Some criticisms of modern astrology go like this: "Traditional astrology is serious, it's about fate, events and predictions. Modern astrology is just vague woo hoo about subjective feelings.."

Science forced the Church to accept that the earth was round, spinning and not the centre of the universe. If traditional astrology had been that powerful it would have convinced both Church and Science.

Modern or traditional, astrology is not omniscient and all powerful. Between all and nothing, there is a spectrum you know!

I’ve heard about experiments made by scientists. They asked a number of subjects to take personality tests. Then they submitted the tests and the astrological charts to famous astrologers asking them to pair charts and test results.

Their rate of success was not higher than chance would predict.

To me, this doesn’t mean that astrology is not valid. This may well mean that the astrologers, even though renowned in the field, were actually not magicians. Taylor Swift is great at what she does but maybe don’t ask her to sing like Esperanza Spalding and conclude that music is not real.

To me, this experiment proves that astrology is not meant to be used that way.

What is the relevance of personality tests to the reality of the soul? If I know what school you’re going to, does this allow me to predict your results? And if I can’t predict your results, does it mean I don’t know what school you’re going to?

If I know it’s half past five, does this allow me to predict what you are doing?

And if I can’t, does this mean that clocks tell fairy tales?

If we expected physicians to diagnose and cure every illness instantly, we would quickly find plenty of evidence that medicine is pure fantasy.

We would say: People die in hospitals, If you’re sick, don’t go there!

When physicists study quantum mechanics and are confronted with utter paradoxes, they conclude that more thinking is needed. They don’t conclude that their field of study is not valid. They don’t mind telling stories like that of a cat that is somehow both dead and alive at the same time, unless you have a look at it, in which case it will instantly appear to be one or the other.

Astrology is a language of symbols. Anthropologists, historians of religion or depth psychologists can tell you: symbols are ambiguous, multivalent, dependent on context, though still meaningful in their own blurred way.

I am convinced there is something to it because I’ve had opportunities to be surprised by some results.

One day, I was elaborating a story, which I presented as metaphorical, to explain the position of the South Node in her chart to a woman, and she exclaimed: “You’ve told the story of my mother!” The story I came up with was about a queen who lived locked up in a tower, with only a faithful servant to confide in, and surrounded by wealth and luxury. One day she would escape…

The mother was the wife of a white important businessman in an African country. She had no freedom, had to hold her rank - or rather to contribute to her husband holding his rank in her role of wife at official events. Wealth and lack of freedom were her lot. One day she secretly bought plane tickets and fled with her daughter…

One day I was reading about Kant’s idea of morality. His “categorical imperative” made me say: This is so like Saturn!... I looked up Kant’s chart and there was Saturn, sitting on the MC.

One day I was writing a blog post about Pluto. (It’s now a chapter in Magical Doors). I was thinking of the movie “Pirates” as a great illustration of the world of Pluto. I looked up Roman Polanski’s chart… and there was Pluto, sitting on the MC. As it happened, Polanski was also condemned for sleeping with a slightly too young teenage girl, which is also Pluto’s style.

One day, I learned the exact day my mother left home to go to the hospital, when she got her blood test results. (She had leukaemia and would die two weeks later, I was seventeen months old).

For a big thing like that, you would expect the transpersonal planets to make heavy transits, but young as I was, they couldn’t be far away from their natal placements.

On that day there was a Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on the exact degree of my MC (27 degree Pisces) and a New Moon next to it, at 3 degree Aries, opposing my natal Moon in Libra. I expected a striking configuration when I knew the date… and there it was.

Astrologers may not be able to master the language of the Great Mystery to the point of convincing everyone, but at times, we are amazed by striking synchronicities…

Jean-Marc Pierson, storyteller, astrologer.

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