Thanks for your thoughtful post, Oddity. Just some alternative perspectives to follow.
The thing is, there's no need to work the outer planets into classical astrology. They don't add anything to it. And I don't say that to knock you or your beliefs.
I don't think most mods have a problem with traditional astrologers not using the modern outers. Unfortunately we've seen a couple of trads on the Pluto threads who don't want anyone to use them-- or modern astrology.
If you look at the history of astrology, and how the outers were assigned meaning, you'll see that anything that pertains to the real world was simply lifted from the rulerships of the classical planets and tacked onto the outers.
This is partly correct. Modern inventions that didn't exist during traditional astrology's era oftentimes got assigned to modern outers. Plutonium and atomic bombs, to Pluto. Aircraft, electricity, various electrical technologies, and psychology, to Uranus. Undiagnosed illnesses and some that weren't discovered before the 20th century, and some modern drugs (like analgesics) pertain to Neptune. Interestingly, while Mercury is the traditional ruler of astrology, Uranus is the modern ruler of (presumably modern) astrology.
A reading of Rex E. Bills,
The Rulership Book, further reveals some inconsistency in which traditional planets rule which phenomena; plus some duplication, and some phenomena for which he couldn't locate a traditional ruler. Litigation, for example, could relate to either Jupiter, the 9th, Libra, or the 7th house. None of these is a modern planet, but it kind of makes a difference!
The rest came from theosophy, which I find a dicey belief system, at best, and horribly racist. It's not something I can ascribe to, especially how they conned their own members into believing things. Basically, if you're 'spiritually advanced' you can feel the 'spiritual vibrations' of the outer planets, and if not - you can't. As far as I can tell, 'spiritually advanced' in the theosophical lexicon was/is synonymous with 'upper middle class white Englishman'.
Even I learnt that when I first started studying astrology. Not the white English guys bit, but that spiritual advancement meant you felt the outer planets. I, meanwhile, was destined to reincarnate as plankton.
Would it surprise you to learn that many modern astrologers don't like this stuff, either, and that it does not inform our practice? There is a branch of modern astrology called
esoteric astrology, with some subsets being
evolutionary, karmic, and
past-lives astrology. I find a lot of it to be dubious, but then most modern astrologers' approaches are more
pragmatic.
For example, if a 40-year old woman wonders why she's never had a long-lasting relationship and is still single, she's not asking for a spiritual improvement doctrine. Modern astrologers can get to work on her horoscope, however, in very pragmatic ways.
So far as historical origins go, what initially turned me off from traditional astrology was Ptolemy's
Tetrabiblos. It used to be one of just a couple of traditional astrology texts available in English. With natal Mars opposite Saturn, I am supposedly some sort of depraved temple robber. Have you read what Vettius Valens wrote about Capricorn?
I've since read up on traditional astrology, but it took a while to get over their sardonic view of human nature with charts in their unhappy pile.
But what that really did was to take the onus of being correct off the astrologer. If the client didn't feel what they were supposed to feel it wasn't that the astrologer was reading the chart wrongly, it was that the client simply wasn't advanced enough to respond to it.
I don't like this type of modern astrology, either. But it is only a small portion of modern astrology, so far as I can determine. If you read charts on this or the Astrodienst forum, I think you'll get a better feel for modern astrology, with the caveat that beginners can make erroneous interpretations more often than the experts.
And for all that people talk about rigourous research going into what the outer planets mean it's surprising that their answers are so remarkably similar to all that channelled material from the theosophists. Blavatsky's friend Franz used to stand on a chair behind a curtain at theosophical society meetings and drop letters (coming directly from astral spirits, of course) down on her so that she could communicate their (her own) wisdom to the flock.
OK, but I think you're committing a big fallacy of over-generalization. Again, if you look at Rex E. Bills,
The Rulership Book, I think you'll get a better sense of how sane, down-to-earth mods use modern outers. A lot of modern astrology dropped the old theosophical material once it got into helping people with their financial problems, vs. a bizarre quest for enlightenment.
I don't think you'd care for my letting the most dire and gloomy character delineations in traditional astrology texts stand in for the whole of traditional astrology today. Their only way around it is by claiming that the horrible delineations in Valens was intended to be suggestive, not diagnostic-- but this is quite a leap. Valens never qualifies his own pronouncements.
It's not the first time astrologers have done that. In the early 1500s, we had the honour of being the first professional group to produce - pulp fiction! There was a stellium in Pisces and street astrologers were flogging their 'build your ark now!' pamphlets. To be fair though, the professionals stayed out of it.
Sorry, but a bunch of the pros
were street astrologers and really bad "office" astrologers. You are familiar with the Isaac Bickerstaff caper. See also Frederick Cramer's book on
Astrology in Roman Law and Politics. The literary sources that have come down to us were probably more the exception than the rule. We know this because of the criticisms they write about so many astrologers of their day.
The thing about the theosophists is that they were the professionals of the time. And I don't trust them as a source, nor did I find the outer planets to be useful at all in divination.
I don't trust Alice Bailey, either. When I first read Dane Rudhyar, I thought he was hot stuff. Then he began to seem like cotton candy for the soul. I wonder what you make of Alan Leo? Despite his theosophical roots, he wrote some pragmatic cookbooks on natal chart delineation. I do like the early books by Robert Hand and Steven Forrest, even though Hand subsequently went trad; and Forrest, evolutionary. Their early books still hold up.
That doesn't mean you can't be a good astrologer if you use them, though, because I've met a lot of folks who are good astrologers who use the outers.
Right-- like Olivia Barclay.
And here's a thing. We're a pretty small group, astrologers, and you'd think with the way we're ridiculed in general, we'd find more in common than not.
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I agree. unfortunately, John Frawley's opening salvo was really unproductive. Then today, we have trads who no longer come from a modern astrology background, haven't read up on it or practiced it, yet feel qualified to critique what they don't know.