The Horoscope in Manifestation: Psychology and Prediction

by Liz Greene

Bridging the apparent gap between psychological and predictive astrology is not easy, and many astrologers feel they must polarise and espouse one while rejecting the other. The seminars in this innovative volume explore the psychological dynamics which accompany concrete events, focusing on the important psychological model of the complex as both a generator of individual behaviour and an archetypal image of individual fate. This book offers profound insights into the ways in which inner and outer reality coincide and reflect each other.

Genres: Astrology, Psychology

265 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Liz Greene is held in high esteem by astrologers all over the world, professional and non-professional alike. She is a prolific author of books and various publications and has been instrumental in shaping modern psychological astrology.

She holds doctorate degrees in psychology and (as of 2010) in history and is a qualified Jungian analyst. She also holds a diploma in counselling from the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology in London, and a diploma from the Faculty of Astrological Studies, of which she is a lifetime Patron.

Reviews

[Stargazer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh Liz Greene how i do love thee!

[Yitzchok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part one: Complexes and Projection

Liz is masterful at either creating a scenario that lays out all the complexities of a configuration or using a real life couple to showcase the complexity of astrological configurations. She first does this with a hypothetical George and his Sun-Saturn complex and shows how it might play out in his life. Then she dissects Franco’s and Ellen’s relationship live in front of everyone at her seminar. Both examples are exquisite examples of a living chart that reflects our deepest complexes and unconscious drives. Beautifully done!
--------------------------------------------------------------------

The following are some of my favorite excerpts from the second half of the book titled:
Part two: A Psychological Approach to Transits and Progressions

“For Venus-Pluto, one of the driving forces in life is a love that will burn and transform the soul. …It is the urge to be lifted out of yourself through passion.” pg. 104

“Over the years I have come to believe that a great deal of what we assume to be fated, in terms of transits and progressions, is not fate at all – it is our unconscious complexes at work. As individuals and as a collective, we unwittingly contribute to, create, or are drawn into situations which enact internal issues – either because we have been avoiding these issues in the past, or because they are simply ripe and the right moment has arrived.” – pg.130

“There are three main levels on which transits and progressions seem to operate. …The first level is …the deeper meaning of a particular transit or progressed aspect. By “meaning”, I am referring to its teleology – its ultimate purpose in terms of the evolution of the personality, the soul, or both.” – pg.133

“Transits and progressed aspects also involve an emotional level of expression. This too is psychological, but it is more concerned with the individual’s responses, both on the feeling level and in terms of the unconscious complexes which are being activated. …Our emotional responses at the time of a transit and progressed aspect are extremely complicated, and a lot depends on how much self-understanding we have achieved, how strong the ego is, what kind of containment we can bring to the feelings which are activated, and how much we know about our parental complexes.” – pg.135

“The person with transiting Saturn opposition natal Sun, who has, in terms of teleology, such a superb opportunity for a greater sense of personal identity, may be deeply depressed and insecure. He or she may feel like a failure, and all the achievements of the past seem worthless. Parental issues may rise to the surface, particularly those connected with the father and father-complex. The challenges of this transit may not be perceived as challenge, but as victimization. Questions about the basis of personal identity may have to be raised, and many attitudes and assumptions about life may need to be cleared away before a healthier world-view can grow in their place." – pg.138

“The third level of transits and progressions is the level of materialization. …Working on this level, the astrologer is primarily concerned with what will happen in the material world under a particular transits and progressed aspect. This may seem like a simple approach, but it is actually extremely complex. There are many issues, inner and outer, that may affect whether a planetary movement will materialize on a concrete level, and in what way. One important factor is the individual’s complexes, which have a tendency to materialize if they are highly charged and dissociated from ego-consciousness. If there is such a thing as karma, that may also be a factor; and the family inheritance, genetic and psychological, is also relevant.” – pg.139

“It is one of the reasons why we often manifest difficult transits through illnesses. We have repeatedly blocked our feelings every time something has hit a sensitive point in the chart, and all the emotions and memories build up until the body can’t take the stress any longer. The feelings are then somatised, because it is the only way these feelings can make themselves known.” – pg.153-154

“If we believe that our emotional responses are not “us” and should therefore be suppressed or ignored, the unconscious psyche tends to come and hunt us down.” – pg.166

“If I go back to the hackneyed analogy of the apple seed. Progressions tell us the natural life-cycle which is built into the seed – when the tree will flower, what color the flowers will be, and when its fruit will be ripe. All these things can be affected by external factors, but the programme of growth is innate.

But transits tell us how much rain will fall in a particular season, how much sunshine is available for the ripening of the fruit, when a plague of aphids is on the way, and when a goat decides to come and eat young shoots.

The ego is like the gardener, who hopefully understands that the right combination of nature and nurture will produce the best apples. The intelligent gardener respects the innate growth pattern of the tree, but takes steps to deal with the lack of rain, the aphids, and the goat. About the sunshine he or she can do nothing.

Both transits and progressions seem to operate on a teleological, emotional, and material levels.” – pg.171

“The most powerful activation, in my experience, is when a transit is conjuncting or opposing a progressed planet, the progressed planet is on a natal planet, and all three have reached a progressed angle in the diurnal secondary progressed chart. But that doesn’t happen very often.” – pg.179

“We are back to the theme of powerlessness, which is one of the major challenges of transiting Pluto to Mars. One’s personal will isn’t as big and potent as one thought. That is the message Pluto gives to Mars. There are forces in life stronger than oneself, and one may have to compromise or accept the unacceptable. Anger at powerlessness is a characteristic theme of Pluto-Mars transits.” – pg.182

“Could Neptune at the MC mean media attention? Liz: on the manifestation level, it can reflect some kind of notoriety, prominence, or involvement with “the masses”. But sometimes the effects are quieter. They may pertain to the relationship with the mother, or to changes which the world does not hear about. Not everyone becomes a celebrity when Neptune crosses the MC.

…It is also a parting of the ways from the mother, the past, and the family background. There would inevitably be emotional repercussions with such a process. Why do we get confused about objectives? Because old objectives are disintegrating, and it hurts. It is a kind of loss, a relinquishing of something safe and secure. But it is also a kind of freedom, and anything seems possible. Under Neptune transits, we may believe we have glimpsed the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We can have and do anything. G-d is on our side. It is as if the heavens have suddenly opened and revealed our true destiny. But Neptune is prone to excessive idealizing, and can confuse boundless vision with what is actuality possible.

Audience: Maybe he will lose his job.

Liz: that is a possibility. But the opposite is also possible. Sometimes Neptune on the MC can seem to make all one’s wishes come true – although there is usually a high price to be paid, of which one is generally unconscious at the time.” – pgs. 184-185

“I had a cursory look at Neil Kinnock’s chart before the election, and I saw transiting Saturn exactly conjunct his natal Moon in the 2nd house on the day of voting. I didn’t bother to look at anything else. I thought to myself, “If I had just been made Prime Minister after such a long time of desperate effort and waiting, would I feel like Saturn on the Moon? On the basis of that, I said to a few friends, “He will lose the election, because this transit is the signature of a very unhappy person. It describes feelings of deep rejection and failure. Here is the Moon in Aquarius, the lover of the people, feeling depressed, restricted. Unwanted, and betrayed. This is not the signature of somebody who has been trying to get into power for years and has finally achieved his fondest wish.

…All right. If you are in a Saturn-Moon emotional state while you are preoccupied with something as important as planning an election campaign, how are you likely to deal with things? What kind of image are you likely to present to others? What feeling-tone will others pick up from you? Your decisions and judgements will be powerfully colored by your emotional state. They will not be the same decisions and judgements you might make under some other transit. You will make them from a place of expecting defeat, on some unconscious level. Your sense of defensiveness and isolation, whether conscious or not, will communicate itself to others, and they will not feel in sympathy with you, no matter what you say or how hard you try to be congenial and friendly.” – pgs. 191-193

“The Sun symbolizes meaning and purpose, while the Moon symbolizes the function of relationship. At birth, the Sun is like an empty vessel, not yet filled with experience. The life purpose has not yet manifested in the world of form. It has not been born; it is not yet embodied. The Moon goes out into the world and touches and feels and feels, eats and digests, and once it has gathered a sufficient amount of experience it brings it back to the Sun and pours it into the Sun’s waiting vessel. …Thus the sense of individual identity develops, primarily on the basis of what the moon reflects back by way of physical and emotional experiences.” – pg. 200

“Rudhyar called this the Balsamic phase. The Moon is within sight of home, and it is burdened by its fund of experience. It is a little weary. It is carrying everything back to the Sun, and isn’t really interested in going out into the world to get yet more experience when it has already had quite enough. Rudhyar describes this phase as portraying a reflective, self-sacrificing quality. One is chewing over all the experiences one has gathered, prior to the imminent new Moon, and there isn’t much desire to reach out for new experience. Other people may find the individual withdrawn and often inaccessible, yet at the same time there is little self-interest. This phase of the Moon describes a deeply reflective and indrawn way of being, whereas the Moon just in front of the Sun is like a child shouting, “What’s out there? I want to go and explore!” – pg. 202

“However, I have found that people with a great emphasis on the 8th [House] often discover their relationship with the inner world through loss and emotional upheaval – it demands an inner journey of a committed kind. Otherwise there may be a sense of victimization, and a feeling that one is at the mercy of forces one cannot understand or do anything about.” – pg. 217

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains the transcripts of two related lectures given by Liz Greene in 1996. In the first lecture, "Complexes and Projection," Greene first introduces readers to the concept of psychological complexes and then explores how to see them in the birth chart. In the second lecture, "A Psychological Approach to Transits and Progressions," she focuses on predictive astrology, looking at how planetary movements show which complexes in a person's chart are likely to be the most active at any given time. I think whether or not you like this book will have a lot to do with whether you favor a psychological or traditional approach to astrology. The book description suggests that it offers a way to reconcile these two schools of thought. It does, but Greene is a psychological astrologer and her explanations will probably go over best with astrologers who are open to that approach. Simplifying greatly, she sees complexes as having so much energy that they can manifest in real-world ways (illnesses, conflicts with other people, etc.), an explanation that traditional astrologers may find insufficient.

I both enjoyed reading this book and found it helpful on a practical level. The material in the first lecture about complexes was interesting enough, but I really appreciated Greene's thoughts on predictive astrology. I thought her discussion of how transits and progressions can be interpreted in three ways—teleological, emotional, and material—was useful, especially when she advises readers not to ignore the feelings of their clients who are suffering, miserable, and not ready to hear What A Wonderful Learning Experience this horrible time in their lives is supposed to be. I was also intrigued by how she sees transits, secondary progressions, and solar arc directions as all being valid, but operating at different levels. I'd recommend this book to any astrologer interested in both the psychological and event-oriented ways of seeing predictive astrology, except that at the time of this writing, it's quite the challenge to find this book (published in the UK) in the United States at a reasonable price.

[Damaskcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liz Greene is, in my opinion, one of the best of the authors writing about psychological astrology. This book consists of two seminars originally given in May 1996 as part of a course run by the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London. The first seminar is about complexes and the way we project qualities we do not recognise onto other people. These are all linked to myth as a way of understanding what is going on in the psyche.

The second seminar is about transits and progressions and the way they manifest in people’s lives. This part of the book is particularly interesting reading it nearly twenty years later as it examines transits and progressions in the birth charts of British political leaders at the time – a year before the 1997 General Election. The analysis by Liz Greene herself and by the seminar audience is uncannily accurate in the light of later events which were obviously unknown to the participants at the time.

I found this book fascinating reading and it can be read and understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of astrology and it may help the reader to understand what is going on in their own lives.

[alice valentín · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly phenomenal. Felt my perspective twisting and expanding with every sentence. I would consider this one of the most crucial astrological texts there is; not in terms of learning the fundamentals but for revolutionizing the way you understand symbolic language and go about chart analysis. Will drastically improve your interpretative skill to an absurd degree. Strictly for intermediate to advanced students. I’m not sure why her work is categorized as entirely separate from traditional astrology, I mean the title is “psychology AND prediction.” So I think traditional students should read this as well. She makes a point to not neglect the material or psychological component. I strive to be this wise of a practitioner.