Traditional Astrology in a Modern Practice - Let There be Lights

by Wonder Bright

For three years of my childhood, we lived far away from any cities or towns. From 1975 to 1978, we lived in a remote corner of Eastern Washington. Our nearest neighbors were about two miles away along a road through a forest. At night it was dark. True dark. It is over 40 years since one such night, when my family trudged through fresh snow across a hilltop clearing. At the peak my mother halted us, saying in hushed tones, “oh my gosh you guys, look at this.” We stood still there for a long moment, taking in the scene. There was no moon that night, just the brightness of the stars reflected on the glistening snow pack, casting soft glows upon our faces. The mountain ridges in the background, spiky with fir trees, stretched into the distance. “Aren’t we lucky?” my mother asked reverently.

I have rewound this story in my mind’s eye many times over and I feel luckier every time. Partly because of the story it tells me about my family, but more and more lately because of the story it tells me about the larger picture of where I come from as part of the human species. The direct experience I have of dark skies is something fewer and fewer of us can lay claim to nowadays. That I have to go that far back in memory for dark skies is nothing compared to the geographical distance I now have to travel to find them.

But not as an astrologer. As an astrologer, I can find night skies with every chart I draw. The dividing line the horizon makes across the page renders them visible to my eye every time. But you have to know to look, and the truth is that neither modern methods nor the modern mind are equipped to do this. In the modern era we have accepted the Sun’s role as the center of not only the solar system but also of the astrological system. It’s as if we cannot help but imagine that the centrifugal force keeping the solar system together must also be reflected in a chart, even one with the Earth at its core. Consider the contrast in thinking between the godfather of modern astrology and the best-known keeper of the ancient traditions:

I believe that the Principle which gives life dwells in us and without us from the Supreme Intelligence through the Rays of the Sun.
— Alan Leo, 20th century CE1

The active power of the sun’s essential nature is found to be heating and, to a certain degree, drying.
— Claudius Ptolemy, 2nd century CE2

The modern astrological conceit regarding our Sun is that, as the giver of light, it is the planet analogous to divinity. But this is simply inconsistent with the ancient origins of the craft. While it was understood that the Moon reflected the light of the Sun, it was also true that both Sun and Moon were considered luminaries, either one capable of holding power over the other depending on the chart. The duo were even referred to as “the lights.” Moreover, it is the case that ancient astrologers, steeped in millennia of polytheistic religion, perceived all the planets as divine, perhaps even as emissaries of literal gods as evidenced by the way the texts describe “the star of Kronos” (Saturn), or “the star of Aphrodite” (Venus).3 This perception is so baked in that “for most schools of thinkers, the stars’ divine nature was self-evident.”4 Today we commonly ascribe only our Sun with such qualities, but our tradition stems from a different worldview, one where the total workings of the cosmos were motored by divinity. Indeed, the motion of the stars “was difficult to explain if it were otherwise.”5

Given the power the night skies had over our ancestors, it is remarkable that within a few hundred years astrologers came to perceive the Sun as the driving force of a chart. But there is no record of this conceptual shift. Perhaps the leap astrologers made from one way of perceiving to another was so obvious to them that it required no comment. But apprehending it now, with the desire to integrate our traditions, requires a deeper look. Why did we place the Sun at the center of the astrological cosmos? What did we lose when we dethroned the Moon? And what might we gain by restoring a balance of power?

The Night Forces

It is probably impossible for the modern mind to truly comprehend the respect, fear, and awe nighttime held over our forebears. We are unbothered by the darkness sunset ushers in, only noticing it insomuch as it might require us to turn on a light in the act of banishing it.

But for thousands of years there were no lights — just the soft glow of candles and fire. For millennia, the only force that truly had the power to banish the darkness at night was the Moon. There was a time when the Moon was the Queen of the Night, the brightest object in the night sky, and the subject of fascination for people who were, with good reason, afraid of the dark. It begs belief now, but for millennia the dark ushered in a starkly different time. Before electricity, people commonly slept in biphasic patterns, retiring to bed at dark and waking up in the middle of the night for a few hours before returning to sleep till dawn. In those midnight hours people visited their neighbors, had sex, and used the time to reflect and to write, often about their dreams.6

Darkness brought with it a privacy hard to imagine in the 21st century, privacy that spelled revelry and relaxation, but also peril and difficulty. The night belonged to thieves and murderers and anyone else who craved the obscurity darkness spawns. We have forgotten now, but for most of our time on Earth, people avoided traveling at night unless the Moon was out and preferably in its larger phases, casting more light to see the path and any threats it contained.7

The importance the Moon held for the ancients is echoed in the Greek cosmology, which places the Moon in closest proximity to the Earth, whereby it can tend to it better. The Greeks conceived of the cosmos as a series of rotating spheres with the Earth at the center and the visible planets radiating out from it in order of speed, believing that the speed of the planet indicated its distance from the Earth. While this ancient cosmology has been upended, the following by Ptolemy still holds true:

The Moon, too, as the heavenly body nearest the earth, bestows her effluence most abundantly upon mundane things, for most of them, animate or inanimate, are sympathetic to her and change in company with her; the rivers increase and diminish their streams with her light, the seas turn their own tides with her rising and setting, and plants and animals in whole or in some part wax and wane with her.8

The vulnerability people experienced at night is mirrored in the rulership of the Moon over the body, for in its waxing and waning it illustrates the changeability mortal flesh lays heir to. In the Moon’s phases the ancients observed their own changing phases as mortal beings, for if the Moon was only “generated by the reflection of the solar light,” 9 well, were we so different? In the flesh, we are not like the Sun — fixed and unchanging. We are like the Moon. Our vitality ebbs and flows and must always, in the end, desert us.

As Above, So Below

When modern astrologers repeat the ancient phrase, “as above, so below,” they mean to impart how our lives on Earth reflect the skies above. But in vanquishing darkness, we have, in effect, cut ourselves off from a direct experience of what lies above. And by establishing the Sun at the center of our cosmology, as if giving light was more important than receiving it, we have upset the balance yet farther. Instead of two great luminaries presiding over the change of day to night, we have days without end. There is no change. Nighttime cannot even be experienced, let alone honored.

We can understand why humanity, having all but banished darkness from our globe, might believe we have less need for the light of the Moon nowadays. But we clearly have not yet managed to banish darkness, danger, or our own mortality. And astrologers are uniquely qualified to understand the importance of the light of the Moon to weary travelers who have lost their way. As we sit with our clients, reflecting their lives back to them through the prism of their charts, modern astrologers are well versed in thinking of their clients as the heroes of their own stories. As such, we are uniquely positioned to shepherd our clients through the difficulties their charts reveal providing solace and comfort in the dark.

In a future column we will look in depth at the planets in attendance on the Moon through the Hellenistic doctrine of sect — Venus and Mars. But for now, we will simply note that the experiences of emotional release (Moon), connection (Venus), and courage (Mars) are the very qualities that most make life worth living. These are the qualities that dictate our moment to moment interactions with others and our ability to integrate our dreams and aspirations in the here and now.

There is something in our focus on the fixed and unchanging Sun that speaks to a desire for immortality, as if the point of living was to last. We have allowed ourselves to forget that the gift of life lies in the present moment, and it is finitude itself that causes this. The Moon reminds us, but we have to pay attention. We cannot integrate the darkness in the absence of observing it. Moreover, in the absence of honoring the dark, light itself has little meaning. Let us turn instead to a more accurate diagnosis of the human condition, one that restores the balance of power to the skies and with it, our awareness of our own finite limitations. In the integration of the lights (plural), the true value of light itself may be restored.

Notes and References:
1. Alan Leo cited by his widow, Bessie Leo, in a posthumously published book. Bessie Leo et al., The Life and Work of Alan Leo, L.N. Fowler, 1919, p. 11.
2. Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, trans. F. E. Robbins, Harvard University Press, 1940, p. 35.
3. Robert Schmidt notes that the phrase "the star of" is not used for the Sun or Moon, and explains that while the five planets were named for terrestrial gods and goddesses — Hēlios and Selenē — were identified with the celestial bodies, the Sun and Moon, respectively. Antiochus with Porphyry, Rhetorius, Serapio, Thrasyllus, Antigonus, et al., Definitions and Foundations, trans. R. Schmidt, Golden Hind Press, 2009, pp. 76–78.
4. Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology, Routledge, 2005, p. 111.
5. Ibid.
6. Roger A. Ekirch, At Days Close, Nights in Times Past, W. W. Norton, 2005, pp. 300–4.
7. Ibid., pp. 127–29.
8. Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, p. 7.
9. Vettius Valens, The Anthology Book I, The Kepler College Sourcebook, trans. R. Schmidt, Phaser, 2003, p. 27.

Images:
Night sky: Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Heavenly Spheres: Wonder Bright

First published in: The Mountain Astrologer, Oct/Nov 2020.

Author:
Wonder Bright is an astrologer living in Portland, Oregon. She works with her clients to help them use whatever sliver of free will they possess to embrace their fates and step more fully into their lives. She uses traditional techniques to arrive at wholly modern conclusions, and this column is devoted to describing how. For more, you can find her at www.starsofwonder.com

© 2020 - Wonder Bright

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