Astrology

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Astrology

Astrology is the study of the movements of heavenly bodies—particularly those within our solar system—and the relationship of these movements to human destiny and life. It has been present in various forms in America since the colonial era, and it continues as a significant aspect of our popular and religious cultures during the twentieth century. According to recent national surveys, roughly one-fourth of all Americans ascribe some validity to astrology. Most major newspapers carry daily horoscope features. As many as eleven thousand professional astrologers are at work in the United States, serving more than 20 million clients. Many bookstores have an entire section devoted to astrological books and periodicals. A blending of the insights of astrological symbolism with the field of humanistic psychology has become the most important development in American astrology in the past thirty years. In this "human potential" form, astrology is often grouped together with the set of beliefs and practices referred to as "New Age" religion.

In late nineteenth-century America, a largely unprofessional and traditionbound astrology decided to align itself with the growing influence of science. The assertion that astrology was an exact science became a commonplace of introductory chapters in astrological publications. Astrologers claimed that centuries of empirical observation had led to the discovery of immutable laws that governed planetary influences on human life. The exact nature of these influences was more difficult to articulate, however. Most theorists fell back on the Hermetic doctrine of correspondences, which assumed that the human person was a microcosm of the greater universe, the macrocosm. As planets moved through the zodiac—a zone of twelve equal segments that extends nine degrees on either side of the ecliptic—corresponding energies and roles were stimulated in human beings, inclining them to act in predictable ways. In "mundane" astrology this theory was expanded to include nations, organizations, and institutions, each of which were affected by planetary movements. Although astrologers professed that they were practicing science, they understood the movements of the heavenly bodies to be part of an ordered universe of meaning and purpose. In a sense, therefore, astrology came to occupy border lands between religion and science.

The first popular astrologer was Evangeline Adams, a descendant of two American presidents who practiced her craft in the heart of New York City between 1899 and 1932 and who counted as clients many of the Eastern Seaboard elite. Adams's four astrological books, published by Dodd, Mead & Company, opened the door for a wave of astrological titles distributed by respectable publishers beginning in the 1920s. Elbert Benjamine, Max Heindel, Paul Clancy, and Llewellyn George were other great populizers of astrology during this period, with both Benjamine and Heindel promoting the "science of the stars" within a metaphysical subculture that included Theosophical, Rosicrucian, Spiritualist, and New Thought ideas.

Several national organizations were formed between 1920 and 1940, the most enduring of which has been the American Federation of Astrologers, which was founded in 1938. The federation helped to professionalize a field that had long been associated with fortune-telling and superstition in the public mind. It continues to publish research, certify practitioners, and sponsor national conferences.

During the 1960s, the study and practice of astrology became part of the counterculture's search for spiritual enlightenment. Along with other mantic systems such as Tarot, palmistry, and I Ching, astrology helped counterculture seekers feel connected to a meaningful matrix of correspondences that included the divine, human, and natural worlds. Under the guiding vision of philosopher, composer, and Theosophist Dane Rudhyar, astrology also became a "language of the soul" that could be used in the work of self-transformation.

Rudhyar adapted astrological symbolism to the analytical psychology of Carl Jung. The horoscope, which is a picture of the solar system at the moment of a person's birth, became reinterpreted as a map of the individual psyche. The planets' placements in signs and houses—for example, Mars in Aquarius in the twelfth house—came to reflect all the forces, drives, and functions in the psyche, and "humanistic" astrologers sought to help their clients integrate these different parts of themselves into a harmonious and meaningful whole. Further, the birth chart provides a kind of seed plan for a fully individuated life, including different stages of development and a sense of ultimate purpose. "Person-centered" or humanistic astrology, as Rudhyar's system came to be called, took astrological practice away from its traditional emphasis on the prediction of events and focused it more on helping human beings realize the potentials indicated in the horoscope. Traditional predictive techniques such as progressions—the movement of the planets forward according to the formula one day equals one year, and transits—the daily movement of the planets through the natal horoscope—became methods for timing the various cycles of psychological development throughout a person's lifetime. "Hard" aspects, such as the square (90-degree angles) and the opposition (180-degree angles) became reinterpreted as growth opportunities when repressed and fragmented psychic functions are brought to the conscious level and thus made amenable to conscious integration.

A new generation of humanistic astrologers, such as Stephen Arroyo, Liz Greene, Rob Hand, Zipporah Dobyns, and Donna Cunningham, have helped turn astrology in the direction of astrotherapy, the use of astrology for psychological counseling. Within the astrotherapeutic perspective, nothing is predetermined in human existence. Rather, human beings, as reflections of the cosmic whole, have the innate powers to create their own reality and to realize ever higher levels of material and spiritual empowerment. In this perspective such growth does not come without work, however, and in the main this work is of a psychological nature. Humanistic astrologers have also emphasized the relational dynamics symbolized within horoscopes. Astrologers now regularly cast charts that map the interpsychic forces at play in relationships between lovers, parents and children, and business partners. These "composite" and "synastric" charts are used in family, group, and couples therapy. The advent of personal computing has made the laborious mathematical calculations of traditional astrological practice a thing of the past. The construction of a horoscope can now be done within a few seconds.

Astrology has always had a tenuous relationship with mainstream Christianity, but the stigmatization of astrology by Christians has taken a more severe turn during the twentieth century with the rise of fundamentalism in American religious life. For many conservative Christians, astrology is seen as part of a complex of metaphysical, occult, and magical beliefs that threaten to destroy authentic Christianity in the name of Satan. In spite of its demonization in the fundamentalist subculture, however, astrology continues to grow in popularity both as a tool for self-transformation and as a system of divination.