The YOU SESSION is a short 30-minute inquiry consultation that allows you to explore whatever topic is most pressing or commanding for you at the moment. There’s nothing like cutting to the chase to jump-start movement towards a solution.

We will begin the session with a quick 30-second meditation and then move straight into our exploration together.

The YOU SESSION is an excellent way for people who are interested in doing more in-depth work with me to connect and establish a rapport. We’ll employ whatever modality moves you — dream work, astrology, somatic inquiry.

*Note: These sessions are not the same as an extensive astrological consultation – which requires more in-depth preparation and time on both our parts.
 
 

The world of fashion is a Neptunian art form that reveals the collective’s longing for transcendence through color, texture, pattern — fad and facade. How Earthlings costume their bodies says everything about where they are heading. All dressed up with places to (seemingly) go.

As Neptune moves through each sign of the zodiac you can track cultural projections of hope and liberation onto the various themes associated with each sign of the zodiac. And there’s a very fine line between madness and spiritual visions, delusions, etc.

For instance, Neptune’s transit through Aquarius earmarked our infatuation with technology and all of the idiotic expectations that involve computers, robotics, information manipulation, etc. Technology was to have made the world infinitely better, but still billions of people go to bed starving each night.

As the planet moved into Pisces — a sign associated with religion, fantasy, mass media (and psychosis) — a slow process of decay began to undo Judaic/Christianity’s hegemony. Suddenly atheism was hip and people turned to straight-up fantasy to channel their now wayward spiritual impulses.

Politically it appears that Christianity remains a dominant theme in American life, but as Neptune often does, that is a distortion that has morphed into political propaganda that masquerades as Jesus stuff. Recently a church in the South held a blessing ceremony for AR-15 semi-automatic rifles. Shit like that tells you how debauched it’s become.

The theater of Gucci’s new fall line of fashions has captured this amalgam-ic decay in eyepopping, polychromatic detail. Pisces, often dubbed the ‘zodiac’s garbage heap’ has never looked more fabulous. Here everything religious, including old hippie dalliances with Tibetan Buddhism and the 9/11 terrorists’ dreams for a roomful of virgins — is jettisoned over the event horizon.

Bring on the final season of Game of Thrones!

Brava!

Astrology claimed me in the mid-70s when I was a kid. As far back as I can remember our home was stocked with Horoscope magazines. You’d find issues — current or older — in every location of the house. Consulting the stars was an impulse that might overtake you at any moment! I clearly benefited from my mom’s oracular fascination.

From Horoscope, I found my way to my teacher, Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson. And then — pow — 45-years zipped past. And here I am compiling this post. It’s uncanny and humbling to have come full circle. Meaning, the new issue of Horoscope contains reviewer Chris Lorenz‘s comprehensive look at my new book Skywriter: Notes on Modern Astrology, sections of which I’m highlighting below. What a wonderful time-cycle this has been.

It’s a testament to Horoscope‘s keen-eyed editor Ronnie Grishman that — in the age of what I call ‘hypermedia’ — the print version of the magazine continues to roll off the presses and find its way into homes across the globe. And into the hearts of the next generation of astrologers. You can subscribe to Horoscope here, either in its print or electronic version.

Skywriter: Notes on Modern Astrology by Frederick Woodruff

The growth of the Internet and social media over the last few years has had a dramatic influence over the astrological community, which collectively has expanded exponentially in recent years. Nowadays, anyone interested in astrology may feel she has no one to talk to in the local community, but readily finds a treasure trove of astrology-based websites to read online and engaging conversations within social-media groups.

Frederick Woodruff finds the Internet a frequent foil in his collection of fifteen essays, Skywriter, Notes on Modern Astrology. Other essay subjects include discussions on Pluto, Mercury retrograde, and even a few non-astrological topics of interest to those living in the Age of the Internet.

Although his essays are wide-ranging, he does come from a specific psychological, philosophical viewpoint that shapes the content of his musings and criticisms. His most frequently quoted source of authority is G. I. Gurdjieff, the early twentieth-century mystic.

Gurdjieff’s primary mission was to awaken his students’ relationship to their bodies. The body has its own wisdom, which is an extension of the earth’s body and wisdom. For those who spend so much time on their cell phones or surfing the Net, Gurdjieff’s teachings are a bit off the beaten track. Yet, getting into a body-based perception is exactly what Woodruff advises in many of his essays.

In “Create Your Own Archetype and Call It You,” he writes: “You can have a direct perception, a sense-based recognition of astrology’s veracity by simply being in your body and registering what you experience as astrological truths (or fallacies). Not enough astrologers write and teach from direct, body-based knowing.”

Getting into this body-based knowing is the solution to a variety of problems faced by many well-meaning astrologers, especially those populating the Internet. Several essays contemplate the astrologer’s place on the web, including “Make Facebook your Slave — Some Tips,” “How to Stop Self-Helping Yourself into Oblivion,” and “How to Write about Astrology (Or Not).” Read more

ORDER YOUR COPY OF Skywriter: Notes on Modern Astrology..
 
“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean.
You are not a stranger here.” — Alan Watts 
 
Astrology is a real experience. A lived sensation.

And yet.

Astrology spans so many centuries, so many cultures and so many schools or categories of knowledge, that often the student of astrology is confused by —and distanced from — this simple fact. And yet: astrology is a lived experience.

Sidereal astrology or tropical astrology? Perhaps spiritual astrology — or evolutionary. Or maybe archetypal, Jungian astrology. But maybe the Hellenistic school is truer. And what about Vedic astrology?

What these schools or different approaches represent are collections of rules and laws based on a particular nomenclature unique to each school but always involving the same underlying principle. Namely the manner in which human beings have anthropomorphized the planets in the solar system to mirror or echo the human psyche.

Although I practice what would be considered psychological-spiritual astrology — I recommend to students that they invest the time to explore the different schools, find one that’s a fit and then — once immersed — let it all go — so as to develop his or her’s own unique astrological experience.

In much the same way that, say, after mastering French you wouldn’t go to Paris and continue to spend all of your time referencing grammar, syntax, and spelling. You would simply talk to people and do things. This is how astrology works best.

You learn the language and then set is aside. There is always time to study and learn more — but it’s best to acquire astrology’s basic codex and then just jump in.

Astrology is a lived experience. In the same way that your relationship with your husband or sister is a lived experience. The rules and laws of astrology — what does the 5th house represent, what’s the central drive of Gemini, what does the square connote between two planets? — those impressions are sketches. Hints. Segues towards your lived experience. They are not ‘etched in stone’ absolutes anymore than the color red should only be used in one specific way in every painting that you will ever paint. Read more

When I launched AstroInquiry ten years ago I took an aim that I would create content that had substance, offered insights and had meat on the bone.

If you’re a reader who has grown bored with the vague, go-nowhere nature of most astrological scribing — New Age jargon cloaked in astrological cliches — then my new book — a collection of some of the most popular essays from AstroInquiry, will interest you.

• Would you like a better understanding of Mercury retrograde — both the astronomical phenomenon and the astrological interpretations of this annual event? Then you’ll enjoy the chapter The Truth About Mercury Retrograde. Find new ways to harness the rich imaginal realm within your unconscious, images that are heightened during the Mercury retrograde cycle. Who cares about lost car keys when the heart of your creative nature beckons?

• How about love? Without question, relationships — especially romance-based — offer great potential for psychological maturity. To understand love is to foster compassion and generosity as well as the excitement of deeper intimacy and sexual communion. You’ll find much to explore in the chapter Secrets of the Heart: Love is an Action Not A Feeling. The chapter opens with one of Rumi’s most beguiling poems and then moves forward from that literary close reading into the mysteries of human relating. A must for the intrepid Hero and Heroine of the Heart. Read more