Astrological Advice from a 500-Year-Old Mage: Obtaining Life From the Heavens on the Vernal Equinox

German model of the Ptolemaic universe, circa 1599

I firmly believe that there are magical technologies out there in the world, and I also believe that we can access these technologies directly, without the use of books or other formal training.  This is something I tell clients a lot – astrology works whether you believe in it or not.  It’s a common experience for me to tell a client to, say, “take your energy out of your business and put it into your personal life,” only to have the client say, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same thing.”  The astral energies I see reflected in the chart are always working on you, and they’re indifferent to your belief in them.  An astrologer simply helps you clear away the social pressures and other personal pitfalls which distract you from your true purpose and desire. 

My yardstick for whether a magical technology has purchase in the real world is its spontaneous appearance to more than one person.  For example, if you think you see a ghost in an old house, you might not tell anyone.  But if your friend sees the ghost too, suddenly you have a lot more confidence in your own impression.  If a whole town sees a ghost at the same time and at the same place, the Pope might have to send out an investigative squadron to research signs of saintliness.  I’m being a little silly here, but you get the idea.  I think one of the reasons people read spiritual or religious literature is to create this experience – to find validation of what they already believe in the tomes of established spiritual authorities. 

Bust of Ficino by Andrea Ferrucci in the Cathedral of Florence

I have this experience a lot because I read a lot.  Six months ago I was reading Francis Yates’s Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, and I happened upon a passage that made my hair stand on end.  I made a mental note to read more Ficino.  A few months after that, I went digging in my book collection for a new read, and came upon Thomas Moore’s The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino.  Moore’s book is a practical distillation of Ficino’s third “Book of Life,” De Vita Coelitus Comparanda, translated as “On Obtaining Life From the Heavens.”

If you don’t know who Marsilio Ficino is, you should feel just a little bit embarrassed.  There would have been no Florentine and perhaps no general Renaissance without him; he translated Plato, the Neoplatonists, and the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin for the first time, and the recent development of the printing press meant that these texts enjoyed wide distribution on the Continent.  In addition to reviving ancient mystical ideas which had lain dormant for a thousand years, Ficino harmonized the wisdom of Plato and that of the mythical Hermes Trismegistus into a system which also included Christianity.  This syncretic merging of essentially occult ideas with Christian theology was both original and highly influential, and Ficino’s efforts toward universal harmony are what, in part, gave the Renaissance its humanist character. 

Portrait of Ficino (far left) in "Zaccaria in the Temple," by Domenico Ghirlandaio, circa 1490

In Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas notes astutely that Ficino wrote his eighteen-volume magnum opus, the Theologia Platonica (1482), under the rare conjunction of Uranus and Neptune in 1478-1479, occurring on average only once every 170 years.  As controversial as Ficino’s syncretic system was, he did not come under church scrutiny until 1489, the year Saturn caught up to the separating conjunction of Uranus and Neptune in the sky.  The cause?  In the 1480s, Ficino wrote sympathetically of natural magic and astrology in his Three Books on Life, and that was just too pagan for Pope “Innocent” VIII to overlook.  The same pope, incidentally, authorized the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, a treatise on the identification and prosecution of witches productive of grave consequences for women in the succeeding centuries.  The appearance of this ominous book within arc of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction (1486) shows the darker potential of the astrological event, less “cosmic harmony” and more “mass scape-goating.”

It saddens me to say that no English translation of Three Books On Life was available until the nineteen-eighties, a full five hundred years after the original was published.  Nor is this surprising; I’ve come to expect that the more esoteric leanings of great thinkers are suppressed or ignored to perpetuate the myth of the secular progression of history, philosophy, and science.  Isaac Newton’s alchemy certainly comes to mind.  

Images of the sky goddess Nut in the Temple of Dendera

By now you’re probably wondering what my point is.  Essentially, it is this: one of the most talented philosophers and theologians who ever lived was also an astrologer, and he wrote a beautiful book about how to live in harmony with the planets.  Ficino’s De Vita was a determining force in the magic of Agrippa and Paracelsus, according to modern-day scholars; his astrological philosophy is also as close to mine as any thinker I’ve come across.  Thomas Moore in his aforementioned book on Ficino does a great job explaining that Ficino was the first psychologist, in that all of his health remedies emphasize care of the psyche, or Soul.  De Vita is full of fanciful remedies – Ficino frequently advises consuming grains of gold to attract the energy of the Sun, and instructs you in making “pills” filled with wine, crushed lapis lazuli, and fragrant basalms for planetary ailments.  You may not be able to implement any of these charming (and expensive!) remedies for yourself, but the very idea of absorbing the essence of what is most soulful in life – fine wine, precious metals and stones, and heavenly perfumes – makes a profound statement about his system.  Ficino believed in surrounding oneself with beauty, because beautiful things have Soul. 

Artist's rendition of the famous zodiac at Dendera

I think the other aspect of Ficino’s system which so attracts me is his cosmic consciousness, his belief that the world is alive and that we draw to ourselves the energies we need through sympathetic magic.  To argue that his philosophy partakes of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism will not mean a lot to most people, so I’ll simply say that he followed the doctrine of “As above, so below.”  He engaged the celestial bodies as archetypal energies, an overarching cosmic harmony which we can emulate by cultivating Soul in our lives, and by increasing our resonance with certain planetary forces.

Here is a selection from On Obtaining Life from the Heavens, in which Ficino explains how to create a “figure of the world” on the Spring Equinox to increase harmony in your life.  I rather unwittingly put a lot of these elements into my own Equinox ceremony a few years ago, which I’ll elaborate on after the quote:

Marsilio Ficino, De Vita Coelitus Comparanda

Chapter XIX: How to Construct a Figure of the Universe

The adherent of these things, if he can do it, should sculpt an archetypal form of the whole world, if he pleases, in bronze; he should imprint this subsequently at the right time in a thin gilded plate of silver.  But when exactly should he imprint it?  When the Sun has reached the first minute of Aries.  For astrologers customarily tell the fortune of the world – at least, what is going to happen in that year – from this moment, since it is the return of its birthday.  He should therefore imprint this figure of the whole world on the very birthday of the world …

Page from an annotated copy of Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres, 1496

But he should be careful not to sculpt or imprint a figure on the Sabbath, the day of Saturn [Saturday] … For by so much as the Sun is accomodated to generation, Saturn is not suited to it … The adherent of these things likewise should first sculpt his world not in the day or hour of Saturn, but rather in the day or hour of the Sun …

But they would like him to insert not only lines but colors into the work.  There are, indeed, three colors of the world, at once universal and peculiar: green, gold, and sapphire blue, dedicated to the three heavenly Graces.  Green is the color of Venus and also of the Moon … Nobody questions but that gold is the color of the Sun, and besides not alien to Jupiter and Venus.  Finally, sapphire-blue we especially dedicate to Jupiter, to whom also the sapphire itself is said to be consecrated.  For this reason too, on account of its Jovial power, the lapis lazuli, richly endowed with this color, possesses according to doctors the prerogative of curing black bile, which comes from Saturn.  Lapis lazuli comes into being along with gold and is decorated with golden marks; thus it is the companion of gold as Jupiter is of the Sun … They therefore judge it useful to look at these particular colors above all, in order to capture the gifts of the celestial graces and, in the model of the world which you are making, to insert the blue color of the world in the spheres. 

They think it worthwhile to add to the spheres, for a true imitation of the heavens, golden stars, and to clothe Vesta herself or Ceres, that is, the earth, with a green garment.  The adherent of those things should either carry about with him a model of this kind or should place it opposite him and gaze at it … Nor should one simply look at it but reflect upon it in the mind.  In like manner, in the very depth of his house, he should construct a chamber, vaulted and marked with these features and colors, and he should spend most of his waking hours there and also sleep.  And when he has emerged from his house, he will note with so much attention the spectacle of individual things as the figure of the universe and its colors …

Because the heavens are most exactly tempered and possess in themselves the most absolute life, it can be conjectured that insofar as other things approximate that temperance and life, so far they will be endowed with a more excellent degree of life.            

3.20.2011; photo by Fritz

I was married on the Vernal Equinox in 2011, when the “Sun reached the first minute of Aries.”  The astrologer Demetra George was one of the wedding guests, and noted this as the precise minute we said our “I dos.”  It was a Sunday, which irked some of our out-of-town guests, but we kept coming back to this potent energy of the “world’s birthday” for our electional.  (An electional is a chart chosen for a momentous occasion, and selected for its auspicious astrological configurations).  It’s not a perfect chart by any stretch, but no electional is – you just have to choose your priorities.  Dour Saturn was exalted in Libra, sign of partnerships, in 2011, and electing the Moon's conjunction with Saturn was a statement of intentionality about the seriousness (Saturn) of our emotional bond (Moon).

But it wasn’t simply Ficino’s singling out of Sun-day and the Vernal Equinox as a fitting moment to reimagine the world which struck me as so uncanny.  It was the colors of Venus, Moon, and Jupiter to be put into prominent display in this “figure of the world” that gave me chills when I read the above passage, years after my wedding ceremony.  I’ll never forget telling the urban shaman who officiated for us that I had settled on green and gold as my main ceremony colors; he informed me with some dismay that those were also the colors of the local university’s football team.  Yet I would not be deterred, even when the florist dismissed the table cloths at the reception site as “golf green.”  I made the unconventional choice to wear a green dress with a gold veil, in unconscious homage to Venus and the Sun.  When I got to the phrase “green garment” in the passage above, I really felt like I must have been channeling Ficinian ideas in all the quixotic detail that went into the ceremony.  Noble Jupiter’s sapphire blues even appeared in the peacock feathers we used for the bouquets, buttoniers, and table displays. 

3.20.2011; photo by Fritz

We got married in a historic octagonal barn with a soaring ceiling, our “vaulted sky” as it were.  I think the reason this passage from De Vita affected me so much was because we really covered that moment in space and time with our own unique energetic embrace, creating a three-dimensional, mobile model of beauty and harmony that I will remember forever.  “Three Graces” read from Normandi Ellis’s beautiful rendition of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Awakening Osiris, while Normandi herself happened to be in Egypt on the Equinox, and so sang out a marriage blessing for us on March 20 in the King’s Chamber at Giza.   

3.20.2011; photo by Fritz

What exactly does Ficino’s “figure of the world” look like?  Is it a painting or a piece of jewelry, or a room decorated to resemble the cosmos?  Is it a three-dimensional globe, or a two-dimensional image of the Ptolemaic universe?  I’ve offered some suggestions in the images I’ve attached, but I encourage you to interpret his words for yourself, and to create something with the materials you have at hand.  What’s your image of a harmonious, living world?  Even if you only construct this figure of beauty and harmony in your own mind, be sure and celebrate the first day of Spring with the consciousness that you have the power to draw the Soul of Heaven down to the Body of the World.   

Orrery constructed by David Rittenhouse, now housed in the library at U-Penn.​

Ptolemaic model of the universe by Bartolomeu Velho, 1568

Perfume Corner: Evan Healy

A few years ago, I taught a class which explored the relationship between alchemy and perfume.  Just as modern chemistry grew out of the medieval science of alchemy, so perfume technology developed alongside advancements in chemistry.  Alchemy is the metaphorical heart of perfuming, a process which involves transforming raw ingredients (flowers, plants, and resins) into an ethereal substance worth a King's ransom for how it makes us feel.  Alchemists quested for centuries, and slaved in smokey laboratories, in search of the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone.  It was said that a little sliver of the Philosopher's Stone could transform any stone into gold, and just a few grains from the Elixir of Life could add decades to one's life.  Though no perfume can claim as much (at least not yet!), perfume affects me with a powerful euphoria which gives me a visceral sense of the divine and our closeness to God.  It's no wonder that the primary use of incense and perfumes in the ancient world was religious; the odor of perfume in the air connotes the invisible (and sweet!) presence of the divine in our lives, and the smoke from burning fragrant woods and incense carries our prayers to heaven. 

Once upon a time, people believed that everything in the natural world had a corresponding principle in heaven.  Those of us familiar with the idea of "sympathetic magic" in folk traditions will understand this principle.  For example, to add love and intimacy to our lives, magical traditions like Santeria advocate rituals involving sweet foods like honey and cakes to propitiate the Venusian deity Oshun.  Like attracts like; the sweetness of honey attracts the divine principle of sweetness - love!  In the Western magical tradition, particular herbs and plants have a sympathetic correspondence to the celestial bodies or planets.  But how were these relationships determined?  The principle of energetic "sympathy" or the likeness between things of earth and things of heaven led to a planet's rulership over a physical substance.  In alchemy, Saturn, lord of limits and the dross of the material world, was given rulership over one of the heaviest metals, lead.  Conversely, gold in alchemy was symbolized by the Sun, not only because of its bright, shiny, yellow color, but also because of its exalted position as the most sought-after and expensive metal.  Gold was the primary object of the alchemical quest, just as in astrology, the Sun is the most important principle in the chart for overall health and well-being.   

Once you get the hang of this principle, it's really very simple.  In our modern world, we're very removed from the medicinal functions of plants in our life, but people who lived in more intimacy with nature would have had a simple way to categorize herbs according to their planetary correspondence.  For example, herbs which soothed the digestive tract or assisted in childbirth would most likely have been given a lunar rulership, since the Moon symbolizes women and the stomach organs in astrology.  I'm thinking of another simple example that's appearing in yards all over Eugene, Oregon right now - sunflowers!  They're big and yellow and they thrive in the summer heat, so it's pretty easy to give sunflowers a solar rulership.  Understanding the basic principle of sympathetic magic can authorize you to be more creative in practicing magic at home.  Want to increase the solar principles of centered-ness, health, and self-esteem in your life?  Place sunflowers on your altar.  Don't their large, happy faces and impressive size put a little spring in your step, and give you a boost of confidence in the grandiosity this physical world can support?  That's sympathetic magic in action.

Which brings us back to perfume.  Using essential oils in ritual or for personal adornment can activate this principle on the sub-conscious level.  It's no secret that wearing a sweet perfume with, say, a vanilla base, makes you feel sweet and sexy, an attitude conducive to attracting lovers. Voila!  That's sympathetic magic.  Wearing pure essential oils is not always practical, not only because they can be hard on the skin (they are potent chemicals, after all), but also because they don't always smell, well, perfumey.  Patchouli is great for attracting money and resources, but slathering on a headshop-grade oil is probably not going to endear us to our co-workers.  Fortunately, both the natural and commercial perfume industry has developed so much in the past few decades that there are, literally, endless possibilities for drawing on the magical properties of fragrance and still smelling sophisticated.  My obsession of the moment is Evan Healy's Saffron Attar, a natural fragrance oil which lifts my spirits at the same time that it delights my senses.

Natural saffron

There's something about Evan Healy- I think she's a true alchemist!  I was first introduced to her products via her face-care line.  As a long-time acne-sufferer, I was always searching in vain for a face cream that would soothe and smooth my skin without causing break-outs.  Nothing worked quite right - light moisturizers controlled the acne but left my skin dry and thirsty, and this became of increasing concern as I aged.  It was great not to have the acne, but now I had to worry about wrinkles!  I took one look at Evan Healy's rich and thick Blue Chamomile Day Moisturizer, and thought, "Yum!  But it would never work for me."  I gave it a chance though, all the while convinced that the heavy cream was going to clog my pores.  The first time I put it on my face, something happened.  My skin cheered!  I'm particularly sensitive to plant energies and resonances, and I actually felt the synergistic activity on my skin as the herbs soothed the surface and the natural oils nourished my face.  The appearance of my skin changed dramatically with repeated use, with the calming herbs controlling the acne and the other ingredients restoring much-needed nutrients and anti-oxidants.  There's even shea butter in this cream and it doesn't cause me to break-out!

Now part of what Evan Healy got right was the science of dermatology (her company slogan is, "the skin breathes"), but I'm also convinced that she is a master-blender, and that part of what impacted me the first time I used the Blue Chamomile face cream was the consciousness and intention that went into gathering these healing herbs.  So when I heard she sold fragrances too, I jumped at the chance to experience them.

Saffron is a solar herb, an attribution that derives not only from its warm, sunny colors, but also from its healing properties.  The ancients used saffron for a variety of purposes, among these as an aphrodisiac and mood enhancer.  Nicholas Culpeper, the seventeenth century English herbalist, wrote the book on the correspondences between planets and plants - literally.  His incredibly popular texts, The Complete Herbal and The English Physician, tell us much about the history of medical astrology and how it was practiced.  Culpeper has this to say about saffron: "It is an herb of the Sun, and under the Lion [sign of Leo] and therefore you need not demand a reason why it strengthens your heart so exceedingly."  Just as all life on the planet would cease without the Sun, human life is dependent on the beating heart, and so the heart in the body corresponds to the Sun is astrology, and the sign of Leo.  One of the most expensive spices in the world, highly-prized golden saffron (remember the Sun's rulership of gold!) is naturally a solar herb.  As a further illustration of how this principle would be applied astrologically, Culpeper explains that saffron "quickens the brain, for the Sun is exalted in Aries."  Each planet or celestial body is said to be unusually strong in a particular sign, and the Sun finds this "exalted" expression in Aries (modern astrologers still refer to these ancient dignities, by the way).  Aries rules the head in medical astrology, and so the solar herb saffron also has a strong application for the brain.

I will tell you that the first time I applied Evan Healy's Saffron Attar, it quickened my brain and strengthened my heart exceedingly!  This perfume is definitely a mood enhancer, and activator of the solar principles of centered-ness, confidence, and a sunny disposition.  So many perfume companies invent bogus, metaphysical properties for their perfumes - but in this case, the claim is not bogus!  Beyond the emotional lift Saffron Attar gives you, it smells heavenly, and I mean that with all the spiritual inflection of the term.  Evan Healy's fragrance line is called Puja, derived from the Sanskrit word for ritual offering.  I think this is one of those rare companies which perfectly hits the mark of combining pleasing scents with sacred purpose. 

Describing a perfume is a sophisticated art, almost as rarefied as the craft of perfumery itself.  It involves being initiated into a certain vocabulary of fragrance families such as floral, oriental, and citrus, and occasionally draws on more exotic terms like chypre.  For myself, I've never found descriptions with these pseudo-scientific terms to be very helpful in grasping the essence of a scent, because smell is such an intensely personal and non-linear sense.  Saffron Attar smells like dawn in a woodland retreat.  It's decidedly not green, but it is reminiscent of the promise of a new day among a circle of sacred trees.  True to its solar nature, the saffron note is bold and loud and vaguely strident, but this fiery note is mellowed and contained by the base of a heart-breakingly beautiful sandalwood.  I've never cared much for sandalwood before, finding its oily components a bit too close to the odor of semen for my taste.  But this is a perfume ingredient which varies widely in quality, and Evan Healy's sandalwood smells like an ornate wooden chest - with the saffron adding an accent of faded red paint.

Fire and earth: saffron and sandalwood.  This is a perfume not for dreaming but for being, for capturing the focus of your solar purpose and planting it in the bosom of a soft and welcoming world.  Saffron Attar smells remotely (and naturally) of India, where its materials are sourced.  The slightest hint of food in the attar is due to saffron's ubiquity in Indian cookery, and this subtle connotation is fully overpowered by saffron's bracing, herbal quality.  The entirely feminine sandalwood balances the masculine singularity of the saffron with a lovely dry-down, both powdery and ethereal in the way it calls to mind the onset of evening in an ancient market-bazaar.  It's not flowers, it's not France, it's not particularly sexy or spicy, just a gorgeous woody perfume which yet works well on a woman.      

Find more on Evan Healy's fragrance line here

I just checked and it looks like many of the fragrances are sold out because they are made in small batches and availability changes with the seasons.  Please keep in mind that Evan Healy's ingredients are of impeccable quality in addition to being all natural, a combo which, while it delights the senses, makes a considerable dent in the pocket-book.  The bottles are small, but worth every golden copper you will pay.  Saffron Attar: a way to enjoy the Sun, even in Winter.  Now go out and make some magic!

Reflections on the Autumnal Equinox

Last night, my husband and I celebrated the Autumnal Equinox.  We were married six months ago in the Spring, in the exact moments when the Sun passed over the ecliptic from Pisces into Aries.  So it was an anniversary of sorts.  It was also rather disappointing.  

We were up late, too late, because we know that the conscious mind unspools as the body draws closer to sleep, and we are more receptive to the Powers That Be when the analytical mind is restful.  But perhaps we passed by that magic moment, from receptivity into exhaustion.  I also thought it necessary to clear the air before the ceremony, to vent the grievances that have been sticking to us like psychic glue as Saturn transits build up steam in our respective charts: Saturn opposes my husband's Aries Moon later next month, and squares my Moon in Capricorn.  As any astrologer will tell you, you can feel the heavy feet of Saturn marching toward you several months before the transit is exact.  

So with the last gasp of the Sun in Virgo, conjunct Mercury for some added verbal sharpness, I critiqued my husband's behavior, and he critiqued my complaints.  Edgy Mars conjunct the Moon in Leo meant that emotions were at war, and Venus in a rather wide conjunction to Saturn prompted us to do the hard work of asserting boundaries before any harmony could be reached.

We soldiered on, and called the directions, and the Goddess and the God.  It was the first Mabon that my harvest altar was blessed with the fruits and flowers of the hands of my household.  A bowl of juicy tomatoes and my husband's pepper crop reflected the candlelight.  Potatoes and squash gilded with our garden dirt mussed the golden-purple altar cloth.  Brian drummed and I rattled, to shake out the heavy energy.  Yet Venusian peace and harmony eluded us.  Wasn't Brian neglecting the thanksgiving nature of our celebration, by airing personal problems in sacred space instead of heaping gratitude on the Goddess and the God, for the roof over our head and the fruits of our harvest?  My Virgo mind complained.  Brian fell asleep during the meditative portion of our ritual, as he always does, and I grew fretful.  Why doesn't our personal connection add to the power of the rituals we create?  Why are we at cross-purposes?

I sent him to bed, and unsuccessfully tried to scry with an obsidian crystal ball.  Why wouldn't the magic come?  The night was hot and humid, not reminiscent of The Mists of Avalon at all!  There was no crispness in the air, no winds of change to whip up the static, no October smell of fire and Fall.  I guess we'll have to wait a bit for that.

Earlier yesterday evening, two of my friends gave an astrology talk at a bookstore here in Eugene, Oregon.  How do we apply astrology to our own lives, the audience wanted to know.  How indeed.  I have seen astrologers falsely inflate the importance of quick transits by Venus and Jupiter, and falsely demonize long transits by Uranus and Pluto.  How indeed.    

A priestess friend phoned me yesterday, to check on the transits for an upcoming dance performance.  The Sun was trining her natal Mars on the day in question.  "Beautiful," I said.  "Your public identity is in easy flow to your physical ability and coordination, just perfect for a performance.  You'll appear strong and vibrant."  Yet I felt that she wanted something more from me - a prediction, a guarantee.  For those astrologers like myself who don't believe astrology makes anything happen, but only articulates energetic possibilities and trends, it can be difficult to speak to the question of just what astrology can offer as a life-tool.  

For myself, I find astrology extremely effective as a post-mortem, such as I performed on our Equinox ritual last night.  No, the gods are not disappointed in me, No, my marriage is not in trouble, we were simply feeling the effects of dyspeptic Mars and stick-in-the-mud Saturn on the warm-fuzzy feelings associated with Venus and the Moon.  One of the most powerful, visceral truths astrology has to offer us is, "This too shall pass."  No life situation or the feelings it caused can last forever, because the planets keep moving and stimulate new places in the natal chart.  The energy always moves, and astrology can help us find the hidden treasure in the hard times.  Ugh, Saturn, we all with good reason say, and yet nothing beats Saturn for competence and professional acumen.  I woke up this morning and was motivated to initiate an astrology blog, a move that will hopefully contribute to increased recognition and respect in my field.  Praise Saturn.  Saturn is a businessman, a careerist.  The energies that were damping my affection for my lover last night are the same ones that are pushing me to come out as a worldly authority. 

We are co-creators with the Divine on the one hand, and on the other we are pinioned to the Wheel of Fortune.  A successful life is not one in which we manifest everything we've ever wanted according to our exact specifications.  That is a Western dream of flat perfection.  Flat perfection is a dead-end; if you're honest, you'll notice that the accolades that come too easy do not feed your soul.  It's the hard tasks, the ones that take everything out of us, of which we are most proud.  Sure, you might be the CEO of a successful company - but forgiving your mother has been a life-long journey and adds untold richness to your life when you finally get it right.  You might be an effortlessly glamorous woman who has coasted through life on her looks; finding and knowing your inner value gives you more confidence than that genetic lottery you won.  

The astrology I practice, Evolutionary Astrology, looks beyond flat perfection and mastery of the material world to the bumpy places in the road, to the karmic hang-ups and wounds which keep us from finding joy in the now.  Some astrologers focus on manipulating energetic possibilities to achieve material success.  I honor them and they find the clients who need them.  Though I daresay that letting Uranus prevent you from starting a business is a questionable choice, or that pinning all your hopes on Jupiter for financial success is not entirely sound.  In other words: predictions are often wrong!  A predictive astrologer might caution against starting a business when Uranus is on the ASC because the results could be unpredictable and short-lived (could being the operative word).  An evolutionary astrologer might tell you to go for it anyway, because the business is fresh and ground-breaking (Uranian), and represents an important bid for authenticity in your personal development.  So what if the business itself crashes and burns?  You just made a great leap forward in consciousness, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would have been missed if you'd spent it twiddling your thumbs and waiting for the planets to align. 

Just as ships at sea are subject to the whim of the elements, so we are alternately batted and soothed by planetary configurations.  The green deck-hand might have a reactive response to the changing tides and weather, and be forever scrabbling all over the ship to attend to its shifting needs and speeds, and find himself feeling rather overwhelmed by the sudden alterations.  But the Captain sees all in advance, he reads the subtle changes in the sea and knows the various procedures to prepare for calm and for storm and for strong wind.  Astrology can transform you from the deck-hand into the Captain.  The Captain doesn't control the weather, but he knows how to care for his ship, when to batten 'er down and when to open 'er up.  But sometimes even the master of the ship has to gulp and pray and hope for deliverance; astrology doesn't rescue us from Fate.  It just gives us a map and a language, sometimes a lantern and a rope.  And in those most vulnerable moments, astrology gives us something else, something astrologers don't talk about near enough: holy humility before forces much larger than ourselves, and a tremulous awe in Divine Plan. 

The little Sunflowers that I grew from seed were clipped and vased for the Equinox; the liquor bottle I stuck them in tipped over on the altar and shattered the lithium crystal with its pink and coral threads.  Energy was released; the wobbly integrity of the one was transformed into the pointed focus of five strong shards.  Of the two Larch trees given us on our wedding day, one died, and one remains to be properly bonsai'ed.  Here we go a'sailing ...