Astrology & Faith

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights–the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning–the fourth day.  —Genesis 1:14-19

I first became interested in astrology while studying psychology in graduate school. There, I learned that one of history’s most intelligent, influential, and unusual psychiatrists, Carl Jung, had actually studied the relationship between planetary positions and synchronictiy in human events, particularly marriage. He found that psychological and astrological tools were similarly predictive—and accurate. This, of course, gave me pause.

The evangelical Christianity  in which I involved myself as a teenager and young adult taught me that astrology was of the devil, plain and simple. But the fact that Jung had found as much validity in some uses of astrology as he found in psychological testing was compelling. Shortly after I learned about Jung’s research, a friend introduced me to a person who called himself an astro-theologian: that is, a theologian who was also an astrologer.

During the course of my studies I have been subjected to all sorts of psychological testing, so once I met this astro-theologian and had him read my natal chart, I was astounded at what he discerned by looking into the position of the planets at the time of my birth. The results of the natal chart reading were similar to those I’ve had from personality or temperament tests. Verrrry interesting.

Since that time, I’ve learned more about astrology. Like Jung, I find astrology’s symbols so archetypal as to be nearly essential to the understanding of the human being.  Astrological symbols are much like any other symbol. I think they hold information from the collective unconscious, and I think they also offer information peculiar to the individual. Put another way, they sometimes are what we make of them.

I don’t tell many people about my interest in astrology because it’s just one more cause of alienation between people living in America’s Bible belt—even though Jesus himself referred to planetary signs.  A star led the Magi to his place in a stable—just a few of the Biblical references to astrology that prompt me to ask,  ”What Bible are you guys reading?” I wonder how many Christians have actually looked into their fear of astrology, and based their beliefs on a more robust understanding of its practice in ancient times?

For example, many people, including Christians, aren’t aware that St. Augustine wrote about astrology in his Confessions, affirming its correct practice and condemning its godless use. Astrologers (diviners, stargazers) who taught that man’s free will–his ability to make moral choice–was eclipsed by the rule of the stars in his chart, Augustine condemned (Book 4, Chapter 3: The Astrologers). On the other hand, Augustine confirmed that astrologers, using the ingenuity and intelligence bestowed by God, were able to foretell “eclipses of the great luminaries, the sun and the moon, telling on what day, at what hour, and to what exten they would be, and their calculations did not fail them [. . .] So early can they foresee a coming eclipse of the sun, but their own present eclipse they do not see, for they do not seek with a devout mind whence it is that they possess this skill by which they seek out these things” (115).

Later, I’ll be updating this post with other Biblical references, and perhaps a link or two to some of Jung’s research, etc. But for now I thought I’d start building the foundation of this discussion category.

References

Augustine. The Confessions of St. Augustine. New York: Doubleday, 1960.