Okay, well this is probably silly as many of us interested in astrology tend to like reading all of the various types of interpretations. It’s really just presented in this fun way so that we can delve into the different astrological schools of thought. In truth, they don’t massively diverge in meaning once we climb into each camp, it doesn’t matter whether it is Evolutionary, Psychological, Humanistic or Esoteric understanding of astrology principles. Those are the four types of astrology viewpoints chosen for this descent into all things Neptune. Many of us are hybrids of horoscopy, and some only prefer one kind of astrology, so don’t get all mad. This is not an attempt to box you into any kind of astrology and you can read whatever astrological papers you want, take your fancy. Anyways, we have four types of astrology laid out, and there are plenty more missed out in this delving – lightfootedly – across the different astrological groups. It is kept simple, no kidding, there are only three questions to pick favourites and you will probably like them all. It’s not really a proper survey, however, it does reveal how the conclusions are not so dissimilar. The only difference is in the outlook, overall perception, mode of thinking. Whether one is more psychologically inclined to go digging into the inner workings of the mind bringing Freudian and Jungian concepts in the mix does not really matter. Some prefer to float off with the bluebirds on a spiritual summit up the mountain and apply mystical principles from whoever is fashionable in this astrological field. So, here is a brief look into the different astrologies, their purposes and ways of interpreting using the planet Neptune, Pisces and the twelfth house as our templates. Basically, it all falls along the same lines as we are talking about universal symbols, regardless.

Evolutionary Astrology

The blurb:

“Evolutionary Astrology embraces paradigms and methodologies which specifically measure the growth of the soul from life to life. These methods invariably focus on the planet Pluto and its relationship to the Nodal Axis. While it is composed of a set of specific formal methodologies, evolutionary astrology is ultimately characterized less by a technical approach than by a set of philosophical principles defined by natural law. Different evolutionary astrologers may use somewhat different interpretive methods, but they can always be recognized by a devotion to the following core perceptions:

1. An acceptance of the fact that human beings incarnate in a succession of lifetimes.

2. An acceptance of the fact that the birthchart reflects the evolutionary condition of the soul at the moment of incarnation.

3. An acceptance of the fact that the birthchart reflects the evolutionary intentions of the soul for the present life.

4. An acceptance of the fact that the circumstances of the present life, both materially and psychologically, do not arise randomly, but rather reflect the evolutionary intentions and necessities of the soul.

5. An acceptance of the fact that human beings interact creatively and unpredictably with their birthcharts; that all astrological symbols are multi-dimensional and are modulated into material and psychic expression by the consciousness of the individual.

6. An acceptance of the fact that human beings are responsible for the realities they experience, both internally and externally.

7. A respectful intention to accept and support a person seeking astrological help, no matter the evolutionary state in which such an individual finds himself or herself.”

“On the face of it, psychological astrology can simply be defined as a synthesis of psychology and astrology. But it is much more than that. Each discipline—astrology and psychology—is radically transformed and empowered by its marriage to the other. Indeed, there are so many correlations and possibilities for cross-fertilization that one could easily spend an entire lifetime exploring the connection.

In many ways, astrology was the first psychology in that it constituted an early means for understanding the nature of the human being. Rooted in the premise that cosmos mirrors psyche, the ancients systematically observed how the nature and cycles of the planets corresponded to the nature and experiences of human beings.

For all their brilliance, our progenitors practiced an exceedingly simplistic form of astrology in comparison to what we are capable of today. Here, emphasis should be on the word capable, for much of modern astrology is still mired in the dogma of the past.

Ancient and medieval astrologers were preoccupied with so-called “good” and “bad” planetary positions—malefic planets, evil aspects, debilitations, falls, afflictions, and other such ominous categories of meaning. While they were obviously aware that people were subject to a process of ageing that culminated in death, there was little or no concept of evolution, that is, of the psycho-spiritual growth of the individual. Accordingly, astrology was largely limited to superficial trait descriptions, fated events, and dubious predictions of good and bad times for various enterprises.

While some scholars might argue that ancient astrology was actually more complex and technique-rich than its contemporary offshoots, this should not obviate the fact that our ancient forebears were wedded to a fatalistic and deterministic model of the cosmos that precluded them from appreciating how lived experience, i.e., fate, can serve as a catalyst for learning and change, and how learning and change can, in turn, alter fate.

Astrology was largely discredited following the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries because it was not intelligible within the mechanistic paradigm that constituted the zeitgeist of the new, modern era. Out of this renaissance of scientific thought, psychology was born, and eventually came to replace astrology as our primary means for understanding behavior.”

“At the threshold of the next millennium, we may well ask a simple but important question: how can we, as students of astrology, best bring forward a more perfect life-style, a life-style that is harmonized with the new unified world that is forming, a life-style based on astrology?

This question surely has no right or single answer. But if a new millennium deserves a new astrology complete with new insights, perspectives and a new direction equal to the challenge–then a worthy candidate, I suggest, is holistic or as it is usually called ‘Humanistic’ astrology.

Humanistic Astrology was first presented in the writings of Dane Rudhyar, the talented astrologer-musician and seminal mind and author (born March 23, 1895) who is considered the originator of this branch of astrology. The following quotation conveys the spirit of his message:

“We need something in which the individual learns his own function in the world, because if you are to have a global world, the individual has to be so well established in his own identity that he can afford to cooperate with other people all over the world, independent of their culture, their race, their traditions and so on. It is very important therefore, that one should learn how to establish oneself in one’s own identity.”

We find similar sentiments expressed by the eminent psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. In ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, a book born of his experiences while a prisoner in Nazi death camps, he writes:

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete specific assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor his life repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

These two sages of the twentieth century think alike. Their approach is different but the spirit remains the same. Indeed they exemplify what they are teaching. To be an individual is not to be unlike others. Rather, it is to share a common humanity with others–in one’s own way. Theirs is a message that reminds us to take responsibility for realizing our unique individual identity and true role in society.

Perhaps we are being too serious? But isn’t that what humanistic astrology is about–serious assessment of our possibilities and unique opportunities for self-realization?

The humanistic astrological frame of reference is the planet earth because that is from where Man peers out to the surrounding vast and starry skies to view the heavens. It is the human viewpoint. From there the astrologer-astronomer, like those of the previous millennia, views the wandering stars, the planets, going now forward, now retrograding, now forward again. The raw data of astronomical observation has not changed. It is the common side shared by astrologers of the past and of the future. But something has changed and if it is not by sophisticated telescopes, computers and software, or other tools that the astrologer of the future offers something new and timely to answer humanity’s need for meaning and fulfillment, then what is it? What the humanistic astrologer has to work with are new concepts.”

“Esoteric astrology is the astrology of the soul. The delineation of a natal chart from the soul-centred perspective focuses on the purpose of the soul, why we are here, where we have come from, and where we are heading. Traditional or exoteric astrology is the astrology of the personality. Its focus is on the problems and potentials of the personality.

The body of knowledge known as Esoteric Astrology is drawn from the Theosophical tradition and the teachings of the Tibetan teacher Djwhal Khul, as dictated to Alice A. Bailey. It is contained in a voluminous set of books which form a large part of what is referred to as the Ancient or Ageless Wisdom teachings.

Soul-centred astrology is based on the understanding that there is a spark of divinity, or ‘soul’ within each of us. According to this cosmology, reincarnation and the reality of the soul are accepted as fact. Many sense this divinity. The moments of deep insight, peace, awe, wonder, grace and love that we have all experienced at some time are voices from the Soul.

Some call this divinity God/Goddess, the Higher Self, the Core Self, the Transpersonal Self, the inner voice, the Buddha or Christ. It manifests as the religious urge in man/woman. Indeed, Carl Jung, in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul, makes the astounding assertion that in thirty years of treating patients in the second half of life, their illness or neurosis was invariably the result of a lack of spiritual or religious meaning:

“….there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”

This soul, or divine spark, strives towards unity and perfection, and according to the Ancient Wisdom teachings, its motivation is selfless and its purpose is service to humanity or contribution to the greater whole. It is essentially a humanitarian philosophy and is therefore highly appropriate for our incoming Age of Aquarius. According to the Ancient Wisdom teachings, the structure of man/woman can be symbolically represented as a downward-pointing triangle (the personality) linked by the Antahkarana or Rainbow Bridge to an upward-pointing triangle (the soul).”

Question Time for the Astrologers of these Different Schools of Thought

Neptune

The Astrology Place: First Question – Dear astrologers, make us lose consciousness in a good way. What is some relevant information on the planet Neptune to kick things off?

Answers:

Astrologer 1. [Neptune] This activity of the imagination often occurs in the borderland where the conscious shades into the unconscious. There is no clear line of demarcation between the deliberate lie of an adolescent facing a difficult situation, the nature of which he or she does not really understand, and the imagination of the confused girl whose half-conscious need for love makes her invent events placing on some person the responsibility for an imaginary love-making scene, events which she herself dimly believes to have occurred.

Is it not at times the same with persons who believe themselves to be the recipients of occult or spiritualistic “messages,” who have “visions” and perhaps very slightly twist or “interpret” factual events to give the impression that some great, mysterious thing has taken place? Nevertheless, who, in many instances indeed, can say positively and objectively that a person has imagined or made up entirely a certain unverifiable episode? Who can say that what seems to have been, as we say, “entirely dreamed up” is not the reflection — perhaps the anticipation — of something that is “real” somehow or somewhere? Can one always separate the real from the imagined?

The Astrology Place: (So, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies). Generally, the truth has many faces, some lies contain some truth. Sometimes what we believe is truth could be fiction.

Astrologer 2. But the meaning of the planet is bigger than that. It also includes conditions of consciousness that are indeed spiritual practices such as mediation, fasting, chanting, yoga, sacred drumming, and so forth. And in every one of these activities, there are certain common features: consciousness becomes less identified with ego; there is a feeling of surrender to something much vaster than ourselves; and “reality” as we define it consensually – the three dimensional, “reasonable” world – loses some of its compelling authority over us.

The Astrology Place: Wow, you really took us to that place, so this change of consciousness can be awesome and take us to a higher power ummmm. With all the drug taking and drinking side of Neptune and its longing to forget the world, one also forgets there is a sacrificial channel of surrendering the ego healthily. A humanist astrologer said that “sacred” actually means sacrifice. Totally out of this world is the way to go for this child of the ocean (photography, art, astrology and music are my drugs meditations of choice).

Astrologer 3. The mythology of Neptune begins with the mythology of water. In astrological symbolism, Neptune is the ruler of Pisces, the third sign of the water trigon; and the god after whom the planet is named is the lord of the ocean depths. But even if the planet had been called by another name, the language of water arises spontaneously on the lips of those experiencing important transits and progressions involving Neptune. Over and over again I have heard people completely unfamiliar with astrology describe their feelings and perceptions at such critical times with images such as drowning, flooding, drifting, dissolving, swamped, inundated, and flowing with the current. Their dreams at these junctures also reflect the domain of water: tidal waves, sinking ships, leaking pipes and overflowing toilets, flooded house and torrential rain.

The Astrology Place: I know we wanted to lose consciousness, but did you really have to drown us all? Baptizing might have been more pleasant, then again. Let me just catch my breath for a second, the water feels like its filling my lungs.

Astrologer 4. On a more spiritual level, Neptune can bring the individual into contact with the Master Souls who govern the evolutionary processes of the Universe. Neptune brings inspired writing, prophetic visions, and realizations of cosmos truths which go far beyond the powers of reason. Thus Neptune is the planet of the clairvoyant and the mystic.

The Astrology Place:  Strange messages come through these channels one has to be grounded to receive them in a healthy manner. I, too, have a massive dose of Neptune in the chart. Though, when telling people about ghostly visits and dream visions of a spiritual nature I psychically feel these overwhelming vibrations of disbelief returned. All one has to say in response is – jalousie much.

Pisces

Second Question: As a Piscean, I only want to read about sexy mermaids, the elusive chanteuses with perfect hair and not strange looking fish. Do you have any insights? And if you have absolutely nothing on Mermaids, just tell us more about how mystical and enchantingly beautiful Pisces is according to the dictates of astrology.

Answers

Astrologer 1.Thus, in a negative sense, the Piscean’s attraction to liquor and all fermented products – including oil wells! Thus their tendency on the one hand, toward psychism and spiritualism, and on the other, towards infections of the mucus membranes due to socially or personally generated toxins, impure food and psychological disintegration. Passivity of the Pisces is especially dangerous, for there is always a tendency to become, like the sea, polluted and overwhelmed by the refuse of the old, instead of transfiguring it into a new birth.

The Astrology Place: Is this why when I get a cold it clings like a parasite in my system for weeks? I famously have terrible immunity. Part and parcel of having a passive immune system. Still, not the romantic reading I was chasing after.

Astrologer 2. Ocean. Not Fishes, but the home of fish. Mother Ocean, the realm of under sierras, of luminous plankton, of lost cities.  Ocean mother of life, brooding symbol of all that is impenetrable, all that can be felt but never known. Ocean: Washing of continents, carrying art and thoughts among the nations, carrying war, carrying disease and pestilence, carrying wine and food, poets and musicians, endlessly mixing and blending the cultures of the earth. The Piscean ocean: Liquid, flowing symbol of the unutterable mystery that binds us all together. The symbol of life.

The Astrology Place: A good answer, but Fish needs to be replaced with the word M e r m a i d and it would have been perfect. Again, another astrologer bringing up more images of how the oceans are polluted in our fishy souls, but I ‘ll take the unutterable mystery. But overall, I get it, – Pisces is the GREAT transporter, point taken. Neptune is a giant blender in the kitchen of the astrological planets, creating something truly colourful for all, the colllectivity of souls.

Astrologer 3. The underwater landscape of Pisces, the fishes, elusive and mercurial, share the depths with the octopus that gurads the buried treasure. Those eager to reach the gold at the bottom of the sea and drink from the couldren of immortality must fight their way through clinging, strangling tentacles and black clouds or, for the guardian will allow no greedy mortal to claim what belongs to the spirit alone. Yet the magical light of the ancient treasure is a beacon and a promise to those who have lost their way in life can trust the currents of the waters to bring them safely home again.

The Astrology Place: Or, freeing oneself from the tentacles of Ursula.

Astrologer 4. The cycle is essential for Pisces. Without periodic cleansing, his waters would soon become polluted by his and other people’s negativity. Pisces is a psychic sponge; for this reason he should use great discrimination in choosing his friends and environment.

The Astrology Place: I am now really worried about the polluted oceans in Pisces. So this type of friend and not this, okay, got it.

The 12th House

Third Question: Now, can we enter into the misty indefinite 12th house. Let’s get lost, and take me into the gates of the ghostly, haunted and invisible realm. What spooky things do we need to know?

Answers

Astrologer 1. Ghosts linger on, alas, with subtle tenacity in the unconscious — the ghosts of things undone, of words unsaid, of small or big gestures which the heart and hands could not be made to perform. The speaker who sees from the clock on the wall that his time is over, that he must bring his speech to an end, may suddenly remember all that he had meant to say but did not. Will he try to crowd the unsaid into a jumble of last-minute statements which would leave his hearers completely confused? Speakers often try and, thus, defeat themselves. One must have the courage to dismiss the things unsaid, the gestures unlived, the love unexperienced and make a compelling end on the basis of what has been said and experienced.

The Astrology Place: This all reads so incredibly sad. Why would you do this to a sensitive soul? Endings are the saddest thing in the world, especially when we feel we haven’t spoken everything within our soul, So, we create our own ghosts, we haunt ourselves, however, we must find peace with all that is left undone. Please don’t tell us that poor twelfth house people must mediate all of this mumbling and confusion somehow, what you call these lost soul yearnings.

Astrologer 1. ” It does not say whether or not you will be able to dismiss your ghosts — dismiss them with a blessing and courageously renew your mind and your life. But it tells you something concerning the nature and insistency of the ghosts you will have to deal with; it gives you a general picture of your subconscious — the realm of ghosts and of the remains of unsolved problems or unlived experiences. It suggests to you the best way to deal with your ghosts and the disintegrating products of your subconscious.”

Astrologer 2. Signs and planets in the twelfth house are like ticking timebombs. The fuse may be long. It may be short. But there is no distinguishing it. Sooner or later, the issues of the twelfth house undercut us. They trip us up. They face us with an impossible situation. Once that situation breaks, we can head for the bar and order a double. Or we can withdraw for a while into our depths, feeling that endless reservoir of creativity and life and resilience within us. And feeling that, we can gracefully let go of a set of dying circumstances, knowing that when the dust settles, we can begin again.

The Astrology Place: The unconscious has been known to trip us. Also, letting go sounds dreamy and sublime in the sea of creativity. Goodbye cruel world.

Astrologer 3. From the 12th, the ghosts of a distant past come back to haunt us – the family “skeletons in the closet,” the forgotten religious orthodoxy of a great grandfather, the long suppressed story of the great-aunt’s suicide and the great grandmother’s “second sight,” the poverty of the immigrant, and the religious persecution of two hundred years before.

The Astrology Place: What a leaky house. I wish I could fix this for you twelfth house people.

Astrologer 4. The special “karma” of the Twelfth House has had to do with the collective. The Twelfth synthesis what has been stored from previous turns of the astrological wheel, that is, other life cycles. Thus, it is the storehouse of secret treasures as the strength we have gained from experience. The last house of the horoscope contains our oceanic reserves of power and potency from all the good we have done and all the positive service we have performed. In effect, is is the repository of our “good karma.”

You make twelfth house people sound like proper Samaritans. Otherwise, who knew the closet space was so BIG in the 12th house.

The Score

If you like mostly answers 1 = You are a Humanistic Astrologer
If you like mostly answers 2 = You are an Evolutionary Astrologer
If you like mostly answers  3 = You are a Psychological Astrologer
If you like mostly answers 4 = You are an Esoteric Astrologer

I Told you my “quiz” was pointless at the beginning.

Astrologer 1 is Dane Rudhyar
Astrologer 2 is Steven Forrest
Astrologer 3 is Liz Greene
Astrologer 4 is Alan Oken

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