Chapter Seven: Alternative Narratives in the Stars
Narratives make sense of our world, others, ourselves. They instill purpose, inscribe origins, explain how things fit together. They circumscribe our imaginary, define achievement, determine possibility. They nest meaning.
As a linguistic species, we’ve been constructing narratives for millennia about who we are, where we are and what we’re doing here. Such master narratives organize and legitimize sub-narratives that flow from them. Our present master narrative conflates individuality with separation, teaching us that our interests can somehow stand outside those of the community and our planet. The mistaken idea of a separate self encourages violence. It gains dominance as a matter of survival: either adopt might-makes-right thinking and practice or face elimination. Equality, freedom, love and peace have not characterized human history, although we cherish these ideals.
In fact, the ego identity is not the only narrative we’ve constructed about ourselves. In Chapter Four, we observed how religious and spiritual traditions have nourished other notions of meaning and purpose. In Chapter Five, we explored alternative ideas emerging in contemporary science. In Chapter Six, we followed counter-narrative threads in the arts. In this chapter, we take up an alternative narrative that connects personal identity with the larger Universe, the heavens, the stars.
As with our preceding discussions about alternatives, we first need to acknowledge certain difficulties. Here, however, the problems include but far exceed those encountered earlier: the oversimplification in order to fit into a single chapter; the inevitable contamination by the master narrative; or limitation of the focus to Western Civilization. In our world, astrology is at best not taken seriously; at worst, mocked or mentioned only as exemplifying discredited beliefs of the past. On the one hand, although astrologers base their work on scientifically verifiable astronomical data, science (and therefore the academic world) dismiss astrology for assigning meaning to phenomena. On the other hand, organized religion rejects astrology for working with meaning in a way that does not necessitate the existence of God.
Beneath these positions lies a substratum of additional reason for skepticism. Astrology has pre-scientific roots and therefore an association with long-abandoned superstitions. Much of the discourse associated with astrology claims to predict the future — with results no more reliable than weather forecast. Dispute surrounds scientific studies that establish a statistical correlation between astrological and sociological data. Astrological descriptions of personality often have so generalized a sweep that they could include almost anyone. Or indulge in blatant flattery. Disagreements abound among astrologers.
Given the history and subject matter of astrology, it would be surprising if the system did not come riddled with problems. Any organization of knowledge that is open to feeling and intuition is likely to include elements of the unreasonable. The more so a non-institutionalized system of knowledge, passed down from generation to generation and susceptible to the pressures of modern consumerism.
Compounding these objections, we know the mind can play tricks on us: seeing what we wish to believe; reconstructing what we thought we saw. We recognize that astrology can be used as a means for abdicating personal responsibility. Most important, we fear for our treasured freedom when we hear talk about personality and behavior coinciding somehow with birth.
Perhaps we could agree on this much: If we could articulate a version of this theory that does not threaten our freedom; and demonstrate that the system describes individual personality with some accuracy — then, we could find considerable alternative power here. In a narrative grounded in experience. That depends on elements of identity that we have in common. That derives from our connectedness with the Universe. And that bridges between sign system and Referent.
To salvage the counter-narrative that the Stars represent, however, requires that we disentangle core value from centuries of misrepresentation, distortion and contradiction. As we do so, we will necessarily revisit issues of legitimacy and liberty.
Problematic Tradition
In the past, peoples and civilizations organized and named the stars differently, even when recognizing the same clusters. Studies suggest that our present constellations probably originated in prehistoric Mesopotamia — modern-day Iraq and Syria. From there, the patterns and stories made their way to the temple walls and tombs of Ancient Egypt. And thence to Greece. Arab scholars preserved and refined the knowledge base during the Middle Ages. Renaissance Europeans re-adopted the configurations. The charts and their attendant records proved indispensable for navigation during the period of European exploration and global conquest. The constellations thus made their way into the modern world.
The first astronomers/astrologers divided the sky by marking the location of the Sun at the equinoxes and solstices and further subdividing these quarters or “seasons” by the number of complete lunations in each. They then chose icons to reflect experience associated with each of the twelve segments. Their work involved a creative connecting of dots so as to form images corresponding with the meaning of the time. The Sun is ferocious as a Lion, for example, during late July and August. Other months, such as the thirty degree segment of sky at the beginning of the Spring, required more imagination. How the four stars there suggested a ram is anyone’s guess; but certainly a ram is known for getting through no matter how mountainous or obstructed the path — as Spring makes its way through Winter every year. The zodiac evolved in this mythic fashion. Astrological signs and astronomical constellations aligned when the configurations were originally created.
A misalignment between signs and constellations came about as time passed, however. Earth slightly wobbles on her axis which causes the location of the spring equinox and each of the successive periods of the year to precess backward through the visible stars. A complete cycle takes approximately 26,000 years. Due to this slight wobble, the first degree of Aries (the beginning of Spring) now occurs near the end of the constellation Pisces, at the beginning of the constellation Aquarius. Likewise, the period of Taurus appears in the constellation Aries; Gemini in Taurus, and so forth. Today, this is one of several contested issues among practitioners of astrology. “Tropical” astrologers disregard the visible backdrop and hold that the meaning of the signs derives from the unchanged relation between Earth, Sun, Moon and planets. “Sidereal” astrologers shift the original meanings of the signs to coincide with the visible stars.
Astronomers consider the difference between signs and constellations — as well as astrology itself — quaint artifacts from the history of science. Prior to the Age of Reason, metaphysics and unverifiable assertions of all sorts ran rampant through the halls of knowledge. Thinkers engaged in serious discourse over the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin. Some saw “the best of all possible worlds” in their pre-technological society, despite slavery, war, poverty and many forms of suffering later alleviated. To free human knowledge from speculation and superstition, Descartes leveraged a radical split between mind and matter, body and spirit, world and meaning. Formal science would afterward confine itself to measurement and objective observation. All else would go its separate way.
With the scientific revolution, astronomy definitively separated itself from astrology. In the past, great astronomers such as Kepler had been astrologers. Now scientists would think about the stars only in terms of distances, magnitudes, descriptions and discoverable laws of causal relationship. The misalignment between sign (meaning) and constellation (visible stars) no longer mattered.
The emerging scientific mentality would ultimately contribute to changed notions of human identity as well. Medieval Scholasticism had taught that each of us has an immortal soul housed in a temporal body. According to that narrative, who we are existed for all Eternity in the mind of an omniscient God. Although scientific reasoning disengaged from this kind of metaphysics, it only partially moved away from such essence-of-man thinking.
By the eighteenth century, educated people increasingly viewed the universe — and man — as a machine, perhaps set in motion by God, but thereafter following its own laws without divine intervention. The master narrative correspondingly shifted blame for suffering in the world from “original sin” to “man as machine.” Itself an “essence” discourse, the machine theme remains with us, although much changed by the dramatic political and social transformation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While modern democratic political cultures have multiplied discourses of individualism and liberty, some schools of thought in psychology and physiology have suggested that we have no “free” will at all, perhaps no real intelligence, but only respond automatically to stimuli.
Not until Existentialism did we intellectually accept responsibility for authoring ideas about our essence and the conditions those ideas produce in our world. Post-Modernism extended the insights of Existentialism by deconstructing language, disclosing how it represents the world to us as an object and alerting us to how disconnected our narratives can be from the Referent. While freeing us from some of our preconceived notions, Existentialists unquestioningly accepted representation of the non-human world as being without Consciousness. This led to the conclusion that neither we nor the world have meaning other than meaning we assign. In contrast, astrology implies that we and the Universe are inherently meaningful. Can we preserve the radical freedom that the Existentialists uncovered and at the same time find a ground of meaning in the Stars? Only if we carefully define our narrative.
Some astrological claims do not resonate with human liberty in an open-ended world. Freedom cannot be reconciled with reading the present, past and future as if they unfold, pre-determined by the heavens. Therefore, we will confine our discussion of astrology to the proposition that a connection exists between Self and the larger cosmos at birth. From this point forward, when we use the word “Stars,” we do not intend everything that astrology has come to include. We set aside prediction, forecast, prognostication and event-related discourse. Limiting the scope of the Stars to identity still leaves some difficulties, however.
Especially when cultivated by democratic political culture, the complex dynamic we call “Self” rebels against objectification / categorization. Free will means that we are free at any time to deny or frustrate efforts to represent us. But knowing something about one’s character need not diminish, indeed can augment, personal freedom. Acknowledging certain propensities or inclinations leaves open how one chooses to enact those gifts. A sensuous disposition, for instance, would indicate a deep appreciation of music, gardening, cooking, the visual arts; as well as a natural talent for interior decorating, fashion, architecture, design... Yet predilection does not bar one from disregarding or even suppressing propensities. Nor does it prohibit someone born without such Stars from developing those capabilities.
It is also important to acknowledge that many other factors influence our personality: genetic information; gender roles and other forms of cultural and social conditioning; birth order and sibling relations; childhood experience; education; economic opportunity and so on. If we hear about our Stars, it’s usually after we’re deeply entangled in a web of constructed and learned identity.
See for Yourself
Analogous to Art, the Stars can link Consciousness directly with the Referent. Astronomical symbols represent the Sun, Moon, planets and their positions. The system assumes that the arrangement of the heavens at the moment of birth carries significance for personal presence in the world. The only way we can determine the legitimacy of this claim is by personal experience. Befitting our Post-Modern context, each person alone must decide whether the identity represented coincides with Self-understanding. And how well the descriptions fit the personalities of friends, relatives, co-workers.
One does not need an astrologer to test the thesis. The identity signified by the Stars does not rely on intuitive talent or specialized training. Free birthcharts are obtainable at numerous websites. Hundreds of explanations are available in both print and digital media. The quality and accuracy of the interpretation, of course, depend upon the source.
The following version of the Stars modifies tradition with contributions and refinements made by thousands of real people. It begins with the signs, the positions in which the Sun, Moon and planets appear. The signs represent the possible dispositions of the celestial bodies. Each sign, being a phase in a cycle, unfolds a state in a whole evolution. The sequence starts with possibility and concludes with a bridge to the next series’ beginning. Definitive patterns distinguish one sign from another. Experience with the seasons of the year provides the metaphor for understanding their meaning.
The Signs
Aries March 21 - April 21: The springtime, warming temperatures, buds on trees. Dynamic, forward moving, enthusiasm, beginnings. Fiery and intuitive. Willfulness. Audacity. Initiative. Seeing possibilities.
Taurus April 21 - May 21: Flowers in bloom, gardeners planting their seeds, birds singing, small animals mating. Down to earth, taking root, practicality. Sensuality. Desire. Choosing what will matter.
Gemini May 21 - June 21: Sprouts moving from the ground into the air. Treetops reading the forest floor. Words, reasoning, logic, abstract thinking. Ideas. Intellectual and imaginative. Communication. Adaptation.
Cancer June 21 - July 21: Summer warmth, the growing season, things concretely becoming, appearing. Animals feeding their families. Feelingfulness and vulnerability. Home and family. Presentation. Making it real.
Leo July 21 - August 21: The August Sun, definitive, hot. Assertive, expansive, decisive. Unperturbed. Laid back leadership. Easy individuation. Clarifying and defining.
Virgo August 21 - September 21: Summer turning to Fall. Temperatures mellowing, crops beginning to yield. Patience, cooperation, carefulness, orderliness. Nurturing. Organizing and perfecting.
Libra September 21 - October 21: The harvest, the autumnal equinox. Fulfillment, harmonizing and balancing. Seeing both sides of every question. Homeostasis. Truthfulness and honesty. Completion.
Scorpio October 21 - November 21: Autumn hillsides, red, orange, purple, yellow. Expressiveness, drama, passion, feeling. Secretive and mysterious. Sensing the magic of it all.
Sagittarius November 21 - December 21: First frost, signs of things to come. Gathering winter stocks. Energetic, philosophical, fiery. Friendly and goal oriented. About something. Going somewhere. Quest for meaning.
Capricorn December - January 21: Winter, ice and snow. Stillness. Purifying cold. Enduring, hard working, reliable. The provider — with a touch of caprice. Strong, practical, deliberate and persevering. Definitive. Taking responsibility.
Aquarius January 21 - February 21: The winds of change. Respite from winter. Intellectual. Kindness, sharing, inventiveness, doing good. Innovation. Change. Giving gifts, serving and helping others.
Pisces February 21 - March 21: Melting snows and rivers running free again. Letting go of the past, bridging to the new. Not counting costs. Compassion, feeling, forgiveness. Self-sacrifice and altruism.
The Sun, Moon and Planets
The Sun, Moon and planets travel through these signs. As with the signs, we can frame the meaning of these celestial bodies in terms of our direct experience with them. Culturally elaborated, they indicate facets of the Self. These include: the centermost contours of one’s personality; emotional life and configuration of the unconscious; how one thinks; how one is graced / what one loves; what one finds inescapable; what one has in abundance; and what one needs to develop. The three outermost planets — recent discoveries of Consciousness — represent epochs of discovery, possible awarenesses. We can gather a sense of their meaning by considering what artists and writers were saying at the time. The place of the Sun usually shows the strongest effects. Yet when the Moon and other planets are taken into account, they can modify, offset or amplify the characteristics of one’s Sun sign.
The Sun - The Sun describes that which is centermost, most apparent and most important about us. That which we might call our “heart and soul.”
Example: If you were born with the Sun in Aries, you’re very forward moving, willful. You see possibilities, begin new things. You’ve a subtle fieriness, an openness for anything to happen.
The Moon - next most apparent of the celestial phenomena, the Moon describes that experience which is next most apparent, which is in the background, the configuration of our unconscious material, something about our emotional life.
Example: If you were born with the Moon in Capricorn, you work at creating enduring and dependable relationships. A reliable lover. An emotional life graced with stability.
Mercury - closest to the Sun and quickly moving, yet never going very far from that centermost experience. Analogous to our cognitive mind, our way of thinking, our words and thoughts.
Example: With Mercury in Pisces, your thinking is emotionally based, associative. You follow poetic connections more than the logical sequence. You may cry easily. How things feel to you strongly affects what you think.
Venus - the Goddess of art and beauty. The star that graces both sunrises and sunsets. Venus describes one’s art, one’s beauty, what one loves.
Example: If you have Venus in Taurus, your art and beauty revolves about the sensual. Good food, music, perfumes, velvet. A love of gardening. An appreciation of the arts.
Mars - appearing as a definitive red star midst all the white ones, Mars draws our attention. It accents or describes as inescapably notable whatever experience or sign it falls within.
Example: With Mars in Leo, you have a natural talent for being yourself, a gift of leadership, assertiveness. A drive to clarify.
Jupiter - an extremely large planet with as many as 63 moons, radiating enormous amounts of energy, Jupiter describes abundance, fullness, good luck. Acts as an exponent, magnifying or multiplying the characteristic of the sign in which it is found.
Example: If you have Jupiter in Sagittarius, you’ve an easy friendliness. A sense of direction. Lots of goals. Deep thinking. An appreciation for distant travel. An abundant love for animals.
Saturn - carries a distinct set of rings around it, suggesting boundedness, limitation. Thus, if we wish for all stages of the cycle to be free, flowing and available, then Saturn indicates the resource or skill one needs to open up or develop. The key. The opportunity.
Example: With Saturn in Leo, one needs to work on being assertive. To practice defining reality. Leadership not easy, but required.
Uranus - discovered in 1781. Enlightenment moving into Age of Democracy. Writers include: Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine. The awareness of responsibility for the social and political structures. Knowledge of each individual’s ability to make changes. A Consciousness of significance in the World.
Example: Uranus in Gemini describes enlightenment realized in an intellectual manner. Communicating with others leads to change.
Neptune - discovered in 1848. Romanticism turning to Realism. Writers include: Blake, Keats, Hopkins, Melville, Thoreau, Emerson, Emily Dickenson, George Elliot, Marx, Darwin. The awareness of relationship with Nature, of universal dreams and utopian visions. Consciousness of significance in the Universe.
Example: Neptune in Libra suggests that by bringing to completion the utopian dreams one becomes aware of one’s place in the Universe.
Pluto - discovered in 1930, re-evaluated in 2006. From Existentialism, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics through Ecology to Post-Modernism and Complexity Theory. Writers include Martin Buber, Simone de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault and Derrrida. Consciousness of significance in the Cosmos.
Example: Pluto in Leo requires assertiveness regarding the reality you would wish to create. You need to define what matters, regardless of what’s going on around you.
Rising Sign - the sign on the eastern horizon also contributes to the picture. Referred to as the rising sign, it describes the experience being unfolded or presented to the world.
Example: Libra rising indicates you show a sense of justice and equality to others and the world. You play the role of peacemaker. And one who completes tasks begun.
Here’s a poetic reading of Sun in Aries. Moon in Capricorn. Libra rising. Mercury in Pisces. Venus in Taurus. Jupiter in Sagittarius. Mars and Saturn together in Leo.
Enthusiasm for all that can be,
lavender clouds sun setting sea —
if not now when unwound,
wild sacred garden sound.
Radically honest love of dark,
keeper of faith ancestral spark,
watching at the edge all night —
sign reader mothersight.
Moon dried tears,
compassion filled years —
friend of four legged winged trees,
sense of direction narrative ease.
With you we’ve an outside chance,
shoreline to promised dance —
if you will show us the path we take,
start of the rainbow snow of swan lake.
The picture could also be articulated in prose, of course. What matters is whether the description resonates with self-knowledge. If you don’t know the time of day you were born, the position of the Moon and your Rising Sign may be uncertain. Nonetheless, the portrayal of Self provided by the Sun and planets usually provides enough material to judge whether or not you experience your identity as linked with the larger cosmos.
Implications
As a storytelling species, we crave explanation. If the Stars deliver a narrative that tells us something we know is true about ourselves, we wonder, “How can that be?” Some argue that the system’s legitimacy depends on the demonstration of a causal mechanism. Others insist that psychological factors explain why the Stars seem to work. Of the many explanations available, several satisfy some people; none avail for others.
In part, Western Civilization’s approach to the Universe helps explain our difficulty conceiving how the Sun, Moon and planets could be connected with the Self. The master narrative supports the idea that physical things are of one nature; our Consciousness, our spiritual life, of another. This division, associated with Descartes, relies on the workings of the sign system. Language can only represent objects to Consciousness; words cannot represent Subjectivity. Without thoroughly deconstructing language, we assume the Universe is a place, the world a thing, the other an object.
This bifurcation between personal presence and the Universe is proving increasingly untenable. Philosophy is beginning to recognize that any move forward requires leaving behind the centuries-old rupture. Stymied by that same rift, science finds itself able to map brain activity but unable to connect our mind with those findings. Self as over-and-against the World locks us into sterile relationships with Earth, our bodies and one another.
History teaches that we often move beyond intellectual impasse by observing something that prompts us to change our narrative. Before modern science, we had only disconnected notions of light, electricity, gravity, matter. By making discoveries and creating new discourse, we learned how these features of our world fit together. Additionally, the process opened up utterly unexpected areas of exploration: the electromagnetic spectrum, the subatomic world of particles/waves, relativity, quantum entanglement...
Recent work in mathematics, physics and astrophysics provides a framework for how matter and Consciousness could be connected. In order for our understandings of the ultimately small (quantum dynamics) and the ultimately large (relativity theory) to make sense together, mathematicians now postulate that there are more dimensions than we thought. They imagine these extra dimensions as “curled up” at the interstices of those dimensions we know: the three extended of space (height, breadth and depth) and the one forward moving of time. Since mathematicians understand dimension as a degree of freedom or possibility, it does not stretch reason or logic to suggest that these enfolded dimensions might hold an explanation of the link between matter and Consciousness.
Narratives that help open new vistas often wait at the edges of the existent narrative field. Long before Copernicus and Galileo, Aristarchus suggested heliocentric theory. Also in the background since ancient Greece, Democritus’ atomic theory of matter. And from Plato, the idea of the subconscious.
As discussed in earlier chapters, we humans have long nurtured narratives suggesting a different notion of Being, a non-objectified Universe. Native American, Australian, African and other indigenous peoples have conceived of Earth as Mother, Universe as alive. In seventeenth-century Europe, Spinoza proposed that matter and spirit, or mind and world, represent the two known attributes of the one Universe. In the twentieth-century, Martin Buber suggested we add Person (that is, Subjectivity) as a third attribute. Theologian Teilhard de Chardin argued that matter has Consciousness in his work, The Human Phenomenon. Late-twentieth-century Gaia Theory postulated that Planet Earth is Herself a living organism. More recently, analysis of complex dynamic systems has pointed in similar directions. In the twenty-first century, Philosophy departments are seriously reconsidering pan-psychism.
When we see the Universe as You, a Subjectivity rather than a thing, we need no longer puzzle over how our personalities could be connected with the heavens. Meaning or Subjectivity may represent a dimension of the Universe, a dimension intersecting with other dimensions as does height with breadth — without need of a causal link. We can imagine such a model, but only if we set aside the master narrative.
If Mind is ubiquitous — perhaps through some kind of quantum entanglement — human intelligence may not be the only form of intelligence in the Universe, our remembrance not the only kind of memory, our sign systems not the only sign systems. Human meaning not the only meaning. The Sun, Earth, Moon, and planets may exercise their own intelligence. The mindful Universe might embed meaning with us at the moment when we come into being as independent individuals. Or perhaps we, as sophisticated neuro-psychological beings, reach out and embrace Meaning at the moment of our birth.
Whatever the exact explanation, the paradigm re-positions Person within, rather than above or outside the Universe. Person-in-Relationship: as started by the quarks when time began; developed by the minerals when they made the first steps into life; and ramified by the bacteria when they invented the nucleated cell. In a narrative of planetary Belonging, we inherit the moment.
In simpler terms, Earth in the Universe may endow us with meaning at the moment of our birth in a personal, not a mechanical way. She names us. We’re able to grasp this meaning because we are her Children. We’ve evolved in this environment for millennia. We are a part of our Living Nest. The Signs and Stars mean what they mean to us because we are Earthlings.
Conclusion
Recognizing that the Stars describe a dimension of our being doesn’t necessarily free us from the master narrative. We can accept that the Stars carry significant information about our personalities without realizing how that could dislodge the ego idea. The Stars become alternative narrative only when we open our minds to the very different answers they can offer to the questions of who we are, where, how and why.
The master narrative tells that us we transcend the world, citing as evidence our ability to revisit the past, imagine the future, measure the speed of light and so forth. Naively accepting such assumptions reduces the Universe to an It. The ego idea would have us believe that we either have no meaning or that we belong somewhere else.
In contrast, the Stars locate us as physical, biological and psychological progeny of a Personal Universe. This identity establishes micro- and macro-cosmic Belonging. Earth our Mother, all Life forms our Family, the Universe our living Home. As individualized expressions of a greater You-ness, we are not alone. We incarnate the Referent. Recognizing our relationship with the Stars can bridge between that Referential Being and our sign systems. And break the chains of signifiers.
In the Stars, we find a much more complex and nuanced identity than the simple comparison model of the master narrative. The twelve signs represent intervals or measures that our evolving World inscribes in time. Although we individually engage the meaning of a particular moment, we incarnate a configuration encompassing all the phases. This whole picture (your whole chart) somewhere includes: energy and courage | love of nature and practicality | communication and adaptability | home and making it real | individuation and leadership | carefulness and patience | justice and honesty | magic and drama | direction and meaning | reliability and perseverance | service and change | self-sacrifice and altruism. The Stars take us from a meaningless world into a Universe of Love.
From the Stars we can construct an identity that celebrates equality and connection. A portrayal of Self that discredits ego ideas of not-being the Other — the basis of sexism, classism, racism, age-ism, species-ism, nationalism, etc. No one can be the Other when we retain the awareness that we all embody traces of one another. The ego narrative has always insisted that dominance/submission represents an inescapable pattern of human relations. The Stars liberate personal relationships from subjugation to such hierarchies of power. The identity given by the Stars suggests an ethics of Love derived from the Being of the Universe.
We know that the master narrative is constructed. We dislike the effects of its ego identity — the alienation, the political differences, the inequality that it places between us — the ugly mess it is making of our world. Instead of ideas about ourselves learned during childhood and reinforced through adult life, the Stars offer an identity that we already are. An identity of connectedness. Thus the Stars highlight the choice each of us now makes: whether we reproduce the master narrative that is destroying our planet; or cultivate an alterative identity that helps us create a world of real freedom, love and happiness.