Message #26991

[Bianca]

Conclusion

The post-modern sensibility reflects a radical shift in the collective psyche, or cognitive landscape. To my mind it highlights a symmetry breaking process in relation to the urges underlying patriarchally based thinking. Post-modern commentators are fond of writing articles with titles like "The Death of the Author", "The End of History", etc., which reflect this cathartic transformation. Given contemporary astrology's patriarchal roots, perhaps we are witnessing the Death of Astrology. But of course, this is a precursor phase in the process of rebirth. The onus is on astrologers to take on the difficult task of re-visioning its conceptual basis and to construct models which can flourish rather than wither in the emerging cognitive ground. This does not mean throwing out techniques, abandoning the experience of millennia, etc.. It's not the application that is the primary problem. It is the conceptual framework or theoretical/philosophical foundation on which the applied craft is based which needs to be addressed. The psychologically comforting and orderly "closure" promised in the past by Saturn in the form of Law and structured inevitability now has to bend to the opposing current of freedom, change and insecurity, as symbolised by the outer planets. Structure (being) is subordinated to process (becoming), a reversal of the previous norm, allowing an evolutionary potential into the system.

In a mythological sense, we are witnessing the resurrection of Tiamat. The cultural re-embracing of chaos and the unknowable currently underway presents an imperative to consciously re-negotiate the form our astrology takes within the new post-patriarchal framework. Unless this happens, astrology will make even less sense in the future than it does in the present.