Under the bridge astrology

Author: admin

  • Writing with the help of the stars – famous authors and astrology

    Writing with the help of the stars – famous authors and astrology

    Astrology is story-telling. The symbols in a birth chart are the raw data that allow me to start shaping a story. And I’m not the only writer who’s been drawn to this ancient art – but how can we use astrology as writers?

    First we can look at our natal charts to try to figure what sort of writing that works with our astrological wiring.

    JK Rowling

    The most famous writer known to have used astrology is probably JK Rowling. It seems like she didn’t just dabble in it. Recently a handwritten and illustrated natal chart that she’s drawn up for a couple she met during an antenatal class came up for sale. According to the vendor of high end collectibles that sold the document for $20 000 “Rowling displays a strong knowledge of astrology, referencing texts such as the influential 15th century French work The Kalendar and Compost of Shepherds“.

    She is known for writing the mega successful Harry Potter-series and then becoming a hate figure because of her combative views on trans issues.

    But what does her birth chart tell us about Rowling as a writer?

    Like many people who write she has several planets in Virgo, a sign that’s ruled by the messenger Mercury. Virgo placements can create an active and precise mind. Virgo can also be pedantic and overthink things and several planets in that sign could create a writer known for their intricate plots – and/or a writer who struggles with perfectionism and writer’s block. For Rowling the former seems to be more on point, she famously plots out all her books on a complicated and detailed grid pattern.

    She has an influential Neptune in Scorpio in the 9th house of publishing. Here is someone who can dive into the undercurrents of society, the urges and drives of the collective consciousness and then shape what she’s picked up into stories that connect with something in the zeitgeist, stories that are published and read.

    With Harry Potter she connected with a long tradition of story-telling and children’s fiction in the UK – fantasy, boarding schools and a brave orphan standing up to the forces of darkness.

    Her Sun in Leo in the 6th house is able to pour a lot of energy into her work. It wants to shine, but it also wants to be of service. There is a sort of moralising tone to Harry Potter – be kind, stand up to bullies etc.

    Finally Jupiter, the planet of blessings, is in the sign of the writer – Gemini – in her 4th house. Stories and story telling about home and family are part of her strengths as a writer.

    The main thing that pops out to me when I look at her chart is a powerful and interesting pattern. She has a so called T-square, a dynamic and sometimes challenging aspect, between stern Saturn and the wounded healer Chiron in her first house, her Jupiter and her many planets in Virgo in the 7th house of relationships and her inner nature the Moon in the potentially tricky 8th house.

    For a writer this could mean that she will be naturally good at stories about wounded heroes who set out to complete a quest that is hard and will challenge them, through this they are confronted with questions and learnings around home and family and also their relationships. But with that Moon in the 8th there is almost an obsessive quality to it, a compulsive need to exorcise demons – real or imaginary.

    And perhaps that also describes the writer herself.

    Eleanor Catton

    This is an author who has been open about using astrology in her writing. Eleanor Catton, a young writer from New Zealand, took the literary world by storm with her second novel The Luminaries, which won the Booker prize in 2013 when she was just 28 years – making her the youngest author so far to win the prize.

    The book is over 800 pages long and follows the stories of twelve men in 1860s New Zealand. These twelve men all represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. Catton also tracked the planets during the year when the novel is set and used that to inform the plot – quite a clever way to use astrology as a writer.

    She has said that she became slightly obsessed with astrology when writing the novel.

    Her take on it?

    I like to think of the zodiac as having a lot in common with the Greek pantheon: less of a thing to be believed in, and more of a repository of cultural knowledge and history that is archetypal, and mythic, and responsive to close study.

    Eleanor Catton interviewed by The Age.

    So what does her birth chart tell us about what kind of story-teller she is?

    There are planets and angles in Virgo, Gemini and Libra. Signs that rule communication and the arts. She has a conjunction between her Sun, her self, and Mercury, her mind, in Libra in the first house. It’s connected to her inner self, the Moon, and Jupiter in strong-willed Aquarius in the fifth house of creativity and creative projects. She also has Venus and Mars in the 12th house of the subconscious in meticulous Virgo.

    The placement that really stands out to me is her Chiron, our core wound but also a point that can stand for healing, right on top of her Midheaven – the highest point in the sky when she was born, signifying our career or our status in the world.

    What sort of stories would an author with this particular birth chart create?

    They would be beautiful and deeply informed by the author herself. They would be different, unusual and with a strong sense of right and wrong, they might help the reader see the world through a different lens by showing them unusual and fascinating characters. Finally they would probably be ambitious works, dealing with topics like home, politics and the author’s country of birth (here I’m looking at her Neptune in Capricorn in the 4th, which is connected to her Mars and Venus).

    But what does that Chiron mean? Perhaps that fame will be difficult for the author, that it could cause her some feelings of anxiety or insecurity, but that she – through being her beautiful Libra self – can help promote harmony, balance and empathy through her writing.

    Olga Tokarczuk

    What a birth chart and what a writer. Polish writer and Nobel prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s powerful book Drive your plow over the bones of the dead has a protagonist that uses astrology. The book itself deals with themes around the destruction of nature and how we treat each other – and in that other she includes both humans and animals as equals.

    Tokarczuk is also a clinical psychologist and an activist. When she was interviewed about why she created a protagonist who uses astrology she put it like this:

     I don’t know what it’s like here in the United States, but in Poland, astrology is a pseudoscience worthy of ridicule and contempt. The intellectual establishment neither values nor is interested in it. It’s considered to be the delusion of old women or hysterical girls; it’s part of the newspaper culture. Because I was creating a character who was supposed to be a bit rebellious, even as an older person, I gave her the astrology to annoy all those who treat astrology as something silly and frivolous. 

    Olga Tokarczuk interviewed at the Brooklyn Library.

    She then described how her own attitude to astrology is that it’s an old science, or art, “that foreshadowed psychology, perhaps even some kind of sociological way or thinking”.

    So what does astrology tell us about her?

    Most of her chart is concentrated in one corner – creating a forceful personality in whose life certain themes will crop up again and again. She has a stellium, several planets in one sign, in Aquarius – the sign of the maverick, the genius, the free-thinker and the activist. A part of that stellium is a Sun/Venus conjunction. There are also planets in Pieces and Capricorn on either side. Her Aquarius placements are squaring a Moon/Neptune conjunction in fixed, perceptive, deep-diving Scorpio in the 3d house of the writer. Phew!

    So writing will be activism and there is a sense that she as a writer wants to be of service, she works hard to try to change the world for the better – and she has very strong views on how to do it. Partly because her life and her character have given her challenging, but important and formative, experiences around the human psyche and the human soul. She knows what is going on underneath the surface. In a different time she could perhaps have been a healer or a shaman. What she knows isn’t always comfortable and she’s willing to be confrontational, to shake people up.

    She also has Pluto on her Ascendant, the lens through which her personality and chart is projected into the world. Pluto is in the 12th house of the unconscious and it’s in Virgo – the sign of the writer, the doctor and the nanny.

    I’ve only read Drive your plow, but after having written this I think I’m going reach for her back catalogue.

    Tips for writers who want to use astrology

    Astrology and writing go together quite naturally. Astrology can inform a plot or create characters, a technique that has been used successfully by both JK Rowling and Eleanor Catton.

    It’s also possible to look to the birth chart to identify our strengths as writers and figure out how to make the best use of our talents and skills. Olga Tokarczuk’s activism and hard won knowledge of the human psyche and the archetypal forces playing out in the world are all part of why she’s had such an impact as an author. Those talents stand out clearly to anyone who look at her birth chart.

    But this is just scratching the surface of how writers can use astrology. As a writer it’s a topic I want to keep coming back to.

  • Why I believe in astrology

    Why I believe in astrology

    I had practiced astrology for a long time, and seen it work in my own life, before I managed to explain to myself how it worked.

    This shift happened because of a book.

    Last summer I finally read cultural historian Richard Tarnas’ Cosmos and Psyche. In it he lays out a world view and an argument I had come across before – but at this point in my life the penny dropped, I was ready.

    Tarnas argues that the modern mind believes that we are separate from the rest of existence. We’ve become these lonely, lofty individuals following a linear path towards some fancy destiny, separate from each other and standing above nature and life itself. We fear our seemingly chaotic universe which lacks meaning, we fear death and we fear each other.

    But there is a different way to view the world:

    “The primal human being perceives the surrounding world as permeated with meaning, meaning whose significance is at once human and cosmic. Spirits are seen in the forest, presences are felt in the wind and the ocean, the river and the mountains. Meaning is recognised in the flight of two eagles across the horizon, in the conjunction of two planets in the heavens, in the unfolding cycles of the Moon and Sun.”

    Richard Tarnas

    This is how my ancestors would have thought about the world, they were part of it, not above it or separate from it. Richard Tarnas calls the primal world “ensouled”. It communicates and has purpose.

    When my world view shifted and I was able to grasp the idea of an ensouled world, astrology suddenly made sense. I’m still figuring out who is doing the communicating and why, but thankfully I’m not alone in that quest as it’s been one of the fundamental question we humans have asked ourselves for millennia.

    This communication with the ensouled world can happen through the Tarot, the i Ching and through astrology and there are many, many more methods and ways and tools out there. They all tell us stories and through those stories we can start to weave a pattern that helps us make sense of our existence.

    Does astrology predict the future?

    No, but it can give us an insight into the themes, archetypes and patterns that are playing out in our lives and through us. It can also give us a weather report about what’s to come.

    A Pluto or Uranus transit to your IC would in most cases mean changes to your home – perhaps you’re moving, renovating or maybe you’re having a baby. But the symbols can sometimes mean many different things. It’s through the skill of the astrologer and in the conversation between an astrologer and the person whose chart is being interpreted that the meaning starts to come into focus. But, just like the weather report, astrology or the astrologer isn’t infallible.

    So what’s the point?

    To me astrology is a shortcut, a language of symbols that helps me to spot patterns and trends in my life and in the lives of others. It also helps me to accept who I am – with my Moon in Cancer in the 6th house I know I need to be of service and that being family-focused and a mother is of huge importance to me – even though that part of myself has sometimes been at cross purposes with my weirdo 10th house Sun in Sagittarius conjunct Uranus and my striving Capricorn Ascendant. This tensions exists in my personality and psyche and that’s OK.

    Astrology has also helped me by showing me that everything is cyclical. There will be good times, bad times, stressful periods and quiet ones. Sometimes the only thing to do is to wait for the storm to pass or for the wind to puff up your sails again.

    Different kinds of astrology

    As some of you know there are many different kinds of astrology, which in itself is an ancient art that has been practiced for over 4000 years. Astrology was used by ancient rulers, by kings and queens (and if some are to be believed, also by modern kings) and by common folk.

    Traditional methods were quite different to the type of woolly astrology we’re now used to seeing in newspaper columns. There was a time when astrology was seen as a hard science and predictions could be dire – these astrologers were predicting your fate and neither they nor fate was messing around.

    Since then we’ve gone through the Enlightenment and lost our belief in the fates. We also have more agency, we have, or think we have, more control over our lives. And in the West this lead to a decline in the popularity of astrology and a shift in how it was practiced. Instead of seeing the planets as Gods who rule over our lives they became aspects of our own psyche.

    In the last decade or so there has been an explosion of interest in astrology. And perhaps because life now feels more uncertain for so many of us, perhaps because we feel the hand of fate more strongly, traditional astrology has had something of a renaissance.

    Anyone who looks up astrology on online or on social media will come across young and ambitious astrologers talking about using Hellenistic astrology and methods like Zodiacal releasing – popularised by an impressive guy called Chris Brennan who puts out four hour long podcast episodes about astrology.

    There also seem to be endless debates around house systems and between different schools of astrological thought. It’s all very interesting and new and exciting things are often born out of creative differences. It’s also great that so many people at this point in time seem to be discovering astrology.

    How I work with astrology

    My practice is rooted in looking at ancestral patterns and stories. And I am a story-teller, not a therapist. When looking at a chart I’m trying to find meaning and the goal is always to promote clarity and self-acceptance.

    To me astrology is a form of story-telling and one of the many tools we can use in order to grow, heal and thrive. I use a blend of modern and traditional methods to shape a story about a person, an event, a life or a family.

    I also see astrology as a useful method when doing ancestral work. The birth chart isn’t just you, it’s your family, your ancestors and the many things you’ve inherited from those who came before you. The chart placements and the aspects between the planets tell the story of your ancestral line and its strengths, its shadow and the trauma those who came before you might have experienced.

    It’s a powerful tool for those who want to look at their ancestry and work on repairing the ancestral line, healing some of the patterns they have inherited.

    Finally I believe we are all expressions of the creative energy of the cosmos. Our birth chart is like the sheet music for a particular segment of a larger symphony. Those notes can be played in many different ways, loudly, quietly, with joy or sadness. There are, in other words, many different ways the chart can be expressed. There are no good or bad placements, only what we make of them. And what astrology offers us is an insight into the particular themes we’ve been given to work with.