How to Appreciate Astrology

A Hermetic lens on Astrology, and its related Logos, Symbols and Archetypes

This Hermetica Reiterated Astrology series is grounded in the rigorous traditions of Hellenistic and Vedic astrology and should be clearly disambiguated from popular or modern psychological astrology.

Astrology, when properly understood, is a rigorous and symbolic science grounded in the principles of Logos, rather than hacky fortune telling, superstition or fatalism. The Hermetica Reiterated Astrology series is written to endorse and clarify Hellenistic astrology as a framework of real substance, in clear distinction from the superficiality of popular magazine astrology.

My intention is not to reproduce or replace the excellent resources already available to those seeking detailed study—these already exist in abundance. Instead, this material exists to equip students with the necessary context and foundational understanding to support deeper work with Tarot, as much of Tarot’s structural meaning and interpretive power is anchored in astrology, archetype, and mythos.

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Hermetica Reiterated is a project catering to the serious student of Hermetics, Tarot, and other esoterica. Because these topics have been bastardised and diluted by popular application, tainted by grift, and syncretised by ignorant advocates of social media esoterica, there is a need for such a resource that reiterates their depth, coherence, and essence. This project exists to restore the true meaning of these traditions, stripping away superficial interpretations and reaffirming the necessity of disciplined study, initiatory integrity, and structural understanding.

The intention is to serve those committed to genuine inquiry and mastery, rather than those seeking quick fixes, vague affirmations, or commodified mysticism.

Appreciation is that which accrues Soul and enlightens Spirit

DIVINATION

To divine means to seek or perceive knowledge, insight, or guidance by interpreting signs, patterns, or symbols believed to reveal underlying truths or the movement of deeper forces of nature and the cosmos.

When someone looks out the window to read the skies for signs of rain, we say they are divining the weather. This does not need to imply supernatural abilities; it simply means observing natural patterns and drawing reasoned conclusions based on those signs. To divine, in this sense, is to participate in the ongoing dialogue with the world, recognising that meaning and guidance can be found through attentive observation and interpretation of the signals present in nature and the cosmos.

DISAMBIGUATING ASTROLOGY

A common foundation of all my work is based on a precision of language.

The first thing to appreciate is that the Pop astrology we encounter in magazine horoscopes is a very different project from the rigour and depth of the astrology that is meant when this word is being used here.

This is the primary reason why this point needs to be made at all.

What most modern Western humans associate with the word astrology is the simplified version found in horoscopes in magazines and newspapers. This practice is comparatively shallow and vague when set against the technical depth and rigour of systems like Hellenistic astrology, which involve comprehensive natal chart analysis and structured methods rather than broad generalisations.

Guarding esoteric knowledge is not about exclusion, but about protecting its essence and ensuring it is only engaged with the necessary care and maturity. Without this, deeper teachings are easily misunderstood or diluted. There is always a demand for what is easy and immediately gratifying, which drives the production of shallow imitations. As a result, the authentic and nuanced is replaced in public awareness by mass-produced versions that lack real substance and value.

This is precisely how we arrived at ‘magazine astrology’, a form of spiritual junk food that lacks depth, rigour, and substance, and which has contributed to astrology’s poor reputation. Hellenistic astrology, by contrast, is a fundamentally different practice and should be clearly distinguished from these superficial versions.

WHAT IS HELLENISTIC ASTROLOGY

It is called Hellenistic astrology because it originated and developed during the Hellenistic period, a historical era that began with the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE and lasted until roughly the 6th or 7th century CE.

The term “Hellenistic” refers to the spread of Greek language, culture, and intellectual life throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East during this time.

Hellenistic astrology is the original form of Western astrology developed in the ancient Greek and Egyptian world, which interprets the whole birth chart, including planets, signs, and houses, using structured techniques and Greek mythological symbolism to understand fate, character, and timing, or what we might call Dharma.

WHY HELLENISTIC ASTROLOGY

Hellenistic astrology was re-discovered when modern scholars and astrologers began translating and studying ancient Greek and Latin texts that had long been forgotten or ignored. Starting in the 1990s, researchers such as Robert Schmidt and Robert Hand brought the original teachings and methods back to light, showing that the roots of Western astrology were far more sophisticated than most people realised. They began a work of reiterating Astrology, much the same as I am reiterating Hermetics and related esoterica.

Their work opened up access to the authentic sources, helping astrologers today reconnect with the original foundations of their craft.

Astrology has deep and manifold cultural roots, drawing from Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, and many other ancient traditions. What distinguishes the Hellenistic tradition is the synthesis and formalisation of these earlier streams into a coherent system that became the basis for Western astrology. This refinement phase did not erase or discredit its predecessors, but rather consolidated and adapted earlier traditions, aligning them with the mythological and philosophical foundations of the Greek and Roman world. It is from this cultural operating system that we inherit much of our legacy in these domains.

The reason I have chosen to focus on Hellenistic astrology is because of the accessibility of the archetypes and their supporting mythologies, and the alignment to the cultural legacy of philosophy and metaphysics, which we inherit from the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The codex of Greek myth and archetype is more accessible for a modern Western reader than the symbolic systems of many other ancient cultures, such as Babylonian, Egyptian, or Vedic traditions. Greek mythology has been deeply integrated into Western literature, psychology, and the arts, making its stories and characters familiar reference points. This familiarity allows contemporary readers to more readily engage with the archetypes and meanings in Hellenistic astrology, compared to systems rooted in symbols and narratives that are less embedded in Western cultural memory.

MUNDANE ASTROLOGY & EVOLUTIONARY ASTROLOGY

Mundane astrology and Evolutionary astrology are both important developments within the broader tradition, each serving distinct yet complementary purposes.

Mundane astrology does not imply triviality; rather, the term “mundane” is derived from the Latin mundus, meaning “world.” Mundane astrology refers to the domain of worldly affairs; nations, leaders, historical cycles, and collective events. It is the application of astrological principles to the fate and unfolding of the world at large, rather than the personal destinies of individuals.

Mundane astrology operates within a profound archetypal and mythic context, where the movements of the slower-moving outer planets and the cycles of time they describe are understood as reflections of cosmic forces shaping the unfolding of history and collective experience. The rise and fall of empires, the emergence of cultural epochs, and the challenges faced by societies are interpreted as expressions of archetypal dramas playing out on the world stage. Each planetary configuration carries symbolic resonance, echoing mythological themes and collective psychological patterns that have persisted through time. By situating worldly events within this broader mythic and archetypal framework, mundane astrology enables a deeper understanding of the patterns that govern collective destiny, providing context, meaning, and orientation amidst the apparent chaos of world affairs.

Similarly, Evolutionary astrology addresses the deeper currents of soul development, focusing on the evolutionary trajectory, karmic inheritance, and transformative purpose across lifetimes.

Both of these approaches are structured upon the foundational system of Hellenistic astrology, inheriting its precise methods, dignities, aspects, and symbolic language. The rigour and coherence of Hellenistic astrology provide the necessary foundation for both mundane and evolutionary astrology to function as meaningful and reliable frameworks, enabling both collective and individual sense-making within a tradition of disciplined symbolic logic.

ASTROLOGY AND ANIMISM

At its most pragmatic level, astrology is nothing more than a technical rigour and the sense-making function of Mythology applied to a worldview of Animism overlaid onto astronomical observations of the heavens.

Animism is simply the recognition that we live in relationship with an ‘ensouled’ world. Our emergent reality is contingent on our local environment, ecological and cosmological. This reasoned perspective arises from a phenomenological reading of the world, where intelligence is apprehended not only in human minds but in the dynamic order of nature, time, and place. This is extended to the totemic and psychological relationship we develop with natural phenomena of the living world of plants and animals, as relational presences that shape and inform our archetypal psychology and therefore our consciousness.

In this view, the natural world is not inert matter but participatory intelligence. The deer, the river, the thunderstorm, the oak, become coordinates of encounter and pointers to meaning. Through repeated interaction, appreciation and narrative association, they become totems; not limited to arbitrary assignment of meaning, but because they so effectively reveal corresponding aspects of ourselves and the world in ways that are consistent, evocative, and wise.

This is the ground on which both animism and astrology converge: the recognition of a world that is alive, ensouled, and structured by intelligible relationships that speak to us, if we develop the sense-making to parse and demodulate such signal.

Both Animism and Astrology are frameworks for perceiving intelligence-in-motion, that transcends the purely metaphoric via emergent and phenomenological reality. The apparent consciousness of nature, its seasonal cycles, regenerative patterns, and forms of genius, becomes comprehensible not as forms, geometries and fractal scales of correspondence.

Just as the Moon governs the tides, and the tides relate to the gravitational interplay of Sun, Earth, and Moon, there exists a broader system of non-linear correlation. The planets do not cause human behaviour or events, but they correlate with archetypal patterns that unfold in the human domain.

Astrology, then, operates within a Logos of Relativity and Correspondence. It is a symbolic system grounded in pattern recognition and correlation across nested scales of time and space. This restores a pragmatic sense of animism, not to be dismissed as primitive mysticism, but elevated via a disciplined recognition that we live within a coherently ordered, intelligent, and participatory cosmos.

In this way, astrology is a logical discipline: a language of Reason applied to the heavens, structured by number, motion, and pattern, yet intersecting the symbolic and the archetypal. It is this confluence between ratio and mythos, geometry and meaning, that gives astrology its unique epistemic power.

LOGOS

Astrology or Astro-logia means the study of the Logos of the Stars.

Astrology has a logia aspect, a rigour which is based on precise movement of the stars or planets, and the precise rules by which houses and bounds are measured and allotted.

One part of this logia is the very literal science of astronomical tracking and computation, governed by rigorous, measurable principles.

The movements of the planets and luminaries follow exact cycles and mathematical ratios, and their relationships, through aspects, bounds, and houses, are determined by precise, codified rules.

The houses, too, are not merely psychological sectors but divisions of the sky according to diurnal motion, with clearly delineated angles (ASC, MC, IC, DESC) and rules for planetary angularity, succedence, and cadency.

In Hellenistic astrology, for example, the division of the zodiac into 12 signs of 30° each, the assignment of domiciles and their respective dignities reflect an elegant underlying harmonic architecture that is only interpreted via Greek mythology or mytho-logia—the interpretive logic of mythic narrative and archetypes, but not defined by them.

In Vedic astrology (Jyotisha), this rigour is seen in the application of nakshatras, dashas, and divisional charts (vargas), all bound by strict computation and layered interpretive logic.

CAUSATION vs CORRESPONDENCE

A key aspect of the Logos of Astrology is the distinction between Causation and Correspondence.

Astrology does not assert that planets cause events in a mechanistic or linear sense. Rather, it operates on the principle of correspondence—the idea that the configurations of the heavens and the conditions on Earth reflect one another through a shared underlying order.

This is a metaphysical premise as old as Hermetic Philosophy and as enduring as Vedic Wisdom: As above, so below. The planetary movements do not engender outcomes but signal the corresponding pattern unfolding within the larger field of Cosmic context and Meaning. The sky acts as a mirror, not a lever. It reflects the same archetypal structures that shape experience, consciousness, and becoming.

Understanding this distinction is what separates astrology as a serious symbolic science and divinatory medium from fatalistic misinterpretation. It reveals astrology’s rightful place alongside disciplines such as geometry, music, and philosophy—tools for discerning the architecture of reality through symbolic resonance rather than material force.

Consult the genius of the place in all;
That tells the waters to rise, or fall;
Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks, or now directs, the intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

Alexander Pope

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The authentic, rigorous tradition of Hellenistic astrology provides an essential structural and symbolic foundation for any serious work with archetype, mythos, and symbolic systems such as Tarot and Hermetica. The accessibility and coherence of Greek mythological archetypes, together with the technical structure of Hellenistic astrology, offer a stable and intelligible framework for sense-making that is otherwise lacking in popular or superficial approaches and would be unrelatable in other ancient traditions.

This foundation is essential for the transmission and application of esoteric knowledge in contemporary contexts, ensuring that work with Tarot and Hermetica is not just psychologically resonant but also anchored in a tradition of genuine symbolic logic, coherence, and philosophical depth.

Astrology, in its most vital expression, is not a hokey relic of ancient superstition or a clinical body of technical rules. It is a living language, a sophisticated multidimensional map through which the movements of the cosmos and the unfolding of the soul are brought into meaningful dialogue. The natal chart is more than a document of fate. It is an active, symbolic interface; a mirror reflecting the unique dharmic configuration of each life, and a map that invites orientation, self-inquiry, and conscious participation in the emergence of it and the greater order by which this occurs.

To appreciate astrology is to recognise its power as a framework for sense-making and the evolution of the soul. It offers us not only a way to understand our place within the wider cosmic rhythm but also a disciplined method for navigating the phases, challenges, and opportunities of existence. In this way, astrology stands beside Tarot, Hermetics, and the great esoteric traditions, and thereby so much more than a tool for passive prediction. It can be an active guide for ongoing self-cultivation, alignment, and the pursuit of meaning.