Why is astrology so often separated from the notion or practice of healing? Many of us, when we hear the word 'healing' in the context of astrology, immediately think of that vast and daunting field officially known as Medical Astrology. With its mountain of complex techniques, rules, correspondences, midpoints, hylegs, strictures... no wonder the average student and  practitioner shies away from thinking about healing.

In centuries past, astrology and healing were one. Astrologers were also physicians, wise women, herbalists, midwives, alchemists, and healers of all sorts. This split between astrology and healing parallels the split between science and religion, between the sacred and the profane, physics and mysticism, mind and body, all of which have developed through our collective embrace of the mechanistic world view of Descartes and Newton.

Much of today's astrology is a reflection of this analytical, left brained, mechanistic approach to life. The computerisation of astrology, while a wonderful timesaver, is reinforcing this trend. We now have an endless array of instant data at our disposal.

Scores of techniques, points, charts, systems, harmonics, fixed stars, asteroids, midpoints. All of these techniques and points,  choices and options, are useful and interesting. But, there is a real danger of becoming so overwhelmed in such a mass of data, numbers and paper, that we may begin to lose sight of the whole chart before us.

Even more than that, perhaps the element of the sacred in our 'divine art/science' is being lost. I remember the joys of drawing a  chart by hand in the days before computers, watching it unfold as I laboured over each calculation. I coloured it. It felt like a mandala.

I do wonder whether that sense of play and of the sacredness of astrology may be disappearing through the computerisation we value so highly.

The New Physics is reformulating our divided Newtonian/mechanistic world view into a more synthesised 'whole', or New Paradigm. Some physicists are beginning to see the interpenetration of matter and mind. Perhaps it is also  time for a new astrological paradigm: time perhaps to resore a greater sense of 'wholeness' to our astrology.

Healing means 'becoming whole';

To adopt a healing approach towards astrology, to see ourselves as  healers, means  to question our belief systems and to change the way we look at a birth chart. It also means to understand and widen our concept of just what constitutes 'healing'.

The word 'heal' comes from the Germanic hailaz meaning 'whole' To heal is to make whole. And what an apt symbol of 'wholeness' we have in the round form of the horoscope. The dictionary defines to 'heal' as to "restore (person, wound) to health;  become sound or whole".

To look at the birth chart from a 'healing' perspective is to see it as a symbol of our wholeness, of our journey towards individuation or self-actualisation.

As astrologers, do we attempt to view the whole chart, to look at the purpose of the life, and focus on what sort of whole embraces the bits? Or do we focus on the bits, the points, the transits, the events at any one time?

Do we see life as an ongoing cyclical process, a process of cycles within cycles, or as a series of linear events separated by moments of time?

If we start to see the birth chart before us as a sacred symbol, a mandala, we can begin to shift our perspective to a more healing-oriented one, because we are now looking for wholeness and potential, meaning and purpose.

This, to me, is a healing approach. It's looking at the whole. It's shifting our focus from events to process, from parts to wholes.

Astrology as revealer of the life 'purpose';

My personal view of astrology is that it reveals our cosmic purpose, if we could only but read it! Dane Rudhyar described the birth chart  as our "sacred name".

[1] Others have described the horoscope as a blueprint, a map, a plan. Where, then, has this plan or map of our psyche, this mandala, come from, if not from something stupendous, something much bigger than our small humble selves? We can call this 'stupendous something' god/goddess, the cosmos, the universe, the divine, the transpersonal, the collective unconscious.

The purpose of astrology, surely,  is to try to glean some tiny glimpse of the nature of our role in this great cosmic drama. A purpose-centred astrology seeks to answer the age-old questions: who am I? , why am I here?, where have I come from?, where am I going?

I believe that the sacred signature of the birth chart can reveal  our highest potential, or that which we may become. 

It can also suggest ways in which we may best participate in the process of unfolding and actualising this seed-potential, through an analysis of the transits and progressions. We cannot look at these areas if we are focussed on answering the client's every question, if our practice consists primarily of advice-giving, warning and prognostication.

There is a place, of course, for all types of astrology. However, if we wish to reconnect with the 'astrologer as healer' archetype, we need to look at the chart more from this perspective of purpose and wholeness. We can still address the real everyday concerns  about health, wealth, love and career.

Reconnecting with astrologer-as-healer archetype;

To bring the healing perspective into our chart analysis, we need to balance the current left-brained focus of astrology with techniques which are more right-brained in their orientation.