Psychological Self-Understanding, Astrology, and Holistic Health

[Note: This is an excerpt from my book "Electrical Christianity: A Revolutionary Guide to Jesus' Teachings and Spiritual Enlightenment."]

Ken Wilber acknowledges the enneagram (a ninefold typology of personality types), but not astrology, as a means to psychological self-understanding. Unbeknownst to Wilber, the enneagram is derived from astrology, which subsumes and transcends it as a system of human classification and understanding. The nine enneagram types mirror the “qualities,” “traits,” or “energies” of the first nine astrological planets—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto is missing because the enneagram originated prior to the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Consequently, even on a superficial level, the enneagram is an incomplete tool for self- and other-understanding. But because Wilber is partially buried in the very zeitgeist “flatland” he heavily criticizes, he buys into the conventionally acceptable enneagram while rejecting the far more complete occult oversystem of astrology, from which it derives. Wilber rejects astrology because various studies have found it an ineffective predictive tool. But the findings of these studies are not surprising, because the “stars” only impel, they do not compel. Person-centered astrology, which holistically oriented astrologers practice, is not about fortune telling; it is about deciphering psychical tendencies. And because these tendencies are contextual—existing within a particular human being who is a product of unique heredity and social conditioning—an astrologer can only be effective when he considers a chart integrally: that is, relative to a whole person. Such an “integral” consideration elevates astrology from a “horizontal” (conventional or flat) typology to a “vertical,” or multi-level, tool of self- and other- understanding. Moreover, it enables a psychologist to apply it to almost any field of psychology, such as humanistic, cognitive, sociocultural, psychodynamic, and learning.

Astrology is a nonpareil tool for deciphering the soul-matrix, the blueprint or map of an individual’s karma, or inborn seed-tendencies, which manifest as his personality and life-energies. A competent professional astrologer can teach a client far more about himself—his personal strengths and weaknesses and areas of harmony and disharmony—than any conventional psychologist. Even the Myers-Briggs personality types, which Ken Wilber acknowledges in his Integral Psychology, can be subsumed under astrology. The four fundamental personality types in Myers-Briggs—feeling, sensation, intuition, thinking—correlate almost exactly with the four astrological elemental types—water, earth, fire, and air. For example, if an individual has the majority of his astrological planets in Cancer, a water sign, his primary mode of interfacing with the world will be via the function of feeling. As a long-time professional astrologer, I could write volumes about astrology and its relation with psychology, but, again, I don’t want to go off on a long tangent. So, all I will say here is that mainstream psychology has badly missed the boat by not utilizing astrology as a tool for soul-understanding, or psyche-ology; and to my mind, any practice of psychology that doesn’t include astrology cannot be considered “integral.”

Astrology doesn’t just provide insight into one’s mind and personality; it’s also a source of information about one’s body and physical constitution. But an even better tool for “reading” the human body is iridology (or iridiagnosis), analysis of the physical vehicle via examination of the iris, which reflects the inborn strengths and weaknesses and current condition of one’s body—organs, glands, nervous system, et al. Because a human being is a body-mind complex, a person’s body and mind are inextricably linked. Consequently, when an iridologist examines an individual’s iris, he sees not only his body, but to an extent his mind, reflected particularly in his inborn constitution and the current condition of his brain and nervous system. For example, if the iridologist notes heavy “pressure” on a particular region of the brain, indicated by markings in the iris, he’ll know that the person has an ego problem and functions under extreme stress. Iridology is by no means the only modality for “reading” the constitution and current condition of the body (and its relation to the mind), but to my knowledge, it is the best. An integral holistic healer, which is what a general psychologist (or “soul doctor”) should be, could also incorporate other tried-and-true tools of diagnosis, such as Indian Ayurveda, into his repertoire, and thus be able to obtain an even more complete picture of a client’s psycho-physical state. And if a consideration of astrological transits (the current position of the planets relative to one’s natal chart) were added to the mix, then the healer would have an integral picture of the client’s body-mind condition and could recommend an appropriate holistic regimen to rejuvenate and balance his organism. Such a regimen would likely incorporate diet, herbs, and bodywork (including “gross-body” practices such as massage and chiropractic, and “subtle-body” ones such as acupuncture and jin shin jyutsu).