June 02nd, 2019

Five Things You Need to Know About Saturn

“The scientific theory I like best is that the
rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.” –Mark Russell

Saturn has been on my mind this week. Or rather Saturn has been pinging me, tapping my shoulder and nudging my conscience, in the same way, most of us might experience Saturn — which is to say obliquely. From the corner of your eye, in the tractor beam of a projection or a dark figure in a dream.

Most of us have our eye, ear and heart tuned to the frequencies of the other planets and lights: Mercury (planning and conceptualizing), Venus (feeling what we want), Mars (getting what we want), Jupiter (persuing realities beyond the personal). The Moon – what poet Mary Oliver calls the soft animal of your body – is the fluid medium of consciousness and how our instinctive nature compliments the Sun’s ceaseless, live-giving radiance.

But with Saturn we’ve what psychologists call depression. If you tune out your conventional notions about depression and consider the condition in a different light, you will see something like this:

The writer Thomas Moore wrote that depression is an answer — a remedy — to manic hyperactivity, a frantic state reinforced by the constant buzz and hum of our info-glutted age. Feeling low and heavy we are forced to move inward and realign with the natural rhythm of our Earth-based bodies. It creates psychic space, a container for deeper reflection – where sensitivity increases and life events feel less threatening. In our bodies, we access the Earth’s wisdom to maneuver dilemmas. I mean, the Earth’s been doing just that for billions of years.

So when you have a moment this weekend, take some time and consider the following facts, pointers or articles related to Saturn. It benefits each of us to know, consciously, the only planet in the solar system that is associated with, not only lead but also diamonds.

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February 13th, 2018

Horoscope Reviews My New Book Skywriter

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



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January 28th, 2018

We Are Earthlings: The Introduction to my New Book Skywriter: Notes on Modern Astrology

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



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December 22nd, 2017

Back by Popular Demand! My First Book Secrets of a Telephone Psychic

Many years ago, after moving to Seattle, I decided I never wanted to work for anyone again in my life. So I took a job with a gigantic telephone psychic network, a cultural trend that was incredibly popular at the time. Dionne Warwick’s manager, when I talked to her years later, told me that Dionne made more money from her psychic friends gig than her career as a popular recording artist.

So, yeah, it was another job, but it was a job where I set my hours and hung up on anyone I didn’t like talking to (which was rare, as just about every caller I interacted with was fascinating or at the very least open to some kind of alternative intervention in his or her life).

Anyway, about a year into the job I knew I was in the middle of something extraordinary and strange. And so I wrote a book about it, got an agent and a publisher and, well, I just recently got the rights back to my book and so here it is again, for a new phase of electronic transmission – as an ebook.

The stories in Secrets of a Telephone Psychic are true. Although you won’t believe some of them when you read them. As most of you know, under the guise of anonymity human beings will reveal themselves in ways you’d never imagine possible in a personal exchange. Technology has given the Id free reign (and a voice).

And these revelations were the most fascinating (but sometimes unnerving) aspect of working as a telephone oracle, where only the voice and ears and the ticking timer are your tools of the trade. Well, also horoscopes and tarot cards, but oddly divinatory methods didn’t figure as prominently as talking – and listening. Just look at Freud, he established the entire realm of psychotherapy upon his talking cure.

I’m happy to see my book back into the light of day. I know you’ll enjoy it.

Frederick



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December 16th, 2017

Saturn & Pluto: One Wedding and a Funeral

Charles Dickens pulled off a literary first when he gave a detailed account of the aftereffects of spontaneous human combustion in his epic novel Bleak House. The recounting went like this: While sitting and dozing in his cluttered room, Mr. Krook — a grizzled, alcohol-steeped rag merchant — abruptly burst into flames, leaving just a rancid smell and a gruesome pile of skeletal ash in his wake.

Dickens, a writer of keen detail and authenticity was always taken at his word by the public. And so one of the most horrifying images from the 19th Century claimed a spot in the collective imagination.

Even today, tales of spontaneous combustion continue to flare up (sorry) in the tabloids. And if those are not genuine, still, the impression of a human being inadvertently bursting into flames is a striking symbol — both mythic and alchemic.

I recalled Dickens and Mr. Krook while contemplating an illustration to mark Saturn’s entry into Capricorn on December 19. The image is fitting while Saturn closes in behind Pluto’s smoldering trail; a path that appeared like a flash fire after the tiny dynamo entered Capricorn in 2008.

The two planets will conjoin in January of 2020. Take this as an alert from the solar system’s public warning system.

This private report on the Saturn Pluto convergence is featured in my new essay The Saturn and Pluto Conjunction of 2020: And the Remains of the Day which you can order directly below.

 



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December 15th, 2017

The Mountain Astrologer Reviews Skywriter

It was an honor to have my new book Skywriter: Notes on Modern Astrology reveiwed by Mary Plumb, The Mountain Astrologer‘s resident book maven. Please consider ordering a subscription to TMA this Christmas season — for yourself or as a gift for someone special. Here is Mary’s review:

“I have been a fan of Frederick Woodruff since I found his Astroinquiry website. This eBook, subtitled The Best of Astroinquiry.com, Vol. 1, is a collection of some of his most popular essays from the past ten years.

Woodruff is a longtime astrologer — practicing “what would be considered psychological-spiritual astrology” — and although he identifies himself as a “skeptical mystic,” my best attempt at defining his style is that he writes as a post-intellectual, post-conceptual, back-to-the-precious-human-body, direct-personal-experience kind of guy.

Effectively communicating with clients, he says “doesn’t need a lot of highfalutin intellectualizing or contemplation or meditation. All you need do is sense yourself, your am-ness, your first-personal giveness and there you are.” His integration of the teachings that he has studied — e.g., Gurdjieff, Chogyam Trungpa, Carl Jung — informs his work and a subtext to self-inquiry or self-awareness (and humor) runs quite naturally throughout these essays.

The essays herein include “Create Your Own Archetype and Call it You,” “Pluto in Capricorn: Death is the New Black,” “Make Facebook Your Slave — Some Tips,” “Depression and Solar Consciousness,” and “Outer Planets and the Nostalgia for Samsara.”

Woodruff’s advice to aspiring astrological writers is spot-on and funny as can be: “Please consider how you employ the words ‘transformation,’ ‘changes,’ ‘challenging’ and ‘archetype’ in your prose. Changes and challenging transformations have been going down on the planet since the first cavewoman read Clan of the Cave Bear, so saying that a transit is going to bring ‘big changes’ or ‘challenge’ me is like telling me that I will finish half a bottle of wine with dinner tonight. This is not news.”

He includes select words of poets, teachers, and mystics. About one such entry, he writes: “Rumi composed a small eruption of a poem…” Frederick Woodruff does something similar with many moments in his writing, as he takes readers through passages and thoughts that provoke and inform.”

— Mary Plumb



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