Astrology as a Practice of Healing

I often describe astrology as a practice of healing, and I mean this is several ways. Astrology invites us to explore connections that are not always apparent—which Angela Davis describes as a feminist methodology—particularly between celestial movements and our terrestrial lives. Directing our consciousness toward connection and relation can be a powerful medicine not only for feelings of disconnection, separation, isolation, and loneliness, but also a remedy for deeply entrenched cultural beliefs about individualism. When we practice astrology or do work with an astrologer, we engage in a process of understanding ourselves and our lives not as separate or autonomous individuals but as a complex constellation of relations unfolding throughout cycles of time. This fundamental shift in worldview can be a source of profound healing.

Astrology can also bring awareness to more of ourselves, inviting us to inhabit perspectives of our lives that may be new or unfamiliar. Sometimes this can feel like a rush of recognition, affirmation, and being seen, especially when the astrology reflects ways we have always known ourselves to be. At other times, the perspectives astrology provides can bring us into contact with parts of ourselves that we resist, repress, or disown. We might find ourselves in the tension between “that’s not me” and “what if it is or could be?” In other words, astrology can sometimes ask us to face parts of ourselves or our lives that we would rather avoid and invite us into processes of becoming more of ourselves that we might never have come to otherwise. These processes of becoming and integrating more of ourselves, our lives, and our lived experiences is another way in which astrology can facilitate healing.

Healing might also come through following the map of the sky—our particular natal charts—back into our own bodies and felt experiences. In addition to providing different perspectives of ourselves and our lives, as we move through our charts, we also move through our feelings about what we are discovering, or hearing if we are working with an astrologer. We feel our ways through what we perhaps want the chart to describe, what the chart actually describes, and the emotions—always embodied—that arise as we experience recognition, realization, affirmation, resistance, longing, fear, apprehension, and hope. If we slow down and pay attention, all of these feelings that arise in relation to the chart, to the sky, can deepen our relationships with our own bodies as our guides. Astrology can teach us to trust our bodies. What if all that you feel in relation to the astrology was a guide, direction emerging from your body and all your body carries—memory, intuition, ancestral relations, relations with the more-than-human, and so on? If we learn to listen, I believe these directions can lead us to the worlds for which we long.

[Image reads Astrology as a Practice of Healing in light blue lettering on a brown-tinted photo of a hand writing on a natal chart alongside a stack of books.]