On astrology and building from reductive to relational
In my experience, in astrology (and especially in trying to explain my astro insights to my dear ones), you really need the context to grasp the final interpretation. Something that might take me half an hour to work out for myself, takes much longer to explain to my lovers because they may not have all the background I come with... and thus, I need to explain those pieces first.
Theres so much! And it can be a lot of mental work... But also very rewarding.
Have you ever observed someone interact with an astrologer - maybe in a comment thread - where they ask, "Is xyz placement good or bad?", "Does xyz mean this?"... And the astrologer gives psychologists'/therapists'/counselors' favorite response of all time... "It depends".
And it does. It depends on the other chart placements and how those placements are aspected (how they are placed in relationship to each other). In interpreting the meaning around a planetary placement, one might consider: characteristics of the planet, the sign its in, the house its in, the planetary ruler of the house its in and the planetary ruler of the sign its in. In traditional models of astrology, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn rule two signs each, adding more layers of nuance and duality. In modern models, Mars loses Scorpio to Pluto, Jupiter loses Pisces to Neptune, and Saturn loses Aquarius to Uranus, trading those components of duality for entirely new planetary characteristics.
It can certainly be overwhelming. But I'm realizing that this overwhelm comes more from a lack of practice than anything else.
I'll be 32 in March of next year. I received my doctoral diploma in the mail this September. Like most folks in my cohort, I started college right out of high school... Beyond not gaining much in the way of credits my first year (5th year senior? Anyone?), I went straight through to a masters program, then to a PhD program, then declared a second major of study for my PhD. In short, I was in school for a long fucking time and got to experience quite a few different programs and academic environments.
I say that all to say this: We really have no idea how to think big. My biggest critique of higher education is the reliance on "objective", variable-based philosophies to interpret the world and create "knowledge", i.e., positivism and post-postivism (think... the scientific method, null hypotheses, etc). I have SO much to say about this but I'll save that for another time.
For now, the important point is that these philosophies, the frameworks through which we've learned to interpret and translate the world, are myopic. They can only really account for a single (or a few) variable(s) at a time.
And those systems of thought train us to be reductionistic. There is no, or minimal, attention to the relationship of things, the connectedness of experience.
Its always the mind and the body and never the mind-body. Specialized medicine that keys into the functions of a specific system and never how that system functions as part of a whole. The nutritional deficits and "unhealthy eating habits" that cause diabetes, and never a monocrop based food system that yields nutrition-less foods and a class system that encourages food apartheid in low income neighborhoods. How to have less self-critical thoughts about your body/your sex life/your productivity and never critiquing where (and in what privileged classes) those messages are rooted. Therapy stigma in POC, especially Black, communities, and never how mental health and medical professionals have historically and consistently harmed marginalized folks and acted as an extension of the carceral state.
Our world is not reductionistic, its relational. But we're trained to see it otherwise. Maybe growing my own food and medicines and hanging on farms illuminated that for me in some special way - all the things are connected. The harvest is never just that; its the health of the water, the soil, pollinators, fertilizers, decomposers, and those who tend, as well as how all of these elements interact with one another.
Astrology is the opposite of reductive. Its interdependence. Its fractal. Its iterative. Its context, context, context.
Furthermore, astrology, much like therapy work (for professionals and clients), is a practice.
There is no end goal, no competency where the learning ends. The cycle continues, the season (of life, of learning) changes, and you engage with that. There is more than you can ever hope to know, really. Theres a balance between wanting to know everything and accepting the finite-ness of your ability to hold information intentionally. You can be an expert, but you can't hold it all... though, you can certainly have community that shares in being knowledge bearers.
And like any practice, its something you engage with to build. Build skill, accuracy, retrievability, volume. For me, astrology is a practice in interconnection. Its resisting the ways that I've been taught to see one as separate from the other - the forest to the trees, the symptom from the system, the client from the joys and oppressions of their lineage - by choosing instead to see how they are, in fact, the same.
Its a practice of looking from the big to the small and vice versa, the unknown to the known, the change to the static, the before and after, the parallels, at evolutions, at influence. I'll refrain: Its a lot of work sometimes. But certainly the effort is worth (re)learning to see the world in a way that aligns with my vision of it.