Lunching with a friend this afternoon, she told me she’d had her chart read once and that it’s amazing how accurate it is. I agreed and then couldn’t help adding, “When it’s done right.” She agreed back. She’d had a good experience, for which I’m always grateful.
But it got me wondering what I meant by that. What’s “right” in astrology? Everyone has their own version. So here’s mine.
I have a decided bias against readings that don’t penetrate the personality deeply. Just skimming the surface (How should I invest my money? Who is my ideal partner? What kind of job should I get?) might provide some useful and true information. But it neglects the roots of issues embedded in the personality, which can be seen all over the chart — if it’s viewed and utilized that way. (Superficial readings also, by the way, place control in the hands of the astrologer, ultimately leaving the client as unempowered as they were upon arrival.)
Take matter, for instance. No, really. Matter generally looks solid to us, unmoving. The book on the shelf is just sitting there; the phone on the desk, the curtains covering the window, the sleeve encasing my arm. All appear stable. But if we look closer — as closely, as deeply, as we can — we know now that each one of these things is made up of molecules that are jiggling, spinning, dancing and swimming around each other fluidly, beautifully, perhaps mercurially.
Similarly, if we look out the window, we see the city or the yard or whatever’s out there beyond the walls, in all its solid and stable glory. We know the earth will hold us up, the same streets will be there predictably day after day, the same buildings, the same trees. But earth is spinning on its axis at about 800 miles per hour in the U.S. (more than 1,000 mph at the Equator) and orbiting the Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. So, like the things that surround us that appear “inanimate,” the earth itself isn’t exactly unmoving, either.
So the level at which we exist is one that’s able to perceive movement as stillness — for the very practical purpose of negotiating a state of being that we come to know as “reality.” Some people are more comfortable with this practical reality than others. But we should not forget that even the most earthy or stable of personalities — those with fixed squares, for example, or lots of planets in Taurus, or strong Saturn energy — are moving, too. Their emotional lives may (or may not) be less apparent than others’, or what others describe as their stubbornness or laziness may simply be slowness as they work to integrate all those molecules spinning underneath. They may need more time to observe, to test, to taste, to dip their toes in before plunging into the lake that their Sagittarian friend is already halfway across.
Everything is matter in our world. We come into the world through the mother — mater – matter — almost as a fierce reminder or admonishment that that’s what this life is about. We live in a physical 3-D reality, bounded, governed, limited by the laws of matter: Two things cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Matter cannot be created, just converted. And so on.
Yet a whole different reality lies beneath and above the apparent stillness of matter. Penetrating beneath our everyday assumptions, moving out beyond our usual periphery, we see that “fixed” matter is actually in constant motion. It’s going places within itself and far beyond. It’s churning, it’s dancing inside, it’s encompassing entire solar systems beyond our range of vision.
We just have to get close enough, or step back far enough, to see.
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