Casting out to hear the Word
If astrology is a language, its purpose is to connect us with that higher substance that orders not just our lives but the entire domain of their existence.
When communication breaks down, the parties still remain. The other doesn’t vanish into nothing simply because we cease having faith in our understanding of them. Our whole conception of the other may collapse into rubble, and yet the other remains, able as ever to rekindle the conversation should we care once again to take it up. And it seems to me that what causes things to crumble is always the same: a vaporously subtle arrogance of vanity and pride that slips in between oneself and the other, tempting us to believe that we know. Becoming self-enamoured for knowing, we mistake our own reflection for the other. Talking to ourself, we think we talk to them. Before we know it, we’re in free fall… It’s so easy to offend, to miss the point and fall away.
The human endeavour of astrology is but one side of the equation. Its premise is all-important: that the whole of creation speaks. What we call astrology is simply the attempt from our side to hear and comprehend the Cosmic Word. And that Word continues, according to its own sweet will, regardless of the forms through which we attempt to hear. Every human language has a slightly different way of describing phenomena. This doesn’t change the phenomena, nor its amazing ability to be described. This is the personal Mercy of the Cosmos: that it so generously lends itself to our description. It completely proposes us. We are mere beggars of existence. And yet it lends itself to our conceptions, permitting us to grow familiar with existence. Our challenge is to remember that our ability to describe doesn’t translate to ownership. The map is never the terrain—which is ever infinitely more than the map could ever hope to contain.
I’ve come to think of astrology (and language in general) as a net-like fabric of conceptions we weave for ourselves. We do so in order to cast it out upon the otherwise overwhelmingly mysterious and incomprehensible array of phenomena we experience as existence. As this fabric is of our own making, we are familiar with it. So we cast the familiar out upon the unfamiliar, hoping that by the contours it assumes while draping over the phenomena of existence, this woven net of our conception will help us to confer familiarity upon the unfamiliar, helping us to recognise something in the shape of the otherwise infinitely mysterious Other. It’s our attempt at understanding. “If I use this language, will You deign to use it and speak to me?” This is our prayer.
For this reason I don’t consider there to be only one legitimate form of astrology. Just as different people in different cultures have developed different languages to describe this one same world, so too do different forms of astrology exist. But with that said, understanding that astrology is not the Cosmic Word but simply our attempt to hear that Word, we can critically compare various forms of astrology to understand their relative biases. Just as certain languages are better suited for describing technical details and others better for expressing moods of the heart, each of astrology’s forms has its own virtues and limitations. As each is a differently woven fabric, each will have its own characteristic way of draping to reveal the contours of the Cosmic Word.
Everything we think we know is actually but a form of desire, merely an invitation to knowledge. We do not have knowledge; it is not ours to own. If I think I know a melody, all I really have is a form that I hope will successfully invite the melody’s revisitation. When I practise the melody, I am actually practising its invitation. All I can do is try to offer the melody some attractive service, attempting to provide it with an inviting form in which to dwell and stay a while. Without its revisitation, no matter how technically accurate my rendition of its form, it won’t be inspired and come to life. Sometimes the muse deigns our efforts worthy of grace, and other times not. It’s our mistake to present our forms of practice as equal to the muse whose realised inspiration we crave.
The same holds true for astrology. The formal aspect of astrology—its doctrines, methods and techniques—are nothing more than forms of our desire for the Cosmic Word. To be fair, the Cosmos has helped us to build these forms. It has incrementally instructed us all along the way, from the most simple concepts to the more complex ones. Each has been proposed to us by its live impression onto our awareness. Like a parent to its child, the Cosmos has taught us how to count. Speaking to us incrementally, step-by-step within the scope of our understanding, it has proposed how we might understand more. Nothing is really ours. We are the most naked of beggars. Even the forms we use to invite conversation have been given to us by the Other. If we cast our language out upon the mystery of the phenomenal Cosmos, praying that it will use it to speak to us, so too has the Cosmos given us the words of our language, praying: “If I give these to you, will you listen to me?”
I belabour the point, but it is both beautiful and important. It is not the form of our astrology that speaks, but that live, mysterious and overwhelming presence beyond it that speaks through it. Even if the form has been taught to us by the Cosmos, still it only speaks if the Cosmos deigns to speak. We are not the controllers of prophesy. But like a radio that needs to be well tuned in order to receive signal without distortion, our astrology too must be vigorously “tuned”. Whatever form of astrology it may be—and that form will determine its inherent biases and virtues—its lines of reason and logic must be as clear and distinct as possible, with sufficient internal consistency, that the Cosmic Word may be received undistorted. If our astrology is a hodgepodge of concepts, loosely knit together by inconsistent lines of reason, we’ll never know for sure which of the revealed contours are shaped by the Word and which are but artefacts of our poor logic. So, while we’re reliant upon the Cosmos to speak and inspire prophesy, like a fisherman who spends his time on land carefully mending his nets, we have to tend to the logic of our astrology. Like a musician doing scales, this is the practice of astrology.
When we seek to read, it becomes performance (process as per the form). We enter into the chart according to the process of form. Since the form is a form of desire, the process is a ritualised act of invocation. And so we pray: “If I use this language You have taught me, please will You speak to me?”