Some Thoughts on Causality and Astrology

I was listening to The Astrology Podcast with Chris Brennan on the way to work and he was speaking with Evolutionary Astrologer, Steven Forrest about reincarnation. Forrest brought up an interesting point about causation that can get quite contentious among astrologers and esoteric students. Do placements cause our experiences or do our experiences cause our placements? For example, let’s say hypothetically you have Moon conjunct Pluto (which I do). Now, this would often indicate that your mother was explosive and domineering, but was it your mother that caused your Moon conjunct Pluto or was it your Moon conjunct Pluto that caused your difficult relationship with your mother? Forrest sounded like he implied the latter, that astrology is the cause.

I disagree. I don’t think it’s so linear or that causation travels neatly in one direction. Reality is a lot more fluid to me, more interdependent, with causes and effects influencing each other. Rather than say that the placement caused the psychology or that the psychology caused placement, we could say the two are correlated or co-related, meaning when this placement is present, the likelihood is that a certain type of experience would follow. So, though neither may cause the other, they tend to coincide because both are internally related to each other, meaning they share inherent similarities in terms of their essence.

Essence is perhaps the closest we can get to causality because it has to do with the source or origin of something. Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary defines essence as “the permanent, as contrasted with the accidental, element of being.” So, the essence of something is what persists, and we can surmise that this persistent aspect must transcend material form, since matter is in a constant state of decay and disintegration. Forrest then invokes the First Law of Thermodynamics, which basically says energy cannot be created or destroyed, as support for the idea of reincarnation, asserting that what persists must do so by virtue of this law. As I said above, Forrest practices Evolutionary Astrology, which takes as core premises two essential ideas. The first is that it is the soul, or consciousness, which persists and relates all things internally to each other and, consequently, to the whole. The second is that it is the soul who is actually evolving through the medium of the form. It would logically follow that all of our incarnations are integral to the overall process of development that leads every being to eventual reunion with our Source, the All, the One Life, or we can just say, “The Whole.”

In fact, what Forrest describes is quite close to what the esoteric and occult teachings of the world have expressed down the ages:

1. That our essence is soul or consciousness.

2. That soul or consciousness internally relates all beings to each other because all consciousness shares a common source of divine origin. This relation demonstrates that all beings are inherently interdependent with each other and with the whole, which bequeaths to them their existence.

3. That all beings are involved in a process of development and reunion with their source, that is, they are progressively realizing their relationship to the whole and thereby consciously re-assimilating their sense of identity with it.

The Bhagavad Gita even points to this process of development with the words, “Though I am Unborn, the Soul that passes not away, though I am the Lord of Being, yet as Lord over My nature I become manifest, through the magical power of the Soul.” Therefore, what becomes manifest, the appearance of things, is not the cause. Rather, the manifold manifestations are internally related, or correlated, by virtue of the fact that they are dependent on the same whole for their existence and that same whole will pervade all things within its sphere of influence with a fraction of its own nature or essence. In fact, renowned occultist Alice Bailey defines natural law in a similar manner as “the impact of a greater life upon the lesser lives within its corporate being.” It then becomes apparent that trying to definitively determine causality in such rigid terms is fruitless because we don’t see all the hidden variables that may have contributed to a given thing’s existence. Instead, what emerges is a network or fabric, made of degrees of causality extending in all directions. What may appear as a cause from one angle is merely an effect from another and one could follow this network of causality into a murky infinity if one doesn’t take into account the relationship between the parts and the whole. It is the whole that gives the part its context or meaning, and hence its essence.

If we take essence as synonymous with consciousness, then we have a clearer picture of what causality means when it comes to astrology. The astrological aspect and the experience which it correlates with, both conceal the source of that correlation, which is consciousness. Everything is alive. Planets, atoms, and even the very substance of space are beings. It is upon that backdrop, of all things having been pervaded with a fragment of the One Life, that the interdependent nature of all existence slowly reveals itself to the keen observer. In that context, causality becomes less and less important because from the wider perspective one can see more clearly the cyclical nature of manifestation and linear causation starts to curve in on itself. The Theosophists called the soul “the causal body,” because, as far as we’re concerned, the soul chooses the type of life one will have at each new incarnation and will also determine the quality of the birth chart. Forrest echoes this when he calls the natal chart “the soul’s lesson plan for this life,” which is a very simple and clever way to understand it. However, even the soul itself is an effect when taken from a wider angle. One could then regard the term “causal body” as misleading because it begs the question, “who caused you?” In this connection, even the soul itself is merely an emanation from an even greater life, just as the many colors emerge from a single ray of white light when refracted through a prism.

Therefore, rather than concern ourselves with causality, I propose a more dialectical approach. Given the vast network described above, causation would be impossible to determine because we don’t see the whole picture or all those hidden variables. Instead, why don’t we focus on how things relate and connect? We first see this idea developed by the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who posited all was one and thus internally related, yet with the caveat that the struggle of opposing forces is necessary for development and achieving eventual harmony. He expressed the idea that all entities are an amalgam of contradictions and that the universe itself was founded upon the struggle of opposing forces. This is a more practical perspective, or dare I say, a creative perspective, because it emphasizes how things interconnect. Steve Jobs said once, “When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something." Some of the most clever and brilliant insights were just a symptom of seeing things from an unexpected angle. Think of the funniest memes you’ve seen! Hence real genius is the ability to realize connections because that very act of realizing can allow you to discover something about the nature of reality. Interestingly enough, this is also the basis for the Law of Correspondences or the Law of Analogy, (which I’ll address another time) of which the most famous expression is “as above so below.” We can learn about things we have practically no experience with because we can connect them to something with which we do have experience because of that internal relationship. So let me carefully repeat: don’t worry at all about which came first, the chicken or the egg. Just marvel at the intricacies of their relationship and allow your mind to be taken off on a journey to uncover more hidden connections, and thus shine your light on some mysteries that have been plaguing the greatest minds since minds even existed. Who knows? You may be on the precipice of a brand new discovery!