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.