sexual orientation astrology

I’ve been listening to archived episodes of Chris Brennan’s excellent astrology podcast which has generated a lot of blog ideas.  One of the more interesting episodes was this one on sexual orientation which features astrologer Christopher Renstrom.  Chris and Christopher discuss a wide range of ideas from a historical perspective which I found very interesting since I am not that well versed in the ancient astrological works of Ptolemy and other ancient astrological history or the rules surrounding the prediction whether or not an individual was gay based on planetary configurations in their astrological chart.

Ancient astrologers such as Ptolemy were much more concerned with absolutes in prediction and description of the human experience than we are today; for example, suggesting that if Venus and Jupiter precede the Sun in a man’s chart and those two planets also aspect Mars, that man will only be interested in sex with men.  Or, if Mars and Venus in a woman’s chart are both in masculine signs (fire and air signs), she will be inclined towards lesbianism.  I haven’t done enough research to know if these rules are true, but I did look up Jodie Foster’s chart.  Ms. Foster is a noted lesbian actor whose Mars is indeed in the masculine sign of Leo, but her Venus is in the feminine sign of Scorpio.

In my experience with gay clients as well as profiles of well-known people, it seems to me that the LGBTQ experience encompasses a very wide spectrum of attributes.  There are transgendered individuals who experience themselves as having incarnated into the wrong body.  There are “gender fluid” people who are attracted to people of both sexes.  There are gay men who are more feminine than their body suggests, […]