The Six Types of Western Astrology
Yes, it’s about way more than your sun sign
If you walk into your local Starbucks during the morning rush (think pre-Covid) and ask people their astrological sign I can pretty much guarantee everyone will know their sun sign and a handful will know their rising sign or more–and that number is growing, particularly amongst millenials.
These days, astrology is booming in both its pop and more complex forms in the West (I say the West here because there are many types of astrology in the world, like Vedic astrology in India, Sheng Xiao Chinese astrology, etc. but it’s beyond the scope of this article or my knowledge to cover them all.)
However, in my experience most people still don’t understand how rich and varied this tradition is and what types of skills many of its form involve.
Whether you’re personally interested or “believe” in astrology yourself, the discipline has an interesting and long history and has endured despite periods of persecution and extremyl poor reputation, which makes it an interesting subject of study if nothing else.
In that regard, let’s move onto a short survey about the six main types of Western astrology as they are practiced today.
Here goes.
Sun Sign Astrology
Yes, checking up on your weekly love life if you’re a Libra or how things will pan out at work if you’re a Sag in a horoscope column is definitely still the most ubiquitous form of astrology, albeit one that few people actually take very seriously.
In fact, this approach has only really been around since 1937 as a sort of media ploy to bring in more readers to the column. After all, to understand someone writing about a full birth chart analysis, you really should have at least some basic understanding of astrology.
But everyone knows their birthday and wants to find out if romance is in the air or if they’ll get that promotion they’re vying for, and can therefore be roped in to reading about their fates and fortunes regularly in the newspaper.
Although the first “star sign” columnist, was an actual astrologer, my guess is that many who followed in his footsteps were really just hack writers from some other department who just made the stuff up week by week.
Astrology is crap anyway, right? What difference does it make.
Nowadays, I think a lot of the astrologers writing these columns are actually astrologers, which is a refreshing change. You can also say some general things about people’s sun signs by tracking the transits and aspects other planets will be making over a period of time, so if the person is legit and knows what they’re doing, horoscopes do have something real to say.
However, that’s part of the problem: by nature, they are extremely general and don’t show the reader how deep astrology can actually go.
They’re also one of the reasons it has such a bad reputation. If you read one of the many “astrology is bogus” articles newspapers like to put out from time to time, I can guarantee you the astrologers they reference will be pop and/or strictly sun sign astrologers, which actually just reinforces how ignorant and blindly biased they are when in comes to finding out just what astrology actually is.
On a more positive note, this is the way most people become interested in astrology, so it is a great gateway drug in that respect.
Who knows? If I hadn’t bought that Aquarius mug while visiting relatives in South Dakota years and years ago, maybe I would have never become interested in astrology and I wouldn’t be writing this article today.
Nah. It was a nice mug though.
Natal Astrology
When it comes to general public knowledge, natal astrology is one step up from sun sign astrology.
As you may well know, this type of astrology is based on the time, date and place you were born. Once you hand over this data, the astrologer painstakingly calculates your birth chart (i.e. types the stuff into an app or software program, although many of the best of the best still know how to do so by hand), which looks something like this:
Ten planets, twelve houses, twelve signs, each chart a unique mix.
The planets are actors in a movie, the signs they’re in are the costumes, the houses are the setting and the aspects (those colorful lines) are how the characters interact with each other.
Think of it as something like a fingerprint for your soul–a soulprint, if you will–which tells you a lot about who you are, your potential, what has and will happen, your overall fate and fortune, blah, blah, blah.
And all that and more is chartered out in that colorful pizza pie chart with planet symbol toppings. This is your life, and a good astrologer can read it out to you like a book.
Sound complicated?
It is.
To become competent in reading astrology charts, let alone good, you really need to put in several years of concentrated study.
Then again, that’s true for most things that are worth learning and will remain so until they start planting computer chips in my brain.
Not entirely sure how I feel about this, Mr. Musk, but I do kind of like the idea of downloading French into my grey matter without first having to wade painfully through the grammar and butchering pronunciation. But I digress.
If you’re still thinking this sounds too weird and dumb to be true, I don’t blame you. A lot of astrology out there is dumb or, at best, harmlessly entertaining.
Critical thinking is a damned virtue, and you should never turn it off.
But open-mindedness is a virtue too, and you can never really know for sure if astrology is a silly old superstition or an incredibly insightful ancient system unless you jump in completely and give it a whirl.
In my twenty years as a student and practitioner of astrology, as well as aclient myself to several astrologers, one thing I can say without a smidgen of doubt is that astrology definitely works.
Why does it work? Beat me.
Maybe I’ll write a post on my thoughts about this someday, or maybe not.
But I definitely will write one about the difference between modern astrology and traditional astrology, which has become increasingly popular in recent years (I personally use a mixture of both traditions, although I lean more towards traditional). Too big a topic for this post, but there’s a lot to be said.
Mundane Astrology
Mundane astrology is astrology that examine and makes predictions for history and world events. They do so partly by casting charts for a particular event, say the Challenger explosion in the 80s, and then analyzing the chart to look for clues, comparing and contrasting it with similar events, etc.
They also do extensive research on planetary cycles, including those of the outer planets and cycles like the Jupiter Saturn cycle, which by the way is making a major era shift at the end of the year (big news!), but more on that later.
Mundane astrologers are truly the researchers of the discipline. Unless they happen to be independently wealthy, they also definitely need day jobs. You can make a living as an astrologer, but it would be tough to do if your only focus was mundane astrology.
People will pay for natal readings, or horary and electional astrology, yes, but not many will be booking readings from you to explain flood cycles over the past four hundred years from an astrological standpoint.
Personally, I think this is one of the hardest branches of astrology simply because you do have to perform extensive research over large periods of time, as well as resist the urge to make predictions about who will win the presidential election.
Why?
Because this gives a misleading image to what astrology actually is.
Although a lot can be analyzed and educated and informed guesses can be made, astrology is better designed to describe the effects of something but not the cause. Personally, I think astrologers can get themselves into hot water when they try to pull the definitive answer card. Astrology can show trends and likely possibilities, but a crystal ball it ain’t.
Horary Astrology
Although natal astrology has been by far the most popular form of astrology in the 20th century until today, this definitely was not always the case.
Back in, say, 1532 unless you were of noble birth, there’s little chance you would know the time you were born or even the day. Without that information, natal astrology is of little use.
But did you still go to see the astrology in his stand on market day?
You bet!
You paid him a handful of coins and asked questions like, “Will my horse get sick?” or “Does Anabel love me?” or “Where is my hat?” The astrologer then casted a chart, interpreted what he saw and gave you an answer.
Known as horary astrology, this is a branch of divinatory astrology that comes closer to the crystal ball stuff.
Ok, maybe not crystal balls, but I think the tarot is a fair comparison. Like the tarot, horary only work well if the questions are concrete and relevant to the present or not-too-distant future.
In other words, asking questions like “Will I ever get married?” will produce no charts describing tall dark strangers because that’s not how it works.
However, unlike tarot (as far as I know), horary is very good at helping people find lost objects (as well as letting you know if the search if futile, so time to give up).
The English astrologer William Lilly is especially well-known for this type of astrology. Apparently, he used to ask his servants to hide things around the house which he then found by casting a chart which told him where it was.
Oh, dear Willy and his Friday night shenanigans.
Horary is very complex and technical and I’m very interested in learning the art to add to my astrology toolbox.
I plan to take some classes on it next year, to finally find where I put my favorite deck of tarot cards (they’ve been missing for months now) if nothing else.
Electional Astrology
Remember how I said astrology can’t tell you for sure if you’ll ever get married? Well, it sure as heck tell you when to get married if your dream person ever comes along and you decide to get hitched.
Yep, electional astrology is the branch of astrology that helps people find auspicious times to do just about anything. Weddings, founding businesses, sending an e-mail to your boss, changing your hairstyle, all of these events can be planned more effectively with the help of electional astrology.
This type of astrology is a huge part of Indian Vedic astrology, but it finds plenty of clients in the West as well, including Nancy Reagan, who worked with the astrologer Joan Quigley for many years when Ronnie was in the White House.
Although electional astrology is super helpful, it is also most certainly the branch of choice for those with OCD-tendencies. Just because you can cast a chart to find the best time to go get a sandwich at the deli around the corner, doesn’t mean you should.
Unless it is literally a once in a lifetime, Earth shattering event like weddings are supposed to be, most of the time just looking for a chart that offers some support and no major challenges or impending doom is good enough in a pinch.
Like the holy grail, the immaculate, perfect-in-every-way electional chart probably doesn’t exist. Quest away, if you must, but know when to call it quits.
n.b. Another milder, non-technical version of this is planetary hours which I’ll be writing about in the future, so stay tuned.
Astrological Magic
As I wrote in my bio here, I consider myself a sceptical occultist. I started reading tarot cards at fifteen but later threw them in a lake because I was growing up very Christian and worried they might be “of the devil.”
Around eight years later, when I had already become disillusioned by religion and hence, left the church, I was reading cards again, but that was it. No crystals, or Wicca or channelling for me.
And astrology? What a bunch of bunk.
Still, resistant and close-minded as I was at the time, fate took a funny turn and I got the astro bug big time and now here we are.
I’ve stayed the sceptical, down to Earth person and take more of a pragmatic approach to the occult subjects I’m into rather than a particularly spiritual one. I’ve questioned and tested them for years and have long since come to the conclusion that they simply work and they’re my thing.
That’s why I didn’t have the same resistance I did in my younger years when I got into magic a couple of years ago. I just shrugged and laughed it off. “For whatever reason, this is just who I am,” I said, and cast a spell.
Lucky for me, there is also the perfect branch of magic for me to also use my astrological skills.
Astrological magic!
In a nutshell, astrological magic is the art of precisely timing fantastic astrological elections (planetary, but also using the decans, fixed stars and lunar mansions–fun, fun!). Once these elections have been found, you do a (sometimes complex, sometimes simple) ritual which enables you to transfer the energy to another medium, like paper, metal and stone.
Vague, I know, but there’s a lot to get into here, so it also calls for another post.
Being into astrological magic also means reading the wonderfully colorful Picatrix, but beware: Picatrix only wanted his book to be used by the truly adept, and he liked to put little tricks in the text to fool novices. In the course I’m taking with Nina Gryphon right now, for example, we found an aspect (Mercury square the ruler of the eighth) which he says you must include in an anti-depression talisman, but that actually might lead the wearer to have suicidal tendencies. If you’re a pro you’d spot the errors and leave them out, but it could trip you up/possibly kill you if you didn’t know any better and just follow every single thing he wrote without question.
Picatrix be like that.
Ok, folks, I think that’s enough astro stuff for now. If I left anything out or you want to know more about any of these branches, just let me know. I’m always looking for new stuff to write about, so stay tuned and ta-ta for now.
