[HOROSCOPE HIGHLIGHTS] November 13th - 19th w/ Astrologer Christopher Renstrom

Listen here:

Why This New Moon is Not Like the Others

On Today’s Episode You’ll learn…

🌑 About the new moon in Scorpio and its opposition to Uranus, highlighting a time of seeding intentions with an added twist of unpredictability and sudden changes.
🌒 The deeper exploration of desires, passions, and hidden aspects of our personality under the Scorpio new moon, inviting confrontation with our shadow selves and embracing transformative energy.
🌓 Insights into the seasonal shift towards Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius, exploring themes of justice, transformation, and philosophical expansion, and how these influence our personal and collective experiences.

📚 Learn Astrology with Christopher Renstrom

📆 Turn your birth chart into a calendar: Cosmic Calendar

🪐 Take the one planets course you’ll ever need: Ruling Planets for Unruly Times

😍 Learn about Zodiac Sign compatibility: Love Among the Elements

💝 Learn about Relationship Astrology: Step Away from the 7th House

📑🧑‍🎓 Sign up for Rick Levine’s new LIVE astrology course and learn how to integrate Harmonic Aspects to reveal the chart’s hidden dimensions! Go tohttps://astrologyhub.com/harmonic

Transcript

[00:00:00] Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Tall order or impossible request. Next on Horoscope Highlights.

Hi there and welcome. This is Amanda, the founder of Astrology Hub, and you’re listening to our week ahead snapshot with world class astrologer, historian, and author of the cosmic calendar, Christopher Renstrom. This show is designed to give you a quick overview of the week ahead, enabling you the gift of choice in how you navigate and weave these energies into your daily life.

Enjoy.

Intro

Hey all, this is Rick Levine, and I’m inviting you to join me in a new class on the Astrology Hub starting mid November, starting November 14th. And this is going to be four Zoom classes of live chart [00:01:00] interpretation, focusing on bringing the harmonic aspects down to earth. So we’re going to step beyond the squares and trimes and sextiles and oppositions into the magical world of quintiles, septiles, and even octiles and other strange tiles.

But this course is a hands on working with charts, I’ll be doing four charts each class of view of participants looking at the harmonic aspects, followed by an additional Q& A session. Find out more information about this and or register at astrologyhub. com slash harmonics. I’m Rick Levine and I’ll see you online.

Hello, my name is Christopher Renstrom, and I’m your weekly horoscope columnist here on Astrology Hub. And this week I wanted to talk to you about the new moon Uranus opposition [00:02:00] taking place on November 13th. But before I do, did you know that you could read about upcoming transits to your own sign by subscribing to my weekly newsletter?

Go to astrologyhub. com slash horoscope. Again, that’s astrologyhub. com slash horoscope to subscribe. Now, let’s go ahead and talk about that new moon in Scorpio forming an opposition to Uranus on November 13th.

The Last 3 Signs & the Season of Justice

For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking a lot about the idea of justice. And the reason why we’ve been talking about justice so much here on Horoscope Highlights is because we are now in the season of justice.

The autumnal signs, that is the signs Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius, the signs that follow the autumnal equinox, these are the zodiac signs of justice. The roots go back [00:03:00] to Babylon, because this was the period of time in the year when the sun was growing weaker in the sky. Days were growing shorter, nights were growing longer.

And there was a coldness, a chill that had become, that had come into the air. The crops and life that had looked so rich and fruitful during the summer months was on the wane. So it was seen as the sun becoming weaker in the sky. And the sun becoming weaker in the sky in the Babylonian imagination was associated to a sunset, something that we experience every day.

So they took this idea of sunset and actually applied it to the season of the fall or the season of autumn. So with the sun’s descent, with the sun’s weakening of its energy, with the sun’s setting on an agricultural year, it began to descend in the zodiac sign of Libra and it [00:04:00] continued its descent down into Scorpio and then Sagittarius until it was at its final nadir, at the bottom of its descent, in the zodiac sign of Capricorn.

But let’s talk about the season of justice. Let’s talk about the zodiac signs of Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius. These are the three ideas of justice. Now, we’ve spoken about Libra before. Libra, as you know, is the zodiac sign of the scales, um, that is, uh, associated to Anubis, uh, weighing the heart of a deceased person in one dish versus a feather of truth.

And Libra was always associated with the letter of the law. So in other words, what was ever written down as a law was adhered to strictly to the letter, to every word of the law. If that was what was written, then that was what was practiced as law. So, The letter of the law is very much the idea [00:05:00] of Libra.

Now with Scorpio, with Scorpio we have a different aspect of the law. With Scorpio, the idea of law with a scorpionic, uh, imagination, uh, is eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. So with Scorpio, there’s very much a retaliatory sense about law, a punishing sense connected to law. Which would be perfectly in keeping because Scorpio is ruled by Mars, named after the god of war in Roman mythology, and of Pluto, named after the god of the dead in Roman mythology.

The third sign of justice in the autumnal season is Sagittarius. So where Libra was the letter of the law, Scorpio was eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. revenge. Sagittarius was the spirit of the law. And what they were trying to communicate with the idea of Sagittarius and the spirit of the law is sometimes the letter of the law is too [00:06:00] parochial.

Sometimes the letter of the law is too harsh. Uh, sometimes the letter of the law just doesn’t really, uh, uh, capture the, the colors and the dimensions that have gone on with an offense, why an offense was committed. Uh, is there something that could be said for the background? Is there something that could be said for circ*mstances?

Is there something that could be said for the mental health? of the person. Okay, so these ideas of looking at the law, not as punishing, or not as a strict code, but looking at the law with a feeling of clemency, with a feeling of mercy, and interpreting this Spirit of the law, you know, yes, this person needs to be, uh, punished or yes, injustices need to be addressed, but perhaps they can be addressed in a way that is more humanitarian.

And of course, as you know, the Jupiter ruled signs, Sagittarius and Pisces [00:07:00] are pretty much regarded as the most humanitarian signs of the Zodiac. So what Sagittarius was the idea of I’m going to take, uh, this law, and I’m going to look at this crime, and I’m also going to bring in, um, the idea, or I’m going to listen to the circ*mstances that brought this about.

What’s the backstory? Uh, what were the things that the people were dealing with? And, and I’m going to, then render a judgment with compassion and with a sense of humanity in the heart and not just a very strict adherence to the code.

The Ins & Outs of Scorpio

So with our new moon in Scorpio, as you can imagine, we are very much in the heart of the sign that deals with eye for an eye.

tooth for a tooth. We are very much dealing with the zodiac sign of Scorpio, and Scorpio is associated with retaliation and with punishment. Now, [00:08:00] Scorpio often gets a bad rap, okay? It’s kind of the verboten sign of the zodiac, and that’s probably because of its association with sex and death. Okay, so Scorpio is supposed to be like you know, vampirically, uh, sexual, you know, in terms of its magnetism.

It’s like, oh, I must fall into the sway of the hypnotic gaze of a Scorpio. Take my throat, take my throat, drink my blood. Okay, so there’s either that sense of Scorpio, there can be a kind of like predatory sense that’s connected to Scorpio. As you can see, all of our, um, Dark images or erotic images of sex are projected onto Scorpio.

And then because it’s also, um, a zodiac sign that’s associated with death. Well, you know, um, that’s a converse, uh, that’s a conversation chiller. Okay. You know, it’s like if you’re at a dinner party, it’s like, let’s talk about death. You know, it’s like sudden silence at the table. [00:09:00] Okay. It’s a buzzkill. Okay.

So, but Scorpio is associated to death. Um, when you broaden the idea of Scorpio a bit more, especially when you bring in its modern ruler, Pluto, Um, we, we begin to really get the idea of talking about those things that nobody wants to talk about. We all know it’s there, but we don’t want to talk about. And when you think that Pluto is the lord of the underworld, that is everything that is underneath the, uh, the, the ground.

New Moons & Planting Seeds

So. Here we are in Scorpio season with a new moon opposite Uranus. New moons, as you know, is the time of month when we do not see the moon in the sky. [00:19:00] Okay, the moon is basically right in front of the sun. It’s not an eclipse. It’s, it’s in front of the, it’s in front of the sun. And so it’s not, uh, or near the sun.

It’s not reflecting the rays of light of the sun. So it’s dark. And, um, If you’re familiar with one of my favorite songs from the 1970s, I’m dating myself, Wildfire was the name of a horse, you know, but there’s a, anyway, um, but there’s a line in that song which is by the dark of the moon she planted. Um, and of course like all farmers know, well of course you like plants according to the dark of the moon.

Okay, dark of the moon is when you plant your seeds. And, um, in many modern day, uh, lunar rituals, you will sow the seeds of your intention, uh, in a meditation, uh, which is timed with the, um, new moon. But those aren’t the only seeds that are planted during the time of a new moon, or those aren’t the only seeds that are going to sprout.

Um, if you’re familiar with gardening, I love to garden, um, you know that you can [00:20:00] plant seeds and they don’t come up the following spring, but they might come up Five years later, 10 years later, I think, I think they’re still, they’re still working with seeds that were like planted in Jerusalem like centuries ago, and they’re actually coaxing them back to life.

So, so, so seeds can carry life for long periods of time before showing life.

New Moon Opposite Uranus

Okay. So, so the idea of seeding, but also the idea of seeds are very much connected and associated with a new moon. Um, with its, exact opposition to Uranus, which is going to be followed a few days later by a Sun Uranus opposition.

And then, a Sun Mars conjunction, which I do have to say at the end of the week is going to be a bit challenging. What you have here is the idea of Uranus’s unpredictability. Uranus is the planet that kicks over the game table. The, uh, Uranus is the planet that kicks over the game board and sends all the [00:21:00] pieces flying.

It’s the planet of unpredictability. And volatility, and it is very volatile when it is opposite a new moon. So a new moon in Scorpio opposite Uranus can almost have a sort of Pandora opening up the lid of the box and what’s inside? Everything goes racing on, uh, all the evils, uh, that were tucked away in Pandora’s box go racing out into the world.

So those are things that I’m going to be frank with you to keep an eye on, uh, during this time when, uh, there is a new moon, uh, in the zodiac sign of Scorpio. Because remember, Scorpio has very strong ties to the underworld, and we’ve had a lot of underworld activity since the solar eclipse in Libra, um, and then that was followed by a lunar eclipse in Taurus.

And eclipses are… are those periods of time in which the underworld is released onto the surface world or [00:22:00] into the world that we all live in.

The Shadow

The, um, idea that I want to share with you, building on some of these thoughts that I’ve introduced, is the idea of the shadow. Um, this is a term that was created by Carl Jung.

People pretty much know Carl Jung as an adjective, a Jungian therapist, okay. Carl Jung was the father of a particular, style of psychology, a particular school of psychology is a better way of putting it, that dealt with archetypes and images. It’s a very elaborate, um, uh, uh, uh, syllabus that Carl Jung, uh, uh, formulated.

And I’m not going to go into it, but to say that, uh, Carl Jung was originally, uh, student of Sigmund Freud’s. And, um, and so he was introduced, you know, he, he was a part of Freud’s formulation of the unconscious, of the conscious and the unconscious. And [00:23:00] where Freud kind of regarded the unconscious as something to be, um, as, as being a storehouse of more primitive, uh, notions or, or impulses that needed to somehow be controlled or shepherded or managed.

Um, and I’m really reducing it to simplicity here for, for, uh, simplicity’s sake. Jung regarded the unconscious as a storehouse of really, um, civilization memory. You know, that myths were, uh, were ways of accessing, myths were based on archetypal motifs and therefore transmitted truths intergenerationally for centuries.

And that, um, we can see these archetypes, which is basically an image, um, in art or in symbol or religious relics. Things that we, uh, naturally respond to as being, [00:24:00] um, sacred or, or resonant, all right, and, and, but, but are defined in different cultural contexts and different cultural milieus and symbolic vocabularies.

Uh, but Carl Jung felt that it wasn’t just the archetypes influencing us, we could actually reverse the direction, and tune into archetypes and, and, and unlock inner truths, and why are we unlocking these inner truths? Are we solving solving the mystery of, you know, who killed Colonel Mustard? We unlock these internal truths, because that allows us to engage in a process called individuation, where we take the different aspects of our personality, we grow conscious of them, and we integrate them into a fulfilled and self understanding personality.

Okay, very, um, very noble, very highfalutin, very idealistic, and what do you expect from A Leo, okay, which is what [00:25:00] Carl Jung was. Okay, so one of these archetypes, or one of these internal, uh, symbols, okay, that we live with, that appear in our dreams, and, and maybe even our speech, or our biases, or our, uh, experiences of enlightenment, um, one, one of these was called the shadow.

And, the shadow was basically, as Carl Jung said, in 1945, The thing a person has no wish to be. Okay. So, so Carl Jung in 1945 says, um, the shadow, the shadow part of yourself is the thing a person has no wish to be. Uh, basically let’s go back to the idea of the underworld, right? Let’s go back to the realm of Pluto, the realm of the shades, all of these parts that we don’t like about ourselves.

Maybe, um, their, destructive impulses, or maybe there are things like need, you know, unfulfilled wants, um, um, um, predatory [00:26:00] needs, these aspects of ourself that we don’t like. A very simple way to think of this is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, okay? Dr. Jekyll is a scientist who puts together a potion and drinks it, and Mr.

Hyde, you know, his, his shadow self goes running around killing people. And then he comes back and, and Dr. Jekyll, you know, wakes up from, from his, his, his lost time, his forgotten memories, you know, maybe with a bloody handkerchief, wondering what, what has gone on. Okay. So, so, so, um, there was a lot of this, you, you see it in Frankenstein, you see it with Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you know, this kind of disassociative. It was a real archetype of 19th century, uh, usually associated with a scientist who’s all cerebral and math and statistics, you know, having a wild double or a wild doppelganger who, uh, performs violence. Um, you know, uh, Frankenstein has the monster who, you know, kills people and, uh, so does Mr.

Hyde pretty much. Okay. So. So, you know, and, and, and [00:27:00] it’s a fascinating image because the more the pendulum swings in the direction of, you know, the ordered intellectual cerebral statistic, uh, processing mind, the more it could swing back into, um, a monster, you know, a Frankenstein or a Hyde, which, you know, um, we’re being very gentle when they, when we say that these particular monsters had difficulties with impulse control, that could be very destructive.

But this is kind of an example of the shadow, I’m going to align myself with the light, you know, maybe a rational mind, a scientific mind, a civilized mind, you know, and then there’s this other side of me, this predatory monster that I’m going to say, you know, I’m going to dump all of the things that I don’t like about myself.

I’m not going to own any of it. It’s just this, you know, double self that gets out and runs around and, you know, causes all kinds of destruction. So this is the idea of the shadow. What’s fascinating about Jung, um, and also someone I’m going [00:28:00] to talk about, uh, here in just a moment, Eric Newman, but what’s fascinating about Jung and Freud is that, um, They are both formulating the principles of psychology, which is the idea that, you know, it wasn’t psychology, just wasn’t personality reading, but that we had a subterranean self, which could be primitive or out of control or wild.

I mean, Jung would say, well, the archetypes aren’t all like that, but he did, he did single out the shadow as being the one that was. Um, these principles of psychology are being formulated on the eve of world war one. And, um, by the time, for instance, Jung says, uh, the shadow is the thing that no person, uh, has no wish, that no person wants to be.

It’s the parts of yourself you don’t want to be. That statement is made in 1945. So a lot of Freudian and Jungian psychology, is coming forth. During the periods of time, uh, during the years in Western civilization [00:29:00] where we were fighting World War I and then went into World War II, so arguably the most destructive period in Western civilization is also the period, in which these principles of psychology are being formulated, this idea that there is an undiscovered country, um, you know, one undiscovered country You know that no one comes back from is, is, is death.

That’s Hamlet. But there’s another undiscovered, or unexplored might be a more accurate way of putting it in another unexplored country. And it’s called the unconscious. All right? And, and this is what psychologists were trying to put forward, and they were making the case by the time we get into the forties following World War ii.

Of an urgency. We need to understand these unconscious impulses because these unconscious impulses are the things that took over in World War I. And these unconscious impulses are the things that took over in World War ii. Um, and that, um, when we have the end of World War ii, these are the unconscious [00:30:00] impulses that have, uh, created the atom bomb, which can wipe out the civilization.

So if we don’t. get a grip, uh, we’re in a lot of trouble. Um, there’s a period of time, also in the 1930s. Let me amend that. Also in the 1930s, we have Dane Rudor, um, who is a famous, um, French astrologer who really makes his name here in the United States of America. He’s pretty much considered as the father of New Age astrology.

He writes a book in the 1930s called The Astrology of Personality, and it’s Dane Rudyard who is the first astrologer to marry Jungian archetypes with astrological symbols, and, and this Is picked up and gets great mileage in the 1980s, thanks to astrologers like Stephen Arroyo and Liz Green, uh, who would access Greek mythology and sort of like, um, [00:31:00] unpack those different archetypal meanings and connect it to the different planets and use it, in, in, in astrological chart interpretation.

So that’s really where the root of that is. It’s, it’s in the 1930s book, Astrology of Personality by Dane Rojar, and it’s coming out of the same impulses that Freud and Jung are wrestling with when they’re talking about, um, the unconscious. Rojar used the planets as being, ways of understanding our unconscious and the enfoldment of ourselves as a whole person.

And Roger was very much attracted to, uh, to Carl Jung’s idea of individuation, um, that only by owning the different parts of your personality, and, and part of that was taking responsibility. Well, it was really recognizing the different parts of your personality, taking responsibility for the different parts of your personality, and then governing.

You know, uh, Rudyard looked at those impulses from [00:32:00] Jung and said, what a marvelous thing if we were to apply that to astrology and the transits of the planets. You know, in which we saw the planets as sort of, uh, participating in this unfoldment of, of a self. What a, what a wonderful link, what a, what a very rich association.

And indeed that is the, uh, that is the beginning of humanistic astrology. Um, but one of the books, uh, that I often go to, and that I turn to in a time like this, is this marvelous little book written by Eric Neumann. Um, it’s called Depth Psychology and New Ethic, and he wrote this in Tel Aviv in, uh, I think 1948 or 1949.

So Eric Neumann was, um, a young a disciple. He was a Jungian psychologist working in Tel Aviv in 1948 or 49 is when he writes this book and then he writes a number of other books which are, which actually sort of become more famous than, than this [00:33:00] book. But this little slip of a book, uh, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, and it’s a call, really.

It’s a call to people to use psychology, uh, to understand Evil. Basically it’s is to use psychology to understand the evil of the world and for Newman, um, who was writing this right after World War ii, um, and he was living in Tel Aviv, and this was really a response to the Holocaust that had taken place, uh, in, in, in, in, uh, Europe, um, to Newmont the problem for the modern man.

Okay, which is the modern man in 1949. Okay, uh, for Newman, the problem with the modern man is evil. Okay, the, the concept of evil, facing evil is the big problem for modern man. Now someone could say, well, you know, modern men and women have all faced evil, but for him, he was really talking about the [00:34:00] magnitude of World War II and the, um, uh, uh, the firing off of the atom bomb in, in, Hiroshima.

Okay. The level of destruction. And he was, he was reacting to, to that. Um, so Newman said that the problem for the modern man is evil because conventional ethics have proved incapable of containing or transforming its destructive forces. The dark side has invaded the world image of modern man with a vengeance, and we are no longer certain of our positions regarding good and evil.

So in other words, Conventional ethics, ethics that have been built over centuries, you know, through church, through justice, uh, these are incapable, uh, incapable of containing or transforming the destructive forces of evil. We have no answer, okay? Um, we have no answer when, when states Uh, handed over people to, [00:35:00] um, to, to the Holocaust, okay, to the persecution when churches, uh, took, you know, you also had people who were saving or covering or protecting people, but you also had agencies, you know, um, explaining why they couldn’t get involved or actually were handing over, um, uh, Jews who are in Europe.

during this period of time. So, so his position is conventional ethics have proved incapable of containing or transforming the destructive forces of evil. The dark side has invaded the world image of modern man. He’s using world image as self image. Okay. The world image of modern man with a vengeance.

And we are no longer certain of our positions regarding good and evil. So this is more, this is More than just allowing good or evil to exist, we have this way of rationalizing our positions regarding good and evil. Um, rationalizing to an extent, uh, which, uh, Neumann regards as being suspect and untrustworthy.[00:36:00]

Okay, the rationalizations a government can make, a rationalization an agency of justice can make, you know, well, you know, these things happen, these are the statistics, we cannot rely on that as being ethically, um, ethically available or present for us. All right? So he then goes on with an idea in this book that modern man needs an answer to evil and it begins with oneself, okay?

We need an answer for evil, and it’s not going to be answered by our, um, by our agencies of justice or government or, or, or houses of belief. Perhaps, you know, I mean, there was a colossal failure of that, um, during World War II, um, and so, you know, you need an answer to evil. It’s not an answer, a solution to evil, but what do you answer evil with?

Okay, that’s, that’s what he means by this idea of answer, and it begins with oneself. examining one’s own [00:37:00] shadow, uh, which is projected onto others and turns others into either oppressors or, uh, scapegoats. Okay. So this gets back to Jung. It’s the idea that we take those parts that we don’t like about ourselves.

Remember Scorpio, the underworld, and we project them onto other people. , we may, uh, take a position of, um, of, of, I’ve been hurt, and I’m angry, and I want an eye for an eye, and I want something back for that, and so I’m going to project my shadow onto an oppressor who’s done me evil, who’s done me harm, and this is going to justify everything I’m going to do to get back at them.

Okay, that would of projecting one’s shadow. Shadows are an equal opportunity. Um, uh, uh, archetype. Okay, shadows show no preference for one person. Everyone casts a shadow, okay, so, um, that could be attached to anything. You could be horribly, uh, uh, persecuted and oppressed, but that doesn’t mean that the [00:38:00] moment you get into a position of power that you’re not going to turn around and do it to someone else, okay, in the name of how you’ve been persecuted or how you’ve been oppressed.

So that’s. One idea of not being in a position of being able to judge good and evil because those who’ve been oppressed can become as malicious, if tables are turned. And then the other one is projecting shadows onto scapegoats. Who are those people that remind us of pain? Who, who remind us of loss?

You know, who make us feel guilty about our privilege? Well, Um, there are people who, um, um, asked for it. They asked for it. Uh, they must have done something evil in their life. They must have done something bad in their life. And so they’re scapegoats. You know, once again, I’m dumping my peas and carrots onto the dish of someone else because I don’t want to eat them.

so we can scapegoat people and we scapegoat people. Because that’s something we do, maybe, because we feel bad about the good things that we have in life, or we want to justify selfish [00:39:00] actions or aggressive behavior by scapegoating, this is a weaker person, or this is someone who’s asked for it.

Okay, so these are natural blank canvases for the, for the shadow, or these are natural um, spots of pavement where you’re standing on a sunny day and you turn around you can see your shadow. Okay, um, these are places where a shadow can be cast or where a shadow can be seen. So what Newman was going on with this in this book is as a result we have split the world into good and bad polarizations of good and bad.

What’s good is absolutely good and what’s bad is absolutely bad. Um, and so this, he says, you could just conjugate, you could just work this down, up and down the musical scale, as it were, you know, uh, you have superior and inferior nations, you have superior and inferior races, you have superior and inferior individuals, and once you split, into absolute [00:40:00] good, absolute bad, the consequences, of course, are going to be catastrophic.

And that’s what he was trying to point out with history. We arrived at this place following World War II from this idea of absolute good, absolute evil. It has been catastrophic, and we have ended World War II not with peace for everyone, but with an atom bomb that can annihilate the entire planet. Okay, so that’s the shadow we now get to live under, and this was the feeling of urgency in which he writes this marvelous book.

Now, he goes on to say that awareness of evil challenges the individual. An individual must learn to realize, acknowledge, and live with a dark side instead of repressing it. The dark side needs to be integrated. So our awareness of evil becomes an awareness that we can do this. Maybe we’re actively doing it by projecting shadow.

And so we need to, realize, acknowledge, and live with the dark side. We need to own it. Um, but in, [00:41:00] but of, but instead of repressing it, it has to be integrated. And this, um, at this point, actually, I have to disagree with Newman and, uh, probably disagree with Jung as well.

Bringing in Astrology, Ethics & Integration

One of the things that I love about astrology, is that it’s based on what I call a, a, a moving gospel of the stars, okay?

The, the stars never stop in their, in their orbits. And so, as an astrologer, you, you look for patterns, you look for aspects, um, and And you work with those patterns and those aspects. That’s why when people say, you know, I’m a weatherman, you know, an astrologer is a cosmic weatherman or something like that.

It’s really great. You know, I mean, weather is coming and people need to know whether it’s good days or whether it’s a hurricane. Okay. You need to live with it. Okay. If a hurricane comes down and, and, [00:42:00] and does horrible things, hurricanes do horrible things. Tornadoes do horrible things. Forces of nature can do horrible things.

Um, you have to work with that. You have to live with that. That becomes a part of your life. So there’s nothing, um, but then you can also have beautiful things that, you know, you can have beautiful days and you can have, uh, lovely weather. But, but if we apply these forces to the way that we live our lives, you can have forces that are negative and you can have forces that are positive.

In astrology, um, those are kind of divided into two camps, which are the benefics and the malefics. The benefics are the planets that bring good things, like Venus and Jupiter, and the malefics are things that bring bad things, like Mars, which is one of the rulers of Scorpio, and Saturn. One can sort of address a kind of like, well, that’s life, you have your good days, benefics, you have your Venusian Jupiter days, and then you have your [00:43:00] Mars and Saturn days, you know, your malefic days.

But astrology teaches us so much more than that. By insisting that all of these planets are part of a pantheon, okay, and let’s add the moderns, Uranus, Neptune, um, and Pluto, and of course, you know, we can throw in the luminaries, the sun, the moon, and Mercury. Astrology insists that you deal with the entire pantheon of planets, alright?

Um, you can have the good, you can have the bad. But one of the things that we learned with Dane Rudyar was to question good and to question bad when we look at the stars, you know. Um, is good always good, you know, and is bad always bad? And this is when we can, when, when we have our imagination stimulated and our consciousness raised.

Um, because… We’re not looking at a static world, [00:44:00] you know, sometimes what can happen with rules and laws or, or scriptures that you have these things, these sayings, these rules, these laws that are imprinted, and this is absolutely what it is, you know, and it attempts to be a static post in an ever changing world, and that doesn’t work, that’s not the world.

And, um, you know, the only static post we have is the pole star that all the constellations go around, you know, when, when we look at, okay. Uh, so, so astrology teaches that the world is always changing, but it is consistent and it’s changed. You’re going to go through good things. You’re going to go through bad things.

And. An astrologer is here to perhaps help you guide, but an astrologer is also here to also help you interpret and to understand what this is going on and how you can interact or interrelate with it. Um, this This is something [00:45:00] that, uh, Newman was bringing up when he talks about death psychology and a new ethic.

What the book goes on to talk about is really the failure of agencies , that were supposed to represent what was ethical behavior. Their failure to, to have, answers. And that, by working with the shadow, we, and the acceptance of a shadow self that we project, um, that understanding the shadow and owning it is essential for building up an ethical attitude of life.

Uh, it’s not building up a judge, a way of judging, but building up what is ethical or teaching yourself a sense of what is ethical in life. Now, again, just to sort of, you know, and it’s just where I disagree and we’ll go on with the rest of the thing. I don’t think all the planets can be integrated. Okay, in an astrological chart.

That was one of the, um, differences that I had with Jungian, [00:46:00] uh, astrology, was this idea that everything was going to become integrated. I don’t feel that that’s the case. Um, I don’t even think that that’s the case of our civilization. I think our civilization, uh, resists integration. Um, and I’m not saying like, you know, like, oh, integration’s bad.

No, I think integration is a really good thing. But I think What happens is that if you, you can expand margins in one or two ways. You can either expand margins to include everyone and make them, and, and, and make them hom*ogenized, okay, where I’m, I’m going to open up the doors of my society and welcome you on in, and you’re all going to be hom*ogenized.

You’re going to be what I call a citizen, and you’re going to follow these things. Okay. Or, margins are widened by the reality of diversity, you know, um, Uh, diversity exists whether people recognize or understand it or not. Okay, it does. And one of the things is that diversity, uh, [00:47:00] fights against or works against hom*ogenization, you know, and, and we see this a lot in models of society and models of culture.

These malefics, the Mars, the Saturn, even take in the wild cards. Uranus and Pluto, um, they don’t work towards an integration. Okay? You can, you can harness the energies, you can direct the energies on a good day. You know, you can learn from the energies 24 7, but the idea of them coming together in the way that we think the world should be, this is something that astrology as an art form has always resisted.

And this is something that the planets, because what’s earth to the planets, but. another planet, you know, it’s just like one of, um, it’s also something that the planets and their courses in the sky also resist, uh, this idea of becoming, you know, integrated or brought together. I do agree that [00:48:00] there is such a thing as projecting parts of yourself that you don’t like onto other people and that this causes very awful, disastrous things, but I’m not sure if the answer is, , you know, to be found in, in regular texts.

You know, sometimes we’ll, we’ll take something from a holy book or, or a book of wisdom or something like that. But sometimes it doesn’t always answer what’s going on in our lives. And again, this is something that Newman also addresses in his book, which is, you know, ethical problems are always intensely individual.

And the collective rules of con conduct offer at most. provisional solutions, but never lead us who are asking these questions. Um, they never lead us who are in these crossroads where, um, you know, conduct is going against what’s ethical. Crucial decisions, they never lead or help during the periods of time when we’re making crucial decisions, which are the [00:49:00] turning points of an individual’s life.

So in other words, we can have, we can have collective rules of conduct. Struggling with, with ethics that happens all the time. It’s like the basis of many plays. Um, we can, we can be there and turning to, you know, the collective rule of conduct. often doesn’t prove helpful during those crucial decisions that we make at the turning points of our lives or the crucial decisions that we make at the turning point in the fate of a nation or the fate of a civilization.

So who do we turn to? You know, um, who do we turn to? Picking up from this, um, uh, picking up from this idea and, and Newman got a lot of criticism because he was basically saying who we turn to is ourselves. Each one of us, uh, becomes an ethical person by, by owning our shadow, by, by engaging in that discourse with the different parts of our, uh, aspects, you know, by, by owning our projections, each one of us becomes an [00:50:00] authority and, and he actually got laughed at.

It was like, Oh, okay. So a raving maniac is going to become the authority. But actually he was laying something down, which is the idea of, you know, we may not be able to affect things on a collective or a mass level, but we can certainly affect things on an individual level. And this is the call to, like an individual morality, or I, I think it’s where Jung was going with individuation.

Um, the person who really picks this up. as I mentioned before, is Dane Rudyard, uh, and these are like my, like some of my favorite books. It’s depth psychology and a new ethic and from humanistic to transpersonal astrology. There’s slips of books. They’re little books, very thick language, but they’re very, uh, uh, uh, little books.

But this one was written by Dane Rudyard towards the end of his life. I think he writes it in 1975. He’s living in Palo Alto, California, [00:51:00] but, um, He, in this book, From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology, which is already gives me a headache. I’m like, huh? What? Okay, but he was basically talking about, you know, putting that ethic, onto a person, onto each person, and that the horoscope chart itself calls us to taking that onto our self.

shoulders, okay? Uh, we’re not meant to look at our chart and go and, you know, sort of reflect in a corner somewhere. We’re, we’re meant to actively participate in our chart through the understanding of transits and things like this, to actively participate in the unfolding of ourselves, and the unfolding of our chart.

Uh, he doesn’t really get too much into integration. He kind of approaches it. He doesn’t, you know, he, he kind of gives the planets, um, like, like I’m talking about today. their own, way of being, okay, not trying to lasso them or, or whatever. But he says, um, and, and, and, [00:52:00] and, and here is really the principles of humanistic astrology, is that there’s this ongoing conversation between ourselves and the stars, okay, that the stars don’t predict, the stars don’t oppress, the stars don’t, there’s an ongoing conversation.

with between ourselves and the stars and we can understand it through astrology. This is basically the founding principles of humanistic astrology. But Rudyard says in this book, from humanistic to transpersonal astrology, he says, and I want you to think about our, think about our current times. Um, I don’t know about you, but when I face troubled times in my life, I go to the past.

I go and read about. people in the past and how they either dealt with it or thought about the future or what their, uh, perspective on it was. This is, I think, is the enormous wealth of history. But Rudyard writes in 1975, Palo Alto, there are times when human beings [00:53:00] can fulfill the inherent purpose of their birth.

They can transcend the collective way of life and they can transcend the mentality of their class. group or nation. They can even eventually transform the ego. If they are successful in such a difficult and slow process, they find themselves face to face with the universe without cultural institutions, without socio religious prejudices and biases or paradigms to determine for them what and how they should see this universe and act in it.

They become open to forces. They become open to forces and influences that may work toward the transformation of our [00:54:00] culture and of humanity as a whole. Creative forces. High intelligences, perhaps divine beings, through which the vast process of human evolution and of planetary development operate. Such a transformation is not only possible, but necessary.

When a culture is gradually breaking down, when its values have become perverted. or empty of meaning, and there is no longer real, vitalizing faith in institutions and their once great and inspiring symbols.

Heady words. I mean, I always get a little bit, when I read those, but so important because it puts the responsibility on each one of us. How do we [00:55:00] understand and learn our responsibility? By working with our own personal astrological charts. What’s one of the things that we can do with the help of our chart?

Closing Thoughts

A shadow isn’t to be integrated. A shadow is cast, usually behind you, on the ground. Uh, that’s why the shadow lives in a blind spot. So whenever you feel yourself dividing between the good and the evil, whenever you feel yourself waving the finger and saying this is right, that’s wrong, this is what needs to be done, that’s what needs to be tossed out, this is vengeance for centuries and centuries and centuries of oppression, take a moment, take a breath, take a look around, and you’ll probably see your shadow.

going on behind you. [00:56:00] And it’s in those moments when we don’t escape or leave or cast it or project it on to someone else. It’s in those moments when we take a breath, maybe we take a chuckle. We own that part of ourselves. And by owning that part of ourselves, we participate in our own small and humble way.

In making the world a better and a saner place.

[00:57:00][00:58:00][00:59:00]

[HOROSCOPE HIGHLIGHTS] November 13th - 19th w/ Astrologer Christopher Renstrom - Astrology Hub (2024)