Philosophy and Astrology
Venus in Virgo: Archetypes of Goddess Consciousness in Astrology introduces a fundamentally radical reading of Hermeticism and dualistic monism as the bedrock upon which astrology was built.
What does this mean?
This means that astrology is built upon the premise that ALL IS MIND. Astrology works through the principle that individual consciousness is a microcosm of Universal Consciousness.
The limited consciousness of the individual has its own mutable boundaries, which are not exactly absolute nor are they entirely determined simply by human will and creativity.
Kantian philosophy posits the idea that there are parts of reality that are by nature numinous and unknowable, outside the realm of human knowing - but this is a fallacy, and a dangerous trap.
But so is the other extreme, which posits that we can categorize and pin down all of our world into a dead and predetermined "scientific" rubric.
The work of Thomas Kuhn shows us that science itself is a changing series of dominant paradigms of thought that are subject to constant flux and revision throughout history. The paradigms are never truly refuted when they are overturned, but they are largely forgotten and their adherents are outcast and deemed irrelevant.
Paradigms are influenced by social constructs at least as much as they are influenced by actual scientific discovery and development.
Quantum theory shows that the observer is influencing that which is observed. This brings us directly back to the primacy of consciousness.
The various philosophies of Idealism, which posit the primacy of Ideas over Matter and materialism to one degree of another, may appear to be the only answer- but these sometimes do not acknowledge the subtleties that Hermeticism expresses through its 7 Principles.
Dualistic monism- the cosmological philosophy based in the generative interplay of opposites- is actually fundamental to the Western tradition, although it is expressed most clearly through Taoism.
One of these principles is GENDER, an idea that is being dragged through the mud in the most egregious fashion right now. All things are generated through the harmonization and conflict of 2 basic principles, the MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE. These principles are both ABSOLUTE in the biological sense and also relative in their expression.
Traditional Astrology must be understood through the interplay of these principles, yet most practitioners of traditional astrology struggle with this, and many do everything they can to render these ideas palatable to a postmodern paradigm.
This effectively neuters the practice.
Venus in Virgo offers an in-depth revisionist reading of these principles that strips away the various overlays that have been placed upon astrology over the course of thousands of years, revealing an entirely earth-based seasonal paradigm. We cannot know for sure the entire bedrock of ideas that made astrology a coherent theological and consciousness-based science and art, but we can fundamentally synthesize and revise the practice without sacrificing all the useful and resonant ideas that have come into the practice over the course of millenia.