What is Astrology?

Astrology is a complex multilayered language of symbols. The natal chart and transits to it are a rich source of information in that language as well as an ongoing relevant conversation that takes place on an archetypal level.

Astrology is not fortune-telling, nor is it a magic pill. Astrology is not the horoscope column in the newspaper either. Horoscope columns have about the same relationship to Astrology that the Alphabet Song has to the English language--an amusing diversion and a useful mnemonic for beginners, but containing virtually no information about the larger subject.

What we customarily call the 'real world' is in fact only a small fraction of the actual real world that exists independent of--and far beyond the scope of--our perception. Astrology provides an accurate and useful blueprint of that larger reality and of our role in it. Though to call it a 'blueprint' is misleading, implying a static structure. Astrology is not static, but ever-changing, evolving and interactive. In modern terms, Astrology is both our personal software and a universal programming language.

Our lives are predetermined only insofar as we sleepwalk through them. In the twentieth century, Astrology is undergoing a renaissance, a revolution parallel to revolutions in the hard sciences. New developments in Astrology can ultimately change our perception of the world and our capacity to consciously create our realities as profoundly as advances in technology have changed our day-to-day lives. Astrology is the mathematics of the whole - the algebra of life.

Astrology is a fluid language which can mean different things at different times from different angles and different points of view. In astrology, point of view is everything. The natal chart is a blueprint of our personal point of view in time and space at the precise moment of our emergence into this life. Astrology is about patterns about change, evolution, magic, timing of great events, deep wells of emotion and vast fields of being.

To understand Astrology or to engage the services of a gifted Astrologer is to go online in a big way - to gain access to a cosmic wealth of information and practical tools that can change the way you think and behave.

Why Astrology works remains a mystery, but that it works is easily proved: have your chart read. Skeptic or not, Astrology will, as Johannes Kepler said, "compel [your] unwilling belief."

I am the author of a horoscope column in the  Island Word