Im currently writing a research project for the MA about the outsider’s perspective of astrology with a target group that came to ASHA for a training course on Holistic Education.
My search for literature review on Holistic Education turned out to be quite inspiring. Im finding many of its themes really interesting, particularly the idea that knowledge could and should be experienced through different channels, not only through the mind.
In traditional/formal sets, education is mainly connected with thinking and developing logic, but we also have our emotional bodies, our spiritual bodies as well as our physical bodies!
This quote from one of the papers I’ve read for my project summarises really well:
‘Education is longing for a deeper more connected, more inclusive, and more aware way of knowing. One that connects heart and hand and head and does not split knowledge into dualities of thought and being, mind and body, emotion and intellect, but resonates with a wholeness and fulness that engages every part of one’s being.’
With that in mind, yesterday, with the help of a lovely actress that has been coming to ASHA for a while now, I gave a session on embodied astrology to the group of EVS volunteers. I have been teaching them astrology for a while but it was the first time that I dared coming out of my comfort zone of brainy virgoan lectures into the fluidity of performance and feeling the knowledge.
The result was really positive!
I’ve been interested in experiential astrology for a long time but did not have the courage to experiment with it.
We worked with both the Sun and the Moon yesterday and after incorporating each we had a little chat and discussion about how that would personally manifest for each one of us by bringing the qualities of the star signs in, but also, a discussion about how it felt to embody each luminary.
It was very powerful and enlightening as another layer of understanding was added to our previous discussions. Even to me, who has been studying and reading charts for a number of years, it was quite mind blowing to play the planets like that.
At the end of our session I was really excited and thinking about eventually experimenting with a constellation exercise involving someone’s astrology chart, with each participant playing one of the planets of that particular chart.
I have heard of that before, I wonder if any of you have heard or experimented with it before?! Any experiences, tips or insights to share?  🙂
I always find guided meditations really powerful. I’ve done a few on the planets and on tarot cards. You get inner knowledge and a deeper look at your personal connection with the deity or essence. It’s fascinating!
It is pretty magical to engage with the symbolic world in different ways. When Neptune opposed my Mercury I was having lectures in my dreams about astrological symbolism!! I don’t particularly miss the confusion I was feeling at that time, but I do miss the vivid symbolic dreams though xx
And, how long before educators and the governments or whatever standing behind them, deciding what can be afforded or not to teach and give students at what cost…before they can reach and teach students all that is truly necessary to live in harmony, when it seems the American education system, at least, is lucky if it can teach students to be respectful to others and property and help them reach financially supportive goals rather than just have fund raisers for everything school-related and call those lessons in what…being a missionary? A salesperson? I could go on for hours about the education system(s).
But, on a human perspective, it’s true that there are many ways we could learn and benefit from learning. I’m just not sure all that we can learn and how we can learn works with or benefits what appears to be an economically-focused humankind. With so much attention to the cost of everything in terms of money, not even considering time, patience, human energies, heart, etc….with so little attention to emotional needs… I’m just so emotionally and mentally drained at the moment that I cannot adequately put this into words.
But, it’s kind of like “special education.” Some “special” kids need different methods to learn and/or feel they are achieving something. You can’t just give everyone a textbook and tell them to read chapter three the same way the others do.
I wonder…could some diversified method of teaching every lesson…every class actually benefit the whole? Or, could we somehow filter students by an initial…not waiting until they are moving on to the next stage of schooling…test and place each student in the right group that benefits their mentality…without it seeming like steering cattle into pens before the lab stuff begins.
Are you saying you had a group work together in a classroom to position themselves around someone based upon the arrangement of planets in a birth chart?…and what did that achieve? Just a visual model? Or, did just that positioning of bodies cause some kind of epiphany that you might expect in an Indiana Jones film, one that unlocks the secrets of the pyramids?
I like your reflective comment on the educational system. We didn’t play anyones birth chart yet, we were just embodying the archetype of the Sun and the Moon on this day. The idea is that you have access to a different aspect of the knowledge through your body, intuition, emotions etc. It was quite interesting when we discussed how we all felt playing each.
So, an elementary-school exercise of pretending to be planets in orbit around the sun? And, this had some sort of internal tuning “awen” aspect to it? Just processing whatever came to mind from orbiting each other? Sort of astronomical improv’?
Not exactly, and Im not sure what do you mean by an elementary school exercise. It was not an astronomical improve, it was astrological, it had to do with the symbolic meaning of the planets rather than their physical properties, in order to embody how each archetypal force, represented by each planet, was felt by each participant. The results were interesting because we could link them up with each others astrology chart specifically
I mean kids in a gymnasium or spacious classroom pretending they are planets, moons and a sun, moving like a solar system with no further thought given to the exercise than what comes by divine intervention to mind, which may never be adequately shared by all because even adults can think and act like kids.
Improv, as in improvisation, not improve. Spell correct app?
How was the symbolic meaning derived and discussed?
I suppose there might be a little fun in that, arranging people like atoms to reach the birth chart configurations.
I see, no, not at school because I live and work in an educational charity community, so the guys are volunteers that come here through an European volunteering program. We have been learning and discussing the symbolism already for a few months so this exercise was intended to explore another dimension of the subject. We had some interesting discussions about how they felt playing each planet connecting to their astrological chart and how that could be related. Like for example people with the sun in scorpio did no feel all comfortable playing the fiery, kingly, under the spotlight energy that the archetype of the sun talks about. Do you see what I mean? It was quite fun, I’ve never done anything like that and having the actress helping me out was amazing 🙂
So, a sort of free library group for adults.
Maybe because having Scorpio as your sun doesn’t mean you have to be the typical sun. The sun is merely the core of a solar system. In the case of a Scorpio sun, the core is more like the eternal ocean, feeding an ecosystem of sea life. But, as the sun/core, Scorpio, in that case, is still the ruling force. So, not comfortable with that might suggest a conflict of ego and a divide between elements elsewhere in the birth chart, similar to my own.
Hi Fernanda
you’d find this book really useful –
https://images.app.goo.gl/ieh7Wv9oc1kosFki7
It’s on experiential astrology, by Barbara Schermer.
Enjoy exploring! Your course sounds really interesting…
Thank you Anne!! I will definitely have a look, I think that experiential astrology is fascinating