Why the stars matter
It's time to reorient to the natural sky and remember the feminine we've forgotten
Being a human is a relationship between the self and the outer world.
We stand in our subjective experience, receiving stimuli and information, as we navigate the environment, and all that exists within it.
Navigation requires one thing: a true north. This is the point to which we orient as we move through a landscape, no matter if all is still or the terrain is difficult.
What we orient to is essential not because it tell us where we must go, we can find our unique pathways, but it guides us forward and holds a container - left from right, up from down.
What if I told you that the stars you’re orienting towards with the practice of astrology are off by 25 degrees to the sky above us?
This is simply the truth. It’s undeniable. It does not mean that the map is wrong, all the elements, objects, locations with it are still very real, how they connect to one another stays the same, but how we relate to it shifts, even if it’s slight.
Most don’t even notice this - when they hear, “the full moon is in Sagittarius,” they assume that means in the current sky. But due to the wobble of the earth on it’s axis, our orientation to the heavens has changed, and that full moon is actually in the sign of Scorpio, calling forth an entirely different message and energy.
Hathor’s Temple, Egypt
I realize this can feel confusing. We all want clarity. We all want truth. This is why we’re attracted to this ancient art in the first place.
It’s time to ask some questions.
So when did astrology begin?
It’s essential to get back to basics - something I rarely see in astrology, or many modalities in self-development honestly.
Babylonian boundary stone - these property markers often has astronomical indicators and even astrological omens on them
The sky is wild, with 5,044 stars potentially visible to the naked human eye, half showing above the horizon on any given night. Our human mind seeks patterns, naturally shaping them into the shapes we call constellations.
There are 13 constellations that naturally lie in the path of the sun - this is called the ecliptic and it determines the zodiac, used since antiquity. Primarily, it came from Babylon. The Egyptians, for example, primarily used a different group of stars called the decans, 36 in total.
Since the very beginning of when we started tracking the moon and sun, they held our notion of time, and in the same way, since we started seeing images in the stars, they held our stories. This storytelling through stars were the first seeds of astrology, which didn’t come till later.
Astronomy is the science of observing and charting the stars and planets. Astrology is the art of deriving meaning from the movements of these celestial bodies and seeing patterns with how they relate to events on earth, from the collective to the individual.
From the high perspective history lends us, we can see that this science grew slowly over time, with astrology as we know it beginning in the Babylonian, some earliest records being around 1875 BCE in the Enuma Anu Enlil.
One passage on these stone tablets reads: “when in the month Ajaru, during the evening watch, the moon eclipses, the king will die. The sons of the king will vie for the throne of their father, but will not sit on it.”
This is the lineage of the astrology we use in the Western/Tropical system, that came from Babylon to the Ancient Greeks. Name a famous Greek philosopher, every one of them practiced and honored astrology as a valid and worthy science. One of the most famous ancient Greek rulers, Alexander the Great, was known to have consulted with his court astrologer, Callisthenes, on all matters of battle and life.
The Hellenistic territories became the Roman Republic with Octavian Augustus in 27 BCE, and in 100 BCE, Claudius Ptolemy, the “grandfather” of astrology, was born in within the Empire in Alexandria, Egypt.
When did our orientation to the stars change, and why?
Ptolemy was most authoritative astronomer and astrologer of the ancient world. What he did was to codify all that came before him, first into his book on astronomy.
The Almagest established a unified mathematical framework for computing the positions of the Sun, Moon, stars and planets at any time in the past, present, or future. It was the final word in astronomy for 1500 years until the Copernican revolution - this was the power of Ptolemy’s word.
Claudius Ptolemy
Ptolemy followed it with a book on astrology, the Tetrabiblos, and this defined the paradigm of astrology that exists to this day. He built the system with Aries fixed on the spring equinox - it had already shifted to Pisces, but he used this placement based on the work of Hipparchus from 130 BC.
Astrology dwindled as a practice, due in large part to the rise of Christianity, which demonized anything perceived to be connected to “other gods.” In the late 19th century, astrology came back into popularity with women in high society in London and New York. In the 20th century, famous psychiatrists like Carl Jung took great interest in it, and much of his mode of archetypal self-understanding became grafted onto astrology and how we practice it.
Planets such as Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto that had not been discovered in Ptolemy’s time were integrated, and over time what we know of as the Western/Tropical system emerged and has now become dominant.
Yet, it continues to use that ancient map, an imprint of where the stars were 2,000 years ago. In many ways, this was due to the ease of using the same map to create charts, rather than updating it over time when we lacked technology to make this easy. As all paradigms are, it became engrained, and can be understood as a seasonal approach, with the archetypes of the zodiac being connected to the time of year they relate to, and forming a consistent rhythm we move within.
I believe this system is powerful and worthy of consideration - using it has been transformational for my own path of self-understanding. Yet, we are dislocated from the natural sky above us, the one that our ancestors would have looked at every single evening as they told stories to heal and unite them. I believe we must consider the sky, reorient to what it has to teach us about our starry nature.
Why do the stars matter, anyway?
The stars matter because they hold our stories and have since the beginning of time. Even if we don’t engage in mythology actively in the way we used to, these tales underlies our cultural narratives about who we are and they are embedded in the collective unconscious. Further, with the rise of astrology’s practices, these myths and their energetics are coming back to the forefront of our consciousness. What we believe about what the zodiac signs and planets symbolize shape our stories, which shape our reality, at least our experience of it - and ourselves.
Are we sure we know what these myths are, if what we associate with them is true, and ultimately supportive to us?
The mainstream system of astrology is called the Western or Tropical, which can be traced back to the Romans, Greeks, and Babylonians - as written above. In regards to stories, what all these cultures share in common is a patriarchal, conquering culture, and mythology that reflect this. If this is the paradigm of thought and belief underpinning our astrological system, is that what we want?
What about what stories other cultures projected onto the same constellations? Where do these stories trace back to? What is missing?
It’s a simple answer: the goddess.
The very first goddess (on written record), Inanna of Sumeria
Our stories around the zodiac and the planets have been shaped by men, in patriarchal cultures, with masculine-dominated theology. Joseph Campbell said that wherever Zeus went, as the Greeks conquered, he met the mother-goddess, the ancient indigenous spirituality of places like Crete, and a new myth needed to emerge about how Zeus ruled all. Of course, it was not as simple as this, but what Campbell points to (again and again in his work on ancient myth) is how the goddess was intentionally removed or demonized as myth progressed, and specifically in Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian belief paradigms.
Is this what we want to base our notions of self-understanding upon as we engage in the practice of astrology?
I believe it’s time that we reintegrate the goddess, myth by myth, planet by planet, sign by sign, slowly reorganizing and expanding our understanding of the energetics of life - and ourselves - by bringing the feminine principle while maintaining the masculine, to build a new holistic astrological paradigm.
Shifting Our North
There is a universal answer ancient people share to the question: where did your knowledge of astronomy and astrology come from? From the gods, they say, and I innately sense the truth in this, even if it transcends logic: our connection to the stars comes from the ineffable place we have always associated with unseen divine forces.
We would not still practice this art if we did not find truth in it.
Truth. There is no way around the truth that the stars we are orienting to lie in a map that is more than 2,000 years old and a system of understanding their meaning created by patriarchal society, underpinned by myths that fail to honor and integrate the feminine.
I am here to shift that. Not in an instantaneous moment, rushing to create in one fell swoop and monetize swiftly, but slowly, artfully, honoring my own needs as a woman, mother, and creative scholar, sitting in the power of what I know, what I see, and sharing with you with a sacred intention.
I refuse to swing the pendulum too wide, I insist that we integrate what is good in all the stories and mysteries, and what they have to mirror to us about who we are, why we are here, and what this grand adventure of being a spiritual human is all about.
That is what the stars are, ultimately, a grand mirror, of our own complexity, our own sacredness, our inherent mystery.
It’s time we looked up and remember all that we’ve forgotten.
xx,
Kelly
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