Mythic Astrology Applied: Personal Healing Through the Planets - Softcover

Guttman, Ariel; Johnson, Ken

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9780738704258: Mythic Astrology Applied: Personal Healing Through the Planets

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0738704253 ISBN 13: 9780738704258

Publisher: Llewellyn Publications, 2004

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Work and play with the mythic characters that populate your psyche
The gods and goddesses of the ancient world are still with us today. They act out in our celebrities, in the media, and most of all within ourselves, our dreams, and our own horoscopes. Through the planets in your chart you can fathom the mythic dimensions of your own life. The authors of Mythic Astrology provide a way to do just that in their new book, Mythic Astrology Applied. Learn how to contact, work with, and bring into harmony the planetary archetypes within yourself.
This book might have you saying things like: “Now I know why I married a Vesta but really long for a Venus as my partner,” or “Now I understand my relationship with my mother; she is a Demeter and I’m a Persephone.”

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About the Author:

Ariel Guttman has been involved with the study of astrology since 1974. In 1980 she founded an astrological consulting firm, Astro Originals, through which astrological seminars, personal and business consulting, astrological teaching and lecturing are conducted. For several years she has been involved with asteroid research, and by including those asteroids in her astrological work, has found a growing interest in this, "the feminine" aspects of astrology. She has lectured for numerous astrological organizations and conferences both in the United States and in Europe. Kenneth Johnson holds a degree in Religious Studies from California State University Fullerton. His emphasis was in the study of mythology and this interest is reflected in his writing and his astrological practice. Kenneth discovered astrology while traveling in Europe during the summer of 1973. He studied in Amsterdam and London before returning to the United States and developing a practice which focuses on archetypal themes and personal mythologies. In addition to his astrological interests, Kenneth is also a musical theater librettist and a member of the Dramatists Guild. ~

Part I
Astrology, Psychology, and Myth
Chapter 1
Astrology and the Gods
Anyone who has ever delved into the art of astrology, whether deeply or not, has heard phrases like “Mars in Capricorn” or “Jupiter in the Fourth House.” This might give you the impression that the planets, like Mars and Jupiter, are characters in a drama, and that when we speak of them as being in “Capricorn” or “the Fourth House” or wherever, it is just as if we were to say “Joan is in Pennsylvania” or “Derek is at his brother’s house.”
In fact, this impression is correct. The planets are characters or actors in a
drama, and the drama is you―your life, your consciousness, your spirit. As
part of your life drama, they may choose to occupy a certain sign or a certain house, but it is the planets themselves who are the actors, the personalities.

But who are they, really? All we have to do is consider their names, and the
answer suggests itself very easily: they are the goddesses and gods of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Jupiter, for example, is the planet of abundance, just as Jupiter or Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods, was a “giver of gifts.” Venus is the planet of love, and of course the goddess Venus or Aphrodite was the ancient goddess of love and desire. But this is to state the case in a very basic, even simplistic way.

The goddesses and gods who gave their names to the astrological planets
have a long ancestry―and it doesn’t actually begin in Greece itself. There is a common misconception among casual observers of history that the framework of our Western world was entirely originated by the Greeks. But the Greeks did not invent the planetary deities; the mythic background of astrology came originally from Sumer and Babylon.

During the past century, whole libraries from ancient Sumer and Babylon
have been uncovered. Stacks and stacks of cuneiform tablets have been translated by scholars. Thousands of inscriptions record the omen literature of the era. Esoteric writings, ritual texts, lamentations, medical recipes, dream books, texts to counter witchcraft, lists of auspicious days, and so on fill these ancient tablets.

Anu was the god of heaven.His son Enlil was the god of earth. These were
not separate domains, but instead two parts of the same domain. Earth was
not lesser than heaven. There was an interdependence and complementary
relationship between the two, and the omens or messages could clearly be
seen as coming from one or the other realm. From them and their interplay,
the West has inherited much of the body of its astrological mythology―the
names and details changing but the stories remaining relatively similar.
Though many may speculate that astrology is much older, the first written
proof of its usage dates from the seventh century BCE and was found in King Ashurbanipal’s library in Assyria. Here we find predictions that dealt with matters affecting the entire country and its rulers, such as war and peace, plagues and famines, floods and droughts, etc. The world’s oldest astrology book, the Enuma Anu Enlil, was the chief atrological/astronomical text of the time. Astrological divination was its chief concern. The kings of ancient Babylon required two things from their astrologers. First, it was necessary to predict, with some precision, the occurrence of eclipses. Second, the moment the moon appeared as a crescent sliver each month in the night sky was extremely important, because it was at this moment that the Babylonian calendar month began.1 From the actual observable appearance in the sky of moons,
eclipses, stars, and planets, stories began to unfold. It was not enough simply to observe a crescent moon in Taurus; the stars that the two horns of the moon pointed to were equally important. And if the moon contained a halo, that was another omen.

The planets as we know them today originated as the goddesses and gods
of Sumer and Babylon. Matched with their Greek counterparts and given
Greek and Latin names, they remain with us even today. Many―perhaps
most―of them bore names that have become distant and unfamiliar to us.
There was Anu the supreme sky god, his sons Enlil and Enki (who were sworn rivals), and then Ninhursag,Marduk, Ishkur, Nannar, Ninurta, Inanna, Nabu, Utu, and Nergal. Some of the members of this divine family got along great together; others absolutely hated each other. Sound familiar? We might recognize these deities as having some similarities both in character and function to the later twelve Olympians of the Greek system. The important point here, however, is that as astrology developed in the observatories of ancient Babylon, it was these early deities for whom the planets were named, and who were recognized as having a nature and function similar to the planet with which they were linked.2

Babylonian Deity Planet
Sin The Moon
Shamash The Sun
Ishtar Venus
Ninurta Saturn
Nergal Mars
Marduk Jupiter
Nabu Mercury
Mesopotamian astrology was concerned primarily with politics, matters of
state, and the fortunes of kings. It was not especially concerned with ordinary individuals and their daily problems. There is no evidence that personal horoscopes were calculated much before about 409 BC. In fact, it was the astrologers of Greek-speaking Egypt who, in the first centuries before the Christian era, transformed Babylonian astrology into the personal and individuated art form that it is today. In these same centuries, Babylonian astrology also traveled to Persia and India, where it influenced older forms of indigenous astrology. The astrologers of this “classical” period were still focused upon the observable sky, and they evolved interpretive tools that made use of their observations.Some of these tools have, unfortunately, been forgotten. One of the most important was called planetary sect. Sect was determined simply by whether one was born during the daylight hours when the sun ruled the sky, or at night when the lunar force was dominant.3 Planets were linked with the Sun and Moon, Sol and Luna, according to their nature. There were variations upon the
central theme. For example, one could be born at night, under Luna’s power, even when Luna was not visible. (For this to occur, the Moon would have to be in its dark phase, very close to the Sun.) And for those instances when the Sun was right on the local horizon, just rising or setting, one had to be there to determine its true position.

There are very few civilizations upon this planet that did not deem astrology
essential to its very existence all the way back through recorded history.
Astrologers have always been priests and priestesses who kept the myths and traditions of their people.

The Greeks did not invent the planetary goddesses and gods. All the same,
it is Greek mythology that forms the most important foundation for the planetary archetypes of Western astrology. Not only is it at the foundation of Western civilization itself, Greek myth constitutes a highly sophisticated and poetically detailed worldview that has sustained, entertained, educated, and informed our thinking for the past 3,500 years. The Greek poets were master storytellers. There’s probably still not a book in print that can surpass the tales told by Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey, though if one were to curl up with Gilgamesh’s heroic journeys and adventuresome tales for summer beach reading, one might find something just as exciting as any current bestseller.

Gilgamesh, for those who haven’t met the gentleman, is the hero of a
Babylonian poem bearing the same name―a very old story indeed, for it has its roots in ancient Sumer.4 Here, already, we find some of the planetary
deities―notably Ishtar―storming across the page. Here we find the symbolism of the four fixed signs of the zodiac already fully developed as Ishtar’s lion (Leo), her bull (Taurus), the scorpion men who guard the mountain passes to the Otherworld (Scorpio), and the fabulous Utnapishtim, Keeper of the Waters of Life (Aquarius) and survivor of a Great Flood much older than the one in the Bible. Though Gilgamesh’s tales were told 6,000 years ago, a good Hollywood screenwriter could no doubt turn it into an epic blockbuster (for a few hundred million dollars).

But despite astrology’s Mesopotamian origins and Greek florescence, the
names we give to the planets today are Latin. The Romans had their own
tribal myths that greatly resembled those of Greece (and in fact the two cultures are linguistically related), but tended to adopt the Greek versions of the stories in their entirety after Greece was conquered by Rome. They tampered but little with the images and symbolism that the Greeks wrote, sung, talked about, and painted on thousands of temple walls, frescoes, friezes, and vases.

They just changed the names―Greek Zeus was now Roman Jupiter; Greek
Aphrodite was now Roman Venus. And that’s where our planetary names
originate―imported from Mount Olympus by way of Rome. (The following
list includes asteroids and contemporary astrological factors as well as the traditional ones.)

Greek Roman
Apollo Sun (Sol)
Artemis Moon (Luna)
Gaia Earth (Terra)
Hermes Mercury
Aphrodite Venus
Ares Mars
Zeus Jupiter (Jove)
Cronus Saturn
Ouranos Uranus
Poseidon Neptune
Hades Pluto
Demeter Ceres
Athene Pallas
Hera Juno
Hestia Vesta

The appropriation of one culture’s religion by another is something that is oft
repeated in almost every civilization.When one civilization overtakes another, whether by conquest or cultural absorption, it sometimes seeks to eradicate the other culture’s religion entirely. There are countless examples all over the world: Greek temples built upon the sites of former Goddess shrines, Christian cathedrals built over Pagan worship sites, Spanish missions built next to an Indian pueblo’s sacred kivas, and the like.
And yet one civilization often adopts the other’s gods peacefully, though
usually with significant changes. In many cases this is a true integration of
religious traditions between the conqueror and the conquered. In ancient Ireland, the deities of the Indo-European Celtic tribes were clearly merged with and influenced by the older religion of the megalith builders. In Brazil, the gods of the African slaves have impacted and influenced the religious attitude of the entire culture.We may be seeing another such phenomenon in America today, as the Japan it conquered during World War II continues to influence Americans through its religious traditions such as Zen and other Buddhist or Taoist traditions that the Japanese themselves had inherited from the older civilization of China.

In the case of Greece and Rome, the adoption of Greek deities by the
Romans was more than peaceful―the Romans were eager to experience the more sophisticated culture of conquered Greece, and eagerly embraced her gods. And because Western civilization as a whole derives directly from the break-up of the old Roman Empire, the deities of the Greeks have become the common inheritance of our entire civilization, something all of us hold in common in the deepest recesses of the soul.

By the twentieth century, astrology had all but been removed from the sky.
On the one hand, precision of mathematical calculations made the calculation of planetary motion much easier for astrologers, first with astrolabes, then with calculators, and finally with computers. But at what price? In a sense, we have lost the real feeling and imagery of what the sky looks like at the magical moment of creation or birth, with their accompanying stories.

Next time you’re in the desert, under a clear night sky, you might notice that
a luminescent Venus is setting in the western sky while a brilliant Jupiter
might be rising in the east through the horns of the bull. Further, a two-thirds
full moon is up overhead. That is the way to the magic of the birth moment.
Nothing else shows this magic of existence with the crystal clarity of
astrology.

Astrology As A Mythic Language

It is the premise of our earlier book, Mythic Astrology: Archetypal Powers in the Horoscope, that the identification between planets and ancient deities is more than just a vague, generalized kind of identification―it is specific and deep, and it opens windows of understanding upon the planets that cannot be opened in any other way.5 These windows of understanding are important because they help to make it clear that astrology is indeed a mythic language.

But what do we mean by the term mythic language? Many people are
accustomed to thinking of the word “myth” as referring to a mere fairy tale or, at worst, a fabrication, an “untrue story.” But this is to misunderstand the very nature of mythology itself. The stories we call myths are, in fact, the wisdom tales and spiritual truths of ancient religions, the religions of our own ancestors as well as of people in widely scattered regions of the globe. As such, myths convey to us, in story form, the deepest and most profound truths of the human psyche, and of our shared human experience. This is why it is important to understand that astrology is a mythic language, and that it contains the same universal truths about the human soul that are to be found in all the world’s great mythologies.

It is even more important because of the simple fact that most of us are no
longer aware of the rich, profound world of myth. The Western world has
been progressively turning away from myth ever since the advent of Christianity, and the so-called “scientific revolution” of the past 200 years has very nearly destroyed our mythic sensibilities altogether. Astrology is one of the few remaining ways in which we still touch the mythic dimension of life. Through astrology, people living in urban apartment buildings, rural farmsteads, or middle-American trailer parks know that Jupiter is the planet of abundance and Venus the planet of love. They may not know that Jupiter’s abundant nature reflects his status as “king of the gods” and they may not know the lore and legends surrounding the goddess Aphrodite, whose myths provide us with the inner meaning of the planet Venus. But because of astrology, they too are speaking a mythic language.

Psychology And Myth

For centuries, then, astrology was the last remaining “mythic language” to be widely known and practiced in the Western world. But in recent years, psychology has also discovered the world of myth.It began with Carl Jung. One of the founders of psychology, Jung broke with his mentor, Sigmund Freud, in 1912. The two great thinkers had reached a point of fundamental disagreement about the nature of the human psyche.

Freud saw the unconscious minds of human beings as a chaotic and dark
receptacle of primitive sexual urges; and, as a scientist, he took a dim view of all religious and psychic phenomena, preferring to see these elements of
human nature simply as another aspect of sex, neurosis, and repression.
Jung, on the other hand, believed that the un...

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