to welcome Alexander von Schlieffen, who is a painter and an

international teacher and lecturer in astrology. Alexander studied painting in

Vienna, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf and now teaches astrology at the DAV-

schools of Berlin and Cologne and at the SARASTRO-College in Vienna.

11th March Liz GreeneThe Trouble with TrinesThis seminar will explore the group of aspects usually known as "good" or

"easy" - trines, sextiles, and semi-sextiles - which are often interpreted in a sim-

plistic way without the context of the complexities of human psychology. The

undoubted gifts and aptitudes reflected by these planetary configurations need

to be viewed together with the more difficult dimensions of the horoscope to

understand why they are so often undeveloped, or linked with serious problems,

and why transiting planets in trine or sextile to natal ones frequently do not

reflect the cosmic bonus that astrologers anticipate. Particular focus will be

given on ways in which we can work with and develop the "benefic" aspects

with greater consciousness.

18th March Liz GreeneThe Thug and The Warrior: Making Peace with MarsThis seminar will explore the many facets of the "red planet", once deemed a

malefic but now understood to be at the root of many inner and outer difficul-

ties if it is not acknowledged and expressed. Mars may be linked with some of

the worst human excesses of violence and brutality, but the aggressive instinct

is vitally necessary for ego formation and the individual’s capacity to develop

character potentials; and the desire nature, if thwarted in blind or negative ways,

can undermine the entire personality structure. Through myth, psychological

patterns, and astrological placements by sign, house, and aspect, we will exam-

ine both the pathologies and gifts of Mars, its power in relationships, its links

with creative expression and with physical health and illness, the ways in which

it is often blocked both individually and collectively, and possible avenues of

positive expression which can help the individual to feel more comfortable with

Martial energy in an age when it is, even at best, deemed politically incorrect.

The Centre for Psychological AstrologySeminar Schedule - Spring 2001

INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL ASTROLOGYA new three-term course for beginners commenced October 2000

Term 2: The Dynamics of Astrology 24 January – 28 March 2001Number Symbolism in AstrologyAspects and Aspect Patterns – Finding the story. Bringing the Chart to Life.Mythology in Everyday LifeThe Angles : MC/IC, ASC/DES and Angular Planets: Meeting the Outside World

Term 3: The Cycles of Astrology 18 April – 20 June 2001Towards FluencyTime – Linear and CyclicalThe Sun/Moon Relationship: Eclipses, Nodes and their interpretationThe Lunation Cycle. Solar and Lunar Returns.Transits, Progressions, Directions: Life Cycles and the Unfolding Horoscope.

The Course is taught by Clare Martin DFAstrolS, and aims to prepare students for the Diploma Course run by the Centre forPsychological Astrology. Students completing the three-term course are eligible to receive the Centre for Psychological Astrology’sBeginners’ Course Certificate. Cost : £170 per term, payable to The Centre for Psychological Astrology. The course takes place onWednesday evenings, 7.00-9.30 pm, at College Hall, Malet Street, London WC1.

For more information on this course ring 0208-749 2330 or email [email protected]

APPLICATION FORMName: CPA Diploma student yes/no

Address:

Telephone: Email:

I would like to apply for ____ place(s) at the following events:

Sunday 21 Jan Relationships - Clare Martin

Sunday 28 Jan Tarot Study Day - Juliet Sharman-Burke *note venue below

Sunday 4 Feb Pluto and the 8th House - Karen Hamaker-Zondag

Sunday 11 Feb The Moon and Mercury - Darby Costello

Sunday 18 Feb Saturn in Gemini - Lynn Bell

Sunday 25 Feb The Fixed Houses - Alexander von Schlieffen

Sunday 11 Mar The Trouble with Trines - Liz Greene

Sunday 18 Mar The Thug and the Warrior: Making Peace with Mars - Liz Greene

Mailing Subscription: £3 [per 3-term year, by post]

If you do not include the mailing subscription, we will assume you no longer wish to be kept on the list and your namewill be removed; this includes ex-Diploma students. However, this information is distributed free by email; see our web-site for details at www.astrologer.com/cpa.

I enclose a cheque/postal order/money order in Sterling, drawn on a UK bank, for the sum of £_________

Post to: Centre for Psychological Astrology, BCM Box 1815, London WC1N 3XX, England

PLEASE NOTE: All one-day seminars are on Sundays between 10am and 5pm. There are two coffee breaks and alunch break. You are welcome to bring all charts (preferably on acetate for use with an OHP) for discussion to all sem-inars. Fees are payable in advance and must be sent with your application form at least ten days prior to the seminardate. Late applicants cannot be guaranteed a place. The fee for each one day seminar is £39. If cancellations arereceived less than 10 days before the seminar, the fee may be forfeit, unless a replacement can be found. No acknowl-edgments are sent unless requested. Please enclose SAE.Venues: All one-day seminars except Tarot are held at Regents College, Inner Circle, Regents Park, London, NW1.Nearest tube: Baker Street. Tarot seminar will be held at 209 Hammersmith Grove, London, W6 ONP. Nearest tube:Goldhawk Rd or Hammersmith Broadway.

Please do not turn up at a venue without booking in advance!

AApollon - The Journal of Psychological Astrology

Back issues - £6 including post and packaging

Issue 1 - Creativity Issue 2 - Relationships

Issue 3 - Healing Issue 4 - Fate

Issue 5 - The Child Issue 6 - Spirituality

The CPA Press Order Form

Books from the CPA PressBARRIERS AND BOUNDARIES

The Horoscope & the Defences of the Personality Liz Greene

THE ASTROLOGER, THE COUNSELLOR AND THE PRIEST Liz Greene & Juliet Sharman-Burke

THE FAMILY INHERITANCE Parental Images in the Horoscope Juliet Sharman-Burke

TO THE EDGE AND BEYONDSaturn, Chiron, Pholus and the Centaurs Melanie Reinhart

VENUS AND JUPITER Bridging the Ideal and the Real Erin Sullivan

THE ASTROLOGICAL MOON Darby Costello

THE ART OF STEALING FIRE Uranus in the Horoscope Liz Greene

INCARNATION The Nodes and the Four Angles Melanie Reinhart

THE HOROSCOPE IN MANIFESTATIONPrediction and Psychological Dynamics Liz Greene

DIRECTION AND DESTINY IN THE BIRTH CHART Howard Sasportas

WATER AND FIRE Darby Costello

WHERE IN THE WORLD?Astro*Carto*Graphy and Relocation Charts Erin Sullivan

PLANETARY THREADSPatterns of Relating Among Family and Friends Lynn Bell

RELATIONSHIPS AND HOW TO SURVIVE THEM Liz Greene

EARTH AND AIR Darby Costello

ASTROLOGY, HISTORY AND APOCALYPSE Nicholas Campion

RECORDED DELIVERY for added security for international orders; requires signature on delivery. £2.60 per order

TOTAL:CPA Press book titles are £19.99 each, plus postage and packaging per item as follows:

UK: £3.50 - Airmail to Europe (or anywhere in the world by Surface Mail): £4.00Airmail to America, Western Asia, Africa: £7.50 - Airmail to Australia, NZ, Eastern Asia: £8.50

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or order on the Web at: www.astrologer.com/cpa

About the Centre for Psychological Astrology

The Centre for Psychological Astrology provides a unique workshop and professional training programme, designed to foster

the cross-fertilisation of the fields of astrology and depth, humanistic, and transpersonal psychology. The main aims and objec-

tives of the CPA professional training course are:

a) To provide students with a solid and broad base of knowledge, within the realms of both traditional astrological symbolism

and psychological theory and technique, so that the astrological chart can be sensitively understood and interpreted in the light

of modern psychological thought.

b) To make available to students psychologically qualified case supervision, along with background seminars in counselling

skills and techniques which would raise the standard and effectiveness of astrological consultation. It should be noted that no for-

mal training as a counsellor or therapist is provided by the course.

c) To encourage investigation and research into the links between astrology, psychological models, and therapeutic techniques,

thereby contributing to and advancing the existing body of astrological and psychological knowledge.

HistoryThe Centre for Psychological Astrology began unofficially in 1980 as a sporadic series of classes and seminars offered by Liz

Greene and Howard Sasportas, covering all aspects of astrology from beginners’ courses to more advanced one-day seminars. In

1981 additional evening courses and seminars by other tutors were interspersed with those of Liz and Howard to increase the

variety of material offered to students, and Juliet Sharman-Burke and Warren Kenton began contributing their expertise in Tarot

and Kabbalah. In 1982 the “prototype” of the CPA - the Centre for Transpersonal Astrology - was born, with the administrative

work handled by Richard Aisbitt, himself a practising astrologer.

In 1983 the name was changed to the Centre for Psychological Astrology, because a wide variety of psychological approaches

was incorporated into the seminars, ranging from transpersonal psychology to the work of Jung, Freud and Klein. The Diploma

Course was eventually created, with additional tutors joining the staff. The Centre continued to develop and consolidate its pro-

gramme despite the tragic death of Howard in 1992, when Charles Harvey became co-director with Liz Greene. Richard Aisbitt

continued to manage the administration until 1994, when the burden of increasing ill health forced him to restrict his contribu-

tion to beginners’ and intermediate classes. At this time Juliet Sharman-Burke took over the administration for the Centre.

Richard himself sadly died in 1996.

In February 2000, tragedy struck again with the untimely demise of Charles Harvey, after a long struggle with cancer. Liz Greene

now continues to run the Centre as sole director, and with the help of the wonderful team of tutors and staff, looks forward to

develop the CPA in both familiar and new directions as these make themselves apparent, with the constant reminder of the excel-

lence of Charles’ work and personality.

For further information, including our full prospectus, visit our website at www.astrologer.com/cpa. You can receive email bul-

letins from the CPA by sending a message to [email protected] with the words subscribe cpalist in the body of the mes-

sage. For those without access to the Internet, please send a SAE to the administrator.

The CPA PressSince the Centre’s inception, many people, including astrology students living abroad as well as those attending CPA seminars,

have repeatedly requested transcriptions of the seminars. In the autumn of 1995, Liz Greene, Charles Harvey and Juliet Sharman-

Burke decided to launch the Centre for Psychological Astrology Press, in order to make available to the astrological commu-

nity material which would otherwise be limited solely to seminar participants, and might never be included by the individual

tutors in their own future written works. Because of the Centre’s module-type programme, many seminars are “one-off” presen-

tations which are not likely to be repeated, and much careful research and important astrological investigation would otherwise

be lost. The volumes in the CPA Seminar Series are meant for serious astrological students who wish to develop a greater knowl-

edge of the links between astrology and psychology, in order to understand both the horoscope and the human being at a deep-

er and more insightful level. Apollon, launched on October 1st 1998, is the latest publishing venture of the CPA Press.

being. Through the centuries this has beentermed the emanationist theory; as such, it isclearly outlined in Plotinus’ Enneads.1

The Kabbalistic form of Neoplatonism pos-tulates that existence has four dimensions

which emanate serially from the Absolute.The first emanation is the pure world of totalconsciousness within existence, known asAzilut, or the world of the Divine, From thatemanates the spiritual world of Beriah, thePlatonic world of Ideas where time, space andduality come into being. This world devolvesinto the psychological world of Yetzirah, thePlatonic world of Forms where astrology,among other forms which attempt to makesense of human experience, is located. Thefinal emanation, the outcropping of Yetzirah,is the material world of Assiyah, also knownas the world of Action, the observable, con-crete world which we see around us. All theworlds are linked to each other and to theAbsolute by consciousness. It is man’s taskand inner yearning to become aware of thisprocess of continual flux, change and inter-connectedness, the modern outline of whichis put forward in Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’s AKabbalistic Universe2. Man’s conscious individ-ual and collective journey back to his originscan be supported by a knowledge of thesteps, the worlds, which Kabbalistic theoryprovides.

Similarly with Buddhism. The examinationand interaction of causes and conditions

within existence which result, in theMahayana, or the Great Vehicle tradition, inthe three states of Dharmakaya,Samboghakaya and Nirmanakaya, are amongthe basic precepts of Buddhist metaphysics.The Dharmakaya is the ultimate state of thefully enlightened mind from which emanatesthe Samboghakaya, which is the state of real-isation where separateness dissolves intounity, and the Nirmanakaya, in which fullyenlightened beings can manifest3. While theydo not directly overlap with Kabbalistic theo-ry, a theory of emanation is clearly visible inBuddhist thought.

The Dalai Lama’s training is such as wouldensure the understanding of these theoret-

ical perspectives within Buddhism. As a result,he might push to understand the affinity withother philosophical traditions, examining theirsimilarities and differences. He has, over theyears, set up a series of discourses with spiritu-al leaders, scientists and psychotherapists fromthe West. That he has an innate curiosity aboutthe human condition is clear from his chart,4

which will be examined later. (See p.42)

As the article will consider the DalaiLama as politician as well as priest, per-

haps a note might be made of political the-ories which could be regarded as appropri-ate to an analysis. Traditionally, mystical per-spectives do not take on a political dimen-sion; they encompass them, but are fullyaware of their limitations. The feudal politi-co-religious perspective of Tibet's tradition-al rulers has now broken down under theimposition of the Chinese form ofCommunism. This itself is in the process ofbeing adapted and redefined since the deathof Mao Tse-Tung and the fall of the BerlinWall. Indeed, we hear very little these daysabout Chinese Communism as such. Fromthe Tibetan perspective, the human rightsviolations visited by the Chinese on Tibetansare little short of a vicious form of imperial-ism which does not reflect their spiritual,psycholgical, cultural or physical needs. Fromthe Chinese perspective, Tibet is an integralpart of China and has been for many cen-turies, therefore, Tibetans easily fit into theirsystem of government; it is only politicalrecidivists who look back with longing tothe days of the Dalai Lama. Chinese propa-ganda tells us that these are few in number.News leaking out from Tibet itself tells avery different story.

The Dalai Lama, in exile, has had to strad-dle many cultural, theoretical and spiri-

tual perspectives in his attempts to bring tothe world recognition of Tibet's inviolableright to exist as a self-determining nation. Asa result, the Tibetan government-in exileoperates many democratic forms gleanedfrom Western practice and the Dalai Lamatravels extensively to bring his political andspiritual messages to many parts of theworld.

1 Plotinus, The Enneads,Penguin Books, abridged edi-tion 1991, pp 361 - 3862 Halevi, Z’ev ben Shimon, AKabbalistic Universe, SamuelWeiser, 1977, pp. 7-163. Dowman, Keith, SkyDancer: The Secret Life andWorks of the Lady YesheTsogyel, Arkana, pp. 222-2244 See editor’s note, p. 47


(continued from page 34)

Realise your potential with the Faculty of Astrological Studies

The Astrological Perspective

The perspective as we use it today encom-passes the study of man’s psychological

make-up and possible development. So, it cangive an indication of people’s divine and spiritu-al aspirations, an understanding of their uniqueapproach to their inner worlds and some expla-nation of how their inner worlds might manifestin outward life. Astrology, rightly used, is one ofthe complex and sensitive tools which peoplecan apply in order to understand themselvesbetter - a core need, not only if they are to livefully in the material world, but also to explorehow they can relate their life experience to theinner yearnings for connectedness whichprompt us all. That yearning can often take usbeyond the world of the senses, whether ornot we are conscious of it in the first instance.A spiritual journey is most often a training inreconciling the inner worlds with the outer, andKabbalah and Buddhism, as well as other spritu-al trainings, familiarise us with those innerworlds: astrology can help us pinpoint, in somedetail, what we need to know about ourselvesin order to facilitate that deeper journey.

As it stands now, Western astrology linksboth the 9th and the 12th house to spiri-

tual needs and developments; both are promi-nent in the Dalai Lama’s chart. The location ofJupiter and Neptune and aspects to them indi-cate the processes by which these needs are

expressed; again, both are located at crucialpoints of the Dalai Lama’s horoscope.Traditionally, Sagittarius, Virgo and Pisces areassociated with a sense of the mystical anddivine; Virgo and Pisces operate strongly in hisnatal configuration. My astrological experiencehas indicated that, often, the 5th house isinvolved in the creative expression of spiritualneeds; interestingly, the Dali Lama’s 5th houseis tenanted by both Jupiter and the Vertex.

Astrology can also indicate the tendency topolitical involvement. The 10th and 7th

houses, placements of the Sun, Jupiter andSaturn and the signs of Capricorn and Cancerare, traditionally, implicated in the formation ofthe political personality. All of these significatorsare prominent in the Dalai Lama’s chart, eventhe untenanted 10th and 7th houses; some ofthem are the same as the significators for thepriest.

In essence, the Dalai Lama cannot avoid thedestiny of the priest-politician; where one

configuration operates, the other must as well.Overall, his chart indicates that he is well placedto express both the spiritual and the temporal,the commonplace and the esoteric, with heartand a well-developed sense of compassion. AsKabbalists would put it, he has the capacity tolink Beriah and Assiyah through the medium ofa finely-tuned Yetzirah. Whether he has a senseof the mystical and divine world of total con-

Founded 1948

Patrons:Dr. Liz Greene

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Julia Parker

For details of courses

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Astrology is a complex, fascinatingand profound subject deserving aninvestment of time across a wide spec-trum of knowledge - which is why theFaculty and the D.F.Astrol.S. is so veryspecial.

Our lecturers and tutors include top UKand international astrologers, who pro-vide a wealth of experience and wis-dom, whether you are a beginner or anadvanced student.

With over fifty years of teaching astrol-ogy behind us you could not have amore effective or caring start on yourastrological journey of self discovery.

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5 Sharman-Burke, Juliet, &Greene, Liz, The Astrologer,Counsellor and the Priest, CPAPress, 1997, p. 105

sciousness, Azilut, we do not know; all he hastold us is that he is still in training, has had somemystical experiences and is taught by some ofTibet’s finest mystics, those from the Tantra andDzogchen traditions. But mystics are notoriousfor not speaking of their inner experiencesuntil the time is ripe to tell the world. As yet,the Dalai Lama’s public teachings concentratemainly, though not entirely, on the lower andmiddle range of Tibetan Buddhism, its philo-sophy and practice.5

He has the capacity for simple and directexplanation, yet has a mind honed to

razor-like sharpness and incisiveness by manyyears of philosophical training, meditationpractices and debate. These qualities are asuseful for the politician as they are for thepriest.

PPriest and Politician

All Tibet’s Dalai Lamas have been politiciansand priests. The fifth Dalai Lama was more

mystic than politician; the present incumbent’simmediate predecessor, the thirteenth DalaiLama was more politician than priest. The cur-rent Dalai Lama has recognised the feudal, per-haps undemocratic way in which his predeces-sors ruled and has, in exile, tried to separatethe powers of priest and politician by settingup a government-in-exile which operates moredemocratically. On the whole, however, hispeople, in exile and those still in Tibet, see himas both ruler and spiritual leader. Perceptionsare sometimes stronger than created forms.The archetypes of both priest and politicianoperate for the Dalai Lama, whether he wills itor no; his Grand Trine in Water between theSun, Jupiter and Saturn ensures that will be so.

Our current Western archetype of thepriest has its roots in the Latin idea of the

pontifex maximus, the builder of bridgesbetween the spiritual and the human worlds.6 Infact, the idea and the practice go back muchfurther than that. The Babylonian priesthoodwas in operation from at least 500 years BCE;certainly, a priestesshood can be dated backmany hundreds of years, perhaps a millenniumbefore that. Buddha, at around the same time,insisted on the exploration of mind within exis-tence primarily because the Vedantist priest-hood of his day spent so much time in meta-physical speculation. The Judaic priesthooddescended from the Levite and dates from thetime of the great Exodus from Egypt. Datingvaries, but most speculation for the time of theExodus is around that of 1500 - 1200 BCE.

Wherever, it seems, man had a sense ofotherness beyond the world of the

senses and could communicate it, a capacity forpriestliness existed, out of which, humanitybeing as it is, priestly organisations discretelyformed. Where the ranks of the priesthoodcongregated, politics inevitably raised its head.

No organisation, temporal or spiritual, canexist in the material world without a hier-

archy and a form of self-government; nor, often,can religious organisations help but overlap withtheir temporal counterparts. This applies asmuch to churches, mosques and synagogues asit does to Tibet and its monasteries. Much ofthe recorded history of West has been takenup with wars of religion and with wars and civilwars, to ensure the separation of spiritual andtemporal power: Tibet has had its own wars ofreligion over the past millennia.


14th Dalai Lama5:04am6 July 1935Taktse, Tibet29°N40’ 91°E20’ (-7:00)GeocentricTropicalTrue Node(See editor’s note p47)

At a very individual level, even if the DalaiLama were to separate off the spiritual

from the temporal rulership of Tibet’s people,he would still be a monk of the Gelug tradition,one of the four main schools of TibetanBuddhism. Ergo, he would not escape its poli-tics and organisation. Standing where he is,bearing in mind his birthchart, he is well placedto bridge the spiritual and the mundane and,indeed, does so daily.

The politician archetype, however, is muchless well explored in astrology. Currently, in

practice, both East and West, politicians have abad press, seen as power-hungry, possibly sub-ject to corruption, in whatever degree, offeringmore than they can fulfil and inevitably con-strained by the larger political sytems withinwhich they operate. They have families, newbabies and hobbies, but all are subjected to thedemands of a somewhat workaholic life, subor-dinating ordinary human concerns to those ofthe wider collective, however they perceive it.Where ordinary human values are discounted,they can shoot out of control, basing decisionson political dogma and theory which can be justas constraining as religious dogma poorlyapplied. The individual is most often subjectedto the mass decision; whether or not the resultenhances human life is often debateable.

Whereas the priest archetype can superfi-cially be seen as all Jupiter, the politician

archetype may be seen as all negative Saturn.Neither is entirely true. What mainly gets for-gotten is the core of the archetype itself. InKabbalah, the prominent politician is seen as theMan of Destiny,7 chosen to lead his people into

the Promised Land of material peace andplenty. There human life is sustained andenhanced beyond the survival level so that civil-isation can advance to the point where it is ableto encourage the development of greater visionand insight into man’s needs and the deepestrecesses of the human condition, both individ-ual and collective. Once the basic needs for sur-vival are met, then man is in a better position toexplore his own inner worlds, from the mun-dane to the divine, to use Kabbalaistic terminol-ogy. It is difficult to do that if you are starving,ill, poorly educated and worrying about wherethe next week’s rent is coming from, to para-phrase John Locke’s famous dictum.

Such was the vision behind Plato’s philoso-pher-kings. Such was, mythology tells us, the

vision and condition of the world when Saturnreigned supreme, before his incarceration inTartaros by Zeus. It operates from the politicalend of the priest-politician continuum. While inthe West it has taken a millennium of wars tosplit off the religious from the political, in Tibetthat process has taken just fifty years. It hasresulted in the exile of a Dalai Lama who is con-scious of the tensions between the two, but justas conscious of how he might build bridgesbetween them. So, what do kabbalah andastrology indicate that he is likely to do?

The Dalai Lama

The mythology of the discovery of the divinechild by the magi has been well told in rela-

tion to the Dalai Lama and not only within theTibetan community. Scorsese’s recent film,Kundun, underscores the point, adding to it thesubsequent story of the young Dalai Lama lead-ing his people into exile, much as Abrahamtook his people down into Egypt. In Kabbalah,Egypt represents the descent into materialityand the loss of memory of man’s spiritual ori-gins. Happily, this did not happen to the DalaiLama; his previous twenty years of spiritual andphilosophical training in Tibet ensured that hehad a steady basis of experience and faith onwhich to place the meaning of his exile.

He does, though, continually refer to thereturn to his Promised Land, that moun-

tain-locked country, Tibet, which is placed atthe headwaters of Asia’s largest and mostprized rivers. Whoever controls Asia’s waterinevitably controls Asia’s future life: a Buddhistinspired government with a respect for theinterconnectedness of all life might, in the longrun, prove a better guardian than a ChineseCommunist government inspired by a verymaterial dialecticism. We are reminded of thebiblical story of the four rivers which flow fromEden. Kabbalistically, each of them is a sourcewhich waters a particular part of the psyche.


Where the soul is cut off from its source, deepmourning ensues and the Dalai Lama, withSaturn in Pisces 9th placed in opposition to theMoon/Neptune conjunction, is no stranger tomourning and suffering the depression whichsprings from the separation from hisMotherland.

There is no concept of the soul in Bhuddistphilosophy, but the human condition con-

stantly refers to that point of confluencebetween experience of the outer world, ourpsychological make-up and that sense of other-ness which unites us all. This stage in the devel-opment of consciousness we in the West callthe soul. Often the soulfulness expressed inmourning and depression is a recognition of theseparation we suffer when we cannot havematerial life fit our inner, idealised picture of it.With Saturn placed in the conscious, other-directed 9th house, the Dalai Lama is wellplaced to understand his people’s sufferingthough the medium of his own Piscean experi-ence of it. Here is the priest who suffers withhis people.

Crucial to an understanding of suffering aspart of the Dalai Lama’s life is the kite con-

figuration in his birthchart, with the Moon-Neptune opposition to Saturn, slung betweenthe 9th Piscean and 3rd Virgoan houses, thoughthe cusps of both those houses, Aquarius andLeo, ensure that the Dalai Lama retains a senseof both individual and collective spiritual andintellectual development. It is no surprise to findthat he is a monk of the Gelug order, the mostpurely philosophical in Tibetan Buddhism. Thekite draws in the Sun on the CancerianAscendant, but just in the 12th house, andJupiter in Scorpio 5th. All of these represent theplacement of the priest; equally, with the addi-tion of the Cancer/Capricorn Asc./Desc. axis, allof them represent the politician. Together, theyspeak of exile and mourning, interconnected-

ness and joy and, hopefully, the understandingthat exile can act as the hothouse for spiritualmaturity.

Isobel Hickey once described the Saturn-Neptune aspects as the signature of the prac-

tical idealist. In the Dalai Lama’s chart, this isenhanced by the opposition’s house placementand sign - the involvement of Pisces and Virgo,both mystical signs, within the 9th and 3rdhouses and their placements on the cusps ofthe 10th and 4th houses. His experience ofphysical (Saturn), psychological (Moon) andspiritual (Neptune) suffering are carried oververy acutely into the roots of his being (Virgo4th house) and into his spiritual aspirations forhimself and his perception of world (Pisces 10thhouse). With Pisces on the MC, he cannotavoid the archetype of the priest-politicianbeing projected into the world, even though hisCancerian Sun, just entering the 12th house,might want to pull him back into periods ofretreat and quiet meditation. Three planets inEarth and a Capricorn Descendant ensure thathe has enough practicality to want to put pre-cepts into practice.

There is, however, a three-way pull in thechart. Practical idealism is strongly empha-

sised; so is the need for retreat where he makessense of the data he so carefully and energeti-cally gathers (Mercury in Gemini 12th trineMars in Libra 4th). But Saturn in 9th housePisces further indicates that this is a man wholongs to travel, physically, emotionally and spiri-tually. For him it is not an escape, but a neces-sity. Meeting up with foreign cultures broadensthe base of his own understanding of politics,people and spiritual systems, at the same timethat he delivers both his political and spiritualmessages to the world. It is part of his nature toexpress a deeply emotional benevolencetowards humankind and individuals (Jupiter inScorpio 5th, trine Saturn, trine Sun, sextile

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Moon-Neptune) while on his travels and open-ly imparting his messages. In many parts of theworld, the Dalai Lama is much loved and ven-erated in return.

This is not so in China, where he is hated andfeared. Chinese Communism, with its

strong need to clamp down on religiousexpression in Tibet, on that “opium of themasses”, as Marx put it, views the Dalai Lama asa threat to the new, enlightened, secular orderit has imposed on the Tibetans. For the dog-matists among the Chinese, the Tibetan reli-gious leader’s return to his native land wouldmean a return to the feudal, politico-religioussystem which existed before his exile. This isthe fear of the shadow side of Saturn in 9thhouse Pisces, though it is not the reality. Tibet,the Dalai Lama and China have moved on andmodernised far too far in the last forty years forthat to happen.

China also picks up the personal shadowside of the Dalai Lama’s chart in relation

to his Piscean Saturn; at one level, that massivecountry is the projection of his own fears ofthe religious life.

Whether or not the Dalai Lama has strug-gled with this consciously is not known,

but he has publicly stated that there are timeswhen he would like to retire. One of the diffi-culties with the Tibetan system of mind train-ing is that the children are chosen and dedi-cated at a very young age to the religious life.In one sense, they have little choice in thematter, though the Buddhist precepts of re-incarnation, rebirth and karma would suggestthat they do, though at a level beyond mater-ial life. Kabbalists would agree with those pre-cepts. In both traditions, self-realized masterschoose to come back to the world to help andaid suffering humanity in its struggle to freeitself from the wheel of rebirth.

Nevertheless, child lamas go through thesame developmental patterns as all chil-

dren; they are trained to develop their latentconscious awareness and this takes time. Thehigher Tibetan lamas are well aware of theneed to train future religious leaders from avery young age because they had failed withthe sixth Dalai Lama. Due to the politics oper-ating between Tibetan monastic orders at thetime, he was not chosen to fill his post untilthe age of eighteen, after which time hebecame a poet as well as something of awomaniser. He died in mysterious circum-stances at a very young age, though not untilafter his initiation as religious leader. All subse-quent Dalai Lamas started their training at amuch younger age.

There are indications in the present DalaiLama’s chart, and in his life, that he, too, had

to struggle with some quite difficult personalcharacteristics in his early years of training. Theson of an angry and powerful father (Sun squareMars, square Pluto), he also showed open dis-plays of anger in his younger days. This was thechild who beat up his older brother on the jour-ney from Taktser to Lhasa just before his initia-tion as religious leader of Tibet. This was theyoung man who gave his younger brother asevere bawling out and a box on the ears when,on a delegation to China, the boy had pulled fishlive from a fishpond and watched them flopabout on the grass, gasping for air. This was theman who let it be known in no uncertain termsthat he was mightily displeased when his olderbrothers disrobed as lamas and married. Theindications are that he has learned, through thetests imposed by Buddhist mind-training, to har-ness his somewhat wild energy and put it at thedisposal of his curious mind and into his serviceof the spiritual needs of others (Mars trineMercury, bi-quintile Saturn).

He has Pluto in the 1st house, in Cancer,never an easy placement for anyone, less so

in a spiritual leader when it squares his Mars. Hemay be well aware of the issues of politicalpower as an outspringing of the strength of hisemotions, his strong will and his sexuality.Celibacy is a pre-condition of life in the Gelugorder to which the Dalai Lama belongs, butthere is a way that sexual libido can be chan-nelled in Buddhist training. The Dalai Lama isfamiliar with the teachings relating to the highertantras in the Kalachakra mode of training. Sometantric trainings very deliberately call on the lifeforce inherent in the sexual libido to supportspiritual development. This can be workedthrough via a series of very detailed inner visual-isations of the appropriate deities and transmut-


Map of Tibet1897 University of California atBerkeley

ed into a further refinement of consciousnessand awareness; no physical consort need beinvolved.

In some respects, this training is similar to theKabbalistic notion of the unification of the

Shekhinah, the Presence of God, with theGodhead, as outlined in The Song of Solomon.We have no way of knowing whether the DalaiLama has personally worked with the tantric tra-dition in this form, nor need we. What is observ-able is that this is a man with an extremely inci-sive mind, whose aspects to Mars indicate thathe has the capacity for awareness of the positiveand negative issues connected with politicalpower and who can, after a struggle, give formand structure to his strong emotions in directingwhere that power is to be applied. Strength ofwill and its application are second nature to boththe priest and the politician within him. Thatmuch we do know from his current words anddeeds.

Four planets in Water and the Moon-Neptuneopposition to Saturn indicate that he proba-

bly struggled with the separation from his moth-er in his early years. He has said that he felt verylonely in the first monastery to which he wassent. His older brother reports that he cried fordays when he first entered into the monastic lifeand, later, often cried after his parents returnedhome from their infrequent visits to him and hisbrothers. The Dalai Lama has also said that, as agrown man, he was hurt to discover that he wasnot his mother’s favourite son. His first suffering

of exile and loss, his separation from his mother,is echoed in his later suffering in exile from Tibet.This is a Dalai Lama who has experienced at firsthand one of the tenets that underpin Buddhism– the suffering of all sentient beings.

Yet he was the driving force behind recreatingTibetan communities, both religious and sec-

ular, in India and, later, elsewhere. Tied emotion-ally to his Motherland and strong sense of tradi-tion, his powerfully creative Jupiter in the 5th andthe trine between Uranus and Venus, withUranus also trining his Moon-Neptune, indicate aman who can explore new ways of implement-ing those very spiritual values from which hesprung, the pressure of exile forcing him to adaptand innovate.

Both traditionalist and moderniser, priest andpolitician, deeply emotional and strongly

intellectual, practical and an idealist, we have yetto see the Dalai Lama emerge as a fully-fledgedmystic. My Kabbalistic nose tells me that he isstill in practice, but he is not telling the outsideworld. My astrological instincts guide me to thetransit of Uranus over his Saturn in 2005 and2006, the transit of Saturn over his Moon-Neptune in 2007 and 2008 and the transit ofUranus over his MC in 2009 and 2010, by whichtime he will be seventy-five. Poignantly, by then,fifty of those years he will have spent in exilefrom his native land. Hopefully, he will havereached an inner reconciliation with himself tothe point where all dualism, that inner sense ofexile, the “going down into Egypt”, ceases.


1 Kundun : A Biography ofthe Family of the Dalai LamaMary Craig, 1997, HarperCollins, Fount Imprint, pp.57-582 Lois Rodden’sAstrodatabank is atwww.astrodatabank.com


Editor adds:

I had a profound sense of the tightrope weastrologers walk in editing Freda’s article - myquest for precise Virgoan certainty in astrologicaldata foundered, no doubt an inscrutable mani-festation of the Dalai Lama’s Piscean Saturn(conjunct my Sun) opposing his Moon-Neptunein Virgo. In routinely checking the details, I dis-covered many different charts in existence forhim. Freda suggested a dawn chart, that had 12ºCancer rising, at Taktser, Tibet. In support of thischart, she quotes Mary Craig, in Kundun: ABiography of the Family of the Dalai Lama,1 “hecame into the world by the light on a single mus-tard-oil lamp, at daybreak on the fifth day of thefifth month of Wood Hog Year (6th July 1935)”.But on my computer, my usually reliable astrolo-gy software offered a chart with 4º Libra rising,with a timezone that was obviously incorrect,and a different spelling of his birthplace - Takster.To establish which spelling was correct, I lookedup my atlas - only to find that the coordinates forhis place of birth, no matter how it was spelled,pointed to somewhere outside Tibet, inSzechuan, China, with no Takster or Taktser tobe seen. A usually reliable Internet astrologicaldatabase had the Dalai Lama’s chart - giving thesame place, spelled Taktser, but set to noon, giv-ing 26º Libra rising - and that chart was used bysomeone else on the Internet, for a characterstudy. Looking up available biographies of theholy man, I was struck by the different spellingsof the place he was born; but all agreed that hewas born in North-Eastern Tibet. My usual toolsfor finding a placename failed me; my huge atlascomputer programme, on which I had spent somuch money, had never heard of Taktser or anyother variants on that theme - but then, it hadn’theard of Tibet, either.

So I started hunting for Taktser in earnest; but Ifailed to find it, anywhere. I learned that Tibetanis an alphabet-based language, like English, andthat Tibetans were forced to learn character-based Chinese after the invasion. So I learnedthat there were Chinese (pinyin) versions ofeach placename, a concept familiar to me as anIrishman. Eventually, on an official Chinese mapof Tibet, I found Taktse - the Chinese versionbeing Daxi xian or Dagze. This Taktse wasn’t a“little village in North-Eastern Tibet” as hisbiographies went - this was a small county town,20kms east of the capital, Lhasa. I was able toascertain that the population in the county was23,500 (1.6% of which are ethnic Chinese) - butI was not able to confirm whether this was thebirthplace of the holy man or not. It wasn’t as ifI could call or email the tourist office there; Iwould have if I could have. But then I thoughtthat any English translations of Chinese wordswould be mere approximations - especially

bearing in mind Oriental tendencies to confusethe English sounds “L” and “R”. So, armed withthis contradictory information, I wrote to thedoyenne of astrological research, Lois Rodden2,to demonstrate my prowess that I had spotteda flaw in the available data on a major world fig-ure, and informed her of my “discovery” ofTaktse. She was initially impressed, but I soondiscovered that my research was not so mould-breaking as I had thought. Although Lois con-firmed that there was much existing confusion,and offered yet another spelling of the village,calling it Tengster, the latitude and longitude shehad on file were approximately the same as allthe others - outside the current borders of Tibet.It hadn’t occurred to me that the borders ofTibet had changed since 1936; it took Fredaherself to bring me back to Earth with a gentlebump, describing in convincing detail whereexactly the village is: “Taktser... is in what wasthen the far East of Tibet, and is a small village inthe province of Amdo about 15 km from thenearest town of Siling, or Sining as it is some-times called. That part of Amdo was in Tibet atthe time of the DL's birth, but may now be partof the Chinese province of Kansu, of whichLangchow is the chief city.” This placing of thevillage, and mention of its province, Amdo,matches Lois’ information. So, we have definite-ly established the place - and Sining can be seenin the old map opposite.

Then we are faced with the question of the timeof birth. The advantage of Lois’ system is that shekeeps records of each piece of research con-tributed to her - so her archives become not onlyuseful as a record of facts and figures, but also aunique history of those who have shown an inter-est in a particular personality over the years. Thereare various times given - and the reason whydawn is a questionable time, even though theDalai Lama’s mother says that he was born “earlyin the morning, before sunrise”, is that, by Easterntradition, holy men are always born at daybreak.The obvious inference is that to suggest otherwisemay be to impugn his holy status, even if comingfrom the lips of a loving mother. The Dalai Lamahimself has been quoted, probably incorrectly, assaying “just before noon”, although his office hasgiven a time of “between 5:30 and 6:30am”.

So, we are left with confusion. Virgoan researchat its most thorough has failed to provide uswith the security of a firm canvas upon whichwe can paint a satisfying Piscean picture of soul,a screen upon which we can project what weare looking for, especially in someone whose lifeseems to embody the characteristics that wehold as most spiritual and admirable. At anytime, a breeze of hard facts can whip the canvasaway from our easel, and we are left with mere-ly a suggestion of the palette.

RRichard Leigh has this to sayabout himself: “I'm an officialexpatriate, have lived herefor 26 years, never felt veryAmerican. B.A. TuftsUniversity, M.A. Universityof Chicago, Ph.D. StateUniversity of New York atStony Brook in ComparativeLiterature. Co-author ofsuch books as The HolyBlood and the Holy Grail, TheMessianic Legacy, TheTemple and the Lodge. SecretGermany, The Elixir and theStone, but all of this is spuri-ous distraction from whatreally matters. I considermyself primarily a writer offiction - novels and shortstories. Have also written onmythic logic in relation toNorthern Ireland. Co-founder and Trustee ofPushkin Prizes in Ireland.Background in comparativeliterature, history, psycholo-gy, philosophy, comparativereligions, comparativemythology, esoterica.Secondary vocation as prac-tical joker and founder ofthe Vancouver Foundationof Lycanthropic Children.”

Where does reality lie? In the greatest enchantmentyou have ever experienced.- Hugo von Hoffmannsthal

In dreams begins responsibility.- W. B. Yeats

One

Awolf's deranged frenzy hurled to the stars, askein of ghostly shrillness woven into wind

like white hair streaming wild; and again, herealised, blinking into the humid darkness, againhe had dreamed of the island. Sunk though it wasinto the soil, the hut quaked and shudderedbeneath the surly pummelling of the wind, andthe timbered walls creaked, and fingers of icy airprobed between chinks in the logs. The frigidbreath of Strivog circulated through the brittledwelling - a misty silver-white vapour stirring theodours into a haze of bear fat and bear skins, wolfand deer pelts, peat smoke and sleep. In thehearth - an oval recess scooped from the dampturf floor - crumbling blocks of peat smoulderedwith red-eyed menace, quivering honeycombs ofangrily caged flame.

Again he had dreamed of the island, herealised, his gaze colliding with clotted shad-

ows. In the corner opposite, the woman was lit-tle more than a black coalescence, only her headprotruding from her rug of bear fur, her faceextinguished by the disarray of her hair. Besideher, however, the youth's face glimmered with awan, almost luminous lustre - a random spatter ofmilk, or semen, suspended in the womb of thenight. But neither youth nor woman, tangiblethough they were, impinged on him as vividly asthe island.

Three times he had dreamed of it - three timessince the wandering Moon began her last pil-

grimage through her phases. Three times he haddreamed of its mystery, set like a jewel in a scal-loped serenity of sea. Three times he haddreamed of scrolled white waves washing a grey-

green rock-ribbed coast, a nap of mossed greenforest inland, diamond-dewed meadows drapedin the folds of the hills. And three times he haddreamed of the shadow impending from acrossthe water, ominously, inexorably, ineluctably - asombre sinister shadow drawing relentlessly near-er, casting its pall over mountains and valleys,spilling its foreboding stain over the earth, dis-secting the island into quarters.

In the hut's humid chill, he propped himself onhis elbow, his dream-filmed gaze aspiring west.

West, towards where the steppe's frozen grass-es bristled against brooding forest-shaggedwilderland. Towards where the people of theone-eyed god hanged captives from rune-scarredoaks, and suckled the soil with the blood of sac-rificed mares. Towards where the one-eyed godhimself raged tumultuous on the storm, accom-panied, as he swept through whirling cloud-wrack, by ravens and wolves and wild wingedwarrior women and spectral hosts of horsemen.And beyond even the one-eyed god's domains,towards where, it was said, the legions of theEmpire to the south extended the dominion oftheir eagles, and the Sun swooned into the sea.

For him, there was only one island. He hadnever seen it, of course. No man, to his knowl-

edge, ever had. And yet it existed, in the song, thesaga, the poetry which comprised the inheritedhistory of his race - a history flung like a torchdown the cascade of generations, the cascade ofdead leaves and years. And, more important still,it existed in his consciousness and that of his peo-ple - a reality as unimpugnable as the gods them-selves.

Had he indeed dreamed of it - of Buyan, theisland and its holy city? Buyan, where the

healing life-giving river gushed from Alatuir, themagic white stone? Buyan, where the jewel-eyedserpent presided over feminine mysteries,beneath boughs of silver laden with apples ofgold? Buyan, where the Sun, plumed in funerealflame, vanished beneath the rim of the world,attended by gentle Zarya, the evening star?


The PortentRichard LeighFor Sacha, who more accurately divines the woivres connecting Russia with Ireland

Storytelling, myth, fable, fairytale - all are means by which a spiritual experience or numinousquality may be imparted. Artistic expression is one of the purest forms of communicatingthe essence of that which connects us all. Let Richard Leigh reach the parts other articlesdon’t, in this short story.

When he dragged himself to his feet, fatigueseeped sluggishly through his limbs, as

though his blood, turned viscous, had begun tostiffen and congeal. Yes, he was tired, he recog-nised, but a feverish wakefulness precluded allprospect of sleep. Silently, lest he trouble his wifeor son, he tugged his felt boots over his ankles,swathed himself in his fur cloak, tiptoed to thewest wall of the hut. Here, he unpinned the cur-tain of skins draped across the entrance andemerged into the night, where the wind smotethe skin of his face like a branding-iron.

His breath formed a fume of silver on the air,and the snow-crust crunched with his steps.

Through the menacing immensity of black sky,the ancient bestiary of the constellationswheeled in stately procession about the pole-star. Beneath their pitiless pageant, the whitefangs of the snowscape glittered with brittle andfutile splendour. In the luminous pearl-silversnow-light, the huts huddled together, abject ascowed beasts within the perimeter of the pal-isade, whose tawny wood stakes were trellisedwith fretwork of frost. Beyond, the steppeyawned from horizon to horizon, a limitlesswhite emptiness, a savage void of scintillant radi-ance under the bleached whiteness of a burned-out Moon. Laden with crystal fruit, a copse ofpointed pines printed arrow-shaped shadows onthe snow; and the wind hurtled headlong andendless out of the distance, driving volleys ofstinging diamond pellets before it, searing thenostrils with fine needles of ice.

Was Buyan threatened? As soothsayer ofthe clan, he was enjoined to interpret his

dream. As soothsayer of the clan, he was alsoenjoined to recount it - to report, with theadvent of each new Moon, the messages vouch-safed by the gods. For dreams, of course, pro-ceeded from the gods - from one or another ofthem. From Svarog, lord of the sky, father of allthings. From Dazhvog, driver of the Sun's efful-gent chariot and regent of the zodiac's twelvekingdoms. From Strivog, who exhaled winter onthe land. From Peroun, who prophesied in thun-der. Most of all, from Mati-Syra-Zemlya, thegreat moist mother, supreme arbiter, oracle andwitness, whose green hair was the summer's rip-pling rye.

Dared he to presume to interpret hisdream? Dared he recount it to the assem-

bled elders? Dared he assume the responsibili-ty it entailed? For though dreams proceededfrom the gods, they could coalesce only in men- in the fragile goblet of the skull, the fleshedflower of the heart, the slippery pulp of theentrails. And without the appointed men, theformless remained unformed, the dreamremained undreamed.

Seven winters ago, his father, the clan's sooth-sayer before him, had dreamed of fallow fields

- of fields that devoured the seed-corn, drank thebounty of spring rain, yet yielded only bones. Themeaning was sufficiently evident, if the responsi-bility attending it was not. One afternoon, how-ever, the old man explained the crisis to theassembled elders. Explained that the dream mustbe denied a receptacle. That it must not again berecounted, not be further fashioned and fixed bywords. That what the gods had boded must notbe embodied. And at nightfall, he sought asequestered quarter of the palisade, wedged ahaft between two stakes, and spitted himself on aspear.

And yet famine festered that year all the same- a famine more merciless than any the clan

had known. As if, by some unfathomable process,the old man's act had inadvertently invoked it. Asif the dream had had to be dreamed and - lack-ing a man to accommodate it - had erupted intothe world...

Two

For five successive nights, sleep assumed thecharacter of an adversary. For five successive

nights, he and his sleep were inimical, circling eachother warily as two wrestlers. Yet when heinevitably succumbed to it, it proved a magnani-mous victor, granting him the sanctuary of obliv-ion. He would wake with gratitude; and in the rit-ual round of diurnal duties, the image of the islandwaned in his mind, growing insubstantial andvaporous as morning mist above a stream. Onlynow and again did he dread the advent of thenew Moon, when, by established rite, he wouldrecite the record of his dreams to the elders.

In the forest beyond the palisade, prongedantlers careened through the undergrowth, a

glissade of arrows hissed sibilant as rending silk, astag fell to the hunters of the clan; and that hemight read the riddles of its still steaming entrails,the soothsayer was summoned. Muffled in hismantle of skins, he embarked for the site of thetriumph, wading knee-deep through siftings ofpowdery snow. In the absence of wind and dark-ness, the surrounding vastness was less mysteri-ous if no less hostile, glinting dully beneath a lus-treless metallic sky. A few furry flakes silted bleak-ly down the dead air, lazy as feathers falling. Alonga verge of trees, the tracks of bear and wolf werediscernible, a runic calligraphy inscribed in thewhite parchment of the steppe.

Beneath boughs sheathed and shimmeringnacreous with ice, the chill grey light was

oppressive, but the entrails omened well. Theyforetold a precocious spring. They foretold aprodigal harvest from the great moist mother.


Most auspicious of all, they foretold a respitefrom the Hunnish host who, with every thaw fora generation, had harried the settlements of thesteppe. In the entrails, the soothsayer descriedportents of a battle far to the west; and unlessthey lied, the hordes of crazed ochre-skinnedhorsemen would career to ruin against the peo-ple of the one-eyed god.

Reassured by the prospect, he pronounced hisblessing on the hunters and prepared to offi-

ciate the ensuing obligatory rite - the fire ofhomage, whereby the stag's heart, together withits entrails, would be offered to the Provider andPreserver, the beneficent White God. Thebeast's carcass was dragged aside, trailing waterypink runnels. Where it had lain, a sticky poolseeped into the snow, shrill scarlet with raggedrust-coloured edges. A pyre was constructed, oftwigs and branches, soaked moss and bark. Red-gold in the sullen gloom, a slender forked ser-pent's tongue of flame flickered upwards, lickedtentatively, withdrew, darted forth again. Amidveering smoke, the damp wood sputtered andcrackled, blossomed into a blaze. On its periph-ery, the snow began to liquefy, turning grey, thentransparent, disclosing brown grass plastered tothe soil. Brown grass, a litter of pine cones andneedles, a cross formed by two dead boughs -wet, black, rimed with frost like mossed silver.Beneath them, the soothsayer discerned some-thing coiled in a semi-circle - something brittleand filmy, with an ornate geometric pattern, illu-mined by the ruddy efflorescence of the flame. Aserpent's skin, he realised suddenly - a wafer-thindesiccated husk, long abandoned, frozen and pre-served beneath the snow. Now it was dissolving,crumbling to translucent grey-silver flakes in thesuddenly aggressive heat. And though he hadoften seen serpent skins before, a dark pre-science, like a shadow of bat's wings, flittedthough the soothsayer's soul.

Three

Jubilation welled within the walls of the palisade.A welter of feet had stamped the snow to grey

mire, and banners of festive flame flapped againstthe zinc-hued twilight, and voices - morose a fewhours previous - were animated, even boisterous,in expectation of the first fresh meat for days.While the women revelled in preparation of thecommunal meal, the hunters, as though intoxicat-ed by shed blood, swaggered triumphantly aboutthem, vaunting each other's prowess with bow orspear. In the huts, cringing against the immensityof land and sky, the aroma of roasting flesh wrunghungry howls from emaciated infants.

In the assembly house - a long low log structurewith dishevelled thatch - the soothsayer per-

formed the function imposed on him by the

occasion. Having gathered the youths about him,he proceeded to discourse on the requisites forthanksgiving, on the imperatives of reverence, onthe diverse natures of the gods. For him, the sen-tences were familiar enough, following each otherwith the rhythmic fluidity of practised gestures -the ancient recitative, worn smooth by his father'svoice before him, on Bylevog and Cernevog, theWhite and the Black, whose everlasting warfarecongealed to a grey stalemate seemingly manifestin the very air. But as he spoke, he was painfullyconscious of his son's face, a thirsty petal upliftedto him among the others. It rendered himunwontedly wary of his words - which, he recog-nised, were plummeting like stones down thewell of the boy's soul. For an instant, their gazesintersected, brushed briefly as the wings of birdsin flight. And the soothsayer, confronted by thedream-scarred depths of his son's eyes, quailedbefore the curse inflicted on him and his family.An icy tremor scuttled fleetingly up his spine,drew his nape taut, plucked at his scalp with tinyskeletal claws.

Four

Replete with food and drink, he dozed morereadily than usual that evening, and dreamed

more vividly. Of days and nights reeling away ina dizzying dance of light and shadow. Of timeitself transmuted to wind and gusting like derelictautumn leaves. Of the earth shuddering beneathan ominous myriad-hoofed thunder. Of steelclanging gong-like against steel, and screams tornby the roots from hacked throats, and luridcomet-tails of blood trailing smears of wet scar-let across the stars. Of a sodden mid-slicked fieldbeyond a city - a fantastic city, whose bulbousonion domes, minarets and spires floated withthe ethereal grace of swans on a diaphanous sky.Of a man striding brusquely through the mire,clad in raiment rich and iridescent as a rainbow,the raiment of some exalted chieftain, perhapseven a king - for there was, the soothsayerrealised, a spiked iron crown entangled in theiron-grey hair. A glorious and imposing figure,with a horseman's bow-legged gait and eyes wildas storm scud. With gaunt grey filigree beard anda face of granite impassivity, reflecting confi-dence, arrogance, defiance, impatience with fools- an imperious adamantine face accustomed tocommand, to combat, to victory. The counte-nance of a conqueror. And the accoutrements ofa conqueror as well. A massive menacingbroadsword, its haft inlaid with precious gems. Acostly emblazoned breastplate, chased withheraldic arabesques in silver and gold. And anamulet, in the shape of a jewel-encrusted cross,suspended on a golden chain. A resplendentapparition - and yet the soothsayer, in his dream,sensed obscurely that this man had betrayedsomething sacred.


On the reed-fretted fringe of the field, ajagged whiteness jutted from the mud - the

pale gutted carcass of a hors, bones polishedghastly and luminous, the intricate scaffolding ofthe ribs like a boat under construction. Long, nar-row, fierce-snouted, the skull dangled crookedlyfrom the vertebrae, with sneering jaws, anopaque mystery in the hollow eyes. Before thisgrisly wreckage, the regal figure paused, proddingwith booted and spurred foot. After a moment'smeditation, he shrugged, his beard wreathing arueful and sardonic half-smile. As he turned away,however, his heel crushed a corner of the skull topowder and something arrowed upwards, flame-swift and sudden, from the vacant eye-socket - avengeful serpent which fastened itself with fangedferocity to his leg. Limbs flailing and thrashing, facecongealed with terror, the man cavorted back-wards, dignity subsumed in a grotesque convul-sive jig. A frenzied bellow burst from the franti-cally writhing lips, gouging the tranced stillness,rending the membrane of the dream, yanking thesoothsayer stark upright on his pallet as if a handhad jerked him by the hair.

In the dank chill of the hut he sat rigid, his hearthammering time to fragments, to a fine dust of

nothingness. Only gradually did his vision contractto the darkness pressing against him, thewoman's fur-swathed form in the corner oppo-site, the pallid blotch of his son's face. Outside,veils of wind-whipped snow swirled amid pal-isade, sky and stars. In the hearth, gloweringembers of peat maintained their incandescentvigil. They had virtually expired before the sooth-sayer lay back on his pallet. But when sleep at lastclaimed him again, he dreamed of the island.

Not from above this time, nor from a dis-tance. This time, his feet trod its rock-

strewn strand, while the sea surged majesticallybehind him, scintillas of sunlight mirrored on thebreasts of the waves. As he threaded through thedew-gemmed grass, the finest of drizzles whis-pered in the foliage, sifted in shimmering needlesbetween new-leafed boughs. A tang of mush-rooms and ripe strawberries wove itself into thescent of sap-filled wildwood, and lilies-of-the-val-ley brandished beneath the osiers the white chal-lenge of their innocence. Against vistas of elo-quent azure, larks darted gorged with morning,dropping their song like silver beads. As thesoothsayer emerged from the forest, the radiancewas almost audible - a music of light inscribedupon his soul.

Sequence and chronology disintegrated, transi-tion dissolved. There was a serpent, jewel-

eyed and silver-scaled, oozing sinuous and som-nolent between silver-grey birches. There was arivulet lisping through a glade, sunlight braided onits surface in strands of liquid gold; and willows,

sibilant in the breeze, trailed their tresses on thewater. Perhaps serpent and stream were thesame? No - and yet each somehow nurtured theother, fused with the other to form an endlesscircular continuity. Both issued from beneath afern-fringed stone - a stone of such etherealsparkling whiteness that its brilliance, amid the lat-ticed greenery, provoked a gasp.

There was also - and the soothsayer sensed hehad expected her - a woman who, with spec-

tral silence, coalesced out of the very substanceof the dream. Tall, stately and serene, she swayedover rivulet and serpent, her slender back archedin a bow. With a luminous scythe, she shearedthe pliant tips of the ferns festooning the whitestone, and her own movements were those ofbending grasses. Her honey-hued hair, her petal-soft skin were accentuated by the fiery scarlet ofher gown - a garment whose vibrant intensity ofcolour made her appear sheathed in a rose.When she raised her head, her gentle gravity, hertender and demure sweetness, enfolded her pal-pably as a fragrance, a manifest emanation of hersoul; and the soothsayer, meeting her gaze, felt hemight drown in the liquid mist-deeps of her eyes- pensive blue-grey eyes to which wide darkpupils imparted a haunted depth. From above,low-stirring linden leaves caressed her face - deli-cately articulated cheekbones, a brow like anarmorial shield, features pure and sculptural, withsomething of a sword about them, and some-thing of a marble mask. As she approached, herfootsteps seemed to pave the world with light,and her smile was gracious as the sky's azure. Nota scythe in her hand, the soothsayer observed,but something else, something of more resonantimport. When she slipped it into her hair, itformed a diadem with two elegantly curvedhorns - the horns of the crescent Moon. Andthereby the soothsayer recognised Zarya, the shyevening star, to whose arms the Sun at night con-fided himself. Drowsily docile, a tawny goldenbeast with feline eyes and matted mane paddedbeside her, at intervals flicking its tail.

Abashed though he was by her beauty, thesoothsayer struggled to shape a question - a

question which, later, he could not recall, butwhich somehow expressed his myriad uncertain-ties. "I requested my beloved to dream you," shereplied, harp-strings vibrating in her words.

And only then, glancing towards the strandbehind him, did he realise that no shadow

impended from over the sea.

Five

He awoke with an eerie intimation, a sense ofhaving dreamed his entire life; and though

the dawn was suffused with an afterglow of gen-


tle gravity, of tender and demure sweetness, hewrithed on his pallet, perplexed. No shadow hadtainted the island, had swooped upon it from thesea; no pall had dimmed its radiance, clouded itssylvan tranquillity. And yet, thrice before, he hadwitnessed a shadow looming relentlessly nearer,darkening mountains and valleys, dissecting theisland into quarters. Were those former visionsnow abrogated, the perils they portended dis-armed? Or were the perils still imminent, still des-tined to occur? Had the shadow already perhapsdescended, already actualised itself, and onlybeen rendered indiscernible by proximity? Hadthe new dream perhaps unscrolled in the stain ofinvisible shadow? Instinctively, the soothsayer feltotherwise. On the island, in the glade, with thewoman, there had been no foreboding.Nevertheless, there had been a serpent, fusedwith a river, seeping with silvery torpor betweensilvery trees. And earlier that night, on theprecincts of some phantasmal city, a serpent hadproved fatal to a chieftain, perhaps even a king -a man, he sensed with indubitable certainty, whohad betrayed something sacred.

For six days he pondered, groping blindlythrough the labyrinth of contradictions. For six

days, he confined himself to his hut, sifting the dis-parate fragments like beads in his mind, strugglingto string them in a coherent skein. For six days, helaboured in the ordeal of interpretation - ofimposing order and meaning, of subordinating theunknowable to man. And as he did so, the exul-tation of his dream receded, the fiery red-goldshrivelled to ash-grey, substance withered to con-cept. On the basis of concept, he at last conclud-ed that some danger still brooded over Buyan.

And thus he interpreted the matter when, onthe seventh day, he betook himself to the

council of the elders, and made the requisiteobeisance before them, and, in accordance withthe hallowed rite, recounted the month's reper-toire of dreams. He did so only with reluctanceand misgiving. But yes, he confessed when theypressed him, his considered conclusion was thatsomething did indeed threaten Buyan.

Seated on the log ledge hewn out of the wall,the elders, shaggy in capes and cowls of wolf-

skin, exchanged furtive glances of alarm. Thesoothsayer was dismissed, that they might studythe problem in solitude, amongst themselves.When they again summoned him to their pres-ence, they justified the decision they had made.The sovereign stung by the serpent had not trou-bled them unduly, they explained. That was anaffair confined to the realm of men - to beaccepted submissively or, perhaps, with the aid ofthe gods, to be forestalled. Buyan, however, wasof more serious consequence - for withoutBuyan, all things would be homeless or bereft.

Buyan was the haven of the Sun - the refugewhere, exhausted by his diurnal pilgrimage, hewas restored by Zarya and enabled to rise anew.Buyan was also the haven of souls - the landfall ofthe dead where, since Svarog first spawned time,the people of all clans had departed, to bask in anidyll of unextinguished spring. Buyan thus affectedthe entire order of creation, the immutable lawswhereby the world sustained itself - the rhythmiccycle of the seasons, of day and night, life anddeath. And any threat to Buyan perforce threat-ened the essential fabric of reality, th fragile edi-fice of existence. A threat of such magnitudemust be averted - and the soothsayer's father hadestablished the appropriate precedent. Therewere certain dreams which must be denied anabode.

The soothsayer understood and bowed hishead in acquiescence when one of the elders,

rising from the bench, solemnly proffered him aspear.

SixAt noon the following day, the menaced Sunhung in suspended effulgence above the palisade- as though it had paused, hesitant, before daringto resume its journey. Unfurled limitless beneathit, the snow-bleached steppe blazed with myriadfacets of dazzle, blinding granules of light that kin-dled an ache behind the eyes. From the serratedmargin of the forest, frigid shafts wafted in gusts,dry and sharp as crystal. In the council hut, thesoothsayer's son, with a cornered expression inhis gaze, cringed beneath the injunctions imposedby the elders - to keep a memorised record of hisdreams, to wrest from them their elusive inter-pretation, to recount them dutifully at the adventof each new Moon.

In the forest, where black strips of shadowstippled the diamond-strewn crust of snow,

the soothsayer died slowly. He had entered thewoods at daybirth, had wedged the spear's haftin the crook of a tree, had confided his prayersto the gods. Now, at last, as the rim of the Sunseared the zenith of the sky, the jagged-toothedpain ravaging his body subsided, the raggedspasms of his gasps grew less laboured, the sil-very fume of his breath thinned spectrally andthen ceased. The threat was not to Buyan, herealised suddenly, with a certainty like a rush ofblood to his head. But as the terror of compre-hension convulsed him, his dimming gazeveered across the pool of warm wet scarletdrenching the snow, welling from the rent in hisbreast. Then, his eyes glazed, and the icy skyimpaled his skull, and the inner rhythm surgedforth to join the outer, and all the constellateddreams of his life spilled away to drift amongthe clouds.


Seven

Two thousand miles to the west, anacreous dream of dawn seeped

stealthily into the sky, diffused a ghostlypallor on the sea. From a gaunt cliff over-looking the shore, a bard studied the wel-tering grey waves, which hurled them-selves, white-plumed, against the sand.Beyond, mist mantled the water withwreaths of seething silver, through which,at intervals, a chant was audible -sonorous liturgical syllables, intoned to themuffled toll of a bell. A crossbow-wingedgull caromed inland on the wind, blaringits raucous herald's cry. And the blackprow of a boat cleft the mist, as thoughprecipitated out of a dream.

To the east, streaks of blood smeared the hori-zon, leaking from some shattered vessel

across the sky. Sunlight lanced through serriedskeins of scarlet and the mist parted, tore asun-der, drifted away in cobwebbed tatters andshreds. From the cliff, the approaching craft wasnow distinctly visible, its prow ploughing a snowyscrollwork of foam. In the bows, a grim grey-bearded figure loomed starkly upright, black cas-sock whipped flapping behind him, like a bat'swings. With both hands, he brandished aloft histalisman of suffering - a gaunt crucifix which castan impending shadow before it, gliding relentless-ly nearer on the tide. As the keel of the boatrasped the rock-strewn strand, the figure steppedsternly forwards, to embark on his crusadeagainst serpents.


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What is it about the ethos of today thatbrings clients to an astrologer asking

about their spiritual path? So many people areconcerned that their spirituality and sense of soulare not being satisfied or lived out in their dailyactivities.

The history of astrology’s evolution, and theemerging practice of it as an individual tool,

have become revealing social barometers. Theprimary concerns of the individual are alwaysreflective, to some degree, of the greater insecu-rities in the collective. Aside from the mostrecent development in astrology’s long history -clients and astrologers using astrology for self-development, and as a guide to a greater under-standing of their inner life - the primary concernsare reassuringly human: relationships, financialsecurity, career, health (which is more abody/mind concern these days), the safety oftheir families and, of course, their unfoldingfutures.

That most of today’s clients are deeply con-cerned about their spiritual path suggests

that the distress is pandemic, and a loss of con-nectedness with the divine has become con-scious. That clients hope to find the answer intheir horoscope, or, at least, through interpreta-tions of their horoscope, confirms that theancient signs and symbols continue to offer linksto their contemporary situation.

The separation of nature (soul) and culture(mind) is not just a twentieth century event,

but was an ancient concern - and, though theissue didn’t arise in the consulting rooms ofastrologers circa 500 BCE, it was a powerfulworry for the western philosophers that seemedto emerge from nowhere into early Athenianculture.

As far back as 600 BCE, there was already anawareness that somehow a gulf had formed

between natural law - nomos - and cultural law -physis - and, based upon that awareness, a philo-sophical dialectic ensued. The very fact that theconcept of a division existed - that there was a

“consciousness” at all - lies at the contemporaryconcern for all that is desacralized and secular-ized. Ancient poets feared for this split; theirawareness of it signalled its truth.

TThe sacred and the profane

Exactly what is it that we are missing? What isthe astrologer’s client saying when she wants

to know what her spiritual purpose is, and is sheliving it out? Is it a sense of loss of centre? Is it atrue feeling of lack of purpose or inspiration inlife? Is it even real? Could it be part of a more sin-ister suggestion that the gods have fled, andhumanity is now being hoisted upon its ownpetard? Or is it a cultural imposition, a slow,degradation of unity in consciousness? I can’thope to fulfil these age-old questions in this arti-cle, but perhaps shed a bit of light on them asthey arise in the astrological consultation.

The question of spirituality and contemporarysoul is a vast, complicated and yet, paradox-

ically, a terribly simple issue. In The Sacred andThe Profane, Mircea Eliade addresses the prob-lem of religious experience and its apparent lossthrough human evolution and the social secular-ization of soulful things. He writes about the split,defining the experiential differences between thesacred and the profane as: “The sacred alwaysmanifests itself as a reality of a wholly differentorder from ‘natural’ realities... Man becomesaware of the sacred because it manifests itself,shows itself, as... an hierophany - [thus] somethingsacred shows itself to us.” 1

Soul - sacred and profane

So, a religious experience can be differenti-ated from a mundane experience by the

quality of feeling tone it engenders. From theLatin word numen, comes the adjective numi-nous. Numen means “god or goddess; divinewill; divine command; divine authority; divinity;divine majesty”; and, secondarily, it means“oracle” - all of which impart a feeling of some-thing wholly “other”, of something outsideordinary experience. Numen, then, is nothuman nor is it cosmic, but evokes a profoundsense of “otherness”.

Erin Sullivan is Canadianborn and has been a consul-tant astrologer and teachersince the late 1960s. She haslectured worldwide and ledworkshops and symposia onmany aspects of humandevelopment using mythol-ogy, psychology and the richlanguage of astrology. Herwork took her to London,England in 1989, since whenshe has been a tutor for theCPA, and the Series Editorfor Penguin’s ArkanaContemporary AstrologySeries. She is an adjunct fac-ulty member for the CentralAmerican Institute ofPrehistoric and TraditionalCultures at Belize. Erin is theauthor of: Saturn in Transit,Retrograde Planets, andDynasty: The Astrology ofFamily Dynamics. Venus andJupiter and Where in theWorld? has been publishedby the CPA Press. Erin maybe contacted for consulta-tions, information on books,studies etc. by email:[email protected] or visither website:www.ErinSullivan.com.


Recollecting our SoulErin Sullivan “Exactly what is it that we are missing?” asks Erin Sullivan, in the face of the rising num-bers of clients enquiring about their spiritual path. A good question; even better, Erinattempts to answer it, in this erudite and thought-provoking article.

We find numen alive when we know some-thing by other than rational means -

when an epiphany reveals a truth. Because weare so wordy today, and tend to compartmen-talize everything (a manifestation of thenomos/physis split) and rationalize everything, themechanized world thinks that this experience isinvalid, or, at best, fanciful and imaginative.

However, the loss of connection to thesacred does not eliminate our human need

for religious experience. For those who do nothave a religious framework - a church, a temple,a synagogue, a sect, a doctrine - religious behav-iours still abound. The loss of the sacred as anintegrated aspect of life itself results in secondarytypes of expression that are rooted in a religiouscore. Superstition, nostalgia, sentimentality,obsessive adherence to self-defined “laws”, ritualacknowledgments such as the handshake andother cultural (secular) greetings, behaviours andshibboleths pass from one state of being toanother.

Fast forwarding to the year 2001, where thedivision of nature and culture has arrived at a

truly alarming global condition, it only makes sensethat we all feel concerned about the loss of soul indaily life on an individual basis.

AAstrology’s role in healing the split

Astrology in itself is a synthesis of themind/body split; it is the experience of the

unity of heaven and earth. Alone, it stands as themetaphor of the undivided self - where both innerand outer worlds meet and where body and soulreside together, untrammelled by the evolution oftime and civilization.

Since the earliest days, astrologers haveremained steadfast in their belief that the rela-

tionships of the planets and the heavenly bodiesare connected to the workings of the world. Theworld, and astrology along with it, have flourishedtremendously since the first known horoscope,and so, today, astrology is more complex, moreaccurate and more integrated into the mainstreamthan it was two-and-a-half millennia ago. But that isa statement of its truth. Astrology would neverhave survived and undergone the requisitechanges in tandem - indeed, ahead of, in my view- with scientific and creative social innovation, hadastrology itself not been an immutable truth.

Since the beginning of our known history, astrol-ogy has undergone peaks and troughs, purges

and reclamations, it has survived proclamations andedicts and intellectual scoffing; the attempt to placethe astrologer at the periphery of the intellectualuniverse has only succeeded in part. This may havebeen a blessing in disguise - apartheids may sepa-rate but they cannot sever, indeed, certain culturesflourish in isolation and in rare atmospheres.Astrology is one of those cultures.

Because astrology incorporates both the tech-nical and the symbolic, we can accept a two-

fold philosophy of this soul/body split. One is themechanistic time-based concept that science hasadvanced to subsume soul, thus we can blame iton René Descartes or Newton and his “singlevision”, as the poet William Blake called it, and/orwe can adopt a metaphysical idea that we mayhave forgotten our soul in the overwhelmingbusy-ness of contemporary society. I think bothare true, so let’s look at an ancient idea of recol-lecting our soul in the midst of life.

1. The Sacred and theProfane: The Nature ofReligion. pp. 10 - 11. passim.Mircea Eliade, Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,London/NY, 1959


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NewtonWilliam BlakeTate Britain

2 Republic Plato p 371, para614a, Tr. Robin WaterfieldOxford University PressClassics 19943 Ibid. op. cit. p 379 para.621b4 From A Vision of the LastJudgement William Blakepara. 130. composed in1810. Selected Poetry andProse. Ed. David Punter.Routledge. London. 19885 The Second Coming, W.B.Yeats, line 3, composed1921 fr. The Collected Yeats,Papermac edition,MacMillan PublishersLondon/Basingstoke 1982

AAnamnesis - recollection of the soul

The astrological Neptune recalls the ancientmyth of Er, in the tenth book of Plato’s

Republic.2 In this tale, Er dies, and comes back totell the story of his soul’s transition from body-death to soul-incarnation. It is a long and detailedjourney, but for this purpose we’ll focus on itbriefly: after many experiences, and the appoint-ment with the Moirae (the three Fates: spinner,weaver and cutter of life’s thread) Er’s soulreaches and crosses the Plain of Oblivion, whichis like Tucson in the summer, hot as the prover-bial Hell, then arrives at the River Lethe. Er iswarned not to drink too deeply from Lethe, butto only slake his thirst, for “...they (the souls)were all required to drink a certain amount ofwater, but some were too stupid to look afterthemselves properly and drank more than therequired amount.”3

Lethe - forgetfulness - is the Greek root of ourword lethal; it is lethal to the soul’s memory

to drink too much of its waters, because we willthen have greater difficulty recollecting our soul’slife-purpose, once it is reincarnated. It is assumedthat the soul has chosen its new body-life, andthus will need to recall why it chose that body-life if it is to be a “successful” life.

Healing the inner split: the astrologer’s role

When we are concerned about our spiritu-al path not being integrated into our daily

life, it is an indication that we have been deeplyinfluenced and contaminated by the collectiveloss of soul memory. But how else can the col-

lective become healed or transformed if the indi-viduals within it each do not take up the aegis forchange? The feeling of being soulfully detachedfrom physical life is, at best, depressing and sad,and, at worst, a spiritual emergency.

If this is the case then, as with all diagnoses, it isa sign that resolution is already in process, deep

within the individual and collective psyche. Theseare days of spiritual emergency - witness the vastnumbers of books in the last decade alone onthe subject of soul, loss of soul, desacralization ofsociety, reclaiming spirit, and healing the woundsof culture.

It seems we have lost innate ways to recall eas-ily our soul’s purpose, and its integrity in our

mundane path. William Blake, born in 1757,worried differently: (but similarly to Yeats, a hun-dred years later) “...The Last Judgement is anoverwhelming of bad art and science. Mentalthings are alone real; what is called corporeal,nobody knows of its dwelling place: it is in falla-cy, and its existence an imposture. Where is theexistence out of mind or thought? Where is itbut in the mind of a fool?”4 Harsh words, but rel-evant to our topic.

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold5

We are living what the ancients predicted,and poets and artists have wept over -

we are deep in the chaos of loss of center.Historically, sacred sites were created with thecentre as the literal core of the world, theanima/axis mundi, and from that central point, liferadiated outward. Sacred spaces and locations


6 The Moment of Astrology.Geoffrey Cornelius, 1stEdition, Arkana, CAS. 1992

were the centre for tribes, cultures and, eventu-ally, cities and countries, and this is analogous tothe “centre” of the individual being the core ofspirituality and psychic wholeness. We mightconsider ourselves as a microcosm wherein allour parts and components are a replication ofthe world itself.

The symbols and signs in each horoscopeembody the totality of the human experi-

ence - each of us is an expressive part of thatgreater whole. The fact that a personal horo-scope is biased, and has only a small representa-tion of this whole, means that we are designedto act out in a particular fashion, with personali-ty and ego - but they do not restrict us.

The natal horoscope is both centre and cir-cumference - it is both the core of Self and

circumference of worldly experience. You arethe centre, the zodiac is the circumference ofyour world, and the planets are your assignedtasks, your way of being in this world. The soul isnot separated from any of this, it is infused, andthus can be recollected through all aspects of liv-ing - in your own way.

This view does not preclude specific choices inspiritual paths, or religious expression - but it

helps come to terms with one or many that areuniquely “familiar” and helpful to each individual.Finding that space or path is the life-work of rec-ollecting the soul’s purpose.

TThe temenos - both sacred and profane

Reflection on the soul’s purpose requires asense of safety, a sheltered place in which

the reflection can be seen. Ideally, the chart read-ing should create a place for this reflection. Asacred space is called a temenos, and the temenosthat can be created in the consulting room, or onthe telephone with a client, is not defined bywalls and doors. It exists outside the realm ofmatter, and thus, between the astrologer andclient him/herself, in some mysterious ritual. Inthe course of discussion, invoking the symbolsand signs in the horoscope, it is possible thatnumen arise, and truths emerge.6 There is how-ever, no rote formula for this experience, whichmakes archetypal and psychological astrologyvery difficult to teach - it is only learned.

The issue of centrality as the core of spiritual-ity is resolved in the natal horoscope. All

spiritual icons or sites in the ancient world weredepicted as the “centre of the world” fromwhich all life emerged. This is replicated in thehoroscope as a spiritual mandala, as well as amundane map, all radiating out from the Self-centre. With the sacred, there is a sense ofabsolute reality; the profane is organised by com-partmentalised, segmented reality.

The natal horoscope is a graphic depiction ofa symbolically specific personal mnemonic.

The individual is in the centre with the array ofplanets around, all contained within the confinesof the zodiac. We have here a perfect picture ofself/centre circumscribed by the zodiac/arche-types and the planets all around acting as agentsfor the Self’s archetypal purpose.

In the session

Aclient calls for a consultation and among theimportant concerns is a feeling of non-par-

ticipation in a spiritual relationship. The degree ofthe feeling of lack of spiritual connectedness isimportant to determine. Often it will have origi-nated in a split from the ordained religion of thefamily. The reasons for this disconnection will bepersonal and also to do with the decline of numi-nosity in the religion itself. There are many occa-sions on which the individual needs to go back tothe origins, the roots of the religion to discoverif there is any remnant within it that might offerunderstanding, if not belief.

People who come out of old, establishedorthodox religions such as the Roman

Catholic church, Judaism, Islam and all relatedsects, are those who have the most difficult timein this culture because the god is detached, puni-tive and separate from the world and its activi-ties. The advent of the sky-gods was long ago,and is mythologically associated with Zeus, whoarrived from the “North” bringing thunderboltsand war. . . demolishing the Earth religions with-in a couple of centuries.

Sky gods are not merciful, nor are they muta-ble - they find the life-forms on earth inferior

and imperfect - mortal, in other words.Spirituality has little to do with dogma or whatthe Greeks called doxa - opinion. There are“right opinions” - ortho-doxa, then, there are“other opinions” - hetero-doxa. And, so are peo-ple along with it. Seeking out soul through astro-logical symbols means wading through theorthodoxies of astrology to find the sophia - thewisdom, the truth - after all, astrology is also asystem. All systems and orthodoxies evolve withthe times, as they always have and will continueto do.

Extricating one’s own personal path from theorganized defined paths is the work at hand.

Sky gods and Earth matters

Traditionally, the planet Jupiter is associatedwith religion and beliefs along with the 9th

house and, archetypally, the sign of Sagittarius.Jupiter was the “old” ruler of the 12th house andPisces, but was succeeded by Neptune in 1846,having been assigned matters of spirituality. Now,Jupiter remains on as the holder of dogma, and


Dante Drinking the Watersof LetheJean Delville

the knowledge of religions, but Neptune moreaptly acts as a symbol for the ineffable and tran-scendant which underlie the soulful longing forthe experience of the divine. As the River Lethewas in the myth of Er, Neptune is the amnesia ofthe soul, and the degree of amnesia one has, isthe degree of soulful distress found underlyingthe horoscopic symbol.

It is not enough only to analyse Neptune andJupiter and their realms in the natal horoscope,

because they are not the whole. We need tounderstand the human elements as well as thedivine. The split between soul and body needs tobe healed through the archetypes in the horo-scope which includes all planets, signs, aspectsand house positions.

If we were to call Neptune “spirituality”, then wewould be committing the Cartesian sin - singling

out a particle, acknowledging its separateness, anddeclaring it independent of the whole. Spiritual soulis not separate from matter, thus, we need toexplore how it is integrated, not how to “find” itsomewhere out there, then catch it and put it inside.

We need to find spiritual integrity as it is, within thewhole of the self. The spiritual path is just part of life’sjourney, without burning bushes, thunderbolts orheavenly stairways leading to biblical skies.

Thus, a point of origin on the quest for spiri-tuality through the horoscope might begin

with the way Neptune is configured, and secon-darily how Jupiter figures into the chart, thenceto all the other arrayed planets and their interre-lationships. Neptune’s placement is the“Lethean” point of oblivion to previous soulexperiences, and its involvement with the rest ofthe planetary array says much about the degreeto which recall of soul-life is possible.

Some individuals with the Sun, Mercury,Venus and the Moon in aspect to Neptune

have powerful longings to return to the blissful,undifferentiated state of pure soul. I find thatthese people are the ones who are most terri-bly disappointed with the mundane aspect oflife, but by that very characteristic simply mustfind soulfulness in their ordinariness and in theplod of daily work and life routines.


7 The Hero With a ThousandFaces p12 Joseph CampbellBollingen Series XVII. 1949.8 Dynasty: The Astrology ofFamily Dynamics. pp 170 -180 Erin Sullivan 1stEdition, Arkana, CAS.1992. To be re-issued bySamuel Weiser, March2001

FFrom the tomb of the womb

Full circle, from the tomb of the womb to thewomb of the tomb, we come: an ambiguous,enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matterthat is soon to melt from us, like the substanceof a dream. 7

Joseph Campbell.

From this viewpoint, Neptune in the horo-scope is the River Lethe - it is the point of

passage from soul to womb to body, hence itholds memory of our archetypal past, ourintrauterine experience and the shock ofbirth.

Whatever our own personal “enigmaticalincursion” is, our soul is both

enveloped in and surrounding that path.Hence, soul is within and without, and ourcapacity to recall our soul’s intent may or maynot be overwhelmingly conscious. It takeswork to bring the soul’s intent into conscious-ness. Socrates called the process of a philo-sophic life anamnesis, which simply meansrecollection - or, more literally, against forget-fulness.

The myriad methods of anamnesis are allquite valid - there is only one spiritual

truth, but it may manifest in as many ways asthere are people to recollect and express it. Ahighly configured or prominent placement ofNeptune in the chart amplifies the desire, thelonging for reconnection to the divine, andthe planets or angles that are involved withNeptune are the agencies for recollection.

This requires more work on anamnesisthan a “relaxed” Neptune, or one that

isn’t assigned huge or personal tasks in thenatal chart. As I suggested earlier, the morecontacts Neptune has from the personal plan-ets, the more likely the person is to havedrunk too deeply - hence, the overwhelmingdesire to go back to that place of ouroboricunity with the divine, and find it.

Because birth itself is shocking and painful,and Neptune holds the memory of birth-

trauma in its point in the chart, it means thatpenetrating the bodily/psychic pain of thebirth - the loss of the divine unity - is also partof 12th house work.

Twelfth house planets are implicated in theloss of soul-memory, too, thus the ten-

dency is for individuals to go to inordinatelengths to recollect their soul’s purpose -usually by focussing on the agency of theplanet(s) that are in the 12th house.8

But, by focusing consciously or unconscious-ly on the Neptune/12th house condition,

we are not recollecting; we are responding tothe forgetfulness, but not recalling the soul’spurpose.

Anima mundi - soulful life on earth

This is all in aid of finding our life-path onthe planet and experiencing the infusion of

soul simultaneously. Ideally, the world soul andthe human soul are entwined... and as wesleep, eat, work, argue, play, falter, arise, andsimply live, we are fulfilling the soul’s path;conversely, our life-path will also define oursoul’s intent. Discomfort with soul path resultsin a somatic condition, where the 12th housesoul-call is not heard, and it then polarizes intothe body and becomes a symptom, symbol-ized in the 6th house.

Symptoms are often related to soul-sickness;discomfort, disease and illness may become

a means of soul-retrieval. To blame an individ-ual for his or her own illness, however, is sim-ply not on, because we are now in a time ofendemic global symptoms which enter individ-uals regardless of their psychological and spiri-tual health. Some of us are victims of the col-lective loss of soul (for example, HIV,immuno-deficiency illnesses, and most cancersare related to the loss of systemic ecologicalbalance on the planet). However, within thisglobal codicil on illnesses, each of us will man-ifest the collective ills in our own personalway.

Now, back to soul-searching. Because thehoroscope is a unique array of planetary

agencies, all demanding participation in thepsyche, we need to consider our life-path aspart of the soul-path. Therefore, there is nomore spiritual value in arranging meals-on-wheels for shut-ins than selling real estate. Noris there less spiritual value in merchant bankingthan there is working for the disenfranchised.But, there could be - it depends on the under-lying motive, the intent of the work.

Altruism, at best, helps others just a bitmore than one’s own self - at worst it is

just another vehicle for the ego. So, one can-not measure soul by activities. When talkingabout a chart with a client, I tend to try touncover the degree to which the person findsexcitement, passion, interest and value in theirlife-work, whether it is child-rearing, managinga shopping centre or serving as an analyst ortherapist. If there is a fairly even balancebetween the stressors of “the work” and theimagination and goodwill that the work gener-ates, I would tend to consider the person asspiritually sound.


Some astrological signatures for pondering

This doesn’t mean that the horoscopedoesn’t indicate how the individual can

more effectively process the world-split andtheir own split. In part, we look at the planetNeptune and the condition of the 12thhouse for the “calling”, or the obligation tothe collective from a personal viewpoint.People with a strong Neptune need to beaware that they can be so overly desirous ofspirituality that they can accept substitutesfor soul - drugs, stimulation, distractions,sleep, compulsive relationships and so on,thereby fulfilling the amnesis, the forgetfulpart of the path. They might think spiritualityis found in the seeking of it. It is not, it isfound in the doing.

And the doing is found in the totality ofthe horoscope - not one single unit of it.

Imentioned Jupiter as an agency for religiousexpression of soulful longing - and, thus, it

should be considered in relation to othernatal planets. A strongly configured or single-ton retrograde Jupiter signals the astrologerthat there are a lot of notions about how spir-ituality should be expressed. Ideally, a “good”Jupiter is a free-thinking, unbiased philosophy,but that is hard to achieve when social, cul-tural and familial wisdom is overwhelming.Jupiter’s role in seeking earthly methods ofcontaining the divine is not to be underrated!

Squares and oppositions to Jupiter are aflag that there may be a lot of ideology

attached to spiritual longing, and the anxietyabout not being spiritual can block or stiflethe creative spirit towards true soul recollec-tion. This individual needs to talk through andunderstand his or her need to contain spiri-tual longings in an ideological vessel, repletewith dogma and concepts. That is normal -what might not be healthy, however, is theunderlying motive for the particular vehicle -be it a cult, science or religion.

In this way, delving into the motive - the psy-chic underlying cause - behind the particular

conscious choice of spiritual vehicle will helptease out which is the “real” spiritual thrust,and which is the mind overwhelming the soulwith its ideas. In other words, the point is todifferentiate between what is numinous expe-rience and what is worldly concept.

Our Earthy parts find a great sense of souland peace doing things of the world -

practical, helpful, organized activities promotea sense living a calm, soulful life. Our Earth-ruled houses, as well as the natural Earth

houses, are areas in which we can find greatsatisfaction - Saturn, Venus (the TaureanVenus) and Virgoan Mercury are the mainEarth planets, but Saturn has a major role,being the only single ruling Earth planet, so itstask is to embody all things.

The airy Mercurial parts of our charts sym-bolically point to reaching spirit through

movement, action, relationship and sharing.Finding inspirational reading, teachings andexemplars/models are important in achievinga sense of peace-in-the-world, just as much asthe inner search. Being “out there” anddynamic with personality are also dimensionsof soul-work. The houses that we have air rul-ing, as well as the three natural air houses,hint as to where we will find the most intel-lectually and spiritually stimulating material.The Gemini Mercury, Uranus and thesocialised Venus (Libra ruled) are the planetsto look to for understanding the social,extraverted path to recollecting soul-purpose.

The most interior and spiritually restlesssigns and symbols are found in the

watery regions of the chart. It is there weswim from one pond to another, and sufferempathic global anxiety - Weltschmertz -world pain. Paradoxically, the greatest solaceand soulful gratification comes through thewater houses and houses ruled by watersigns (and planets therein). Planets such asthe Moon, Neptune and Pluto fall into thisdeep, soulful interior search, along with the4th, 8th and 12th houses. There reside ourdreaming and imagination, the soul and itsdeep recesses. Soulful things like music, poet-ry and rhythmic movements, rituals andprayers are yet another link to our memory.

It is in the fiery parts of us, the animated andquesting houses, where inspiration simply

must be externally activated - here, and inthe houses that are ruled by fire signs andcontain planets like our Sun, Mars and Jupiter,soul-work becomes active, extraverted andplayful - experimental too. Wildness and will,power and stamina, courage and innovationare vital agents in the quest for soul - there isnothing about soul that says one cannot seekit loudly or actively!

When our parts are at one, there is asense of smoothness, calm and

peace, as if all parts are running well togeth-er. Spiritual peace is not a quantity ofpower, but a quality of power. And, fromthis place, there apears to be no single way,but a myriad of ways - indeed, if we reallyare “all one”, then it stands to reason thatthe “one is all”, as well.


JJuliet Sharman-Burke hasbeen practising astrologyand Tarot for the past twentyyears. She has been teachingand supervising for theCentre for PsychologicalAstrology since its inceptionin June 1983, and also runsthe Centre’s administration.She is also a qualified analyt-ic psychotherapist with aprivate practice in London.Juliet is the author of TheComplete Book of Tarot, TheMythic Tarot Workbook, andUnderstanding Tarot, and isco-author of The MythicTarot and The Mythic Journeywith Liz Greene. She hasalso written The BarefootBook of Stories from the Stars,a book for children. TheAstrologer, the Counsellor andthe Priest, with Liz Greene,and The Family Inheritance:Parental Images in theHoroscope, have both beenpublished by the CPA Press.

There is a great deal of disagreement aboutthe origins and purpose of the Tarot. A.E.

Waite, designer of the famous Rider Waitedeck, states that “The chief point regarding thehistory of the Tarot cards, whether used as pre-texts for fortune telling or as symbols of philo-sophical interpretation, is that such history doesnot in fact exist.”

Was the Tarot originally designed as gameor a fortune telling device, or did it hold

a spiritual significance? As its true origins are asyet unproven, we are left with 78 cards, 22 ofwhich contain such diverse imagery as Death,The Devil, The Hanged Man and The Toweralongside The Lovers, The Empress,Temperance and The World. If the Tarot wasonly a game, why were images of archetypalimportance included? If it were a fortune-tellingdevice what sort of fortunes were being told?Antoine Court de Gebelin, an eighteenth centu-ry Tarot expert, suggests there is evidence thatthe cards may have evolved from images whichadorned the walls of the temple of Thoth inancient Egypt. The images represented themajor forces (the 22 Major Arcana) which gov-erned the patterns of a person’s life, and anyonewishing to consult the gods about their liveswould throw a loose bundle of rods (which pre-sumably transmuted into the numerical MinorArcana) at random, in the direction of theselarge pictures. The priests of the temple wouldinterpret the pattern of the fallen rods, noticingwhich image was highlighted by the number andformation of rods that fell pointing to it, and inthis way would attempt to interpret “the wordsof the gods”. Out of this custom grew the prac-tice of carrying the images around in card form,and as Court de Gebelin, author of Le MondePrimitif Analysé et Comparé avec le MondeModerne (Paris 1781) (The Ancient WordAnalysed and Compared with the Modern World),put it, they were “the unbound leaves of thesacred book of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus”.There is much discussion about the historicalaccuracy of Count de Gebelin’s “discoveries”regarding the Tarot’s orgins; nevertheless it is aninteresting and, I feel, appropriate approach thatrather than being a mere “fortune-telling”device, the cards can be used as a way of com-municating with the gods.

In the Tarot, the card which relates most to spir-ituality and the urge to connect with a greater

dimension is the Hierophant or High Priest. Thedivinatory meaning of The Hierophant in a Tarotreading suggests that the seeker will want to turnhis or her attention away from the materialworld, and signifies a desire for a deeper under-standing of philosophical or spiritual matters. TheHierophant points to an urgent wish to find realpurpose or meaning in life. This may manifest inthe search for a spiritual mentor, or a religiousframework, or an ideology which might act as aguide in this pursuit. The ancient word for priestis pontifex which means “builder of bridges” sothe priest acts as a bridge between the gods andmen. The Hierophant in the Tarot is an image ofsuch an intermediary.

The traditional decks use the image of a priestor pope blessing two kneeling men. Such

imagery generally depicts him in priestly or papalrobes wearing a triple-tiered crown, which sym-bolises his wisdom in the physical, emotional andmental spheres of human existence. His hand isoften held up with two fingers pointing sky-wardand two fingers folded down towards the earthsymbolising his link between the heavens andearth.

The traditional image of the Hierophantdressed as pope does connect him in many

people’s minds with the Christian church,although his essence is far broader, and he is noteasily described by any one set of religious beliefs.For this reason, when designing The Mythic Tarot,it seemed that the wise centaur Chiron might bean appropriate image for The Hierophant, as hewas a teacher and spiritual guide to the youngmen of noble houses in ancient Greece.

Chiron does not symbolise any orthodox reli-gion; the wise centaur was in charge of

teaching spiritual values and respect for divine lawto the young princes which they needed tounderstand before moving on to learning the artof rulership.. The Hierophant represents the urgethat all humans feel to a greater or lesser extent,which is to find some spiritual purpose in life. Hesymbolises the force behind each of us formingwithin ourselves terms on which to base our reli-gious beliefs or philosophical values. Each of us


The HierophantJuliet Sharman-Burke

Juliet Sharman-Burke here introduces us to the Hierophant or High Priest in the Tarot,and explains why she chose Chiron to represent him in the Mythic Tarot.

The Mythic Tarot

needs to test out teachings and doctrines forourselves, and The Hierophant stands forthis energy and desire to find a personal spir-itual truth. This can be a lonely quest as it isone we must necessarily do on our own.

Chiron in astrology is the planet whichhas come to symbolise much of the

human disappointment we experience whenwe discover that the world contains pain andhurt, much of which seems unfair. In mythChiron was wounded by accident. His friendHerakles dropped by for a visit, bringing withhim a quiver of arrows which he had poi-soned by dipping them in the monstrousHydra’s toxic blood. One of these poisonedarrows grazed Chiron’s thigh, his animal part,quite by chance. Chiron, being half-animaland half-divine, was badly wounded and interrible pain; yet he could not die because hisdivine part did not permit this option. Theanimal part had to suffer a wound for whichthere was no cure, inflicted randomly andundeservedly, which made it more difficult tocome to terms with.

Thus, Chiron became an image of theWounded Healer, the one who through

his own pain can understand and appreciatethe pain of others. Only when we have feltpain ourselves can we appreciate and sym-

pathise with another’s plight from a place oftrue compassion. The positive side forhumanity was that Chiron committed himselfever more earnestly to his study of healingand herbal lore in search of a cure; but,although he managed to heal and help manyothers, he could never heal himself.

Atrue priest is open to the world’s painbecause he, being human, suffers like

everyone else. Chiron seems an apt imagefor a priest, as he is half god and half horse,and so partakes of both the instincts and thespirit and as such contains a duality which issimilar to the human condition. We, too, areneither all-animal nor all-divine but an uneasymixture of both, and we must painfully learnto live with both. Out of this mixture comesChiron’s wisdom, which partakes of both theknowledge of God and the knowledge ofnatural law.

The Hierophant in the Tarot is an imageof someone who can aid this process of

finding meaning and understanding, or it canrefer to a part of ourselves which seeks outanswers through private study and reflection.Both paths are valid and often both apply.The name Hierophant means “the revealerof sacred things” which is his function in ourpsyches.

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Apollon - Issue 6