In order to express ourselves we frequently resort to words whose literal meaning describes events ‘outside’ ourselves, and we use them metaphorically to communicate what is going on ‘inside’ ourselves.
In a totally literal reality, to ‘understand’ something, one would have to be physically in the midst of it, to ‘grasp a problem’ we would use our hands instead of our intellects, and blind people would not be entitled to ‘a point of view’ like everyone else.
Evidently we are not living in a totally literal reality. So it is actually quite logical to use the very same elements of the physical world which give us a clue about the immensity of the external cosmos (i.e. stars, planets etc.) to help us to describe the goings-on of human inner space (which is about as murky as dark matter).
Let’s factor in the last century’s scientific discoveries that (a) nothing can really be proved to objectively exist, let alone space, time or space-time, and (b) that there is no separation between the observer and the observable universe, and we find a tantalisingly simple basis on which to make palatable the investigation of astrology.
The idea that the movements of celestial bodies influence our fates has become as outmoded as Newton’s deterministic universe… which is to say, it is still with us, but somehow not at the cutting edge any more. Modern psychological astrology looks more at potentials, much like quantum physics looks at probabilities or possibilities.
It can be very interesting to take a long view of the evolution of consciousness in terms of how astrology itself has evolved, in tandem with the evolution of culture, art, science and religion. There exists a rich palette of symbols which are unique in how they draw together our mental capacities for grammar and geometry, maths and languages, into a synthesis of symbolic representation which, if nothing else, is bloody elegant.
astrospection 