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Can you be a conservative astrologer?

Ronald ReaganAmercian astrologers are better at predicting Democrat victories than Republican ones.  And for many astrologers, Trump’s victory in 2016 was . traumatic.  Not only did they predict that he would lose, but they also supported the other candidate.  This is not surprising, because astrologers in the West tend to be liberal, and their view of the world will inevitably bias their predictions.  So if you’re an astrologer, there is a good chance that you believe in some or all of the following:

Manmade climate change
A woman’s right to choose.
Gun control.
Treat people well and they’ll treat you well in return.
Humanity is evolving in a positive way.
Western countries spend too much on defence.
The government should play an active role in society and the economy.
The abolition of the death penalty.
The value of international organizations, like the Europe Union and the United Nations.
Violent criminals can be rehabilitated.
Marijuana should be legalized.
Progressive taxation.
Relatively relaxed immigration policies.

You get what I mean.  There is a cluster of beliefs that tend to characterize liberals, and Western astrologers tend to share these beliefs.  However, I don’t think it has always been the case.  In the 1980s many Reagan Democrats were sympathetic to astrology, and the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, got astrological advice from Joan Quigley.  This advice may well have contributed to Ronald Reagan’s political success – he wasn’t called the Teflon President for nothing.

Possibly the main reason why astrologers parted company with the political right was religion.  In the United States of the 1980s evangelical Christians had an increasing influence over the Republican Party.  Astrology was another demonic new age practice, which could only lead to one place, and that was hell.  This position has a degree of logic.  The only way of entering the Kingdom of Heaven is through Jesus Christ, and if you look for spiritual enlightenment through other means you’re doomed.  In terms of Protestant dogma, you cannot get to heaven through your own efforts, you can only get there through the Grace of God.  Using astrology as a tool of personal and spiritual development is therefore at odds with evangelical Christianity, particularly if you use astrology to predict the future.  After all, the only person who knows what is going to happen next is God.

Move forward into the 2010s and 2020s, and astrology is part of the rainbow coalition.  It allows us to be whoever we like, and at the same time it can give us meaning in a post-religious era.  Astrology doesn’t define us, instead we define the astrology that makes us feel comfortable.  So it becomes part of the tool kit, along with yoga, reiki, crystals and blah, blah, blah.   We can use it to expand our consciousness, and to transcend the divisions that Trump and the Republicans try to impose upon us.

Yet I would contend that to be an astrologer is to be a conservative.  This is because astrology defines not only who we are, but also who we are not.  If we believe in God, then the horoscope represents the hand we have been dealt.  It shows the gifts and challenges that God has given us, and if we step outside the horoscope, and try to be someone else, we will never fulfill our potential.  This is particularly the case if we regard astrology as a system that is handed down from generation to generation, with rules that were formulated over several milennia.  If you have Venus in Scorpio retrograde conjunct the Sun and Saturn, your Venus is badly placed, and nothing can change that.  The role of the astrologer isn’t to make the afflicted Venus go away, but instead to work out the best way of dealing with it.  For example, by avoiding, mitigating or transforming the bad situations that this configuration will attract.

Outside contemporary Western astrology, we can see the fundamental conservatism of the profession.  The country with the most professional astrologers has got to be India, and you can’t really understand Indian astrology without reference to the Hindu religion.  Indian astrology reinforces Hinduism, and indeed can support its social structures.  Hindu priests are often astrologers, and astrology can be used to select marriage partners.  This might seem disturbing to the modern Western mind, but if you believe that astrology works, it’s logical.

Yet one thing that modern Western astrologers share with their Indian colleagues is a belief in reincarnation.  I say this because every astrologer I have ever met believes in Karma and past lives.  In other words, astrologers can’t be Christians, right?  And they certainly can’t be Muslims.  Yet if you go back 1000 years, there were some great Arab astrologers.  The greatest was probably Al-Biruni, who lived in Afghanistan in the 11th Century AD.  I think there can be little doubt that Al-Biruni had a conservative disposition.  From his writings it would appear that he was a devout Muslim, who had contempt for mind-readers and magicians.  He was particularly bothered by astrologers who claimed that they could tell clients about their previous incarnations: “I know of no method of dealing with them except insisting on exposing their vicious decrees  and their leading the querent into crime by the bad advice given him”.

Another astrologer who was conservative in outlook was William Lilly.  He was working in London, around the time of the English Civil War.  He supported the Parliamentary side, though he was careful to hedge his bets.  His magnum opus was titled Christian Astrology, and it was published in 1647, when England was increasingly under the control of Christian fundamentalists.  Lilly made it clear that it was God that had the final say, and not the stars.  He also seemed to accept St. Paul’s dictum in Romans Chapter 10 that we should respect the government.  For example, he described how he used astrology to predict that William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, would be executed by beheading.  Lilly wrote that although he was very sad about the execution, “I account him not a martyr, as one asse did; For by the Sentence of the greatest Court of England, viz. the Parliament, he was brought to his end”.

William Lilly, right at the beginning of his book, wrote “Nihil dictum, quod non dictum prius”.  Which means nothing has been said that hasn’t been said before.  This represents a very traditional view of the world.  In terms of wisdom, astrological or otherwise, there is no point in trying to be original, because someone, somewhere, has said it before.  Taken further, it questions whether modern humans are any better, or any more self-aware, from their ancestors.

Over the last few centuries every generation has had the arrogance to think that it is cutting edge, but it always dies away to do be replaced by something else.  As astrologers, we are aware that planetary cycles repeat.  There may be changes in technology and fashion, but humans are always the same, and any concept of evolutionary progress is fake – certainly of you’re measuring things in small periods of time, like centuries or millennia.  This means that astrology can help us distinguish between the eternal and the transitory.  When people get excited about global consciousness, people coming together, the wonders of human potential, you know it is just a phase.  Or as Macbeth might have put it, “Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.  An astrologer should have seen Trump and Brexit  coming, and a conservative astrologer shouldn’t have been bothered about it.

In fact, astrologers should be weary of liberals.  One of the key features of liberals, particularly those of an intellectual bent, is that they don’t believe in God.  They believe in science, unless science contradicts their social agenda.  And they certainly don’t believe in astrology.  Astrology is not going to pass any scientific test, whatever Michel Gauquelin might have discovered. Furthermore the academic elites that condemn the stupid supporters of Trump and Brexit will treat astrology with only marginally less disdain.

I do of course understand that a lot depends on what you believe in.  If you believe that astrology can be whatever you make of it, that you can interpret a horoscope in whatever way makes you feel happy, then you’re not really a conservative astrologer.  You should nonetheless be aware that you’re chasing a fad, which is not going to last forever.  However, if your astrology is something handed down rather than invented, which describes society rather than reinforces your liberal overoptimism, then you might well be a conservative astrologer.

{ 10 comments… add one }
  • Aaron Armstrong January 23, 2020, 4:22 am

    I know of only a couple astrologers that correctly predicted trump winning the election along with many other things.

    • Archie Dunlop January 23, 2020, 4:28 am

      Thanks for the comment. I steered clear of making a Trump prediction, although I got the Brexit vote right in 2016. When you have an 85% probability of a candidate winning (Hillary!) there is probably not much to be gained. P3rsonally, I don’t want Trump to win in 2024, but I suspect he will. That is not a formal prediction, by the way!

  • Pavani January 23, 2020, 5:27 pm

    Thanks. I do enjoy your observations, including in this latest article. I say this as a septuagenarian astrologer who perfectly fits the profile you outline: American “a la carte” Hindu, born to Theosophist mother-rational empiricist father, socially liberal, with democratic socialist leanings since fifth grade. I did not attempt prediction of the 2016 election, but relied on Nina Gryphon’s prediction via Aries Ingress, which turned out to be mistaken.

    • Archie Dunlop January 23, 2020, 5:56 pm

      I don’t think I’d want to rely on just an an Aries ingress chart. I wouldn’t even want to focus just on a candidate’s horoscope. My feeling is that the most reliable way to predict an election result is to ask a horary question, and get a clean, interpretable result.

  • M February 3, 2020, 6:06 am

    Religious conservative republican constitutionalist here. I really see the most awful bias from liberal astrologers. To the point they are betraying the art. The idea is to study an ancient art and learn from it….not distort information to bolster up your own self hatred and denial. It’s sad to see people doing that.
    Astrology teaches about archetypes and universal truths. If people want to develop some alternative system that talks about gender confusion, say, then they should make their own oracle cards and stick to that maybe?
    Denial of reality is a form of madness. And the media has brainwashed so many. Example: a black man in my small rural mostly white town had a long layover for a bus connection. Bcs of how this community is, some strangers at a cafe offered to let him come to their house to wait the 8 hours in a warm house and relax. He said no thanks fearing the people lived “way up in the mountains” and were somehow dangerous. The other people at the cafe explained that no they were just being nice. (I’ve seen homeless people get offers to stay in peoples houses man many times here. And by the way this town is armed to the teeth. The people who are charitable and kind have 6-12 guns on average here I would say.) anyway this urban black man was so brainwashed he couldn’t comprehend people just wanting to help another person out regardless of race (typical conservative behavior…and I know. I was raised liberal and woke up. And yes I have been poor and dependent on charity at one point)…sorry for rambling but that reminds me of liberal astrologers so steeped in hate and twisted by supporting things like full term abortion….that they begin to become utterly useless at astrology.
    The black man did go visit with his new white friends btw. It’s funny when people expect racism from white conservatives and it just is not there!
    As a conservative I have gotten the worst dirty looks in a hippy co-op market for just walking in though. When they think they are so “tolerant”! Well not if you don’t have tattoos and just want to politely buy some food and you brushed your hair that day I guess.
    When I was waking up out of liberal ignorance (plz read books by David Horowitz if you’re still stuck thinking dems want to help the poor) I went to a conservative place and I was like why are all the women here being so NICE to me? It was such a change from the sneering, cold, fake-nice liberal women.
    Anyway I hope astrologers respect astrology if they’re going to learn it. Trying to remake and reinvent something ancient and amazing….to conform to their mental illness and anger issues is somehow just horrible and arrogant. And spreading their false interpretations misleads others. If someone is so angry and twisted they can’t talk about male energy as MALE energy…maybe they have no business dabbling in astrology.
    A lot of these liberal astrologers think they are seeing indications of the old order falling away…and then they get giddy thinking “the patriarchy “ is going and socialism will save the day. Socialism/communism that has killed over 100 million is going to save something?? (Read the book A River in Darkness to see how communism really works…or the book Of Monkey Bridges and Bhan Mi Sandwiches) . Be well and seek truth.

    • Archie Dunlop February 3, 2020, 7:21 am

      Thanks for the comment. I think there is a problem with relativism. People are unhappy with absolutes, and everything must be tolerated. Astrology becomes a reflection of who you are, rather than a reflection of the Universe. I suppose in a way that is a kind of blasphemy. It is blasphemy to make God in our own image, and it is blasphey to make astrology in our own image – if you take a traditional view. There is no way that a Venus-Saturn conjunction in Scorpio is a good thing! I suppose from a conservative Christian perspective, astrology has become over-spiritualized. Astrology was not about finding your personal meaning, and you certainly couldn’t find salvation through the horoscope. As for Democrats helping the poor, I suppose it is a case of “cui bono”. You always have to ask who benefits. When you have permanent poor, someone can benefit from them – in terms of keeping a job, or getting a vote. But getting back to being an astrologer, you are, by the nature of your profession, saying that there are limits to free will. Anyone who says differently is plain wrong. That is not quite the same as saying that you can predict the future – from a Christian perspective only God can do that. But the destiny intrinsic to astrology means there are limits to who you are. You have a place, and you need to accept that. And that is a conservative view.

    • N. Max July 1, 2020, 2:54 pm

      Wonderful to read your comments. I am a Christian, because I try to keep the commandment of the Christ “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. I study astrology. Astrology is amazing, especially when I notice its beauty and order, and learn that the planets and signs are part of Divine creation. It saddens me how astrologers demean the political thinking of conservatives.
      I would like to find thinkers in astrology who have something to say about the big ideas of events. But if they present one side in ways I hear in the mainstream media, or as inaccurate characterization, I know of their limitations. Yet, they claim this is astrological wisdom. Well, no. It’s not.

      • Archie Dunlop July 1, 2020, 4:47 pm

        Thanks for the comment. Astrology does not favour one political view or another, and historically astrologers have often been conservatives. I don’t think there is anything in astrology that contradicts a conservative, Christian view of the world. If anything, there are more problems with reconciling astrology and radical socialism. In some respects astrology is conservative – there are repeating planetary cycles, and at some level everything remains the same. Astrology is a reminder that “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

  • Monica Schreiner April 20, 2020, 8:08 am

    What a refreshing article about astrologers and astrology! True astrology is neutral, without political or religious positions. I am a conservative astrologer in Minnesota, U.S.A. I agree that American astrology is dominated by liberal, socialist thinking. As a conservative astrologer, I feel unwelcome in astrology groups. If anyone knows of any conservative astrology groups, please share contact info for the groups. Many thanks! Monica

    • Archie Dunlop April 20, 2020, 8:41 am

      Monica, thanks for visiting the website, and I am glad you enjoyed the article. I do completely understand your problem. There is absolutely no reason for astrologers to be liberals, unless their astrology is a total fad – just part of the rainbow garbage that infects our society. As for conservative astrology groups, I feel they should exist, and I have certainly given serious consideration to setting one up. On the other hand, my own beliefs are all over the place. By European standards, I am certainly a conservative, but perhaps not by American standards.

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