Astrology Practice Statement
Well, I suppose. In the spirit of clarity, with Neptune now in my 3rd place, and given the space weather and the discourses, I would like to speak about myself, and also my practice to help others understand me. You can read even more than this, in bullet-list form, all my identities and privileges, etc in my About Me Section that’s always been there. This is long, because I’m not distillable into a social media post, so I post it here on my website.
So first, About Me (more)
I realize I'm a (western-bodied lay person) buddhist, but this is not to be confused with:
passivity
apathy
neutrality
non-confrontation or “being nice"
These are misunderstandings.
The middle way isn’t really in the middle, nor is it being neutral
If the building is burning, you are actually supposed to run out or put the fire out, even if you’re buddhist. Not just sit there.
I am not passive, apathetic, neutral, or non-confrontational
Practicing dispassion =/= apathy/passivity
I will disagree sometimes and not seem “agreeable”
I try to be non-judgmental in a non-shaming sense, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to 1) forego discernment or 2) co-sign bullshit or sloppy takes 3) not have self-respect
I believe in abolition of the police and ice, which more plainly we can refer to as the upholders of the prison-slave labor-industrial complex. I don’t have much patience for apologists of these systems. Amerika is a yt supremacist nation with an obsession with punishment that makes abolition progress difficult.
Buddhism and non-violence: 9/10 times for me, yes. And also I find violent uprising necessary sometimes. I have not reconciled this with buddhism at this time and that’s ok. I firmly believe that people who are being harmed or imprisoned are allowed to defend and protect themselves.
What is clear to me, is that the more non-violent someone is, the more creative they have to be in order to escape and stop violence. There’s many examples of this creativity from history, and recently in Minnesota and other states’ resistance to ICE (whistles, frog suits, leaf blowers, etc), but this creativity only goes so far. At some points (state-supported murder and slave labor) it’s clear that revolt is necessary and reasonable.
I talk about kindness sometimes, and people have historically misunderstood me, which is not surprising given the western definition of love is a distorted dumpster fire, fueled by Disney propaganda. Kindness and Love aren’t always experienced as gentle or warm. The expectation that being kind/loving means warmness, gentleness, passivity, non-confrontation is a misunderstanding that continues to drag entire cultures downward, which is paraphrasing bell hooks All About Love. People also assume when a strategy of kindness/love is suggested, that this is the only strategy being suggested. No. Kindness is one strategy, and there are other strategies we also need. I will not stop talking about kindness, bc I’m not sure how else to replace the cruelty that america is founded upon.
Like buddhism, I am action-oriented. I don’t use some* labels because the label actually grows complacency; i.e., I will never label myself as an ally because I believe one is either acting as an ally from one moment to the next or they aren’t. I am always aspiring to act in a way that an ally would or that a kind person would.
Finally, and most importantly, as white person, it’s a life-long practice to continually decondition from bias. I am steeped in a culture of biases, and have a human brain that loves making bias (for anyone who knows the neuropsychology), and I have to be vigilant about this until death. I do not believe in singular moments of enlightenment that make someone immune to propaganda or bias.
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My practice of astrology recognizes the conditions the client lives in,
and the conditions the astrology I'm using was living in when it was made.
We could theoretically treat astrology like math and say that numbers don’t have bias, numbers don’t have partisan views. Numbers are nature. And also we know the people who discovered the numbers are biased, the people wielding the numbers have politics. Astrology is more fraught than plain old math, because now the math is overlayed with symbols. And while symbol itself, like number itself may be its own thing in a vacuum, the discovery, development, and application of the symbol or number leaves that vacuum as soon as humans get involved, which was from the beginning. It’s almost like the tool and the human who discovers and uses it are two parts of a pair that can’t exist on their own. Or like two organelles in one cell. We can talk about them as separate things, but they function inseparably.
E.g. if someone identifies as a woman or was socialized as a woman growing up in a patriarchal society, and for example has a Saturn in the 7th or 8th house (a sign of potentially having a tendency to take on, or be forced to bear, the responsibilities of others in some cases) I'm going to ask questions about and talk to them about this placement differently than a cis-het man. If they're overextending and struggling to care for themselves, I'm going to explicitly mention patriarchy/capitalism and its distorting influence on expectations from self and others.
Same thing if say a woman has very martial tendencies, but lives in a patriarchy, these expressions will likely not be praised like they would be in the case of a man. More so for a Black client who was experiencing intersecting forms of discrimination for expressing martial qualities as a Black woman. These will all be very different conversations, with different kinds of exploratory questions, and different interpretations being made depending on the socio-political context the person is living. I name these dynamics out loud in session, and also name out loud when I am out of my area of expertise in a discussion.
Another example of my practice, if I'm reading a really old text that says something about Mars in the 7th being bad for women versus men regarding marriage, I'm going to interrogate that ancient interpretation and make sure they aren't just saying that bc ancient men (and any modern ones) expected women to be compliant and not advocate for themselves (self-advocacy and assertion are mars functions). Yes, Mars can be the malefic of sect or not, and do harm to or negate certain life topics. And also I’ll read the symbolism of that Mars in the 7th with that patriarchal baggage in mind.
I name when my own opinions are coming into the session in these instances. It's important that people know everything is NOT on them and it can still show up in the chart. The chart shows the individual, other people, and also the environment and systems they live in. It takes conversation with the client to sort out how that placement is coming out, and what effect it has on their quality of life.
If I'm talking about resourcing in the chart, say with the transits of Jupiter, I need to be aware of the real world the client lives in. I ask clients what resources are actually available currently in their lives, and I use astrology to give ideas as to where more help/extra ease/assistance could be. But I won't naively say “Jupiter is in your 10th! Chase your dreams!” to say, a single parent of small children on a struggling single income in a country that has little social support systems. It matters what country you live in, and how your identities are treated there, for me to have a coherent discussion about realistic sources of support. I do not believe in manifestation as it’s discussed on the internet, bc most manifestation discussions ignore systems that are out of someone’s locus of control. Manifestation talk ignores the uneven playing field that many are tasked with navigating.
I hope this shows how I practice astrology, and how I consider how the client might be affected by the various spheres of existence (individual, group, community, nation, culture etc), as well as how the history and development of astrology lingers in these texts and needs to be critically engaged with in order to be employed effectively in modern times.
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