Musings on planetary discovery and human consciousness
While there is relatively little planetary action in the sky I thought I would take a moment to share some thoughts on this topic which is of great interest to me. For several thousand years, astrologers of all nations and cultures used only the visible planets and luminaries to cast horoscopes and predict the future. Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – these were the basic elements of the horoscope (remember, a horoscope is the actual map of the sky at a given moment, not the daily forecasts you read in the newspaper). The ancient Greeks and Romans used a series of “lots” to add more detail to the charts, and after the fall of the Roman Empire when knowledge moved eastward, Arab astrologers continued their use and these chart factors became known as the “Arabic parts.” There are close to 100 of these “parts,” or “lots” and the most commonly one used today is the “Part of Fortune.” These points are derived from a mathematical calculation between three chart points, often including the ascendant. They are predictive in nature and reinforces the idea that the birthchart describes the fate of the individual. Astrology, of course, was used primarily to determine one’s fate and predict the future. The belief that the human experience was an evolving process and that the individual held the key to his or her own transformation would have been a completely foreign concept. In modern astrology, the traditional planets described above represent aspects of the personality. I will discuss my views on the Sun and Moon and the relationship to the soul in another article, but for now let’s think of the Sun as being the conscious mind and the Moon […]