Photo by Richard A. Huston
January 2006 | Cover Report
Star Crossed
Astrology is more popular than ever. But does that make it A-list for a meaningful life or simply the A-word?
By Ritzy Ryciak
His profession—an insurance adjuster—certainly didn’t predispose Doug Velez to take an interest in astrology.
Velez got into astrology because he was having so much trouble getting along with his wife. He wondered what an astrologer would say about their relationship and eventually stumbled upon a karmic and evolutionary astrologer.
“She told me what me and my wife argued about,” remembers Velez, explaining that the astrologer didn’t know him or his wife at all.
The astrologer took their session together one step further and explained to the Velez couple what they were meant to learn from each other and how they could help the other person grow.
“Life moves in cycles,” says Velez. “Astrology helps you get to know yourself, your relationships, and allows you to be in touch with the cycles of our world.”
He describes astrology as similar to having a pair of life binoculars.
“It lets you see the big picture and what is ahead,” Velez says. “That said, anybody who spends too much time looking up at the stars eventually stubs his toe.”
Down here seasons change, cell phones ring and calendar pages turn. Life is colorful, dramatic and undeniably busy.
Up there, gases bubble, stars collapse and planets plod across the sky in a reassuring and predictable away.
Celestial bodies do their thing while we do ours. The intriguing realization that we humans are floating on a relatively large rock in the middle of outer space rarely comes up.
Let’s face it, pondering our place in space among infinite galaxies is a bit overwhelming. When you stop to think about how much we still don’t know or understand about our presence here on the earth rock, you start to question what exactly it is that we do know?
Uh, not much.
One of the first questions: Do the celestial bodies simply do their thing while we do ours or are we somehow connected?
The scientific world openly ridicules it, the Church forbids it and Webster’s defines it as a pseudoscience. In this past September’s Letters to the Editor section, one reader even referred to it as “silly fluff”.
“The A-word sends‘em running,” agrees Carol Tebbs, president of Kepler College, a liberal arts college in Lynnwood that provides scholarly education and academic degrees in the field of astrological studies. “If we just drop the A-word things might be simpler. The PR [public relations] problems that we have in the community are real.”
The A-word, or astrology, means many things to many people. Defined as the study of the positions of celestial bodies and their influence on human affairs, for much of mainstream America, astrology is simply the daily sun-sign horoscopes that you find online and in newspapers and magazines across the United States.
“The public doesn’t understand that there is more,” says Tebbs, an advanced placement English teacher for more than 35-years.
“Horoscopes are one size fits all. They are based on a knowledge that is so broad and general. Obviously you cannot make any life decisions based on the sun-sign section.”
Horoscope, a Greek word meaning “a look at the hours,” actually refers to the specific chart or diagram that represents the positions of the planets and other celestial bodies at the time of a person’s birth. It is part of the “more” to which Tebbs refers. Astrologers calculate the relative positions of the sun, moon and planets for specific time and place in order to determine a person’s moon, sun and rising sign and where certain planets were at the precise time of their birth.
’Not a religion’
“Many people are confused or not clear on the idea that astrology is not a religion,” adds Tebbs. “Astrology is simply a study of planetary cycles and their correspondence to the affairs of man.”
One well known planetary cycle is Mercury retrograde. Astrologers assert that when certain planets move “backwards,” or retrograde, we feel the effects down here on earth. The word retrograde refers to the apparent backward motion through the zodiac of a planet—when viewed from the perspective of the earth it appears to have stopped.
All the planets, except the sun and moon, have retrograde periods. But Mercury, the planet named after wing-footed Roman god of communications, is probably the most famous. When it is in retrograde, those who follow the stars frequently report unexpected delays, mussed communications and a bit more frustration than usual.
Tebbs, an astrologer since 1971, says she and fellow Kepler faculty hope through rigorous education and research to help transform the A-word into a subject that is more widely respected, understood and utilized by the public.
“Education is the key,” she says. “It used to be that everyone was self-taught. There were no standards, no exams to pass and no schools. It is very different nowadays.”
Kepler is doing its own small yet intense part. Founded six years ago, it has graduated two classes numbering nearly 20. Half of the graduates sign on for two more years in the master’s program while the other half start astrology practices or gain acceptance to other accredited graduate schools.
One of astrology’s biggest obstacles in the last 50 to 100 years, according to Tebbs, has been “loose scholarship.” Many of the books written on the topic of astrology were self-published and without any references or notes.
“The real down side of astrology,” says Dr. J. Lee Lehman, a Ph.D. botanist and academic dean at Kepler “is that until recently, individuals who were genuinely interested in [astrology] did not have a mechanism to learn it in a context where they were challenged to exercise their brain and look at it critically.”
Adds Lehman, “There are a lot of misconceptions about the history of astrology by the public and also by astrologers. I have seen so many books on astrology that will make comments that are completely fictitious. They are just urban legends.”
For example, many people do not realize that astrology and astronomy were, for thousands of years, the same thing. Johannes Kepler, considered the father of modern astronomy, formulated the Laws of Planetary Motion and discovered that the orbits of the planets are elliptical. He is considered the father of modern astronomy. But the irony is he made the planetary discoveries because he was an astrologer—he was trying to find a more accurate way to calculate the positions of significant planets.
“We have this mythology that there was a reporter from CNN reporting on the fall of Rome—there wasn’t,” offers Lehman, making the point that many well-known historical events did not happen overnight—instead a sequence of events lead up to pivotal points in our history.
“Sorting out astronomy and astrology was not always easy,” says Lehman. “Astrology was such an important divination system. In history, where does one leave off and the other pick up? They really were one and the same.”
Star power
Misconceptions and academic pursuits aside, there doesn’t appear to be a shortage of interest in the zodiac and the role that it plays in people’s lives. If the Internet is any indicator, astrology is, at the very least, something that many people are curious about.
According to Webster’s Online Dictionary Rosetta Edition, the word astrology receives 22,846 searches per day across major English-language search engines. There are more than 15,000 other searches associated with the word astrology, e.g., “Chinese astrology,” free astrology and astrology horoscope. Those numbers were compiled in 2003 and it is a safe bet that astrology’s popularity has only increased since then.
“Good astrology puts things in spiritual perspective,” says James Jarvis, an astrologer and trained counselor for more than 15 years. “It gives a sense of reason for things happening.”
Jarvis, who offers astrology consultations and coaching along with authoring this magazine’s StarWatch column, points out that astrology is not just “airy fairy” anymore. In fact, there is reason to believe it is more relevant—and wired to hard science—than ever.
“It is not just that we are all one,” Jarvis says in a faux “spiritual” voice. “It is literally true on a quantum physic level—there is no separation.”
He refers to the old Newtonian physics that defined the atom as the smallest particle and electrons and neutrons as separate.
“What we are seeing now is that there is no separation, energetically, from a planet in space and what is going on down here,” he explains. “We know that the moon affects physical things that happen on the earth, like the tides, but similarly, these other planets are having an effect as well.”
Brian Greene, a physicist and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist book, The Elegant Universe, recounts some of that history in his recent book, The Fabric of the Cosmos.
“According to Newton, space and time supplied an invisible scaffolding that gave the universe shape and structure,” Greene writes. “Not everyone agreed…But the explanatory and predictive power of Newton’s equations quieted the critics. For the next two hundred years his absolute conception of space and time was dogma.”
The theory of relativity eventually followed and then along came quantum physics.
Greene writes that “quantum physics—if taken at face value—implies that something you do over here can be instantaneously linked to something happening over there, regardless of distance.”
While Greene doesn’t advocate astrology, his book does confirm research that showed that “there can be an instantaneous bond between what happens at widely separated locations.”
That leaves room for debate over the stars, planets and us.
Jarvis points out that over the centuries astrologers have noticed a correlation between the angular relationships of planets and the specific and predictable behaviors in people—planets over there having an effect on people over here.
Proponents of astrology contend that looking at an individual’s chart can offer a tremendous amount of insight into their character traits, past and future.
Jarvis says he believes that one of the most powerful ways to apply astrology is to help individuals increase their own personal self-awareness and self-recognition.
“Self awareness is the key,” he says. “It is essential for any kind of change to occur. If I am not aware of what I am doing then there is no way that I can change it.”
Control freaks
“People in general, are total control freaks,” explains Karen Wennerlind, president of the Washington State Astrology Association and an astrologer at East West Bookstore. “We want to know that we will be safe and everything will be okay. There is a lot of insecurity surrounded with dealing with change.”
Wennerlind, an astrologer for more than 15-years, says at the core of all of us is a search for deeper meaning. What is this life supposed to be about anyway?
“Astrology can provide a container for individuals to explore what their personal sense of meaning is,” she says.
Here’s a twist for anyone still hanging on to the notion of astrology as religion: Wennerlind says that you don’t even have to believe in astrology for it to work.
“You don’t have to believe in gravity for it to work,” she says. “You don’t have to believe in astrology for it to work. It just works, quietly behind the scenes.”
What many astrologers and zodiac believers argue is that utilizing the astrology tool just seems to make life run a little smoother. Many consider the birth chart an individual’s road map, which illuminates major intersections in a person’s life.
“Astrology offers understanding,” says Laura Nalbandian, an astrologer since 1986 and Co-coordinator of the Northwest Astrological Conference held annually in Seattle. “Understanding not just of yourself but your life circumstances. Life is perception driven. How you see it and how you perceive it determines what you get from reality.”
Nalbandian believes that her job as an astrologer is to help clients shift their perception and their story—when the story shifts, the outer world will shift too.
She stresses that if a client leaves her session and says “My god, I have never really thought about it that way,” then she has done her job.
“There is not an external solution to an internal problem,” she says emphatically. “We need to shift our perceptions, our stories, our meaning and then life magically shifts around us.”
Ritzy Ryciak is a regular contributor to Conscious Choice.
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