Astrobiography
There are various systems of astrology that each undertake a different task: Personal Forecasting, Relationship Assessment Etc.
Character analysis using the birth chart as a symbolic map of the psyche has found its place in the field of psychological astrology and psychotherapeutic practice.
A new method of obtaining an insight into the life story of a person is about to emerge:
It is known as Astrobiography.
How it began:
In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson describes his creative process:
Loose ideas become hunches – a model for creating a hypothesis. My mystical view of phenomena contributed specially to build up this double habit of mind-it led me into wild “hunches” and, at the same time, compelled more formal thinking about those hunches. It encouraged looseness of thought and then immediately insisted that that looseness be measured up against a rigid concreteness. The point is that the first hunch from analogy is wild, and then, the moment I begin to work out the analogy, I am brought up against the rigid formulations which have been devised in the field from which I borrow the analogy.
In 1991 I found myself following the same steps as Bateson: I had a question that led to a hunch, that in turn led to more questions and the formulation of a concept that appeared, to me, to be substantively plausible.
That concept is now known as Astrobiography.
By the winter of 1990/1991 I had been a self-taught student of astrology for eight years. Being an undiagnosed Aspergers Syndrome individual I assumed that the reason it took so long for me to understand astrology was that it was such a complex subject to study, for even after studying for that length of time, I still could not read an astrological birth chart fluently. By read, I mean being able to relay to a person everything that it might be possible to tell about themselves, as instantly as if I were reading from a book written in English. From childhood I seemed to have the notion that I should be able do this easily and naturally – I thought that is what being an astrologer is.
By the end of the 80s I had frequently looked at a copy of The Twelve Houses, by Howard Sasportas, and while the individual interpretations made sense and were accurate, to me the whole picture still seemed fragmented. Astrology became a wholistic map literally overnight when I read Psychological Astrology by Karen Hamaker Zondag. A chapter of this book explored the cycle of the progressed Moon and that of transiting Saturn. I learned that as these two cycles turned in their thirty-year revolution that significant stages in life coincided with significant stations of their sojourn. Suddenly, I viewed life as a cyclic process with archetypal landmarks that are common to everyone.
What casts Astrobiography in a different light is the concept that each stage of life we encounter can be pre-determined from the natal chart, making no reference to any other form of astrological calculation or concept. The idea that suggested itself to me, that one could look at a single piece of paper with an astrological chart printed upon it and read a person’s life story as if it were written in the letters of one’s own language, seemed incredible.
Astrology provides an insight into the potentials and probabilities for each individual.
When looking at the life phases one is able to know the outline of a person’s general life story. It is possible to read this at any time, including within a few moments of a person’s birth. This means an Astrologer can know a life story, or rather, the choices of life stories a person has. This is a profound insight into the range of choices a person has that are definable and realistic with a high probability, much like reading a biography before the life has yet been lived.
An Astrologer can follow the pathways of the person’s strongest potentials – their most highly charged probabilities and know within a few moments how each section of time will seem to that person. It is like gaining an outline of each chapter in a book or a play without having yet explored the fine details of every line. This means a life can be seen as an unfolding story in which each chapter, or stage, makes sense. The up times and down times, the twists and turns become increasingly easy to rationalise.
The birth chart can be used to accurately describe the atmosphere and general conditions, the ‘environment’, or ‘perceptual context filter’, for long periods, or phases of time. These life phases provide the external verification needed by the individual’s inner-self to determine that the season for expressing and experiencing the ‘x’ experience, or the moment of change, is occurring now.
Like changing seasons, or the scenery in a play, the life phases that are connected to the symbolism of the Planets reveal the context through which the chart, the life map, is perceived and experienced for that designated period of time.
It is from what we experience during a Life Phase that the level, or style in which we automatically tend to use a Planet is derived for further growth and development. The Planet’s position in the chart provides a window into the individual’s world for that designated time.
- The Moon – life between zero and three years
- Mercury – life between three and seven years
- Venus – life between seven and fifteen years
- Mars – life between fifteen and twenty-one years
- Jupiter – life between twenty-one and thirty years
- Saturn – life between thirty and forty-two years …
… the Sun gains Power now, and the 4th House begins to gain ascendancy - Uranus – life between forty-two and sixty years …
- North node life lessons nearing fulfilment
- Neptune – sixty years and onwards
- Pluto reveals how we may die, the will of the spirit – the mission upon which our soul has embarked for this sojourn.
Each Planet is connected with a particular stage of human development, or phase of time, and impresses itself on the background of consciousness, then the foreground of consciousness, and then the background of consciousness once more of our perceptual filters as we move and live through time.
Contained within our biological clock is a primal sense of ‘timing’, a notion that somehow we unfold and grow in our own season. Contained within the Astrological birth chart is not just the map of our journey, it also has the time-table. This means that in just knowing a person’s time, date and place of birth you can lay out a map of their highest and lowest potentials of experience for any given phase of life growth and development.
In retrospect this means a deeper understanding of your past experiences can be gained to enhance your self knowledge. An insight into your future possibilities means you are better placed to know how best to respond and to steer your life along a more harmonious, and hopefully healthy and prosperous, pathway.
This is a unique view of Astrology as it uses Planets as symbols of time as well as symbols of experience or psychic drives and personality types.
To read an Astrological chart is to read a symbolic map of a life.
To read a life path is to read an Astrobiography.
To find out more please click here:
Your Astrobiography – the reading of your life
Books – Astrobiography
Books – Mapping the Psyche in Modern Applied Psychology
MA papers – Cultural Astronomy and Astrology
Monthly Discounts
Your personal astrological forecast