What is Holistic Astrology?
Is Holism different than Holistic Thinking?Jan Smuts first used the term "holism" in his 1922 ground breaking book titled; Holism and Evolution. Dane Rudhyar expanded its meaning, in a more culturally significant way about 10 years later, to include the whole individual and the growth of humanity-as-a-whole.
Over the last 80 years there has been a slow transition from a basic understanding of holism to a more refined humanistic approach which added needed elements to bring the meaning beyond the biological, material, and psychological. Holistic thinking and concepts understand the specific parts of a system to be all interrelated. The part can not fully be understood independent of the whole system. This is a corner stone philosophy of Seattle Astrology.
Holistic Thinking Moves into the 21 Century
A holistic approach looks at the parts within a whole as intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts.
Astrology mainly deals with the central problems of human existence. The most basic of these problems are the inherent meaning of the relationship humankind has with the universe in which we are a part. This relationship is holistic by its very nature.
Astrology and the Idea of Holistic Thinking
Astrology's response to the most primordial and universal of human experience is that of the sky. The sky has two distinct aspects, the day sky and the night sky. Thus, a waking consciousness and sleep, light and darkness. Astrology then interprets this experience of the sky. However, there are two separate ways to interpret this sky experience.
1. The symbolic way, is to see whole sky, both day and night, and the ordered movement of the Sun, Moon, and planets as a revelation of the order of man's nature and a cosmic order outside of man.
2. The empirical way, seeks to formulate systematic correlations between periodic events and the positions of interrelatedness of the celestial bodies.
Astronomers give us a new perspective of our solar system that archaic astrologers didn't have available to them. In times past, the dualism involving the sky and earth was seen only as "above and below." The perspective of a planet in a solar system within the Milky Way galaxy, situated in a universe containing billions of galaxies was beyond their capacity. This basic dualism of above and below is today being challenged along with old ideas of the duality of good and evil. as the foundation for the familiar animal and angel fight for dominion within the human soul. The dualism of body and soul, has been moving in the direction of a more complex concept of levels or 'planes' of being — of consciousness and activity. This type of concept is the foundation for a new astrology based on holistic thinking.
What Then is Meant by this New Foundation of Holistic Astrology?
Signs and symbols are produced in order to answer human
needs. But there are various kinds
of needs. Within the holistic concepts of astrology these needs fall into a
hierarchy of functions
rather than of only basic needs. This is
an important fact to recognize that human beings can operate at several levels
of activity and in terms of a consciousness whose scope and power of mental
association and abstraction increases at each successive level or functional
hierarchy. The entirety of these levels are holistically viewed as a whole and
their classification is only a meager attempt at a deeper understanding of
their relatedness.
The Biological Level
Starting with physical organisms, as bodies, all human begin to operate
at the biological level.
They act and react within this first
level of functioning in order to satisfy a few basic organic functions (food
assimilation, adaptation to changing temperatures and existential situations, self-reproduction,
and self-protection) of which security is certainly primary. Each of
these fundamental functions has what we might call a psychic overtone
manifesting as drives, emotions, and an overall sense of being a particular
organism whose characteristics differentiate it from other human organisms.
Synthesizing, as it were, all the basic biological needs is the basic need for
security, not only as a particular person, but more deeply still as a member of
the human species — for, at the biological level, the preservation and expansion,
and hence "security" of the species as a whole functions at a very
deep level.
The Sociocultural Level
On the basis of the need for security, human beings find in
themselves the urge to come together and to unite their strength against animals, nature, or threatening forces. This coming together
is not merely according to biological origins (the family grouping), but exist
beyond or outside of the deep organic and psychic bondage of the strictly
biological types of relationships. When this level of cooperation is reached it
functions at the second level, the sociocultural level. No human being should
be called a "person" unless he or she has become a functional
participant in a social collectivity. Culture establishes itself within the
collective psyche of a community as a power that controls the basic emotional
responses to everyday living and the collective mentality (primitive and
instinctual, or more formally developed as it may be) of all the human beings
born within the social organism and subjected throughout their growth to the
religious beliefs, taboos, and mental assumptions of the community, clan, or
tribe.
The Individualistic Level
When a human being, having become a sociocultural person, is actually
able to operate, consciously and emotionally, as a truly autonomous individual
regardless of sex, color, race, class, or religion, a new needs take form in
this individual's consciousness; and they have to meet life at an individual level. These needs are particular to each individual — yet,
they take specific kinds of forms for various groups of individuals. While all
these individuals are trying in some manner to assert their
individuality within the particular culture in which they were born
and educated, they also have to assert
themselves against the rules,
taboos, and mental assumptions of that culture. Within these individuals (or
sometimes, individuals-in-the-making), primordial biological drives and
"conditioned" sociocultural attitudes are still operative. This type
of "programming" is usually operating in a deep, or partially
unconscious level, and often a unrecognized type of bondage to the generic
human biological or drives, and the more specialized sociocultural or religious
levels, of existence are experienced. Conflicts as a result arise, which are
often highly destructive or at least confusing if not bewildering.
The individualistic level of consciousness and activity is the third
basic level at which human beings can operate. This level has also its own
specific needs, the fulfillment of which requires the use of a new type of
symbols — or a new type of interpretation of old biological imagery and
cultural-religious myths.
The Transpersonal Level
On the foundation represented by the individual level, a fourth
level is possible — the transpersonal level. The transpersonal is
dealing with states or areas of consciousness beyond the limits of personal and
individual identity. It implies a
"descent" of power that meets, as it were, the aspirations or
"ascent" of the human person who, having concentrated a long series
of efforts toward the goal of actually becoming a free and autonomous
individual. Eager to stress his or her uniqueness and originality, they have
found these efforts leading to serious crises of belief and identity. During
such crises, many confusing experiences and perhaps unclear revelations may
take place — new feelings the individual could not account for, new visions and
yearnings to merge with some mysterious subliminal reality, a new sense of
"belonging". On these foundations, a transpersonal kind of living may
be built, not actually to "solve" personal problems, but to transcend
them by illumining the process that produces them, and what is still more
important, by suggesting how they can used in terms of a new kind of
purpose — a purpose that
transcend the individual.
Holistic Thinking Implies a Multilevel Approach to Astrology
To many
people, astrology now appears as a significant and inspiring means of
interpreting what is happening to them and indicating what can be expected to
happen personally and or collectively to them. This "multi"-level
approach to astrology is foundational from a holistic point of view because it
can foster a sense of ordered and purposeful change, as well as a meaningful
process of unfoldment. Change and process in this sense is holistic when
considering themselves as part of a fundamental relationship, not only with the
entire solar system as a whole, but also the entirety of their whole person
through time. Not only within a functional hierarchy, but from the stand point
of a persons entire lifetime a whole.
