THE PLANETS

We live in a simplified world designed for our human lives. In this world of plans, of predictable emotions, in this organised and compacted world, it is difficult to open up to the immensity of the sky. This sky that surrounds us and opens us to an incomprehensible dimension every time we allow ourselves to be touched by its magnificence. This patient observation of the night sky connects us with its infinity of lights, its orderly cadence of regular movements, its mysterious darkness. But it also brings us back to the here and now, to the fact that we inhabit a part of this sky, in a time and space, that we are part of a planet. On this planet we call Earth, we, sons and daughters of its mud womb, organise a world to protect us from the openness and mystery, from the thunderous silence of not knowing ourselves, of not understanding where we come from and where we are going.

Astrology offers us a complex perception. This planet that is our home functions in relation to a larger organism, as a piece of a whole. The other planets of the solar system seem to participate in the structure and fabric of our Earth, our home or our stage. Our lives reflect that ordered dance we observe in the sky. The sky around us and the sky within us. The Moon protects us, threads us in its order, inhabits us as a survival instinct, as contact, enchants us as a mirror of unconscious layers, leaves us open-mouthed every time it reflects the sunlight in the full Moon. This moon we see in the sky inhabits us and is part of us. How could we let ourselves be affected by its magnetism if there were not a lunar, magnetic, instinctive and ancient quality in us? A participation of our bodies with it? How could we feel the warmth of the Sun in our chest if there were not within us something of its very nature? A potential, a heart, dry branches looking for a spark to catch fire. 

Incorporating the astrological perspective implies opening ourselves to a perceptive complexity that is very different from the one that culture leads us to. This perspective is connected to a different way of feeling which expels us from the perception that we are something fixed, a centre of consciousness or a person to whom things happen. As in a drama, we are different characters that develop a plot. Our consciousness divides and dialogues with itself through occurrences, through experiences and other people, like a story in which destiny is dynamic. In this play that is our life, our consciousness identifies or rejects parts and characters of the plot. The material that builds these characters arises from the qualities and the specific order of the sky. From the relationships between its parts, from the distances and harmonies between the planets of the solar system. How do we open ourselves to that which complements us and thanks to which we are something more? How do we open ourselves to others and remain vulnerable and on fire? Venus. How do we wish to open our arms and expose ourselves, trusting in the loving response of the other? And how does this loving desire link with its complement? How do we assert ourselves and modify the world? How do we feel our own transformative and mobilising power? Mars. How do we celebrate our tense, concentrated and determined body and enjoy the strength of others? 

This new perception that astrology gives us points us outwards, towards the planets and their creative configurations of meaning, in a space and time that are not empty but full of meaning. It makes us look, each time we do so, towards the sky with a new wonder and sense of belonging to a living cosmos. But this perception also points us inwards, towards the reflection we are of that universe. Perhaps the Planets are not just out there. Perhaps they are at the same time within us, as the starry sky is reflected in a pond of water. Perhaps when we speak of the Sun and the Moon we are talking about something much more abstract, hidden and mysterious than those bodies we see in the sky. Astrology is a language to symbolise that mystery.