IS ASTROLOGY A RELIGION? Depends on how you define “religion.” I prefer to bypass this heady line of inquiry and move on to a less academic question: Can modern archetypal astrology help us awaken to what science calls the non-local field of consciousness and Rumi calls The Friend? Yes, providing the language of archetypes becomes a felt, here/now experience and we learn some empirical ways of working with them. Too turned off by belief systems to invest in this kind of psycho-spiritual study? Here are ten reasons to reconsider your position:
1) Astrology is not a belief system. It’s an intuitively verifiable, archetypal way of seeing that 1) exposes personality as a collage of clearly discernible “styles of awakening” and 2) articulates the thematic lessons we’re attempting to teach ourselves during specific seasons of life so we can act and evolve in conscious harmony with them.
2) Astrology doesn’t overly prescribe. Astrology confronts us with the challenges and opportunities of our unique incarnational predicament without getting dogmatic about how we express and resolve it. The soul’s free will is honored as a sacred player in creative dialogue with divine destiny.
3) Astrology is inherently nondual. When harnessed as a form of meditative self-inquiry, archetypal astrology confronts us with the relative truth of our egoic psychology even as it embeds us in a psyche of cosmic dimensions.
4) The astrological worldview avoids the pitfalls of both scientism and fundamentalism. As we learn to understand and see through ego’s archetypal veneer, humanity is revealed to be far more than a complicated animal whose highest destiny is to become socially well-adjusted. That’s called scientism. We are also more cosmically collaborative than a divine servant bound by rigid rules. That’s called fundamentalism. In place of materialism, astrology challenges us to shrewdly attune to everyday signs and symbols as evidence of divine guidance. In place of dogma, astrology provides a sturdy framework of archetypal self-inquiry.
5) Astrology has intellectual rigor. The Dalai Lama once accused the new age of “lacking rigor.” Not so with modern, psychologically nuanced astrology. Far from being morally vague or overly permissive, a basic understanding of one’s birth chart and transits adds clear, psyche-specific directives to the Bible’s generic commandments.
6) Astrology inspires discipline and self mastery. To the extent that we fail to harness the talents and opportunities of our birth chart and transits, we suffer a creepy, nameless malaise that is no less vexing (or karmically significant) than acts of outer perpetration. This realization keeps us living at our creative edge.
7) Astrology reduces meaningless suffering. When we learn to understand, surrender and flow with the archetypal seasons of our lives, the apparent randomness and lack of intelligible meaning that once twisted our passing psychological pain into prolonged, mind-made suffering becomes a rarity.
8) Astro-literacy ends the habit of reflexive like and dislike. When we get familiar with our inborn archetypal biases, we know what archetypal bundles of dark and light we must develop in ourselves such that we no longer demonize or idolize them in others.
9) Astro-literacy gives us a more objective criterion with which to determine relational compatibility. The stress of mismatched relationships is, thereby, greatly reduced.
10) The God of astrology is as close as the face in front of us. As the practice of perceiving the positively-intended heart of each archetypal style of awakening becomes second nature, a larger, benevolent consciousness beams back at us through a wider and wider swath of mortal gazes.
[Want to enter more deeply into the Astrodharmic worldview? Consider taking the Styles of Awakening Training.]
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