Here, the goal is not to describe the astrological mechanisms themselves, as I may do in other articles, but rather to understand the psychological mechanisms at play when one studies their Birth Chart.
As Dane Rudhyar repeats throughout his writings, the simple act of beginning to study one’s chart intrinsically and inevitably creates deep psychological changes, initiating a totally irreversible process, just as a butterfly can never again become a larva or chrysalis within its life cycle…
Chronologically, these psychological changes do not arise randomly or chaotically, but rather in a progressive logic in which each phase takes its place once the previous one has been integrated.
Phase 1: Understanding
The first phase tends to be more “intellectual”: it’s the phase of analysis, decomposition, awareness, where the Logos intervenes more directly…
It begins with the discovery “I have a birth chart”; what does it contain ? What does it say ?
How can we explain this astrological Synchronicity ?
Many questions rise all at once, and one struggles to truly structure meaningful answers…
This is a very “exploratory” phase, somewhat empirical, and it consists in putting words on what was previously experienced in a more or less confused way.
This understanding obviously has several “layers”, depending on the complexity of the birth pattern and on the depth one can bring to its interpretation.
Phase 2: Integration
This phase consists more directly of consciously “feeling” one’s natal energies at work within one’s being and life, with the aim of eventually being able to transform, transcend, and sublimate them in the future…
It’s a more “emotional” and receptive phase, requiring direct introspection. It follows rationality: after having “understood” the present patterns, we then “feel” them operating within us…
Analytical logic may persist, but we may try to reverse it, by saying for example: “I feel this, what does it correspond to in my chart?”
And this opens a whole new field of research, including regarding the different activations our birth chart “undergoes” through Transits and Progressions, which come to modulate its fulfillment.
Phase 3: Sublimation
This is somewhat the final phase, in which the synthesis of the two previous ones takes place: we have understood the patterns, we feel them at work, and we master them by giving them a conscious externalization to avoid their “forced” expression through fate or compulsions.
We then strive to give “the best possible measure” of our natal energies, with the fewest possible drawbacks.
This may correspond, in some respects, to a kind of surgical work, since we have attempted to structure things (energetic behaviors), we have refined them in order to modify their deeper nature, so to speak.
We have reached the best possible version of ourselves; we have transcended Complexes, undergone the necessary grief processes, and we achieve the best incarnation experience possible.
We approach what Jung called Individuation: the contact of the “personal” with a certain part of the “collective”.
If we accept the link between the image we have of ourselves and of reality, and our actions and reactions, then we understand that almost mathematically, symmetrically, by acting on one element of the equation (the understanding of the birth chart), the entire calculation changes: the equation is different, so its result changes as well (our actions and “reality”).
The caterpillar has become a butterfly…
Crisis and Creativity
Make no mistake, this entire evolutionary structure is, in the deepest etymological sense, “a crisis”, a moment of decision, judgment, separation of the wheat from the chaff.
It’s the entire alchemical process in which the “Prima materia” produces its “Great Work”.
It’s a crisis of “growth”, intrinsically linked to the overall development of the process, and therefore inevitably necessary for any evolution (see also the book “Crisis and Creativity” by Dane Rudhyar).
If the crisis is imperative and cannot be avoided, its form, however, can be guided, or in some cases even chosen.
It’s not inevitable that it must take place in the pain and violence of a prolonged Depression.
Several traps must be avoided here, such as denial (“no, there is nothing wrong, I don’t want to change”), regression (“I want to go back to a previous state, to before”), dissociation (“yes yes, all of this is very fine, but for other people!”).
Many behaviors, in truth, send us back to a childish stage where we refuse to face reality.
This is generally when processes become the most painful, because the psyche clings to obsolete patterns, trying to reproduce in a loop things that are no longer relevant.
And this is precisely when reality may strike in a brutal, fateful way: since the person did not initiate the changes, then life will impose maturity !
In truth, human evolution always comes down to either action or passivity, and the whole purpose of astrology is to accompany this phase actively.
Change is never comfortable; it’s almost always anxiety-provoking and destabilizing for most people most of the time, yet it’s absolutely necessary for evolution, adaptation, assimilation, and simply life itself…
Of course, many factors can modulate all this, and the common thread is that several cycles, several passages (including the famous Retrogradations) are often necessary.
Thus, for everyone, this inevitably takes time, and time that cannot be compressed!
Astrology is not here to prevent biological, individual, emotional, or even social crises, because these must occur in every life for transformation to happen.
They are necessary for the final and global development of the personality.
But each individual’s freedom lies in finding a meaningful purpose in them and understanding their deeper significance, and that is where astrology finds its main function: to foresee and to give meaning.