21st Century Astrology, and Beyond

Greetings, and welcome back to Journeys! This month I’ve been wondering about the future, specifically the future of astrology in the 21st-century.

Talking about the future, especially so far in advance, is always deeply speculative but I have tried to ground my thinking in a couple of ways. Firstly, I have made an assumption that we will survive. Admittedly, I feel that this is a big assumption given the state of play, but it feels necessary to make this assumption in order to allow the imagination to explore what may come. I am a hopeful person by nature, and that hope is sourced in my faith in what human beings are truly capable of and what they truly are, but also I do not see any reason to give up on hope, ever. It’s part of what defines it for me. But I’m also very realistic. I see the path we are on as many of us do now, and it’s obvious that we are living in a period of existential threat. So, if we do not make it through these times of tribulation, all bets are of course off on what I have to say here and astrology will like everything either cease to exist or be thrown back into a regressive arc for many centuries. In this case I do not think it will vanish unless humanity does, it will just go back to basics. The idea and practice of astrology has survived other apocalypses, including the Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, and probably also survived the ancient Ice Ages and Great Floods. One reason for this is that the patterns in the sky are relatively unchanging no matter what goes on at ground level on the Earth, and so the sky provides an anchor of constancy in times of great change.

Secondly I imposed a structure on my wanderings and wonderings, confining it to 3 broad fields of inquiry: Discovery, Technology and the Human Condition. I feel that each of these areas is already showing signs of producing revolutionary change during this century, meaning we can already see the seeds of these monumental forces of change beginning to emerge and they look destined to transform every aspect of society. Therefore, considering how they would change astrology is not stretching things in any way. They will. The only question is how. I don’t feel that I’m reaching or stretching my imagination too far, which helps to keep my speculation grounded in at least some realities. This does of course mean I will miss a great deal of what could potentially change and how, but I’m not trying to present a comprehensive argument or presentation here, I’m just trying to get the ball rolling in our minds. There are some very exciting things to think about here, but overall I think the key word is challenge. Future generations of astrologers and the current generation of astrologers have numerous challenges before them and the practice of astrology is undoubtedly destined to go through a Pluto like transformation, possibly even as soon as Pluto in Aquarius.

Finally, although it is implied by some of the things we will discuss, I do not consider the sociological implications of some of the changes that we will be talking about, for example I will not be making any comments about how technology is turning our society into a surveillance culture or what this will mean for everything being discussed. I will just be talking about how that technology might be applied in astrology and how it might change astrology and present it with existential challenges or, in many cases, a potentially radical new form of popularity.

ON DISCOVERY

First of all I will define this entire area of thought – specifically, I am focusing on discoveries connected with space, in particular our solar system but also beyond, but also scientific discoveries such as the development of quantum theories and our understanding of the sub-quantum realm. In thinking about this I discovered three main areas of discovery with many implications.

Starting with quantum science, if you do just a little bit of research and are prepared to have your brain heated up considerably, you will quickly come across ideas that might develop into a new theoretical basis for astrology, one that is rooted in scientific principles. Entanglement (where objects can share a state regardless of distance, so if you have two dice in an entangled state but separated by galaxies and you roll one of them, the other will turn to show the same face), the observer effect (where the witnessing consciousness changes the outcome of what they witness), superposition (whereby objects can exist in two or more states at the same time), quantum tunneling (wherein waveforms pass through solid barriers, disappearing on one side and reappearing instantly on the other, so teleportation) and many other discoveries could easily bring some kind of greater validation to astrology as their ideas permeate into popular culture, and may even open up new practical approaches in astrology itself. It will almost certainly bring in new thinkers and people who want a rational and more scientifically supported approach. I think a great deal here will depend on what happens within the scientific community itself which is clearly split in this moment between the old thinking and the quantum theorists who are rewriting the founding principals involved in the scientific approach. If this split is not resolved to allow the future of science to emerge, then we will all be stuck in a world where science is arguing with itself and unable to resolve what it needs to resolve to solve the problems of today. However I feel that this is very unlikely, as the old paradigms of science are rapidly losing ground. There is still a battle going on in some areas – such as in brain and consciousness research where the prevailing traditional opinion that consciousness is an epi-phenomena of the brain still holds sway – but as time passes old ideas lose ground one death at a time and new generations do not have the same reluctance to embrace the new. They don’t have anything invested in it. Also, once quantum discoveries progress deeply into other ‘hard’ sciences like biology, which is already happening, things will be very different. So it is quite possible that scientific discoveries will develop that provide astrology with a stronger or even entirely new theoretical basis, one that will undoubtedly be branded as pseudo-scientific or a nonsense interpretation, but many may disagree, and these ideas could even give astrology a more widespread and popular acceptance. It already seems to be that astrology is receiving a surge of interest among the young.

These possibilities however are not as certain or as challenging for astrology as the next set – discoveries about our solar system. There is no question that this is a great challenge and will be extremely transformative for astrology in the next century, since we already have a large number of new objects in the solar system to answer for. In reality this change has been going on for a few hundred years now, since the discovery of Uranus shattered the old paradigm,and since then we have been racing to catch up, but in the last 30 years and especially the last 20 the discoveries have piled up one on top of the other as we have probed into both the local asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the deep regions of space beyond Pluto, discovering that our solar system is many magnitudes larger and more populous than we previously thought it was. Many of these orbiting bodies are very small relative to what we knew before, but others are not so easily dismissed, especially once you start seeing their impacts in peoples charts.

We need a new framework for astrology to make sense of all this new data, because the old framework cannot support it. The simple truth is that the more objects you add to a chart the more likely it is that you will be able to find an indication for anything you like in it. So we can perceive the serious threat as well as the challenge and the potential for exciting new developments in these new discoveries. We can ignore all the new arrivals, but then we are like the traditional scientific thinkers who resist the arrival of the quantum revolution. In practice it would be reasonable to stick to the traditional method of course, but then we will have to accept that we will receive countless questions from people about these new objects and we will have no good answer for them other than “they make things too complicated” or “they don’t count”, both of which, to my mind, are lazy and lame responses to a sincere and important question. So we are challenged to somehow integrate them without diluting our astrology of all meaning. And guess what? We are an Aquarian rabble. We are a relatively disorganized, chaotic, freedom loving bunch of geniuses who rarely agree on anything and yet we will somehow have to collectively figure out a way to handle this entire mess before it threatens to tear us all apart. Pluto’s arrival in Aquarius this decade, in just a couple of years, may well be the beginning of this great debate/transformation.

My own part has been to contribute in my book (in the section on Chiron) a model outlining 9 tiers of astrology, each one more personal and less collective than the ones that follow it. For ease of reference I have reproduced it here:

The Astro-Cosmic Structure

• The temples: Realms and arenas of experience in which we encounter all that follows below personally. Structurally, arises from our localized perception of the daily rotation of the Earth (primary motion).
• The zodiac: The Elemental processes of life on Earth, through which all that follows below is expressed. A co-creative relationship between humans and the beings of the Lights and planets expressed as native Elemental processes, particularly the processes of the seasons, therefore, partially human in creation and reflective of different cultures and ages of human societies. Astrological aspects are of the zodiac, being the harmonic interaction it contains, its geometry, and the Lunar nodes are also part of this structure. Structurally, arises from our perception of the rotation of Earth around the Sun (secondary motion), but has its earliest roots in the patterning of stars (see below).
• The Lights: The essence of life on Earth expressed as consciousness (Sun, the mental awareness of meaning, existence and life, the focus of our individuality) and astral awareness (Moon, the personal awareness of significance, the focus of our personality). The conductors of the celestial music of life on Earth.
• The inner worlds: The solid, visible worlds of the personality – intellect (Mercury), feeling (Venus) and will (Mars). However, Mars is also involved in an individual process of aligning our personality with our individuality (he is an architect and enforcer of the mediators and inner worlds who decides which ideas and feelings to act upon).
  The asteroids: The minutiae of the specific material of the personality and individuality which must be made integral and assembled into a harmonic whole. Our relationship to the many details of the personal and individual world which we must discern and integrate. Harmonizing Mars with Jupiter is an important overall aspect of this process because this places our seemingly vast and fractured individual differences in context with our greater quantity and quality of individual similarities. Largely invisible and therefore astra-mental in causation.
• The mediators: The gaseous worlds of the individuality, the guardians of the natural order, endless expansion (Jupiter) and endless crystallization (Saturn). They are mediators between the zone of the Lights, inner worlds and asteroids (the inner zone) and the zone of the outer and mythic worlds (the outer zone), therefore, mediators between the personal/individual and the collective or transpersonal. Visible, therefore able to create a physical causation directly.
• The centaurs: Emissaries and bridges to the collective and transpersonal, our ties to what lies beyond the mediators and thus escorts to the outer and mythic worlds. We must always go to the outer and mythic worlds and bring back what we learn for the collective, individual and personal worlds. These are our guides and companions for that journey, they are teachers and the givers of knowledge from beyond, the threads which connect the individual to the wider collective or spiritual and thus bind them together. Any other objects found among the centaurs and named for hybrid or mythical creatures will also serve a similar function of introducing us to the outer or mythic worlds. Not visible with the naked human eye, therefore astra-mental in causation, but still capable of condensing a physical effect through the geometry of the zodiac.
• The outer worlds: Uranus and Neptune, representatives of the collective human awareness that we are all one mind, and the universal awareness that all existence is one mind. Uranus hovers on the edge of visibility with the naked eye like some of the asteroids, but is more effective on an astra-mental level than a physical one, like Neptune. Again, this does not mean they cannot create physical effects, only that they always begin with an astra-mental one. Shapers of generations of people.
• The mythic worlds: Pluto and other invisible worlds beyond Neptune; concern the emergence of mythic archetypes and are heralds of realizations and states emerging in the collective human awareness as it encompasses more of its infinite nature and the universal consciousness. Transmuters of the collective and representatives of
  aspects of the universal consciousness. Transcendental portals through which consciousness touches the infinite and eternal. Shapers of fate.
• The stars: Underpin all of the above with pure essential meaning through Quadrapolar relationships to the Earth. The essence and font of pure astral and mental meaning which becomes clothed in and expressed through the planetary fabric of our solar system. Stars represent influences over the creation of a spirit. Constellations relate to the facets of the Greater Self (the immortal spirit) as it turns its infinite face through physical eternity, therefore to the turning of celestial ages.

In addition to this I wrote several chapters on my thoughts about some of these new discoveries like the centaurs, asteroids and mythic worlds. My focus was on exploring their more magical and transformative meaning, and below is a summary of what I presented:

Asteroid Belt

• Ceres: Feminine Earth, Goddess of grain, fruition.
• Pallas: Feminine Air, Goddess of wisdom through effort.
• Juno: Feminine Water, Goddess of marriage.
• Vesta: Feminine Fire, Goddess of hearth and home.

These four bodies represent the need to bring balance and healing to the feminine energies. They are the primary focal points of the asteroid belt.

Centaurs

• Chiron: Holistic integration, collective healing. 50.76 year orbit.
• Chariklo: Nature spirits and the collective of the natural world. 63.17 year orbit.
• Asbolus: Sages, teachings of natural law and its magic. 76.88 year orbit.
• Pholus: Philosophers, revelation of hidden wisdom. 91.85 year orbit.
• Nessus: Ferrymen, transitions between realities, especially through darkness. 122.42 year orbit.
• Amycus: Warriors, self-preservation and the mastery of violent and destructive urges. 126.12 year orbit.
• Hylonome: Romancers, secrets of the martial art of love. 126 year orbit.

These bodies act as escorts for consciousness to move between the personal/individual and the collective/universal awareness. They are not the only centaurs.

Mythic Worlds

• Orcus: Serves a similar influence to Pluto, but for the animal, plant and mineral kingdom. 245.18 year orbit.
• Pluto: Collective human astral evolution and reincarnation. 248.09 year orbit.
• Ixion: Sacred masculine, collective dominion/strength. 249.95 year orbit.
• Varuna: Laws of Creation. 281.03 year orbit.
• Quaoar: Song of Creation. 285.97 year orbit.
• Haumea: Fertility of Creation. 283.26 year orbit.
• Makemake: Sacred objects. 309.88 year orbit.
• Eris: Emancipation through strife. 557 year orbit.
• Sedna: Ocean of life, primordial awareness. Estimated 11,400 year orbit.

These objects and others among them – all relatively small – represent collective and universal powers and cosmic principles. Pluto is the most significant among them because he manages to insert himself inside the orbit of Neptune from time to time, thereby inseminating the larger main body of the solar system with the content of these mythic worlds.

At present these significations are good enough for me to work with but clearly with all of these discoveries already on the table and undoubtedly many more to be discovered in the future, astrologers have their work cut out for them. There is even the possibility of a large (Neptune -sized) ninth planet being discovered. Go check out its wikipedia page and you will see a lot of research pointing towards it, although it remains unconfirmed.

If this wasn’t enough, there is one more thing in the category of discovery I would like to put on the table for consideration. While it may not seem related to astrology I am of the strong opinion that it will directly impact how astrology is perceived. I’m talking here about the discovery of life on another planet or one of its moons. Not only is there an extremely high probability that we will discover some form of basic life in our solar system very shortly, it’s my view that we are also very close to being able to confirm the existence of intelligent life elsewhere. The Pentagon has recently been admitting that yes, those things we called flying saucers back in the day are actually real, even though we don’t know what they are. Apparently. Buried amongst all the bigger headlines recently has been quiet news of materials that have been recovered and studied, and admissions in public congressional reports that mysterious objects seen over power stations and navy ships and by trained fighter pilots are displaying capabilities far beyond anything possessed by humans. We are also told that last month there was a private version of this report made available only to a few select congressmen and women containing further information considered a national security issue. Essentially, while we hunkered down through the coronavirus, we transitioned from a world where UFOs are mostly a wild cocktail of swamp gas, human gas and weather balloons to one where the only reasonable explanation for them (yet one still avoided) is that they are piloted by someone from another planet, and we don’t know who they are or what they are doing. The point I’m making here is not just that it seems that human interest in the sky is awakening again after a period of slumber, which may well spill over into an interest in astrology, but also that things previously considered ridiculous and impossible have gained official recognition by one of the three superpowers on the planet. Additionally, once you begin looking into the whole phenomena of UFOs you quickly realise that it’s more than just pretty lights in the sky, even more than intelligent life from elsewhere, since the vast majority of encounters involve things like telepathy, time slips, phasing through walls and levitation, to name just a few things that defy reality as we know it. If there is a revelation of alien intelligence here on Earth it would open up a huge can of worms that would affect our thinking on essentially everything. As people who are renowned for studying the stars and understanding something ultimately weird to most people, astrologers could well find themselves being the go to for masses of people seeking to make sense of such a revelation.

And all this before we even get to…

TECHNOLOGY

I have less to say in this area than the other two, but that’s not because I think they are less important, it’s just because I have less personal and technical knowledge in these areas. They may well be the most revolutionary of the changes I suggest here.

It’s very hard to imagine where technology will be at the end of the century, simply because it is progressing at an exponential rate with the advent of computational power. When we look at what’s available now and what’s on the horizon however we can already see several forms of technology that would be revolutionary for astrology once they are developed and become household.

First of these is quantum computing. This would be a qualitative evolution in computer power, enabling them to make vastly more complex calculations and even to entangle themselves with one another for file sharing purposes. It would effectively remove the handcuffs from their processing by giving them the ability to make involved value judgments about data. These computers would provide invaluable research and statistical data but beyond that they would also be able to make nuanced and contextualized interpretations of charts using vast amounts of data for us, even to learn from their mistakes in those interpretations. You would be able to have detailed conversations with these devices on any number of topics, and they would never stop learning about them. While the computers of today have no capability of providing you an interpretation of the chart as a whole and can only hold and compile files relating to the different parts of it (for example a file on the Sun in Taurus and one on the Moon in Taurus and one on Mercury in Taurus, etc) and cannot integrate them and interpret them as a whole, a quantum computer could. It could in fact become so good at this that it would be able to drive other astrologers out of business – we might even see the return of the old end of pier fortune-telling machines, Zoltar and Madame Zita, only this time they could be uncannily accurate and lifelike.

The point here is that quantum computers are going to get really good at interpreting data, not just gathering and compiling it. They are going to be able to make sense out of it, and before we think that they will never outstrip us I suggest you do some research into what current artificial intelligence is pulling off in the chess arena. The machines are learning the game in a few seconds and beating everything we can throw at them with ridiculous ranking scores. One factor they won’t have going for them is an intuition, and this will give biological interpretations a greater edge in dealing with complex human situations, yet gradually, maybe not so gradually, the quantum machines will learn and eventually may even be able to outmatch us in this regard to.

The power of these computers will undoubtedly not operate alone. It’s possible, even likely, that they will utilise some form of holographic display technology. The flat screen monitor may be the last in its line, giving way to fully three dimensional imagery. Of all the technologies being discussed I think this could be among the most revolutionary because it might bring an end to the old paradigms of astrology being based in two-dimensional charts. If we can display the solar system in a three-dimensional format in real time and are able to manipulate it like we manipulate astrological software today, it could lead to all kinds of new revolutionary theories and practices. Just for starters, it helps us to see parallel aspects visually for the first time, but beyond that it allows us to engage in our astrology on a completely different level. Imagine if we could attach documents including photographs and film or important dates, diary entries or art projects to the chronology of the chart, so that these items were archived with specific planetary positions. Think of how we would be able to bring the stars back into astrology as well, since they will no longer be confined to a position on the ecliptic but would be restored to their true position in the sky. Think of how it would change the way we use things like out of bounds if we could visually see the area as a ring around the Earth projected into space, or how traditional concepts like dignity could be visually displayed rather than placed in a table. There are so many ways in which this technology alone would alter the way we do business. However we can also see the beginnings of augmented reality and virtual reality, and if these develop we can also imagine that we will start to see things like astrological compatibility icons above one another’s heads (please, no), but more meaningfully we might be able to explore our astrology in simulations created by virtual reality machines, in ways that are both artful and educational, even therapeutic. I suspect this would also be the way in which many astrological conferences take place. These technologies also have enormous potential to revolutionize the way we practice astrology.

We also cannot ignore the impact that social media technologies have had on astrology in only the last 20 years, with platforms like Twitter and Instagram currently being very popular with young astrologers. The development of this situation has great potential to change the way astrology is delivered, since these devices deliver instantaneous communication with potentially limitless numbers of people. In the 20th century we worried about watching too much TV, in the 21st century, everyone has their own TV station. What used to be daily horoscopes read on the train to work in your favourite newspaper could easily become you tuning into your favourite astrocaster to receive your free quantum assisted horoscope for the hour. You get the idea. There will be a huge variety of astrology’s on offer. However, the collective power of people to utilize astrology will also come of age, meaning they will be able to organise into astrologically optimised groups with great ease for the first time, if they wish.

Really I have only scratched the surface of what technology could bring about to change astrology here, and of course the future will hold numerous technological breakthroughs we have no inkling of yet, especially with quantum AI driving things, but I think I have highlighted the areas that we can be pretty sure of playing a role in our future, though, and I think they alone make the point that radical shifts are coming. There is one thing left though, but it blossoms into a huge area that I decided to treat all by itself, and this is the area of the human condition given that it is likely technological advances will occur which allow us to settle elsewhere in space, possibly even beyond our solar system.

THE HUMAN CONDITION

By this I mean what it means to be a human in the 21st-century or at the end of it, and beyond. Assuming that we do survive, which means that we start doing the right thing with the planet that we live on now, it seems that this will be the century in which we finally settle off world. This is the area I want to focus on in this section, but before I do feel I should mention some other things.

Firstly, the advances in genetics which may eventually lead to human cloning and the overall advances in treating the genetics involved in things like cancer and Alzheimer’s as well as other conditions like diabetes, as well as the potential (likelihood) of parents being able to tweak genetic material (first to have either boys or girls, and then other traits) raises some philosophical and practical questions for astrology. In addition cybernetic advances will result in the replacement of limbs or other body parts with technology and nano-particles may become involved in health treatments. It’s worth pausing to consider what we know about Mercury retrograde at this point, and also more seriously its appropriate for us to begin grappling with how much of astrology is biologically connected to our flesh. If it is something inborn in us, what does it mean if we replace the parts we are born with, and not just the small parts like teeth and hair, but the whole kit? The modern day question of trans-gender rights is something of a staging ground for these debates. What if we discover reverse aging or life extending technologies, prolonging lifetimes to the point where people can experience a Neptune or even Pluto return? What would that do to human consciousness, being able to see Pluto size bites of history in one sitting? To put that in some relatable context, imagine your natural life span is not 3 Saturn returns, but 9 – think you have the endurance for that? And what if all this is only for the very rich? Is that going to be reflected in peoples natal charts, and if so, how? While it seems unlikely to get that far this century, you never know, and the path is already materializing before us.

Aside from questions like these about the beginning and end of life there are many others that could be raised by the trans-humanist agenda. One is the possibility that we may be able to genetically modify or create people suitable for inhabiting other worlds. Even if we don’t go this route, plans are afoot to set up a base on the Moon (a joint Russia/China mission is not the only one) and Mars (plenty of people other than Elon Musk trying to get there too). This is the real question I’ve been thinking about in this area – how will astrology meet the challenge of people migrating to other worlds, and possibly even being born there? What about people born in orbit around planets in space, where there is no horizon? Even though many planets are completely inhospitable to humanity as it currently stands, those planets frequently have moons which are habitable and as I have just said human beings can build structures in orbit around these worlds, regardless of whether they can set foot on them safely. Terraforming is also a possibility.

In the early 1990s I was wondering for a brief time what the astrological meaning of the moons of other planets might be, but from an astrological point of view there is nothing to work with because these moons, no matter how far away they are from their parent planet, will always occupy the same degree of the zodiac and therefore have all of the same attributes and significations of their parent planet. They are literally conjunct the parent planet for eternity, and so anything we can say about them is only as an extension of their parent planets qualities. For example the two moons of Mars, Deimos and Phobos, signify challenging emotional states (Moon) connected to Mars – fear and dread or panic. However now the question of being able to live on some of these moons or on some of these planets is actually feasible it is time I feel for astrology to start figuring out what that would mean, and so it is time to look at the planetary moons again.

As of now, July 2021, there are over 200 significant moons in our solar system, most in orbit around Jupiter and Saturn:

• Earth – 1 Moon, with plenty of water.
• Mercury – no moons, unless they are extremely small.
• Venus – no moons, unless they are extremely small.
• Mars – 2 moons, Deimos (dread), Phobos (fear) from attendants of Ares. With water.
• Jupiter – 79 moons, 57 named. Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa are planet sized (Europa is bit smaller than Earths moon, Io the same size, Ganymede much larger). Named after lovers of Zeus. Jovian system. Moons have water.
• Saturn – 83 moons, 53 named. 7 large moons, Titan much bigger, 24 are named after Titans, others have Inuit, Gallic or Norse names. 150 moonlets and many more undetected within the ring system. Moons have water.
• Uranus – 27 moons, 5 major moons all smaller than ours are Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania (largest) and Oberon, names are from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Moons may have water.
• Neptune – 14 moons, Triton by far largest, just bit smaller than our moon, named after Greek water deities and heads of the undines. Moons may have water.
• Pluto – 5 moons, Charon is largest, more than half as large as Pluto, forms a a binary system with it, moons are named after figures and elements of the Greek Underworld. Moons may have water.

Currently there are 9 of these moons spread across 4 planets in our solar system which might be able to support human habitats (i.e. they have the potential for water and good atmospheric conditions):

• Around Jupiter there is Europa, Callisto, Ganymede and Io. Europa is thought to have a subsurface ocean maintained by geologic activity, tidal heating, and irradiation and may have more water and oxygen than Earth and an oxygen exosphere. Callisto is thought to have a subsurface ocean heated by tidal forces. Ganymede is thought to have a magnetic field, with ice and subterranean oceans stacked up in several layers, with salty water as a second layer on top of a rocky iron core. Io, due to its proximity to Jupiter, is subject to intense tidal heating which makes it the most volcanically active object in the Solar System, so the outgassing generates a trace atmosphere.
• At Saturn there are Enceladus, Titan and Dione. The first is thought to have a subsurface liquid water ocean due to tidal heating or geothermal activity as well as free molecular hydrogen, providing another potential energy source for life, while Titans atmosphere is considered similar to that of the early Earth although somewhat thicker. The surface is characterized by hydrocarbon lakes, ice volcanos (called cryovolcanos), and methane rain and snow. Like Earth, Titan is shielded from the solar wind by a magnetosphere, in this case Jupiters, for most of its orbit, but the interaction with the moon’s atmosphere remains sufficient to facilitate the creation of complex organic molecules so it has a remote possibility of an exotic methane-based biochemistry. Dione data gathered in 2016 suggests an internal water ocean under 100 kilometres of crust, possibly suitable for microbial life.
• Triton of Neptune has a high orbital inclination with respect to Neptune’s equator which drives significant tidal heating and suggests a layer of liquid water or a subsurface ocean.
• Charon of Pluto has a possible internal ocean of water and ammonia, based on suspected cryovolcanic activity.

Chances are that we will land on one or more of these this century. I don’t know about the physiological possibility of giving birth on any of the moons, planets or in space, but even on Earth’s Moon I think the difference in gravity would, to name one thing, have severe effects on bone development that would preclude anyone born there setting foot on Earth. However, I am making a lot of assumptions this month so let’s carry on and assume that it becomes possible or is possible. This is a big bag of questions. It may be easier to begin by answering some questions about what won’t change – because all of the planets in the solar system (with the exception of Pluto and the extreme orbiting bodies beyond it) orbit the Sun on a relatively flat disc relative to one another, and because they all orbit the same star, the basic constellations in the sky will not change. But the tropical zodiac signs will be gone. They depend upon the seasons, not the stars. The tropical zodiac will have to be redrawn each time because the seasons on the various moons and planets in the solar system will be different to those on Earth. In many cases it will be completely impossible to transport the old way of creating a chart onto the new world. On top of this, we will have to come up with an interpretation for what the planet Earth and its aspects means as well as having to do without one of the traditional planets – on Mars, I challenge you to find Mars in the sky. In space, nobody will hear the astrologers scream as they have no rising planets, no houses, no signs, and crazy aspects like Mercury opposite Venus to deal with (impossible on Earth). On a spaceship you are basically dealing with a moving planet Earth as far as astrology goes, an Earth that can be present anywhere in the solar system at any time. Good luck with figuring that out, future astrologers!

And this is just talking about intra-solar migration, what about extra-solar migration to other star systems, possibly even other galaxies? Anyone thinking of doing astrology under these conditions would have to invent the entire system from scratch based on local astronomy. Certain principles might make it through – assuming they work there in practice – but all bets would be off as to what it would look like. No doubt the area of sky containing the Earth (if any) would hold great significance for those people, one way or another, and so it may begin to unfold there from that root, but it would form out of their experiences and history, their culture, their legends and stories, their currency and flavor of significance, and it would be shaped by the cyclical patterns of objects in their skies.

This brings up a final point relevant to astrology, namely that the system is one of universal forces or levels of consciousness expressing themselves in symbols which speak to the collective mind of the culture that looks up at the sky. This means that even the names that we have given to these forces are names that Earth-based humans have given them. For example, Jupiter is the name we have given to symbolize the level of consciousness that is symbolically expressed in our solar system by the planet Jupiter. This level of consciousness is a universal force that is present throughout all physical space and is only locally symbolized for us by Jupiter. In another solar system a different planet may be present that symbolizes the same universal force but it will be given a different name. In the same way, the moons of a planet will serve a similar function to our Moon, they will symbolize the level of consciousness that our Moon symbolises – that ALL moons symbolise, but differently. Thus, a person born on Mars will have two natal moons (and they may well have different names for those moons, not Deimos and Phobos, and that is hugely significant, as I explain below), both symbolizing their connection to the universal Moon sphere. This would effectively make them a different species at the astrological level. But what happens when the Martian comes to Earth, or vice versa, or goes to live in the rings of Jupiter? These are new questions with new complications for astrology.

It goes deeper. Since our entire system of astrology is an Earthling based one using Earth-based human names and symbols, it means that people living on other worlds will experience different symbols in the way that the same universal forces manifest. For example, on Earth we experience the universal force or level of consciousness associated with Jupiter through the symbolism of lightning, storms, eagles, a masculine patriarchal figure, horses (also winged horses) and centaurs (via Sagittarius) and all kinds of aquatic beasts (through Pisces), also with the oak tree, etc. All of the Jupiter spirits we interact with follow this same pattern, taking their forms from our consciousness – it must be this way because they must symbolize something universal for us, which means they have to personalize it in some way that we can personally relate to. The Elementals and other spirit beings of another planet will look very different and behave differently, but they will still be expressions of the universal Elements or whatever universal level of consciousness they express. So in another solar system the function represented by Jupiter could be symbolised by a different planet with a different name and different myths and will probably have extraterrestrial animals attached to it through a completely different zodiac. There might even be different numbers of zodiac signs or houses, missing planets in the system relative to ours or extra planets for which we have no equivalent, and thus symbols for things which have no Earthly equivalent. I might be a Scorpio born on Earth, you might be a Jaganum born on Sartoria and have a chart with 4 individual Moons. What happens in our synastry when we meet and get married? Wish us luck!

What this forces upon astrology and astrologers is a deeper consideration of what we are doing and how we are giving symbolic shapes and forms to things which have a universal meaning, so that astrology is truly a cosmic language we are speaking and inventing. Future astrologers will have to become aware that the factors we deal with in astrology are only symbolic ones and that we must learn therefore to look beyond the symbols for the deeper universal essence and meaning that is at their core. Only by doing this we will be able to unify the various systems that would develop as humanity spreads across the stars.

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That’s it for this month, thank you for reading and let me know in the comments you have any thoughts about all of this, I found it fascinating to think about all of these things and had many more thoughts but have condensed them down to these ones as I feel they are the most interesting and pertinent. See you next month!