Damian Sharp - Learning Astrology: An Astrology Book for Beginners

First published in 2005 by

RED WHEEL/WEISER, LLC

York Beach, ME

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2005 Damian Sharp

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.

Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sharp, Damian.

Learning astrology : an astrology book for beginners / Damian Sharp.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57863-298-6

1. Astrology. 2. Horoscopes. I. Title.

BF1708.1.S52 2005

133.5dc22 2005018474

Typeset in Adobe Caslon by Kathryn Sky-Peck

Printed in Canada

FR

12 11 10 09 08 07 06

8 7 6 5 4 3 2

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencePermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials z39.48-1992 (R1997).

For Yumika, Venus in Furs,

alluring and enigmatic

like moonlight on a placid lake.

DS

CHAPTER 1

A strology is both a science and an art. It is a symbolic representation of all of the elementsreligious, spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical, invisible and visiblethat exist in the universe and come together in diverse combinations that account for individual human beings and the forces that shape and act upon them. We are microcosms manifesting the macrocosm, an ancient concept set forth in the Bible as Man made in the image of God. Astrological interpretation relies heavily on an informed intuition and a familiarity, gained from practice and time, with the complex and multilayered meanings underlying its seemingly simple symbology. Interpreting a horoscope is partly science, partly intuitive discipline, and ultimately a synthesis of both. The particular reading will reflect the personality and outlook of the astrologer in much the same way as a psychologist's analysis is also colored by his or her personal views.

Astrology tells us that as individuals we are peculiar and particular, while at the same time a direct manifestation of a cosmic whole to which we are inexorably linked. It reminds us that we are bound to the karmic wheel, that we come into the world with special gifts as well as certain burdens and travails. On the surface it can appear to tell us that our fortunes and our personalities are preordained, that our fates are completely in the hands of the gods. But a man's character is his fate, the Greek philosopher Heracleitus tells us, and in the end there is no disguising or excusing who we are.

Correctly understood and applied, a horoscope is a precise instrument based on real forces, events, and relationships occurring in nature. It is, most importantly, a diagram of an individual's purpose in life and a symbolic language that describes how different factorssigns, planets, and housesare combined to produce a meaningful whole. Each horoscope is a complex combination of factors, a graphic depiction of a particular determining and synchronistic moment in time and space when the bodies of the solar system form a unique pattern. The art of astrological analysis lies in intuitively synthesizing all the relationships in the horoscope to create a complete and integrated picture or profile.

In reading any horoscope, it is important to remember that the energies symbolized by the planets and signs represent birth potentials that the individual may or may not choose to actualize in the manner described. Age, sex, socioeconomic conditions, education, environment, spiritual development, and many other factors contribute to the ways in which we express our natal energies.

Astrology does not preclude personal willpower, selfdetermination, and dynamic action upon those very forces that seem to have cosmically preordained who we are and what we are to become. What it presents us with are the lessons we need to learn within this particular turn of the Great Wheel, along with our innate potential, in order to become and ultimately be. How well we learn these lessons and gain from them is up to us as individuals. We are all, in a sense, Odysseus using all of his courage, guile, strength, and wits to defy Poseidon (the god of the sea), of whom he'd made an enemy, in order to simply get home. How well the lessons are learned is not the responsibility of the teacher, who simply presents them for what they are and moves on. It relies solely on the intelligence, receptivity, perception, and tenacity of the pupil.

You may find it useful to obtain a horoscope for your time and place of birth so you can learn the principles presented in this book by studying your own natal, or birth, chart. Constructing an individual horoscope is a fairly complex process, involving precise calculations, the exact time, date, and place of birth, latitude and longitude, an ephemeris, a table of the houses, a list of time changes, and other tools. In this day and age, however, there are many Internet sites and computer software programs for casting astrological charts. Several books on casting techniques are also available, among them Alan Leo's Casting the Horoscope and Margaret Hone's Modern Textbook of Astrology. The American Federation of Astrologers (AFA) also puts out an excellent series of math handbooks.

In our earliest art, that of the Upper Paleolithic, between 32,000 to 12,000 years ago, depictions of the heavens, of the Sun, Moon, and the stars, are totally absent. Our remote Cro- Magnon ancestors were not stargazers beyond an awareness of the moon and its phases, depicted, perhaps, in bas-relief cave carvings of women holding bison horns with thirteen incisions and as marks on antlers and bones found on the cave floors. These people were basically earthbound in their preoccupations, concerned with their immediate and animistic world. For them, magic and power resided not in the sky above, but in the earth, in deep caves in which these ancient artists chose to render, by the meager light of crude lamps and small fires, remarkably beautiful, sophisticated, and accurately detailed depictions of the fauna that both sustained and threatened their existence: aurochs, bison, horses, ibex, and reindeer; mammoth, rhino, lion, and the cave-dwelling bear. The symbolic meaning beyond their naturalistic representations spoke of the creatures' inherent personalities and attributes, as well as a host of abstract ideas associated with them (like speed, agility, courage, strength, nurturing, fierceness, cunning). Chinese astrology is in part based on this kind of observation. What did these creatures represent to our ancestors, who knew and observed them so intimately? It does seem that the images on the cave walls are not just the beginning of art, but the beginnings of written language, visual symbols drawn from nature conveying meanings beyond their simple and mundane representations.

The deep cave is the realm of the shaman, of the vision quest, of the underworld where nature's mysterious power, the miracle of existence itselfbirth, being, death, and regeneration reside. It was the role of the shaman-artist to penetrate this dark realm of the invisible and make contact with and capture this power, conjuring the animals and their attributes from out of the living rock in which their spirit-essence dwelled and snaring them as though art was the hunter's trap. The creation of these magnificent works of art was usually part of a form of ritualistic magic.