Astrology as Enchantment

Sunday March 17th 2024
Water Lilies 1910 by Claude Monet

Water Lilies 1910 by Claude Monet

“You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” β€” Rumi

At Iftar a couple of days ago, I found myself sitting next to an Anglican vicar. As we waited to eat our dates, we talked about god and vocation, and astrology as enchantment.

She told me that a decade ago, she’d had a powerful spiritual awakening during a 30-day retreat at St. Beuno’s, in the Welsh hills, where she had undertaken the “spiritual exercises of St Ignatius“, the founder of the Jesuit Order.

Then we listened to a beautifully intoned call to prayer: “Come to salvation.” And she asked me what I believed happens when we die.

So I asked her about the Father and Son stuff, which I find alienating, and she said that Christianity for her was just one way into the invisible.

The mystic way, a strand in many religions from sufism to tantra, is a belief in the One, the Absolute, of which we are all a part. During moments of great ecstasy, or ego-loss, or enlightenment, we realise our oneness. This world, the one that we see and touch, is simply the multifarious outer expression of the One.

Astrology is a mystic way (often), because you have to accept that there is a connection between yourself, this earth, the planets spinning far off in the solar system, and even the distant stars in the far reaches of the universe β€” Altair, Rigel, Beetlejuice and all the others. If we are all one, then a change in one part of the universe ripples through the fabric of space/time and manifests, perhaps, as a stubbed toe, or a war, or transcendent concert.

Another aspect of mysticism is the idea that we contain the universe within ourselves. This is a poetic notion, but it also seems to be true that we are all collections of dancing particles, just as the night sky we see is a collection of dancing points of light. And, of course, it is astrological. We contain a microcosm of the universe that responds to the macrocosm, so the astrology we know is a tiny scrap of reality.

Which leads me to the enchanted way, the notion that we live in an enchanted universe, fully connected, fully meaningful.

What happens when we die? I’m not sure. But I know that it’s a matter of passing from one state into another, from the material to the invisible world. And perhaps, in the same way that the water on planet earth is a closed system — cycling from rain to the seven seas and back again — maybe our souls are part of the closed system of the universe. Just a thought.

 

 

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  1. Victoria says:

    Wow! That was very deep and enlightening. I will think of that all day. You had a wonderful adventure. Thank You

  2. Leila says:

    I liked your view of our place in cosmos, recycled back like water, because I believe we do go and in and out of the physical universe from spirit to body over and over.

    • Christina says:

      I have been thinking about it a lot this week. My cat died and he literally gave up the ghost, exhaling into the other dimension.

  3. What an exquisite beautiful way of speaking . Blessings, Peace and Love, Tovah DelmontπŸ’«πŸ§šβ€β™‚οΈπŸŽΌπŸŒˆπŸŒŸ

  4. Jen Deer says:

    Thank you for sharing your beautiful thoughts about astrology as enchantment. It is wonderful to think of astrology as a way to engage in ineffable relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm.