Astrology and the Authentic Self is a ground-breaking work by Demetra George, one of the most the respected authors in her field. This book provides a model for the practicing astrologer to analyze a client's life purpose as indicated through the natal chart. It addresses significant concerns, such as relationship and vocation and provides methods for determining current timing movements. She gives the methods to communicate this complex information in a concise and professional manner within the context of an astrological counseling session. Ms. George provides an excellent introduction to the doctrines of ancient astrology concerning how to determine the condition of a planet and its capacity to be effective and produce favorable outcomes. She outlines how to follow these traditional guidelines, but interprets them within a modern context, adding the insights of more contemporary approaches.
Demetra George, M.A. Classics, received the 2002 Regulus Award for Theory and Understanding. A practitioner of astrology for over 30 years specializing in archetypal mythology, she has authored numerous books and articles, including Astrology For Yourself, Asteroid Goddesses, and Mysteries of the Dark Moon. She lectures internationally and leads pilgrimages to the sacred sites in the Mediterranean. Currently she is translating a corpus of hermetic medical astrological texts from ancient Greek, is an associate of Project Hindsight, and teaches the history of ancient and medieval astrology and Hellenistic techniques.
This book is THOROUGH! As a beginner to astrology, I really needed a book that would guide me to a deep understanding of the natal chart. I learned soooo much! I thought Bill's natal chart was helpful because his chart was complex. I felt that it was super dense at some points and could have used more visuals. There were many times I wished there was a chart to display what Demetra was writing about. I'm a beginner so I literally have no reference to what she was talking about. It would be helpful to see what she meant.
Notes Configurations can be harmonious (conjunction); helpful (trine, weakly sextile); discordant (square, painful if a malefic is involved); or adverse (opposition, worse with a malefic).
Bonification: a conjunction, trine, or sextile from a benefic—Venus or Jupiter—makes a planet's significations more favorable. Corruption: a conjunction, square, or opposition from a malefic—Mars or Saturn—makes them unfavorable.
Retrograde points to an internalization of that planetary function in the psyche, with a need to rethink and reformulate its expression more individualistically than the norm.
Phasis occurs when a planet makes a heliacal rising or setting (15-degree interval from the Sun), or stations direct or retrograde within seven days of birth. It indicates an intensification of that planet's energies; its significations saturate the life, for better or worse.
Power comes from a planet occupying its own signs (domicile) and exaltation. Strength comes from angular or succedent house placement; good houses are like profitable locations for conducting the business of life.
Best condition: sect in favor, own signs, angular/good house, bonified by benefics, visible, fast, direct, heliacal rising or setting. Worst: out of sect, detriment or fall, cadent/bad house, corrupted by malefics, under the Sun's beams, retrograde.
Fire = freedom, air = change, earth = stability, water = emotional safety. Fire and air are sympathetic; earth and water are sympathetic. What dominant theme and sub-theme emerges from the elements of the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant?
The Ascendant's sign occupies the first house. Hellenistic astrologers named it Breath, Spirit, Life, and Helm.
Gemini rising: communicative, versatile, curious, changeable, seeks breadth over depth. The persona is driven by a psychological need to make mental contacts and communicate.
Aristotle held that the celestial realm was composed of aither, while everything beneath the Moon was a mixture of fire, earth, air, and water, changing through the qualities hot, cold, wet, and dry. The Moon transmitted celestial influences to the terrestrial realm via effluences, making them manifest in physical reality. The Sun and Moon's heating and cooling governed what Aristotle called the "generation and corruption" of the elements—the cycles of coming to be and passing away.
Vettius Valens: the Moon signifies the queen, conception, and the body. The Sun is lord of the day, the Moon queen of the night; together they are the earthly representatives of god and goddess. The Moon signifies how the Sun's divine intention finds physical actualization in a human body and is applied to daily life so that our actions can benefit others.
A planet renders judgment on and brings about the affairs of the house it rules, doing so through the activities of the house it occupies.
Libra and Aquarius are both "other-directed" signs, so the Sun's unique individuality is eclipsed by its consideration of others—one-to-one with Libra, in groups with Aquarius.
The Moon signifies how early childhood conditioning has imprinted the patterning of our bodies, instincts, and emotional responses—all pre-cognitive faculties. Behaviors driven by instinct and feeling, when we "act without thinking," often trace back to experiences under our mother's influence.
Modern timing mechanisms: transits, secondary and tertiary progressions, solar-arc and primary directions, eclipses, Solar Returns. Traditional techniques being revived: profections, planetary periods and ascensional times, circumambulations, decennials, zodiacal releasing, firdaria.
Every thirty years, a progressed New Moon initiates a new vision or aspiration that matures twenty-one years later and concludes at the cycle's closure.
When a transiting planet enters a sign, the entire sign is stimulated, and every planet in any degree of that sign becomes charged.
Transits = actual planetary positions in the sky. Progressions = symbolic: one day after birth = one year of life.
Rudhyar used the seed as metaphor for the eight lunation phases depicting successive stages of the life process—unfolding, fulfillment, completion, renewal—and extrapolated eight personality types from them.
New Moon: emergence, projecting a strong image, inhabiting a new personality, moving forward instinctively. Here to initiate new directions and release first intimations of new aspirations, even without awareness of long-term outcomes.
Crescent Moon (keyword: "struggle"): struggling away from past inertia and dependency, mobilizing resources to assert forward movement. Must establish a fledgling identity as an independent force, developing self-reliance, faith, and persistence. Like a seedling exhausting its seed capsule and pushing against gravity toward the Sun—the pull of familial conditioning and fear of the unknown can keep individuals tied to security that doesn't support independence. Keynote: self-actualization.
First Quarter: rooting into the world, building structures for the aspiration's realization. Ready to test strength and shape/manage/control the environment. Faces external crises where structures fall apart; must harness the surge of energy to take direct action and rebuild quickly.
Gibbous: growing awareness of the purpose behind the vision, with anxious expectation of being on the brink of revelation. Compelled to improve, refine, and perfect existing structures through critical analysis—discovering what doesn't work and fixing it so forms can be functional.
Full Moon: developing clarity in thinking to guide actions toward others, formulating conscious relationships. Here to illuminate what is meaningful, personally and collectively.
Disseminating: synthesizing and disseminating information and ideas of personal value. Here to teach and share their truths, immerse in society, and take in the feedback and wisdom of others.
Last Quarter: reevaluating beliefs, revising thinking, reorienting around new creative possibilities. Here to challenge and tear down antiquated societal structures. The harvest is in; remaining fruit decomposes to seed the next cycle. Must periodically let go of obsolete forms and sever from the parent plant.
Balsamic: the final phase, a particularly karmic life straddling past and future—bringing closure to the old, preparing for rebirth. Relationships are many, strong, poignant, and intense. Often feel out of sync, already envisioning what others won't realize for years. Many sense a special destiny: distilling accumulated wisdom into seed form as a legacy. These souls carry the sum total of seven prior lunation-phase lifetimes, bringing it to final synthesis in preparation for the next round of incarnations.
The discovery of new planets may correspond to an internal awakening in the human psyche of the consciousness they symbolize. Social scientists foretell a quantum leap of consciousness activating dormant brain cells.
Pallas Athena's serpent symbolism links her to healing; one epithet is Hygeia. She represents the mind's power to cure disease; her armor and shield are our immune system. As a woman in warrior's clothes, she also speaks to expressing the masculine within women or feminine within men—androgyny that balances the polarities. In the chart: the urge to channel creative sexual energy into mental and artistic progeny; capacity for clear thinking and creative wisdom; the drive for excellence and accomplishment.
Juno: the desire for a mate who is a true equal—psychologically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. When intimacy, depth, equality, honesty, respect, and fulfillment are absent, Juno speaks to disappointment, despair, anger, and rage.
In the Arabic/Medieval tradition, aspects were determined by moiety—each planet assigned degrees based on heliacal visibility. If the arc between two planets was ≤ the average sum of their moieties, they were in aspect.
Kepler dismissed signs and houses, focusing only on aspects, and introduced minor aspects (quintile, septile, novile). Contemporary practice determines aspects by orb from exactitude per aspect type (e.g., 6° sextile, 8° square/trine), regardless of moiety or sign position.
Major aspect patterns: stellium (3+ planets in one sign), T-square, grand square, grand trine. A stellium acts as a unit—emphasis and concentration on that house's affairs—but inharmonious planets within it may produce confusion, conflicting agendas, or imbalance.
T-square: two or more planets in opposition, each square a third planet. Generates tremendous tension: conflicting agendas pulling in opposing directions while a third planet is at cross-purposes with both. The individual may feel torn asunder and locked in a vice grip—yet like water behind a dam, enormous potential energy accumulates.
Grand square (grand cross): four or more planets all square each other, two sets of oppositions. An intensification of the T-square with even less maneuvering room. Demands great strength of will; inner pressure must be channeled into outer productivity—in the process, great things may be realized.
Grand trine: three or more planets each trine to the other two. Tremendous creative energy, easy to access. Posited by some to represent innate gifts carried from other lifetimes, emerging early and seemingly effortlessly. Other patterns: Yod (two quincunxes + sextile, "Finger of Fate/God"), Kite, Mystic Rectangle, Star of David.
T-squares and grand squares configure angular (1st, 4th, 7th, 10th), succedent (2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th), or cadent (3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th) houses—indicating the dynamic energy available to produce outer events. Most externally potent: cardinal signs + angular houses.
"Topic" derives from the Greek topos ("place")—the technical term for an astrological house. The twelve houses locate the various departments of life.
1st: body, character, appearance, personality. 2nd: livelihood, finances, possessions. 3rd: siblings, neighbors, communications, short journeys. 4th: home, parents, land. 5th: children, creativity, romance, sexuality, pleasure, games of fortune. 6th: illness, accidents, jobs, servitude. 7th: marriage, sexual unions, partnerships. 8th: death, inheritance, lawsuits, joint resources, depth psychology, the occult. 9th: foreign travel, higher education, religion, philosophy. 10th: profession, actions in the world, honors, reputation. 11th: friends, organizations, patronage, social activism. 12th: enemies, afflictions, suffering, loss, karma, transcendence, the mysteries.
Planetary significators: Venus = marriage; Mars = siblings; Jupiter = children; Sun = father (diurnal chart), Saturn = father (nocturnal); Venus = mother (diurnal), Moon = mother (nocturnal). The 7th house element/sign represents what the person seeks from partnership: fire = freedom and power; air = communication and relating; earth = physical/material security; water = emotional safety and presence.
10th house (praxis): actions in the world, status, role in society. 2nd house (bios): livelihood, material support. 6th house (House of Evil Fortune): jobs, employees, daily work—once the house of slaves and servants, signifying the servitude of working for others. No single planet signifies profession, though
Jupiter covers honors and reputation. Ptolemy used Venus, Mercury, and Mars as 10th house rulers, their signs indicating career type.
The Delphic priestesses entered ecstasy (ekstasis—"to stand outside oneself") before giving oracles, then enthusiasm (enthusiasmos—"having the god inside you").
Homer alludes to divine causation of disease: illness as punishment for failing to honor the gods, cured by pilgrimage, temple offerings, and initiation. Archetypal therapy recommends the same: discover which archetype has been neglected and honor it. Symptoms are messages indicating what the psyche needs for integration. "Therapy" derives from therapeia—"attendance upon the gods."
Chiron, founder of healing who could not heal his own wound, descended into the underworld and took on Prometheus's suffering and death so that humanity's benefactor could be freed. Zeus immortalized him as the Centaur constellation. Chiron is the quintessential shamanic healer: the shaman is always wounded first. The descent into that wound leads to the spirit realm where wisdom and insight are received. The shaman's destiny is service to the community—bringing back messages from the spirit world about the healing of body and soul.
3.5*: creo que los únicos dos problemas que tuve con este libro es que 1) yo no practico tanto la astrología tradicional, sino que me guío mas con la moderna, entonces hay ciertos temas de este libro con los que no estoy de acuerdo o que simplemente no me parecen taaan relevantes; y 2) creo que es un poco más avanzado y denso de lo que esperé, aún soy beginner entonces ayudaaaaa. igual para mí, siempre es bueno aprender cosas nuevas de la astrología y definitivamente así fue. me encantó especialmente aprender sobre los asteroides, que es un tema donde ms george es experta.
A book with great depth. It is probably best suited to someone with a solid basic understanding of astrological concepts and beginning a consulting practice. I will be keeping it with a short stack of volumes I refer to again and again.
An excellent book for someone serious about studying astrology. She covers Hellenistic astrology plus asteroids. She walks you through the process of analyzing several charts and also explains how to describe difficult transits to clients.
Concise, clear and practical teaching from one of the world’s top Hellenistic astrologers. My copy is very well thumbed! What I found particularly helpful were the chapters on face to face client work and how to structure consultations.
Everything Demetra writes is fantastic. Recommended by Chani Nicholas as a great book to learn from and reference. I go back to this one time and time again for chart interpretation.
one of the best books for interpreting astrology charts, highly recommend it to people who are interested in trying to understand their chart or others and the purpose with it.
A good example of bridge between ancient and modern astrology. I've liked it more than I expected. It's the book that I would have wished to read many years ago. It teaches remarkable hellenistic astrology instructions from Robert Schmidt, by way of (simplified) introduction. And it approaches some issues relative to the astrological advice, with honesty and very human quality, that I had never seen in another book before. However, the editorial focusing can be a bit confused due to the book has been written for beginners (from scratch) who are not ready to offer any astrological consultation yet. Anyway, I think that it's more recommendable for advanced students interested on hellenistic astrology instead of beginners. I look forward to the Demetra George's forthcoming book! Footnotes, not at the end: please.