So appreciate this. To hold lightly with the explicit understanding that the future that can be named is not the true future. The microbiome in my gut has influence on my bodily constitution, yet those beings could never predict all that I might do or become. I tend to see humans in this light a lot these days
A former student of mine (we're both Interfaith ministers and she was my student in seminary) has been an astrologer for about forty years. She has reflected (in Facebook posts) on some of these patterns and, as she does so, keeps posing the same question to her readers: "What are you willing to live and die for?" A disturbing question, but I get it, and I am perceiving a similar way of thinking in your reflections.
The other thing that my former seminarian does with her astrology, relating to world developments, is to examine the birth charts of world leaders and influencers, in relation to current planetary aspects. Not to attempt exact predictions (which, as you accurately assert, is impossible) but to alert us to trends.
I find her reflections, and yours in this vein, interesting and a bit scary. These are scary times.
Thank you so very much for this post…What extraordinary thinking ..so broad and deep…opens so much space for imagination. I would love to hear a bit more about the phrase “cultivated spiritual persona”. Perhaps you’ve written about it before but I’ve missed it. Again, thank you for all of your work.
I'm reminded for the second time today how lucky I feel to have grown up in a religious community that entitled its belief documents "Faith & Practice." Not because Quakers always successfully practice their faith in real time, but because, at a foundational level, they're committed to a religious paradigm in which your statements of faith are only valuable to the extent that you continually strive to live into them. Otherwise, they're just words.
It makes this moment less intimidating, in some ways. I read your words and think, "Yep. Same as it ever was. Let's go!"
Thank you! Virgo Sun sign here. I am ready to accept all the karmic blessings as I align to my truest Higher Self. I am fearlessly riding the Fire Horse! Love from Minnesota, Rob! Thank you!
This post, Rob, is one of the most powerful I’ve read in recent years. As a Pisces w/ Gemini rising I already feel the shaking turmoil of Uranus in Gemini—especially as it now begins conjuncting my 4* Ascendant. But your section of Neptune/Saturn in Aries is so amazingly spot on! No more spectators or speculators; we’re all being drafted into the ranks on Planet Earth 🌎.
In the last week I notice past dreams & plans that once felt important falling away with ease and a shrug. I’ve heard other cultural sensitives speak of this, too.
Opening the way for "what we dare to enact in the face of fear, failure, and futility.”
What struck me reading this is how cleanly you separated retrodiction from prediction without making it feel like a consolation prize. Tarnas's work IS that good, and naming that distinction matters.
The reason world-mundane astrology resists prediction isn't just complexity, I think. At the individual level, the chart works as a scaffold against which one biography unfolds - one body, one timeline, one container. At world scale there's no analogous container. There's a swarm of overlapping charts: nations, ideologies, technologies, even individual leaders, each with its own ingress moment. So predicting the World Soul isn't really a harder version of individual work, it's a categorically different problem. You're trying to read a system that doesn't have one center.
Which is part of why the honest astrologers stay close to the personal scale, and the dishonest ones invent precision to fill the void.
OMG YOU ARE A WONDER. AN OLD OAK. YOUR LINKTREE IS A TESTAMENT TO YOUR WONDERFULNESS. THANK YOU ROB FOR BEING AND ALL YOUR CARING AND SHARING AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE AND THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. I LOVE YOU. CANCER SUN HERE. THIS READING WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED TO HEAR FOR THE UPTEENTH TIME TO GET MY BUTT INTO GEAR. RUMMMMM RUMMM. THANK YOU.
I was recently looking at an old book, Edgar Cayce’s “there is a river,” and was thinking about the “universal consciousness.” Having dreamed future places in my serial here, Paradise Gardens and real places-people. Cayce’s clairvoyance in healing knowledge-disgnosis and treatment, he also attributed to this factor. And read about it in religious texts from India. I think astrology relates to this consciousness. And the awakening of consciousness in these times. Your thought?
So appreciate this. To hold lightly with the explicit understanding that the future that can be named is not the true future. The microbiome in my gut has influence on my bodily constitution, yet those beings could never predict all that I might do or become. I tend to see humans in this light a lot these days
Smiling: what if we humans are the microbiome in a larger being’s gut?
Exactly! Or some other collective cosmic organ that we can't even imagine
A former student of mine (we're both Interfaith ministers and she was my student in seminary) has been an astrologer for about forty years. She has reflected (in Facebook posts) on some of these patterns and, as she does so, keeps posing the same question to her readers: "What are you willing to live and die for?" A disturbing question, but I get it, and I am perceiving a similar way of thinking in your reflections.
The other thing that my former seminarian does with her astrology, relating to world developments, is to examine the birth charts of world leaders and influencers, in relation to current planetary aspects. Not to attempt exact predictions (which, as you accurately assert, is impossible) but to alert us to trends.
I find her reflections, and yours in this vein, interesting and a bit scary. These are scary times.
Thank you so very much for this post…What extraordinary thinking ..so broad and deep…opens so much space for imagination. I would love to hear a bit more about the phrase “cultivated spiritual persona”. Perhaps you’ve written about it before but I’ve missed it. Again, thank you for all of your work.
Something woke me up at 4AM this morning. Apparently, that was you and this post. ✨THANK YOU, POET✨
I'm reminded for the second time today how lucky I feel to have grown up in a religious community that entitled its belief documents "Faith & Practice." Not because Quakers always successfully practice their faith in real time, but because, at a foundational level, they're committed to a religious paradigm in which your statements of faith are only valuable to the extent that you continually strive to live into them. Otherwise, they're just words.
It makes this moment less intimidating, in some ways. I read your words and think, "Yep. Same as it ever was. Let's go!"
End of Spectator Astrology:
Drifters Days Past Now
What To Leave In And Leave Out
Deadlines Commitments
Light warriors, we ride each dawn!
Thank you! Virgo Sun sign here. I am ready to accept all the karmic blessings as I align to my truest Higher Self. I am fearlessly riding the Fire Horse! Love from Minnesota, Rob! Thank you!
This post, Rob, is one of the most powerful I’ve read in recent years. As a Pisces w/ Gemini rising I already feel the shaking turmoil of Uranus in Gemini—especially as it now begins conjuncting my 4* Ascendant. But your section of Neptune/Saturn in Aries is so amazingly spot on! No more spectators or speculators; we’re all being drafted into the ranks on Planet Earth 🌎.
In the last week I notice past dreams & plans that once felt important falling away with ease and a shrug. I’ve heard other cultural sensitives speak of this, too.
Opening the way for "what we dare to enact in the face of fear, failure, and futility.”
What struck me reading this is how cleanly you separated retrodiction from prediction without making it feel like a consolation prize. Tarnas's work IS that good, and naming that distinction matters.
The reason world-mundane astrology resists prediction isn't just complexity, I think. At the individual level, the chart works as a scaffold against which one biography unfolds - one body, one timeline, one container. At world scale there's no analogous container. There's a swarm of overlapping charts: nations, ideologies, technologies, even individual leaders, each with its own ingress moment. So predicting the World Soul isn't really a harder version of individual work, it's a categorically different problem. You're trying to read a system that doesn't have one center.
Which is part of why the honest astrologers stay close to the personal scale, and the dishonest ones invent precision to fill the void.
My birthday is December 23. I feel more like a Sagittarius this week and will take that message to heed.
Dang, Rob. Exactly what I needed to read just this moment.
Off to retreat away from the throng of insanity.
So very grateful to you
OMG YOU ARE A WONDER. AN OLD OAK. YOUR LINKTREE IS A TESTAMENT TO YOUR WONDERFULNESS. THANK YOU ROB FOR BEING AND ALL YOUR CARING AND SHARING AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE AND THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. I LOVE YOU. CANCER SUN HERE. THIS READING WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED TO HEAR FOR THE UPTEENTH TIME TO GET MY BUTT INTO GEAR. RUMMMMM RUMMM. THANK YOU.
I was recently looking at an old book, Edgar Cayce’s “there is a river,” and was thinking about the “universal consciousness.” Having dreamed future places in my serial here, Paradise Gardens and real places-people. Cayce’s clairvoyance in healing knowledge-disgnosis and treatment, he also attributed to this factor. And read about it in religious texts from India. I think astrology relates to this consciousness. And the awakening of consciousness in these times. Your thought?