Every year when we get ready to launch our new certification courses I start meditating on why I love astrology so much, and why anyone else would love it enough to study it in depth for 6 months or a full year. Recently I decided to create a list of the top reasons why people benefit from studying astrology more seriously, even if they have no desire to become a professional astrologer. So here they, in no particular order!
1. Astrology opens the imagination
Most of us forget that our lives, our society, and our relationships are built on dreams. We think that what we’re participating in is “real,” but astrology teaches us to see through the concrete “reality” of the world we live in and straight into the timeless themes that permeate who we are and how we spend our time. When we study astrology we become more in touch with our imaginative freedom. We can choose to interpret the meaning in our lives in more diverse and interesting ways, and we can do it each and every day all over again by these age old planetary tracking techniques.
2. Astrology puts us in touch with the unconscious
Astrology reminds us that our lives are deeply influenced by archetypal patterns and divine energies that we aren’t always in touch with. Most of us know that we have “patterned” ways of being that come from our families, and the past, perhaps even past lifetimes, and yet we have very little knowledge of how and why these things are with us. Astrology teaches us to understand and interact with the unconscious patterns of our lives in powerful ways. Astrology is therapeutic because it teaches us how to stay in touch with the depth of our being, the place of our soul, where these archetypes live and breathe.
3. Astrology offers us both knowledge and mystery at once
Astrology can help us predict certain aspects of the future, which is absolutely amazing, but it also never fails to encourage co-creative responsibility. Astrology teaches us not just “what’s going to happen to us,” but also “how to respond and meet the coming influences” so that we might develop relationships with the gods. In this way, astrology encourages uncertainty, responsibility, and mystery as much as it imparts a kind of celestial wisdom or predictable intelligence.
4. Astrology is a language that helps people to live life more easily
When people learn the language of astrology life gets easier. By this I don’t mean that life involves less suffering or difficulties. Rather it means that suffering and difficulty are understood as the expressions of a cosmic intelligence. Difficulties become like teachers. They become awe-inspiring and complex. We study and listen to our difficulties at a deeper level when we know they are predictable, timely, and in a sense unavoidable. Astrology helps our mind to deal with powers larger than ourselves, which helps us to suffer our suffering differently. This is an immeasurable gift that we gain through the study of astrology.
5. Astrology is where art, psychology, philosophy, religion, and science meet.
Birth charts are like musical instruments more than they are blue prints or “dna code.” The study of astrology is highly philosophical, and yet your own relative psychology can’t help but express itself in the way you do astrology, no matter what. Astrology is the father of astronomy and modern physics. It has been the tool of popes and professors and sages for centuries, and yet it remains subversive and marginalized even today. Astrology is the first psychology, and astrology is the celestial background of all mythology. Astrology is also a high art form, where each individual reader or practitioner is essentially an artist before and after anything else. Astrologers are poets, reading and inventing the language of the soul, brand new, each and every day. Astrologers are counselors, mediums, advisers, and dream interpreters. Astrologers are shamans, priests, professors, sages, and scientists. Astrology is the longest lasting and oldest renaissance form of human study and anyone can do it. It’s claims are as diverse as its practitioners and students. And while the planets are never all in the same place twice, neither is astrology.
6. Astrology is fun and its useful
Knowing more about your own birth chart, knowing how to read the transits in your chart, knowing how to gain basic information for friends and family, and knowing the basic language of astrology is a life long tool that is the equivalent of being able to read a compass while at sea or a terrain map while lost in the wilderness. Learning the language of astrology is fun and magical, and doing it with other people in an interactive setting, free from dogmas and gurus, is the best experience you can have with the planets!!
Classes begin Tuesday nights, this November 18th, from 7:00 to 10:00 pm eastern time, via live webinars. All classes are recorded. Email us at nightlightastrology@gmail.com for more information!
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To learn more about the Nightlight Astrology School, or to follow Adam Elenbaas:
www.nightlightastrology.com
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Image courtesy of jaikdean, at Creative Commons Licensing.