In the first session I gave an overview of Hermeticism — the core of Western magic, science, and literature.
In this session I give an overview of one of its two main practices: astrology.
The point of Hermetic astrology is to orient you to the cosmos. It's part of a system, seamlessly interwoven with alchemy, theurgy, and Hermetic Qabalah.
And the aim of the system is to consciously embody divinity here on Earth.
In this talk I try to give you a feel for the underlying laws. This art has to land in your body for it to work for you. And when it does, it changes how the world looks to you.
Then stuff like "Why look at the stars' positions when you were born?" makes way more sense. It’s far from being an arbitrary rule.
Further Resources
Here’s some follow-up for material I brought up during this talk:
I’m leaning heavily on what’s called Hellenistic astrology. It’s meaningfully different from modern astrology in some key ways. In particular, the old astrological system was far more compatible with alchemy than modern astrology is. I picked up this style from Matthew Merlin.
I have a somewhat unusual take on Saturn. I brought it up in this talk. A few years ago I wrote an essay about my approach to Saturn. You can read that essay at this link.
The term “egregore” shows up in occult contexts from time to time. I’m watching it become a more common term. When I use it, though, I don’t mean something vague or otherworldly. I gave them some grounded description (as “memes”) in a 3-hour YouTube interview, which you can watch at this link if you like.
Here’s where you can find out more about Michael Ashcroft’s approach to Alexander Technique. He’s also quite active on Twitter and has a thread of threads explaining parts of his approach.
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