Astrology and Sacred Nature

by Shelley Jordan

The cosmos is alive - a lavishly intricate, plural and hierarchical unicity. Nature is the vital, multi-layered essential that provides the animated cohesiveness for this cosmic unity. In its ceaseless symbolic narrative of light and dark, birth and decay, Nature is richly generous in its spiritual instruction and revelation. In Nature we discover the ordered, cyclical intelligence of the divine, both magnificent in its creativity and solemn in its inevitability.

Our solar system is clearly part of the larger natural order. It is organized in a rhythmic, numerically intelligent and coherent fashion. The cycles and orbits of the planets divulge the orderly framework and symmetry that is found in the sacred architecture of time and matter. One only has to gaze in silence and wonder to see the beauty contained in the organization of heavenly patterns.

Astrology is mankind's ancient symbolic system that examines this sacred order in Nature and informs our personal relationship to the psycho-cosmic structure of the larger environment. The seasons of the Sun, the tidal forces of the Moon's shifting shapes, the cycles of the planets, are all part of the cadence of the spiritual poetry inherent in the cosmic order.

Hinduism refers to this cosmic order as rta, viewing it as the foundation of the incorruptible laws that regulate the metamorphoses and configurations of Nature. Inherent in the natural order lies a moral and spiritual instruction waiting to be discovered. What is seemingly chaotic on the surface of appearances is revealed, through contemplation of astrological symbols and myths, as the embodiment of divine structure.

Planetary archetypes and activity act out the drama of the sacred. The solar system and the birth chart are the fields of action for the hierophany of supernal truths that, through thoughtful examination and meditation, inspire and elevate the soul, leading it to perfection and illumination.

This inviolate order exists on a massive scale in the universal environment of the macrocosm, as well as on the microcosmic scale in our personal, intimate and interior lives. Consider the fact that the Sun and the Moon are exactly the same size from our Earth, despite the discrepancy in their actual sizes and vast distances. This extraordinary synchronic coincidence of Nature enables us to view total eclipses from Earth, which are among Nature’s most powerful metaphors for rebirth and the inevitable deliverance from darkness. The Moon's 29 day cycle closely duplicates the feminine reproductive cycle in its duration and in the growing lunar light, when its illuminated belly bursts at full phase.

Imagination (related to magnet, magia and imago) is that crucial faculty which permits the symbols, myths and images of astrology to be used as intermediaries for gnostic ends. Imagination itself is an "organ of the soul" through which mankind can intuit the richly inhabited esoteric world, or mesocosm, that links the personal with the universal by means of archetypes, symbols and myth. Imagination enables the mind to perceive the metaphysical light which is the suprasensory essence of the astral.

The birth chart is a miniature diagram of that most immensely vast particle of the divine - the soul. By means of an astrology that makes use of imagination and contemplative "interiorism," that is, meditation on the symbols in the birth chart and how they resonate with personal experience, one can achieve entry into the deeper layers of the self. This process enables the psyche to aspire and ascend towards spiritual knowledge. Life affirming and comforting, the study of the birth chart, celestial cycles and their exposition in our personal lives can assist in the discovery of life’s meaning and purpose, leading us to the promise of enlightened insight and tolerance.