Why Astrology?
  by Fr. Aion		 Leo
"Learn first - O thou who aspirest unto our ancient Order! - that Equilibrium is the basis of the work. If thou thyself hast not a sure foundation, whereon wilt thou stand to to direct the forces of nature?
   Know then, that a man is born into this world amidst the Darkness of Matter, and the strife of contending forces; so must his first endeavour be to seek the Light through their reconciliation."  (Aleister Crowley, Liber Librae)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

So why Astrology? To begin with, I will not teach or speak about the manifold technical aspects of astrology and chart interpretation, a topic far too complex for this Website and our intentions. There are many other informative places and books around which you might want to consult if you want to learn astrology, or even better, look out for an experienced astrologer and take classes.

Instead of providing another 'how-to' site, then, I will only make a few remarks about how I believe astrology can be used on the spiritual path. Well, you may have read that above the portal to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi it was written: GNOTI SAUTON - "Know Thyself". And this, leaving aside other cosmological considerations for the moment, is exactly what Thelema is about, as far as it concerns the individual and his or her spiritual development.

Astrology, as also the eminent psychologist Carl Gustav Jung believed, can be an excellent tool for this very purpose of Knowing Thyself and serve as a map of the pysche, or of your conscious and subconscious personality patterns. Contrary to the popular misuse of astrology, it isn't so much about finding out about your future, which you anyway create yourself all the time and which changes with each decision you make or refuse to make. The future is never there - it is rather in a continuous flow of eternal creation, it is eternal becoming. Zoroaster, however, says: "Explore the rivers of the Soul, whence, or in what oder you have come; so that although you have become a servant to the body, you may again rise to that Order from which you descended, joining Works to the Sacred Reason." So what did we come here for, and why is it, that we are we here at all, and where are our roots? How can we reconnect these to the present, in order to learn who we really are? How come that we are confronted again and again with the same kind of problem? How should we best construct the Temple of our own Great Work? To answer questions of this order astrology can be a great help.

The natal or birth chart cannot, however, determine your fate. It never describes facts or future events which will occur no matter what you do, which conception would not allow for any free will at all; it rather captures an image at the very moment of your birth, and according to the ancient teachings of the correspondences - "As above, so below" - this image describes in a symbolic way your predispositions, your talents, your strengths, your weaknesses, whether you are more introverted or extraverted and so forth. Whether you will use a talent or a predisposition which is latent in you, is up to you alone, and as far as children are concerned, can be encouraged and fostered or suppressed by their parents. Also, one must avoid to 'confound the space-marks' by taking the picture to represent reality. The good astrologer always remembers that the picture of the tree is not the tree. The chart is not a map of an individual's life any more than a photograph of a tree is a map for the future growth of the tree. We may, taking all of this into consideration, call the horoscope the 'seed-moment' or 'blueprint' of the soul: "This seed-pattern defines what that Organism (or organised field of activity) should be if it fulfills its function in the universal scheme of things, or one might say, according to God's plan" (V. Brome, Jung: Man and Myth). Strangely it is written: Deus est Homo, God is Man, and God's plan can thus be interpreted to signify the higher purpose of our own Enlightened Self.

Guided by astrology and accepting the assumption that life is meaningful and that the individual has a path and a purpose, you can be better enabled to grow and realise your potential by knowing the signs of the times - when to sow, when to reap, when to prune, 'to do the right thing at the right moment'. The astrologer is often symbolically described as the 'Celestial Gardener', and this wholesome gardening metaphor evokes the cycles of nature and an uplifting sense of connection with the cosmos (M. Hyde, Jung and Astrology). The ancient problem of the dychotomy between fate and free will is reconciled because the individual has the free choice as to how he or she develops the innate potential. Yet despite its emphasis on free will, the seed-pattern analogy still has to cope with certain predefined parameters which constitute an individual's fate. Say, a horoscope has Saturn in a prominent position, then that potential will be predestined to be a key theme in life in one way or another, however spiritual our interpretation. Think of the seed-packet analogy again: The seed can grow and blossom into the same species as shown on the original packet, but it cannot flower into something else. In other words, although this is always difficult to accept, the freedom of the indivudal to change or transform also has its limitations: "A man is what he maketh of himself withiun the limits fixed by his inherited destiny" (Crowley, Liber Librae).

How, then, can I learn more about astrology? First of all, it requires much time, patience and experience. The more horoscopes you interpret, the broader your basis will become, and you will ultimately develop a special kind of intuition which tells you what this or that chart is about. I have found that it is very difficult to learn from books alone; too easily one gets lost in the myriads of details, and the whole picture is lost. You read about this and that aspect, but how does it fit into the whole scheme? I therefore, following my own experiences, can only recommend to start taking classes for a beginning, teaching you the basics, wheron to concentrate and so on. Once you have that, you can well continue on your own. As before: practice is all.

Love is the law, love under will.

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We have recently received lots of requests whether we couldn't post an online chart program allowing you to get your natal chart. Unfortunately such a program seems to require lots of server space and even more bandwidth, and so at this time we can only refer you to other sites offering an Astrological Chart for free (AstroDienst is excellent; see the links below), and besides there are lots of Freeware and Shareware Programs for all platforms around.

On the next page, however, you can view an astrological real-time clock (compatible with IE, Opera only) showing you some of the important current astrological data. Due to the complex nature of this program - it is created with JavaScript and dynamically updated by using advanced layering techniques - this page requires an NS or MS browser of the version 4.x or greater. The data depend on your own system clock which needs to be correctly set. If you have trouble finding the geographical data of your location, the following sites may help you to find out long/lat (if this fails, contact a local librarian or atlas):

For further reading:
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