POSTHUMANIST FEMINIST ASTROLOGY
“
The incommensurable thought project of inhumanity is the active self-attunement to life as varied and unsorted correspondences, collisions, intermeshings, and accords between people and nonhuman objects, things, formations, and clusterings. – José Esteban Muñoz
Post-humanist Feminist Astrology is a zine created by Kasey Reinbold for UCSB course FEMST185NH, taught by Chloe Diamond-Lenow.
What is astrology? Across cultures and across time, astrology has emerged as a study of the effects that the celestial bodies (the sun, moon, planets, etc.) have on the Earth and its inhabitants. In ancient times, astrology was used to track natural phenomena such as weather, seasons, and harvests, whereas modern astrologers have interpreted the planets movements in order to predict events and outcomes such as presidential elections or romantic partnerships. In the 1960s, astrologer Dane Rudhyar built upon the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and ignited the emergence of humanistic astrology.
How does humanistic astrology work? There are essentially four parts of astrology: planets (including luminaries, asteroids, etc.) , signs, houses, and aspects. Humanistic astrology uses these tools to understand the human psyche. Jung recognized the parallels between his concept of archetypes and the twelve signs of the zodiac. All of these things
are represented in the natal chart -- basically a map of where all of the planets were in relation to the Earth and each other at the exact moment of one’s birth. Planets represent the basic urges of human nature. For example, the Sun represents one’s vitality, one’s core sense of self, while the Moon represents one’s emotional nature, etc. The energies of each planet are filtered through the sign and house that the planet occupies, as well as the aspects it makes with other planets. The signs can be described as cosmic styles. The sky is divided up into 12 signs, and each is named after its respective constellation. Depending on where a certain planet was at the time of one’s birth, its energy will be expressed through the style of the sign it is in. For example, if one’s natal Moon is in Leo, they will have a flamboyant and creative (Leo) emotional nature (Moon). Houses represent different areas of human life. For example, the second house represents finances/luxury/material goods, and the eleventh house represents friends/collective projects/ support, etc. Houses are also a way of dividing the sky into 12 sections, however there are different systems for determining house division – a common point of difference among astrologers. Each house has a sign, depending on which sign the cusp of the house falls in. When planets are in houses, the energies of that planet are focused onto the subject matter of the house. For example, when the Moon is in the 11th house, one’s emotional wellbeing will be very contingent on close friendships and group dynamics. Aspects are the angles formed between two planets. The five major aspects (though there are more) are conjunction (two planets are aligned), opposition (180 degrees apart), trine (120 degrees apart), square (90 degrees apart), and sextile (60 degrees apart). All of these measurements include ± 5 to 10 degrees. When two planets aspect one another, their energies interact and are affected based on the angle of the aspect. For example, when one’s Moon and Mercury are conjunct, those planetary energies work together, and the person may find that it is easier to express (Mercury) their emotions (Moon).
Moving past humanistic astrology The main issue I take with humanistic approaches to astrology is not that the connection between the planets and the human psyche is false, but that these planetary energies are interpreted in a detrimentally narrow and anthropocentric way; the meanings of these varied energies lose their vastness when translated into terms of the human experience. One clear example is the way in which planets and signs are needlessly categorized as “masculine” or “feminine,” or when astrologers assert that sign characteristics manifest differently in men and women. “A new day dawns, bright and early, but not nearly early enough for the Aries man. He’s been up hours before the dawn, working out a fresh approach with his personal trainer at the gym, beginning a new project at the office, or starting a novel initiative with the local neighborhood watch.” -Cafe Astrology “Eager and enthusiastic, she is the alpha female of the pack, always at the front of the queue and kick-starting everything from projects to dinner dates. A fearless and natural leader, an Aries woman is charismatic, energetic, and dynamic. She looks forward to new challenges and novel situations, and is up at the crack of dawn each day, raring to go.” -Cafe Astrology
The quotes above are an obvious demonstration of pointless gender-specific astrology. The astrologer has simply taken the traits of Aries (driven, energetic, aggressive) and filtered them through human ideas of socially-constructed gender: Aries men tackle projects at the office, Aries women kick-start dinner dates. Gender was invented by humans. The planets have no stake in it. The Moon and the Fourth House are often said to represent the mother, while Saturn and the Tenth House represent the father, however some astrologers (including myself) have substituted “dominant parent” for father, and “sub-dominant parent” for mother; in many cases, the mother may be the dominant parent. This is one way to reimagine astrology outside the confines of gender, however, concepts like “parents” or “romance” or “finance” have little significance outside the human experience. What, for example, would it mean for a dog to have Saturn
square Sun in its chart? It is unlikely that this dog would have trouble with its father (or dominant parent), but perhaps with its owner or with obedience in general. Or, what would that mean in a chart for an event, such as the inception of a romantic partnership, or a job offer? Humanistic astrology would do well to incorporate José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of brownness, “an expansive category that stretches outside the confines of any one group formation and, furthermore, outside the limits of the human and the organic”.
Admittedly, I am coming from a place of little knowledge outside of my studies of Western astrology. There are countless ways of interpreting the stars, just as there are countless ways of knowing. Just as Donna Haraway calls for the abandonment of the project of objectivity, I too reject the idea that there would be any benefit to synthesizing the many approaches to astrology into one (or even a few) common practice. All we as astrologers can hope to do is engage critically with each different practice in order to create our own knowledge. I believe that learning to think outside the categories of human/inhuman can help us achieve that.
SOURCES
José Esteban Muñoz “The Sense of Brownness” Glenn Perry “The Birth of Psychological Astrology” http://www.aaperry.com/index. asp?pgid=20 Cafe Astrology “The Aries Man” http://www. cafeastrology.com/articles/ariesmanlove.html Cafe Astrology “The Aries Woman” http://www. cafeastrology.com/articles/arieswomanlove. html Donna Haraway “Situated Knowledges: The Science in Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”