AUTHOR’S NOTE: In reading about the mythological history of the stars and their constellations, I came across the supposition that, in primitive cultures, the concept of a personal “guiding star” predated by millennia that of an individual “guardian angel.” Everyone was aligned with a dominant stellar (or more likely planetary) force that governed their destiny and furnished protection from harm.

It wasn’t clear how this predilection was established, but we might assume that it was based either on prominence in the local sky of a particular star, planet or constellation and its associated mythical properties at the moment of birth, or on the characteristics exhibited by the individual later in life (the sort of thing that was eventually subsumed under horoscopic typology). This rudimentary star-lore was brought into focus in the rise of geocentric astrology, which promulgated the idea that the natal horoscope is a kind of refractory lens or prism through which we’re filtered at birth, picking up different hues of personality from the various planets, or “borrowing illumination, energy and talents” (to use Sallie Nichol’s compelling phrase) as our inward-bound spirit passes by them on its way to manifestation.

Because these heavenly powers originate in the solar system and flood our environment with their “rays,” they are identical for every person born at the same instant in time; what makes them unique are the geographic coordinates of the birthplace, such that no two living people can have exactly the same birth chart (underscoring the theory of absolute individuality behind Aleister Crowley’s cryptic statement that “Every man and woman is a star”). The generic qualities of the planets in their zodiacal positions are personalized according their placement in the houses of the chart. This model supports the psychoanalytical premise that personality is inborn, while character stems from the learned behaviors that constitute experience.

Nichols’ allegory proceeds with the notion that, when we pass away we return these planetary energies to their source as we migrate back into the realm of Spirit, to be used by the following generation (or perhaps by us in our next incarnation), kind of like a mystical “gene pool.” I’ve been an astrologer for decades but I have never before encountered the idea of temporarily “borrowing” our personality traits from the planets that exemplify them; we are merely “stamped” with their essence. However, the idea of the horoscope as a prismatic lens that parses these influences into their unique “hues” and deposits them in particular houses (or departments of life) is not at all foreign to my previous understanding of how astrology works. Taking it a step further, the network of angular aspects between planets behaves like a spider-web: one planetary strand is plucked (through the transits and progressions that activate it) and the impulse resonates in another strand, evoking either a sympathetic or an antagonistic response from the second planet.

I’ve been pursuing classical, seven-planet, non-psychological astrology for the last few years but I’ve never warmed up to the idea that the fixed stars can have more than an extremely attenuated and abstract effect on human affairs; they are just too hypothetical to earn my confidence. The post-Ptolemaic Arabian astrologers were big on them, but I’ve never applied them to my own chart. They remind me of the Star card in tarot, which has been associated with the astrological qualities of Aquarius, the sign governing astrology. It is similarly remote from Earthly activities and it represents the most refined and exalted expression of the spiritual current that emanated from the High Priestess. Its energy is not so much “at ready” as “held in reserve;” if we want to enjoy its tenuous benevolence we must travel well outside our customary path, not that it is resistant to our supplication, just that it’s turned aside and preoccupied, utterly oblivious of our need to engage. It takes a very long reach to tap it on the shoulder.

In modern astrology, the outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto would seem to play in the same court. They are for the most part impersonal in nature and have been described as “generational” factors affecting a broad segment of the population due to their extremely slow progress through the zodiac. The individual and social aspects of the personality end with Saturn, beyond which everything is trans-personal and less psychologically attuned to daily life. Their energies could not be “borrowed” for chart interpretation in classical antiquity because their existence was not yet known or guessed, much less observed in the night sky.

Their absence or presence in a horoscope still makes little or no difference to the traditional astrologer, and the juggling of what was originally an elegant system to allow space for their rulerships and essential dignities amounted to an exercise in “fiddling-and-fudging.” Just because they’re out there doesn’t automatically mean they will add anything of more than incidental value to a personality profile, and I for one prefer to stay with the prototypical concepts of elemental temperament and humour; that’s about as far into anyone’s psychological minutiae as I care to delve. When it comes to metaphysical truth, “new” is often underanalyzed, overrated and a clear testament to the observation that human nature does indeed “abhor a vacuum.” (Don’t get me started on asteroids.)