Your wife just gave birth to a baby boy. You’re sanctioned a father now. And all of the experiences that accompany fatherhood await you.

You are a woman who just turned 68, and with this new chronological phase arrives an array of feelings and sensations. Your wisdom continues to develop but you pause now, to consider your options: To share your knowledge with others or live a quieter life of solitude.

Viewed from the archetypal realm, the new dad will soon be channeling the archetype of The Father. And the older woman is now ready to embody the archetype of The Crone or The Wise Old Woman.

But what does any of this mean?

As I’m typing this right now, I don’t feel the archetype of The Writer possessing my mind and my fingers on the keyboard. It’s just me, enjoying the process of sleuthing syntax and feeling a dull ache in the low of my back.

Another question.

Can’t the two individuals mentioned above have their own unique life experiences without the depersonalizing intervention of an archetype?

Yes, they can. And they do. And archetypes need not be involved.

Archetypes are not literal structures that, once evoked, descend and encapsulate us within Platonic bell jars. But this is the conjecture that spurs everything that’s been written about, expounded upon and woven into the world of modern astrology.

Why are we hypnotized by archetypes?

My theory goes like this: In an attempt to explain the human predicament — the big questions about ‘who we are’, ‘what we are about’, ‘where we are going’ — we’ve cut ourselves in two and crawled up into our heads: The conceptual realm of the archetypes.

By abandoning a full-bodied experience of reality, we feel safer from life’s unpredictable and impermanent nature. Human bodies (and lives) have a short run. Archetypes are forever.

Many Annoying Questions

What do those archetypal dimensions have to do with the you that is sitting here, right now, reading this sentence? The you that is a unique phenomenon, the you that there is only one of, and will only ever be one of within this particular moment within the time/space continuum — and future moments too.

If you abandon the archetypal scaffolding (and as astrologers many of us have been cornered into this conceptual framework for decades), you’re left to fend for yourself. The rawness and freshness of your being becomes the ‘lens’ that life is viewed through.

What if your style of being a father is completely revolutionary to the category of ‘being a father? What if you bring to the ‘father-child’ relationship a way of being that has never been documented? Is an inspiration to other fathers in-the-making?

Why must we be cut off from our ‘is-ness’ and have our lives circulated through something that is essentially an imaginary, lifeless concept? This makes no sense. Worse, for astrologers, it generates a force field of nonsense that hovers around the sensitive relationship between the astrologer and her client.

If, as an astrologer, I can not communicate with my client without employing archetypes, then I have cut us both off from the human experience of engaging in an inquiry that is present-based, vital and alive.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

• The Truth About Mercury Retrograde
• Planetary Ennui: The Nostalgia for Samsara
• How To Make Facebook Your Slave and Preserve Your Creative Drive
• The Power, Beauty, and Wonder of the Horoscope’s 12th House
• Imbeciles at the Gate: How The Internet Destroys Astrology
• How To Escape From the Torture of Self-Help Hell
• Depression and the Solar Consciousness
• Secrets of the Heart: Love is an Action Not A Feeling
• Create Your Own Archetype & Call It You: An Escape from Evolutionary Astrology
• Redefining the Oxymoron of Sex and Marriage
• Death is the New Black
• How To Write About Astrology (Especially How Not To)
• Astrology, Ants, Hives, Essence, and Types: A Gurdjieffian View
• Final Notes About the Life-and-Culture-Changing Uranus-Pluto Square