Towards a High Pagan Astrology
Astrology is one of humanity’s oldest arts – as old, if not older, than religion itself. The vast majority of time that humanity has been interacting with the heavens occurred before the birth of writing. But most of what we know of astrology, and how we come to understand even older elements, relies heavily upon changes to human thought and culture that occurred as a result of the rise of writing. These changes often take their most potent form in metaphysical assumptions derived from Plato and his later followers. For example, the way that the debate over whether astrological configurations should be understood as symbolic signs – i.e. omens – of given events or as energetic causes of those events is heavily framed in terms of concepts that would only have made sense following the dominance of writing. Oral societies, which I have argued and will argue are always pagan in a metaphysical sense, prioritize concrete events and individuals over abstractions such as the general idea of “power” and “energy” or symbolic interpretations of events. For this reason, most of our history of interacting with the heavens will involve concepts of persons and places rather than forces or symbols.
Understanding the nature of the heavens in terms of persons and places makes the encounter central to astrology. It is not a reading, an interpreting, but rather lives in direct experience and interaction with the personages that are the stars, whether wandering or fixed, or direct experience of the places of the stars or a meeting with those places’ guardians. This means that the essential nature of astrology within a pre-literate high pagan context is not that of divination but rather that of magical and religious ritual and experience. High pagan astrology is, first and foremost, astral magic centered on direct involvement with the real entities that the stars were understood to be – and not simply to symbolize. We speak here of a crowded cosmos, heavily populated with individual personalities who pressed near – often too near – rather than being distant gears of cosmic clocks. This talk will begin the challenging process of uncovering how pagan oral societies may have understood and interacted with the heavens and ask what we can learn in our own practices from the lost insights of these older foundational relationships with the heavens.
Astrology is one of humanity’s oldest arts – as old, if not older, than religion itself. The vast majority of time that humanity has been interacting with the heavens occurred before the birth of writing. But most of what we know of astrology, and how we come to understand even older elements, relies heavily upon changes to human thought and culture that occurred as a result of the rise of writing. These changes often take their most potent form in metaphysical assumptions derived from Plato and his later followers. For example, the way that the debate over whether astrological configurations should be understood as symbolic signs – i.e. omens – of given events or as energetic causes of those events is heavily framed in terms of concepts that would only have made sense following the dominance of writing. Oral societies, which I have argued and will argue are always pagan in a metaphysical sense, prioritize concrete events and individuals over abstractions such as the general idea of “power” and “energy” or symbolic interpretations of events. For this reason, most of our history of interacting with the heavens will involve concepts of persons and places rather than forces or symbols.
Understanding the nature of the heavens in terms of persons and places makes the encounter central to astrology. It is not a reading, an interpreting, but rather lives in direct experience and interaction with the personages that are the stars, whether wandering or fixed, or direct experience of the places of the stars or a meeting with those places’ guardians. This means that the essential nature of astrology within a pre-literate high pagan context is not that of divination but rather that of magical and religious ritual and experience. High pagan astrology is, first and foremost, astral magic centered on direct involvement with the real entities that the stars were understood to be – and not simply to symbolize. We speak here of a crowded cosmos, heavily populated with individual personalities who pressed near – often too near – rather than being distant gears of cosmic clocks. This talk will begin the challenging process of uncovering how pagan oral societies may have understood and interacted with the heavens and ask what we can learn in our own practices from the lost insights of these older foundational relationships with the heavens.
Astrology is one of humanity’s oldest arts – as old, if not older, than religion itself. The vast majority of time that humanity has been interacting with the heavens occurred before the birth of writing. But most of what we know of astrology, and how we come to understand even older elements, relies heavily upon changes to human thought and culture that occurred as a result of the rise of writing. These changes often take their most potent form in metaphysical assumptions derived from Plato and his later followers. For example, the way that the debate over whether astrological configurations should be understood as symbolic signs – i.e. omens – of given events or as energetic causes of those events is heavily framed in terms of concepts that would only have made sense following the dominance of writing. Oral societies, which I have argued and will argue are always pagan in a metaphysical sense, prioritize concrete events and individuals over abstractions such as the general idea of “power” and “energy” or symbolic interpretations of events. For this reason, most of our history of interacting with the heavens will involve concepts of persons and places rather than forces or symbols.
Understanding the nature of the heavens in terms of persons and places makes the encounter central to astrology. It is not a reading, an interpreting, but rather lives in direct experience and interaction with the personages that are the stars, whether wandering or fixed, or direct experience of the places of the stars or a meeting with those places’ guardians. This means that the essential nature of astrology within a pre-literate high pagan context is not that of divination but rather that of magical and religious ritual and experience. High pagan astrology is, first and foremost, astral magic centered on direct involvement with the real entities that the stars were understood to be – and not simply to symbolize. We speak here of a crowded cosmos, heavily populated with individual personalities who pressed near – often too near – rather than being distant gears of cosmic clocks. This talk will begin the challenging process of uncovering how pagan oral societies may have understood and interacted with the heavens and ask what we can learn in our own practices from the lost insights of these older foundational relationships with the heavens.