Depth Astrology

I haven’t looked at a horoscope chart since last summer, much less tried to put anything astrological into words since then.

On the surface, this is strange, since I just had an article come out in The Mountain Astrologer, finally completed my Diploma in Astrological Psychology with API (UK), and seen more change in the last 12 months of my life than in the previous 10 years combined.

You’d think I’d be running to clients waving my new credentials like a flag in the wind, running to my blog to capitalize on a bit of publicity, running  to my chart to understand it all: the deaths, the layoff, the diagnosis, the abuse I suspected at the hands of my child’s caregiver, the two new businesses, the job offer, the packing, the move back to my hometown, the sale of our beloved home, the waiting, the chaos, the shedding, the limbo between being settled there and being settled here, the miracle cure for the mysterious pain I’d lived with for more than 16 years.

And the baby! The difficult pregnancy, the frightening labor — and then the mellowest, cheerfulest, healthiest, most startling new baby imaginable, in the midst of it all.

But one thing astrology teaches us — and especially Huber astrology — is that life flows in waves, like cycles, like the startled crash of ocean on rocks, followed by a swirling retreat, and then by the slow, smooth rocking of the water’s surface in preparation for the next big swell.

Only some of those times are conducive to reflection. Other times, the full-throttle living must come first.

There are many different astrological indicators for when such tempests might occur in a life. For me, it was predominantly the passage of my Age Point over the Low Point of my seventh house, followed immediately by Saturn’s transit across my Pluto-Moon-Uranus conjunction in Virgo and Libra in my second house. It was the grace of synchronicity, all lined up and waiting to sweep me off my feet, to steal my breath and my sight for a dark night.

I was only dimly aware of these imminent passages last January, only had a vague notion what the coming months might bring. I knew it would be a seminal year, knew certain parts of my life would be deeply shaken, even transformed. But as the drama stacked up, it began to obscure my view of the year’s astrology. I let go of all but the most essential survival requirements: tending to my children, tending to my health, tending to our money, our house, our safe passage through the storm.

From inside the tempest, it’s tough to see the landscape, the markers you normally grasp to orient yourself, to map your way back to dry ground.

We’re close to landing now, though. We were fully in the clouds and spray last fall; now, though still in flight, we’ve begun to let go of What Was. We’re starting to emerge from the mist, come closer to solid ground, squint the shoreline into view, see a cloudy outline of What’s To Come. And the astrology is waiting there, too.

Image

The photographer’s description of this image is as striking as the picture itself:

“Tom and myself rode down this hill in a ropey old 1950’s Leyland bus, typical of the Maltese bus fleet, but driven by the stunt driver for the bus scenes in ‘Speed’ where the bomb would go off if they slowed to less than 40mph! We were on high seats opposite the exit door and had to grip on whilst centripetal force took us and the bus closer to the outside wall. Tyres squealed on the hot tarmac and we were saved by some old dear in black who didn’t seem to need to hang on and dinged the bell as calmly as you like for the driver to stop and let her off.” (Source)

Life feels like this, sometimes, for each of us. Yet some people are more prone than others to careening through the days, whipped back and forth by forces they feel they can’t control. They complain of other people’s actions and influences on their lives: “He made me feel bad,” “She won’t let me go,” “They really have me tied down.”

In traditional psychology, this innate sense of where control lies in one’s life is referred to as the locus of control. In astrology — namely in Huber astrology — we can determine where a chart native’s locus of control lies in different areas of life by examining the dynamic calculations: a series of negative and positive numbers whose values reflect the strength of various mode and element combinations within the chart, based on planet, sign and house placements.

For example, someone with dynamic calculations of +33 mutable and +14 earth will end up with a “build-up” of +47 in Virgo energy (Virgo being the mutable earth sign). This means, in a nutshell, that the person tends to assume that Virgo-type control over life exists externally, out in the world, not within her own domain. So though she may have several planets in Virgo, she may feel their obligation, responsibility and critical analysis being imposed on her from others rather than from within herself.

Similarly, someone with dynamic calculations of -18 fixed and +10 water will end up with a “cut-down” of -8 in Scorpio (fixed water) energy. The person’s sense of emotional depth, intensity and control will lie more within himself than without; he is more likely to acknowledge that his strong feelings are generated internally rather than to blame someone else, or some external circumstance, for them.

This basic knowledge of dynamic calculations, alongside the psychological concept of locus of control, can be enormously helpful for clients who feel they are careening down a mountainside in a runaway bus with a crazy driver and a bomb on board. The astrologer may be the wise woman in black, calmly ringing the bell, telling the client it’s okay to get off, to see what it’s like to descend calmly and quietly on his own two feet.

Image: Harry Willis

The Hubers have done it again. Through their meticulous and rigorous research, they have discovered a new — and extraordinarily useful — way of looking at the horoscope that could shed light on individual behavioral norms, help couples understand each other better and help teams work together more effectively.

In a recent post I asserted that there is no clear archetype of nature in the horoscope. I want to take that back, kind of. There are actually several symbols that could be different faces of the nature archetype — for example Mars’s wild instinct and Venus’s sensuousness and the abundance of Jupiter — but I’m going to go out on a limb (ha!) and call out the least “wild” of all archetypes as the horoscope’s fullest embodiment of nature.

Most books on karma and reincarnation in western astrology look to the natal chart for clues about what baggage we lugged into our present journey on earth.

In the natal chart, as many astrologers have pointed out, the Moon’s North Node signals a karmic calling in this life: what the native is here to accomplish. It’s normally not an easy task (why would we be sent here to live out an easy life?). But while the North Node is the lodestar, it is not the whole journey. For that, astrological psychology pioneers Bruno and Louise Huber have developed a different tool: an entirely new chart covering the whole sweeping scope of past lives. It’s called the Moon Node chart.