A sampler, a little one.
are any of these ideas of interest to you?
A sampler of astro things.
I’ve been hosting some friends in Philly which has been great because they’re great and because Philly is great, but I’m quite tired now that they’ve headed to the train station. It’s rainy and I’m tired, but, while I’d normally be sad to say goodbye to a friend, I’m lucky that I’ll see them in a couple days in Charlottesville, VA and in a couple weeks in Boulder, CO. Lots of upcoming travel, lots of trying to do time management, lots of trying to let unimportant things go.
Today I thought I’d just try to hit some fun things you can do with your chart and what they can offer you. These aren’t strictly historically vetted traditional Hellenistic techniques. Two of them involve planets or dynamics that weren’t discovered until much more recently and the third is a rediscovered traditional technique. They’re fun and, in the spirit of experimentation, might give an interesting perspective to how you understand your own chart.
Explore the asteroids. There’s really nothing I can say about the asteroids that you can’t get in a really clear, concise, and poetic form from Demetra George or one of the many amazing teachers in her lineage.
What I will say is that, specifically when approached from Demetra’s perspective, there are interesting components of “the feminine” that we can understand by integrating the asteroids. You can see where they are in your chart with the help of most astrology softwares, including both astro.com and astro-seek.com, or you can grab a copy of Asteroid Goddesses and use the ephemeris Demetra provides at the back (are you interested in ephemerides? do we care about the math behind astrology? chime in in the comments…)
We can use these figures to build out a story, leaning heavily on the myths and narratives associated with the asteroids in question and holding those stories up against your own life. What’s the same? What’s different?Spend some time with Chiron. This is an extension of the previous suggestion, in the sense that Chiron is also an asteroid. Where Chiron is different is in the story of his discovery and the story of how we’ve come to understand this flying object with a very oblong orbit.
You can learn a lot by just listening to this interview with Melanie Reinhart on The Astrology Podcast, but if you want to spend more time with it I’d encourage checking out her book, Chiron and the Healing Journey. This book is of the highest quality woo woo interpretation and is a lot of fun if you can remember to take what is helpful and leave the rest. Both the interview and the book do an excellent job of tracking how Chiron the myth and Chiron the flying rock in space have become associated with traumatic wounds and healing.
Trauma is a buzzword today, but when Melanie was writing her book and astrology’s psychological orientation was growing we didn’t all have such a strong handle on the concept. Exploring Chiron in the chart, both natally and through transit, can raise some interesting questions. What parts of your life does Chiron’s arrow target? Where does he now need to direct his healing attention?Find your fixed stars. My last suggestion in this very short newsletter is for you to explore if you have any fixed stars in key parts of your chart. This is more challenging to find online, but you can find out if you have fixed stars near personal planets, the ASC, the DSC, the MC, or the IC by using astro.com or astro-seek.com and then use a source like this article at Time Nomad to begin to interpret their influence on your chart. I’m planning to write something longer about this as I learn more about them myself (I’m not very well-versed in this beyond the basics).
Essentially, the fixed stars are stars along the circle of the Zodiac that evoke specific energies, connecting with, emphasizing, and undermining what the planets in your chart are attempting to initiate or create within your life. Unlike the prior to concepts that I named in this newsletter, the fixed stars have been understood and interpreted since the earliest days of Hellenistic astrology. What’s more modern is our renewed interest in interpreting them and folding their meanings into individual chart readings.
Get your hands dirty with them. How do the stars most highlighted in your chart play out? Is there a tendency toward stars with specific planetary associations? What’s that planet doing in your chart?
Okay, obviously this was more of a sampler platter of a newsletter. It probably has left you still very hungry and you might not have cared for every bite. If any of these topics do pique your interest, please let me know and I would be happy to do a deeper dive and give some examples. Unfortunately, at the moment, my brain is more or less dead! Thanks for being here anyway <3
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.