Linking Vedic Astrology to Psychodynamic Western Astrology and Powerful added Dimensions of Healing
Part 1 Delving Deeper into our Vastness
This article and its associated videos comes to you in three parts:
Part 1 Delving Deeper into our Vastness
Part 2: The Fuller Landscape of The Self and Healing Methods
Part 3. Bridging Vedic Astrology and Western Psychodynamic Astrology
Here is Part 1: Delving Deeper into our Vastness
See the video HERE.
Immerse yourself in the vastness of Vedic Astrology. Vedic astrology can provide a full declaration of our scripts, our consciousness, our behavior, and our sense of Self in this lifetime. However, knowing Vedic astrology is only one part. Proper use and the right response is the second part: bring in understanding of our unconscious self and our shadow self and bring in needed Healing Approaches.
This video and blog is about achieving the fullness of what Vedic astrology can offer – which is indeed a vast offering, but the need to also go beyond it into areas and methods which connect us to our unconscious and shadow material which is indeed vast, too, so as to contact the buried power and beauty buried there, and heal the hurts and wounds that are also there, often denied -but affecting us powerfully.
Vedic astrology really can provide the vastest declaration of our scripts, of our consciousness, of our behavior and of our sense of self in this life.
But there is the risk it remains just super-intelligent formula if you don’t then make a right response to that and the right use of that, if you don’t also go beyond that to receive nourishment and healing from your unconscious realms.
Mantra and yoga posture and remedies can indeed strengthen us and connect us to divine faces of the planets, but more is needed to make the needed healing and empowerment to the fullness of our self, and to make the needed connection to the unconscious dimensions of our self. Mantras and Yoga can be powerful and Healing, but they do depend on the actual true level of consciousness of the person, and their level of awareness and healing, if they are not to be just ‘over-lay’ or formula.
Vedic Astrology truly can give us the most valid perceptions of our karmas in this life, of our incarnational life purpose, of our destiny dimensions, and of our central forward life path in this incarnation, of our personal life scripts, and of our relationship life scripts. But then the crucial step is to go far further than its traditional formula, and identify the deep tasks of healing and empowerment as well.
We need also to get into the fullness of the landscape of our Self. We need also to encompass our unconscious and our dream-self dimension, to get to know the true ‘landscape of our Self’.
Vedic Astrology has some dimensions that can do this, but those need to be handled and used in a more than just formulaic way. The formulaic, rigid scope that is often communicated by Vedic astrologers has many roots in cultural and mind-set issues that just aren’t spiritually justified and, in excess, they are spiritually detrimental. The level of consciousness needs to rise at these very tense times. The longer those who have the ability and the wisdom to bring a person to such perception are silent, the longer the struggle between consciousness and Maya will persist.
As my colleague Lia Cruse writes, ‘there is no such thing as a complete path anymore. History is far too destructive for every ancient practice on earth. I feel deeply and have seen that bringing the different paths together fills in the missing pieces for each, thus accelerating one’s spiritual growth and lessening the chances of the individual falling victim to the formulaic topics which you address here. Communicating the necessary bonding together is key, so that others – those with the capacity to see that this is true – can answer that call. What we are all needing now is indeed revolutionary. As I ask my own self, if we can see the answer but do not speak it, are we really embodying the purpose we were meant for?’
I would like to say that the wonderful methods of Vedic Astrology I am referring to here as pointing into the fuller sense of our Self, are just to name a couple of examples: the ‘emotional-consciousness-based’ declarations about us – warts and all – that are offered by the utterly wonderful Nakshatras, the wonderful 27 sign Lunar zodiac of Vedic astrology. Also there’s the deep inner conflicts of having planets in our chart in Ashtamamsha padas. There’s the complex vastness and insubstantiality of planet placements in Gandanta zones, Pushkara, Vargottoma. There’s several wonderfully valuable Varga (Divisional) charts such as D9 Navamsha, D12 Parents and recent past life, D30 Trimshamsha (Good and Evil) – and there’s the 8th House and the 12th House.
But I always add in when I do a Reading, the fuller dimensions of our Self and our unconscious. these can, indeed, be stated by psychodynamic Western Astrology: issues like Unaspected sub-personalities, the existence of which we may not be aware of, but nevertheless may be powerfully directing our actions and life choices, leaving us wondering ‘why did I do that?’ There’s the Nature v Nurture statement offered by Western Psychodynamic Astrology.
And of course, there is obviously the needed inclusion of the outer planets which became manifest in our consciousnesses at around the time of their discovery: Uranus the planet of Revolution, Neptune the planet of illusion or needed visions and intuitions, Pluto the planet of our Power Issues: negative power over us (or others) or, importantly, our own true and positive power that may have been denied us. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are of course often included in the astrological declaration of Neo-Vedic Astrologers. And most importantly, also, there’s Chiron the Wounded Healer – there’s such a powerful need to know about your Chiron!
Part 2: The Fuller Landscape of The Self and Healing Methods
See the video HERE.
So, at this point, I want to raise the crucial key question: What is the fuller landscape of the Self?
Imagine a full-sized page – a map of the self.
In the top right corner is a little sector that might be called our persona. This is our self that everyone sees and thinks us.
But see that behind the little top right corner sector of our persona, lies a huge range of mountains.
And behind that range of mountains lies, invisible until we explore it: the true vastness of our self.
In this vastness lie our animus and our anima – our sense of the masculine and the feminine.
Also, within this vastness lie our key archetypes that drive our life, our complexes – and also our own particular personal share of the primordial fire that drives humanity.
We should not ignore the true vastness of our self, otherwise we risk approaching our lives like formulaic robots, culturally determined beings.
We need to use the declarations of Vedic Astrology to it fullness, AND we also need to use methods to contact these vastly powerful dimensions of our self.
We are bypassing, otherwise.
We are fooling ourselves, otherwise.
And in contacting this vastness of our buried unconscious self, we also need to draw on our buried power to become the fullness of self.
We need to tap into the intuitive powers that our upbringing and society often denies we have.
We need to gain access to the fullness of our self that lies behind the persona – the ‘self’ that everyone sees as us.
How do we do this?
Methods of doing this include such approaches as:
Shamanic Healing techniques (I have been working as a shamanic healer for 26 years)
Dream work
Magical work
Embodiment work
Vision work and scrying
Relationship Counselling.
Just to give one simple example: we need to identify and lovingly heal damaged and damaging faces of each of the four elements in our life, if we are to succeed in a loving successful life. We need to heal the damaged self that is our negative sense of Earth or Air or Water or Fire in our identity, in our life, for example: – all done with kindness and love: healing our inner demons.
What Vedic astrology can offer us is a vastness that is astonishing and of such value. But my point is that to fully benefit from it we need to go far further than its immense and so valuable traditional formulae.
Let’s look a bit deeper at the wonders of Vedic Astrology. 26 years ago, I read a sentence that convinced me to commence a study of the vastness of Vedic Astrology, in addition to Western Astrology. What happened was, I read about Moon in the Gandanta and what it means. In just one sentence this spoke the very unusual essence of my fate and destiny and incarnational life purpose in this incarnation – and Western Astrology knew nothing of it!
Reading this, made me embark on a study of Vedic Astrology, because Western Astrology which I already encompassed, knew nothing of the Gandanta. Yet Vedic astrology’s concept of the meaning of Gandanta Moon actually described my life’s central task and challenge. And this is one example of why Vedic astrology should not use the Tropical Zodiac of Western Astrology because the Tropical zodiac knows nothing of the three Gandanta zones.
The teaching I stumbled upon 26 years ago, is that my Moon in the Gandanta at the very, very end of Vedic Pisces meant that ‘Mother will not be there for you, so you must learn to mother yourself’. Moon is of course my Atmakaraka planet too: Atmakaraka is the key planet one must work with in this incarnation.
Western Astrology knows nothing of the Gandanta Zones (these are the three transition points from Water to Fire signs: the couple of degrees either side of the transition zero point are Gandanta where this world is experienced as insubstantial and unsupportive. The nearer to the zero point a planet is to the zero point, the more the person will be exposed to the insubstantial and unsupportive nature of human life on this earth.
And in fact, having a planet deep in a Gandanta, does potentially offer to the person, the perception that this world – Maha Maya – is not fully real or supportive, so what we need to open our self to is what lies beyond: the Void, the God realm.
Here we are into the vision of Shiva and Shakti mating endlessly to create the worlds.
Here we are into the vision of Lord Vishnu lying back in ecstasy to dream universes in and out of being. Lord Vishnu dream a Universe into being, but as it gets further from the God it becomes less pure. So, Lord Vishnu sends Avatara to sort us humans out. But eventually the decline is such that he re-absorbs that universe into his self and emanates another universe.
Also, here we are into the teaching that we in this world of Maha Maya are part of the playing of Lord Krishna’s flute.
The dimension of Vedic Astrology that encompasses connection to the Gods and Goddesses as Faces of the Divine is so very marvelously healing and empowering and extending of our consciousness. This is the dimension of Vedic Astrology where each planet has a Divine Nature – and this is such a crucial dimension of our understanding of life because how that planet appears in our particular life is just a matter of seeing the divine face of that planet through, as it were ‘filters’, filters like sign, house and aspect, which prevent us, at first, in our life of appreciating what is the divine dimension of Mars or Saturn or Pluto etc.
This is another example of the way Vedic Astrology can be used in such a vaster way than the formula.
Vedic astrology can of course so well describe the scripts of our consciousness and our behaviours and our egoic self, but the key challenge is to see the greater vastness that is within each one of us, as well: the unconscious, the shadow and the dream life, etc, the denied parts of our self due to hurts and guilts and secrets, etc.
And as we develop our abilities to more fully see these, the key task, then, is to heal and grow.
Part 3. Bridging Vedic Astrology and Western Psychodynamic Astrology
See the video HERE.
So, I always include the declarations of Western Psychodynamic Astrology and also Western Evolutionary Astrology when I give a Reading, as well as the vastness and wonders of Vedic Astrology.
I do this so that we can see crucial things like: what is the effect of our nurture on our nature? What are the sub-personalities in our chart/in our life? What is the unfolding of our Individuation? Individuation is the process of us getting to know the fullness of our psychological self – an imperative, indeed so that we can bring a more divine perspective on our ‘self’ we have to have a ‘self’ here in Maha Maya, because our Self is what gets us to the other side of the river of life, we need a sense of self to get to the other bank which is spiritual realization, we have to have a self, but we need also to understand way in which it is dysfunctional or unreal. We need to heal it – so that we can do the Divine Work required of us in our fate and destiny and life path for this incarnation, in the burning of our negative karmas, in the maximation of our incoming latent talents. And we need to identify: what are our ‘missed steps’ that we failed with or got incomplete from our previous lives?
If Astrology is done in these wider ways and linked to healing methods, it provides such an awesome portal for us to step into our Healed Self, for us to step more into our Fullness, more into connection to the Divine.
The combined declarations of Vedic Astrology and psychodynamic Western Astrology are such wonderful steppingstones to our work of transformation, to our work while we are here of burning our negative karmas and maximizing our special talents that we come in with this time.
That is why we are here!
How helpful it also though to understand deeply our destiny from the position of the Outer Planets in our life.
For example, if we have Pluto in the first House in our natal chart, we will have meltdowns and reinventions of Self periodically through our life. We will behave destructively if we feel threatened or blocked or vulnerable. We may be over-identifying with our ‘bad side’. Especially if Pluto in the first is an Unaspected Sub-personality, we may have been put out of touch with our true and positive power, we may be very unaware of how powerfully or how powerlessly we are coming over to others. The early environment is often filled with intense difficulty – hardship acquaints the individual with struggle for survival. This leaves them frustrated, restricted and insecure, into control and inscrutability, alone and aloof, full of a sense of Fate and Destiny – until they find their power. And as an example of the healing approaches I use to give astrology
its needed additional healing dimensions, I offer wonderful healing and empowering on-line ‘Journeys to the Abyss’. Latent in them can be psychism or clairvoyance, and special understanding of others’ motivations and of their shadow-side.
For example, if we have Saturn conjunct Venus in the birth chart, this is one of the classic impediments to happy relationship. The person’s upbringing left them with a sense of low value which prevents them showing their love fully. Saturn conjunct Moon in the birth chart is another of the key impediments to happy relationship. A wonderful method of healing I use here is the shamanic method of Soul Retrieval. In an online drumming journey, we make contact with the little guy or girl who suffered this harm, get to lovingly know him or her, often finding the little guy or girl is raging and hurt, but we work with that, often finding the hurt little guy or girl was cut off from our conscious awareness but in fact powerfully directing our emotions and actions. And the whole process aims to lovingly heal the wounded split-off part of our self, and re-integrate it, healed and happier, into our self.
As a third example, if we have Chiron in the 8th House in our birth chart, we find powerful often difficult themes of partnership, sexuality, shared money, birth, death, rebirth, loss, abandonment, the surfacing of childhood and infantile emotions, our deepest wounds are present, vast issues of vulnerability and dependency and how we mask these are also present. I have done much relationship counselling, and definitely find that a couple can heal their relationship of its (astrology-identified) negative scripts and the relationship baggage they come in with through a lovingly agreed strategy of identifying the negative scripts at play and then lovingly agreeing to lovingly point out to each other when the negative scripts are lapsed into, or when the identified unconscious scripts rear their heads.
A wonderful feature of western psychodynamic astrology is also its Chart Aspect Shapes. There is a compendious range of interpretations for the chart shapes your plants in your birth chart make. These are so necessary to know sub-personalities of your self. They include psychic eye, talent triangle, Yod, Grand Cross, T-square. The list is very extensive. AND of course, western psychodynamic astrology included its Nature v. Nurture dimension. Are you the product of your Inherited Nature OR of you earliest Nurture Environment? And of course, the gift of the Nurture can be positive or can be negative, and there are chart aspect shapes to be identifier=ed in the Birth Chart of your Nurture and also the House chart of your Nurture.
Of course, these wonderful gifts also extend to your predictive astrology: The predictive declarations of psychodynamic Western Astrology can, of course, also be used with such power and benefit for healing:
Let’s mention, for example, the 8th House Low Point: There’s a concept of two predictive Age Points within western psychodynamic astrology: the first is the individuation age point that progresses around our chart from the moment of our birth, and when it reaches our 8th House, especially the 8th House Low Point, well, basically, if we are off-course for our sense of self, of who we are (due to destructive or repressive parenting or cultural conditioning) we can have a real ‘mid-life-crisis’. If we resist the imperative to develop and express the fuller more genuine sense of who we are, our life can crash utterly to force us to take on board the need to do this.
In psychodynamic Wester Astrology, there’s a second Age Point to crucially also be aware of: the Nodal Age Point, which is the whisper of our soul from the astral, at any particular time in our life.
With 26 years of experience of working with these two Age Points, I can say that I have always found them valid.
With this realization, we can then go on to the Healing Approaches that are right for the person to put them on course for their new life.
If Astrology is done in these ways, it provides such an awesome portal for us to step into
our Healed Self and step more into our Fullness.
The combined declarations of Vedic Astrology and psychodynamic Western Astrology are such wonderful stepping stones: to our work of transformation, burning our negative
karmas, and maximizing our unique talents that we come in with this time.
That is why we are here!
My wife Maggie Pashley offers a very wide range of Healing Modalities online (and face to face in Sligo). These include: Hypnotherapy, Stop Smoking, QHHT, Pain Free, Body Code, Emotion Code, Heart Wall Clearing, Bodywork sessions, Soul Realignment, Past Life Future Life, Access Bars, Reiki Seichem Healing.
My Colleague Elizabeth Hendricks offers wonderful life-changing psychic Readings and Healings, Life Path Healing, Past life healing, Soul readings, Chakra healing and Psychic Realignment.
My colleague Ann Gildart offers wonderful sessions doing Pendulum Dowsing which provides such useful Yes No or % answers
My most sincere thanks to my colleagues Janell Renshaw, Vedic Astrologer and Youth Counsellor and also Lia Cruse, Runes Teacher and Ogham Teacher, for their comments and assistance with the writing of this post.
See the links for all the different parts of our August Newsletter: //www.starwheelastrology.com/2021-sep.html
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My wife, Maggie Pashley, offers a range of Healing modalities worldwide. Find out more at: //maggiepashley.com/ or email Maggie at maggiepashley@gmail.com or call her on +353 899799642 (0899799642 from within Ireland).
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