What Is Astrology?

by Robert Wilkinson

Well, it's not fortune telling, soothsaying, magical thinking, psychism, or too esoteric for words. It is an enduring means to measure the progress of our personality evolution, as well as something that opens doors of higher perception about time, life, and interrelatedness.

Some time back I gave a talk called "What is Astrology?" Of course a comprehensive discussion of that would take several lifetimes, so I tried to keep it focused on a few core principles. What I'll offer today are the essentials of what it is, and a few key elements of my approach to Astrology,

Levels and Dimensions in the Quest for Understanding

Astrology is the art and science of the cycles of life. They begin at our first breath, and continue until our last. We have many cycles that affect us, some short, some long. Some cycles last so long that we never experience the whole of them unless we become fully realized Beings, as in the case of Neptune and Pluto, outermost two of the three invisible “Spiritual” planets.

We would have to live for 250 years to experience a complete cycle of Pluto in our chart. However, there are other cycles that we all experience many times in our lives, and through these we come to know key themes and lessons related to why something happens when it does and how that impacts the way we are shaping our “destiny.”

We are the ones in command of our responses to life’s challenges. This is our true “response-ability.” If we know what is happening and why at any moment in time and experience, we have the ability to adjust our responses consciously within the many cycles that work across the personal, interpersonal, and the transpersonal dimensions. This helps us fulfill old karmic patterns while offering opportunities for us to transmute our energy in positive ways, generating detachment, dispassion, discrimination, and bodhichitta, or goodwill.

In the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal dimensions we have many cycles going on simultaneously on four levels, those being the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, or archetypal realms. Thus we have personal physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual cycles going along with interpersonal physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual cycles going, as well as transpersonal physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual cycles of activity, with all 12 “bandwidths” functioning simultaneously.

We can also call the transpersonal realm the realm of truth, of archetypes, the quest for the higher or greater self, or the realm of higher service we do for our world. So you can see that our life lessons and transformational experiences work out through different cycles operating on each of these 12 bandwidths, or frequency zones, throughout our lives.

Most people think that astrology concerns only such things as “I was born at such and such a time, and that gives me the times to get married, buy a house, get divorced” and so forth. It is mostly regarded as a predictive tool. While that is true, it is also true that there are much larger cycles of change going on that affect all of us regardless of whether our Sun is in Taurus or we have a Sagittarius Rising a Moon in Gemini, Jupiter in the fifth house or Saturn in the ninth. This is the Transpersonal level of existence, the cycles of things beyond our immediate control or creation that sweep across large populations of people, regardless of their individual cycles of activity.

Character Is Destiny

Regardless of the larger patterns at work across generations and continents, we always have the ability to control our responses to circumstances. If “character is destiny,” in the sense that as we make our character we make our destiny, then obviously we are in charge of our own fate, regardless of external passing circumstances.

As one who is dedicated to understanding “the intersections between fate and free will,” I found a long time ago that there are only two things that are “destined” in this world: One is to be born when you were, where you were, to the people you were born to. The other is in the timing on certain choices. Not what choice you will make, but when you will have to make a choice.

Even not to choose becomes a choice here. Everything else in life is a product of free will, our own or someone else’s, which challenges us to act, react, or deal with what is being acted upon us.

In astrology, all cycles have a beginning and an end, followed by new cycles. Between beginning and end in anything, there are times of harmony and times of friction, times of flow and times of blockage. Many astrologers believe that the harmonious aspects mean good things, and frictional aspects mean bad things.

While this can seem to be true, I take the approach that a harmonious aspect, whether at work in your birth chart or in the heavens above, is a challenge for us to come to correct understanding. A frictional aspect, on the other hand, is a challenge for us to act correctly.

There is no thing in astrology that compels you to be defeated, or to be a victim of circumstances or any thing or any one. Here finding the right point of view can help us to a greater comprehension. Many times in life, we don’t “win” even if we do our best. In those cases, I have found that we are cultivating a quality of our character as revealed in the birth chart.

When we go through difficult circumstances, regardless of the apparent cause, we’re chewing up old karma. This helps us fulfill an old tendency or potentiality, and gives us a chance to cultivate a strength, a skill, an understanding or a way of acting that can serve us in the future so we don’t have to go through that friction any more.

In group astrology, or collective astrology, sometimes I have found that frictional aspects going on in the sky can indicate pandemonium on Earth. In those situations, sometimes the best thing we can do is not lose our cool even if everybody else is losing theirs. Just don’t make it worse, and you’ll look pretty good by the time the psychic “storm” passes and the whole thing is over and others have either created a mess, deconstructed their reality, or done something to destabilize their lives.

The forces symbolized by astrological planets are always in flux. There is no absolute time of good or absolute time of difficulty. I have found that often we are actually doing quite well in some aspects of our life and challenged in other aspects of our life.

Each person has a unique situation. Just because everybody else is having a difficult time doesn’t mean you will. And just because everybody else seems to be “doing well” is no reason for you to beat up on yourself if you feel that you’re not doing well.

A lot of this has to do with the difference between perception and experience. We often perceive something completely different from what we’re actually going through. We just as often don’t know our true realization until after we’ve already gone through the experience.

In predictive astrology you may see when something is coming down in the cosmic moment, but it may take an hour or a day or a week to realize what that transit was about. That’s why you may hear an astrologer say “Such and such is going to come down on such and such a day” and it seems not to be happening. Well, it may very well be coming down on that day but we may not be perceiving it as it happens. It may take us some time to figure out what it was that happened, and that’s why reflective meditations can help us see things from different perspectives.

Astrology is not a substitute for meditation, spiritual discipline, or spiritual practices that can help us to greater realizations and skills for applying those realizations to better ourselves and our world. However, it is a roadmap and living "weather report," helping us understand when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run, when to act, when not to act, and when it's time to blast off into the adventure of a lifetime!

In my 40 years of study and practice, I have found it's one of the best tools we have to show us both our fragmented personality and our wholeness as Eternals having human experiences. By using Astrology wisely, we can come to know the timing on many things, and what phases of experience we're passing through relative to a larger ever-evolving reality. That alone is worth its weight in gold.

(Originally published 18 March, 2006)

© Copyright 2011 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Kala]

Beautiful and inspiring. Thank You

[Cindy]

Robert,
Thank you for your wonderful summary on "Astrology". I'm currently working on improving my mental thoughts to "positive thinking". I was told by someone I respect that my words and thoughts are most always "negative". What is your feeling about "Astrology" and "Positive Thinking"? Is one able to maintain positive thoughts and actions if one's horoscope reveals a period of negative aspects. Do you feel the whole "Positive Thinking" philosophy is impossible to maintain due to astrological patterns in ones chart? (Here I going thinking negative :)) Cindy

[Shehzaad Maroof]

nice article dear Robert
GOD BLESS

[Sunshyne]

"A lot of this has to do with the difference between perception and experience. We often perceive something completely different from what we’re actually going through. We just as often don’t know our true realization until after we’ve already gone through the experience."

Robert, you put into words, what I have been feeling the last couple weeks. I used to use astrology to try and "predict" what would be the outcome of situations in my life, and others. Yet, it has changed over the last couple years to a better usage/tool.

I am working on just my Responses. As you would say nicely.. Response-ability.

Also, just enjoying a new freedom. Enjoying life, work, home, and the likes.

I have a transit of Venus, opposition and conjunct MC (also conjunct natal moon in Cap)to my natal stellium, in Cancer. Venus, Mars, Jupiter.

I will just wait it out, to see how this one pans. I find it to be like a game in ways. (Sun and Mercury in Leo, 5th house)I am just prepared to make the right choices, and make sure my Responses are on target. Usually, in the past, I find that whenever I have an oppostion to this stellium, it is just so very freaking hard. Perhaps not this time.

Sincerely,
Nancy

[Matt]

A tour de force Mr. Wilkinson... so happy you blasted this through the technological cosmos.

[Warriorlady]

"There is no thing in astrology that compels you to be defeated, or to be a victim of circumstances or any thing or any one."

Um, THANK YOU. I'm so tired of reading about how troublesome a Mars-Mercury opposition is. Deal with it, man! Make it work for you :)!

Love your writing, Robert. Peace!

[Svetlana]

...Some time back I gave a talk called "What is Astrology?"...
Is it the one you meant?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A51iYFzZRFA&NR=1
Having had a break in my visiting this site I felt a necessity/need to read how Mr.Wilkinson treats\interpretes this past Full Moon. But the title of the site slipped out of my memory at that moment (it was not "out of sight out of mind" context I am sure and assure you as well:).I googled -- and came upon the talk on youtube in the programme "Heaventoearthbridge".
Wow! I drew\had an image in my head of a dark-and-gray-hair(ed^) old wizard -- and Robert happened to be smth of a fair(y) handsome young(looking) man!
If Live Astrology influences the person and his appearance the way it does in your case,Robert, it is worth serious and response-able studying:):):)
But it is not all.On the Amazon.page advertising your book about beloved Mercury,Guide of the Soul
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Wilkinson/e/B001K8G21M/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
the accompanying book happened to be "What the BEE knows" by PL Travers,"mother" of Mary Poppins. It is about myth,archetype,faierytale etc.
That is how IT all works, really!!!

[Svetlana]

A few lines to add'
This the proof))
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Wilkinson/e/B001K8G21M/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
And one more reference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=864rKY1ON4I
This the rare film about the unit\alliance\alignment^) Pamela-Mary
And part 6 ends in a starry way:) even in the direct sense of the word -- really "Out of the Skies She Came", from the stars. Evidently to help both children and grown-ups to find their Higher Self -- Heavenly I Am Presence on the Earth...
That what Astrology about as well... As far as i can see///

[Robert]

Hi Kala - The craft really is. You're welcome.

Hi Cindy - Positivity is a good thing, as long as it doesn't cover up negativity that frustrates one's better intentions. That's why I always suggest Florence Scovel Shinn's "The Game of Life" as a primary manual for mindfulness re: language and how we're expressing what we're expressing. Reprogramming the language we express definitely leads to a different reality.

Positive thinking helps us move through the chapters of life and the various intersections of fate and free will on our terms. Rather than being trapped by patterns generating difficult feelings we can learn to find a more productive point of view where many things are possible.

Some periods of life and some experiences are not happy, nor easy. In those times "Being happy" is just a facade. But our inner resolve to be our Highest Self the best we're able despite the difficulty shows us the starch in our Spiritual spine, and persisting in not making things worse yields its own rewards.

If a difficult experience brings up negative feelings, then it's useful to examine why those responses are there. They may be perfectly valid feelings, but still need transmuting. Welcome to your human-ness. Our difficulties help us to be compassionate and when possible, help others who deal with the same difficulties we once had to go through.

There are no negative astrological conditions that compel us to suffer. There are no negative conditions where detachment, dispassion, discrimination, and generating positivity are unhelpful. To paraphrase a truly great Western Master of the Wisdom, many things are possible if you just find the right point of view.

Hi Shehzaad - Many thanks. Blessings to you as well.

Hi Nancy - When our perception is accurate, our experience is produces wisdom, whether through easy or difficult experiences. And of course, 20-20 hindsight always yields more than we can guess ahead of time, unless the experience is clearly something we've done before. Then we know where we don't need to go before we're induced to go there.

Hi Matt - Thanks for the kudos. Just glad I learned how to type all those eons ago!;-)

Hi Warriorlady - Yes, back in ancient days when studying many texts I originally learned the illusion that "good" aspects mean "good" things and "bad" aspects mean "bad" things, until I started seeing that the frictional aspects were usually the times when important things got done, changed, moved in a new direction, or bad habits and patterns were curbed through brakes and blocks and diversions. Oppositions may or may not bring tugs of war or head butting, but they ALWAYS bring realizations. How's that ever a "bad" thing? When we learn how to see things from opposing angles of view, we go a long way to dispelling intellectual shadows arising from one-sided approaches.

(ps - A Merc/Mars affliction gives an amazingly practical way of viewing things once impulsive or distractive tendencies are controlled. It requires knowing where to put one's energies with precision and coordination, not jumping to conclusions, getting diverted too easily, or getting involved in superficial things. This is an aspect that knows how to get things done once the planetary negatives are transmuted.)

Hi Svetlana - This article is just a very small fragment of the original talk from many years ago. The tv show wasn't necessarily connected to this specific talk per se, but there are key points whenever this particular topic comes up.

Thanks for your praise of the tv show, but truly the makeup artist was a true professional! She did a magnificent job of making me look about 10-15 years younger than I was at the time. And since that show was many years ago, I don't look quite like I did then (but still smiling in any case!);-) However, I assure you my hair is still silver, my heart is clean, strong, and healed of a lifetime of tragedy, my mind is positive in its intention, and I love the art and science of Astrology as much now as I ever have. Of course, I'm sure that has affected my looks, since our faces show our Soul!

I hope you enjoyed today's Full Moon article, since it's an important one showing us the light of the greater unified field of light/life consciousness. It should help us remember we're all Eternals, here to learn and play and work and celebrate the endless path to ever-greater realizations of the truth, goodness, and beauty of our world, humanity, each other, ourselves, and "All-That-Is." On the whole, not a bad gig.

[ppr]

I love this article. So enlightening and refresh read in review what do we really do. Truly, it gave so much justice to the Astrology world.