Astro Stories

  The symbols of the zodiac are spiritual enzymes.  The anonymous author of “Meditations on the Tarot”  - A Christian Hermetist - introduces the Major Arcanas as “Spiritual enzymes”: they have the power to stimulate and awaken deep layers of the soul when we contemplate them. I have no doubt that the zodiac is the same. The twelve signs are authentic symbols, let’s say arcanas.  Symbols are not mere conventions, like ordinary words. If you don’t know that the French word “bateau” means “ship”, you won’t be able to guess. The sound of the word “bateau” has nothing to do with any sound that may suggest a ship. You can calligraphy the word with great art, it won’t look like a ship at all.  Symbols on the other hand are like tips of icebergs: if you see the tip, you can have an intuition of the whole iceberg.  Imagine being new to the world like a child, and you see an iceberg for the first time; however you have previous experiences of  floating things....

The astrological signs are not signs actually, they are symbols. A sign is a simple thing, like a traffic sign. It just means one thing. A symbol is an image which has an impact on the human psyche and connects it to its own depths. It's a metaphor for psychic or spiritual realities. I keep coming back to this fundamental notion of "symbolic language". In my view, a major cause of misunderstanding in astrology comes from not understanding what symbols are and how they work, which is by showing analogies. The law of analogy is an esoteric principle which means that there is a similarity between the symbol and what it means. For instance, the Moon means woman. Woman and Moon have similar cycles, so they are symbolically connected. Now, in symbolic language, just because the Moon means woman.... doesn't mean that she will mean woman in all cases, and never mean anything else. The Moon is also like our dreams, we see the Moon and dream at night. The Moon is like the crow...