Introduction to Natal Astrology
- Written by Philip Graves; expanded 13-16 Jan 2004
What is natal astrology?
In natal or genethliacal astrology, we research and acknowledge universally found correspondences between the variable personal characteristics of individuals born on earth, on the one hand, and particular placements and configurations of the variable astronomical conditions prevailing on earth at the times when these individuals are born, on the other. We call such variable conditions astrological factors because it is clear from the consistently observed patterns of correspondence between their placements at the instant of our birth and our natures throughout life that they are astronomical causal agents, by the logic of whose placements we are all affected and influenced! 'Natal' simply means 'at birth'; and a diagrammatic representation of all the relevant astronomical conditions at birth is called a natal figure, nativity, natal chart or birth chart. Those conditions in the figure that relate specifically to the axial rotation of the Earth about its equator are collectively known as the horoscope.
Our personal qualities that are seen to be affected by this astronomical logic have been found to include thinking, unconscious psychology, emotions, patterns of interaction and communication with other human beings, perception and psychic receptivity, interests and aptitudes, tastes and preferences, career potential, ambition and drive, general behavior, and even physiology and health. All of these types of personal qualities vary in their particular features, manners of expression, and general extents, from one individual to another, depending on the astrological factors present at birth. This is not to say that familial genetic heritage and environmental influences throughout life are not also separately and strongly influential - they are, and astrologers do not claim to discount them - but the study of natal astrology opens the consciousness to a vast additional vista of real and definite causes of individual difference, identifying causal relationships that, to the non-astrologer, will always remain veiled.
Because it is not yet scientifically known exactly how or why astronomical conditions at birth affect us so markedly, many astrologers in recent decades have turned meek and cagey under intellectual pressure from the inevitable scientific sceptics who contest the possibility even; indeed, these astrologers have backed down from the more conventional position which accepted and assumed a direct causal mechanism, and yielded to the arguments of the sceptics that it cannot be and is not, handing them the reins of intellectual victory in the process, and taking astrology away from its once respected status as an empirical science into the realms of occult belief.
These astrologers have tried to get round the issue over which they stumbled and withdrew and justify their continuing practice of and belief in astrology by suggesting somewhat more obscure and far-fetched alternative models of astrological correspondence of an 'acausal' nature. They have trapped themselves in fanciful and nebulous propositions that demote the zodiac and planetary influence almost to the status of the imaginary or collective illusion, or a tarot tool, and that are much less rationally plausible than the straight-forwardly mechanistic one from which they timidly withdrew. Typically, while denying that the astronomical conditions are active causal agents of any effects upon us, they pronounce instead that the astronomical conditions merely symbolize the characteristics of individuals born under them, as though they are a synchronistic omen of these characteristics, reflecting the symbolism assigned by the mass consciousness of human beings to the planets and zodiac signs concerned. Liz Greene's view falls pretty closely into this bracket; she is one of a good number of non-mechanistic astrologers of 'symbolist' persuasion who lean on supposedly relevant archetypes from ancient mythology in their attempts to broadly deduce and flesh out the believed symbolic meaning of the planets.
Various suggestions have been made by astrologers of this persuasion as to the true causes of the variable individual characteristics they hold to be only symbolized by the astronomical conditions.
Some, such as the late Betty Lundsted, take the view that the astrological conditions are synchronous symbols at birth presaging the individual's family upbringing and early life history, and their effects on the individual's psychological development in childhood. Many of the astrologers taking a predominantly psychological approach to the understanding of astrological placements hold this type of view. Often they were reared on Freudian or Jungian psychoanalysis, which has imbued them with a strong conviction in the significance of the early family life upon psychological development, perhaps to the regrettable exclusion of their being open to the possibility that the astrological conditions at birth are real causes of individual psychology and potential, fixed in the moment of birth, regardless of the nature of the early environment. This is not to deny the quality of the insights of such astrologers: they are often highly aware of the psychology of people with particular astrological placements only muddled as to its causes.
A rather different school of thought or belief, that still falls generally within the more sceptical camp as regards the material reality of astrological causation, is that of the so-called evolutionary or karmic astrologers, who postulate that the correspondences between the astronomical conditions at birth and human personality indicate the karmic choice or need of reincarnated souls to experience particular tests, trials and conditions of life in their latest incarnations, the idea being that the soul has actively chosen a time to be born when the astronomical symbolism would aptly describe its evolutionary needs for that lifetime.
It could be argued that the aversion by many modern astrologers to astrology's being exposed to the more rigorous forms of mechanistic analysis to which the rest of science is accountable results in the needless intellectual marginalisation of astrology within academic and scientific circles as a non-credible or invalid discipline. It is equally true that with any such empirically based science as astrology, in which the mechanisms of causation are not definitively established although the presence of patterns of correspondence is manifest to any perceptive person, the very uncertainty of cause opens the gates to those of particular faith persuasions to champion the intellectual integration within the discipline of their originally entirely dissociated belief systems such as those of reincarnation and karma. In so doing, they are arbitrarily filling the gaps of uncertainty that rendered the science incomplete, and attracting more often than not a significant following of innocents for whom the leaps of faith required to slavishly adhere to the newly inserted belief systems come disconcertingly easily.
Astrology does not need any such obscure and faith-necessitating belief system to account for its functioning, and it is rather more credible to suppose that those who have an aesthetic taste for such belief systems have simply been eager to capitalize on the uncertainty regarding how exactly astrology does work, and glad to seize the opportunity to artificially incorporate their faiths into its teachings. These belief systems may be pretty and psychologically appealing to the human mind for whom the prospect of mortality is hard to countenance, and for whom the glimmer of mystery is delightful but are they really anything more than pleasurable delusions which obscure and mystify astrological causality, and fortify the suspicions of those of a more sceptical, rational, evidence-conscious mindset that the whole of astrology is a quasi-religious sham? One thing that can however be said in favor of those who blend such theories as reincarnation with their astrological slants, disregarding the already sufficiently stated causes for intellectual dissatisfaction, is that their writing is often very artistically admirable and rich in imagery, and works on a therapeutic, meditative, almost subliminal level, even if a literal reading is entirely inappropriate. Besides, as applies to the writings of the psychological astrologers who treat astrology as being 'purely symbolic', if you are prepared to overlook their erronneously complex and obscure explanations, their actual insights into the effects of the astrological placements under discussion are often very sharp and revealing.
But to conclude, one of the most widely agreed intellectual principles is that, where the cause of something is not certain, the simplest possible should be assumed the most likely. It is on that basis that the contention that the astronomical conditions at birth cause, rather than somehow symbolizing, the corresponding characteristics of the people born under them, seems most reasonable. So for the purpose of these pages at least, the conditions will be referred to as factors and not as symbols.
This article taken from
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01.10.2006.