Astrology is based on the assumption that the celestial bodies in our stellar and planetary system have an influence on the earth, and in particular that they influence us – our character and our destiny.
The basic concepts of astrology are the horoscope and the Zodiac. The Zodiac is a stellar ring on the celestial sphere, consisting of twelve constellations, along which our sun wanders in the course of a year. Each of these constellations has its own name and sign. Their origins are lost in the mists of time, in the myths and strange legends of the ancient world.
In the light of modern science the domain of astrology tends to be dismissed as poetry or childish fantasy. However, there are still people – and by no means only the uneducated – for whom it is a genuine area of knowledge. For astrology represents a sort of challenge for modern science. It is synonymous with mystery; it is a different path toward knowledge.
The best and most famous expression of scepticism about the value of science, and of fascination with Magic, is to be found in Goethe’s Faust. At the very beginning Faust talks about how, despite all his learning, he is no further forward than when he began:
To Magic therefore have I turned
To try the spirits’ power and gain
The knowledge they alone bestow;
No longer will I have to strain
To speak of things I do not know.
A moment later, on picking up a volume of the predictions of the sixteenth-century doctor Nostradamus (a Frenchman, incidentally), considered to be the greatest astrologer of the modern era, he says:
What secrets lurk in this old book
In Nostradamus’s own hand?
Perhaps it’s here I need to look
To grasp the stars’ mysterious flight;
I’ll learn what Nature has to teach;
I’ll hear, endowed with magic’s might,
The spirits whisper, each to each.
My own attitude towards astrology and horoscopes was always extremely sceptical until one day I, too, like Faust, picked up the ‘mysterious book of Nostradamus’ – his Centuries Astrologiques, written in 1555 – and began to read. I studied it thoroughly; in particular, I checked my own horoscope very carefully to see how accurate it was. I was astonished at the result: everything fitted, everything was confirmed.
I was born in September. On the tenth of September, to be precise. Which makes me a Virgo.
Virgo – the Virgin – is an earth element, and earth represents certainty and stability. People of this element have a clear aim in life and are unwavering in their progress towards it. They are logical and rational, precise and industrious. They never give up before they find a solution to a problem; they think everything through and approach it methodically. Their love of order can be excessive, even pathological; in such cases Virgos become slaves to their own principles. Finally, Virgos have excellent memories and are good at music and chess.
Is this not the perfect portrait of me? Let those who know me well be the judge.
I know, I know: you’ll say a portrait like this is easily coloured to suit. All right. But what if there is more than just this vague portrait – what if there are other things that fit, traces of deeper connections?
What I am about to tell you shook me profoundly when I first came upon it.
Up to now the thing more or less held together. From here on, however, it became unadulterated drivel:
We must start with the myth of Virgo and Aquarius.
Each of us must surely have wondered why the signs of the Zodiac are mostly animals, and why these particular animals and not others; and why Libra – the Scales – is among them, and then why two humans are also among them. Most important, we wonder why these two people are not just a man and a woman but the Watercarrier and the Virgin.
The ancient legends that lie at the source of this intricate construction tell the story of the Cosmic Division.
In the beginning there was Monos, a homogeneous entity, closed and infinite like the surface of a sphere. But the defining principle of his existence was flawed: Monos, in his monomania, folded in upon himself, sank deeper and deeper into his Monosity, and sought his own destruction. Finally, when he reached the critical moment, he spoke. It was the last instinct, perhaps, of his fading will to exist. He said ‘I’: ‘I am.’ Having spoken, he heard himself; and, having heard himself, he ceased to be a monolith: he became Hearing and Voice. He split himself in two. In short, by his act of speech he became Heteros.
This new principle of existence remains the foundation on which the world is built.
The Zodiac is an ingenious expression of this dualism. Everything that is, is a duality: it has its ‘thesis’ and its ‘antithesis’, and these, in their eternal conflict, cause the world to oscillate. All forms of life embody this duality. Hence we have two Fish (Pisces) and the Twins (Gemini). Nearly all the animals exhibit some sign of it: the Ram (Aries), the Bull (Taurus) and the Goat (Capricorn) have two horns; the Scorpion (Scorpio) and the Crab (Cancer) have two front pincers.
The most perfect embodiment of this dualism is to be found in the human pair: the Virgin (Virgo) and the Watercarrier (Aquarius). Alone, each is incomplete; together, they form a unity and a whole. And while Leo (the Lion) and Sagittarius (the Archer) form a hostile pair, expressing man’s conflict with the beast that lurks within him and his desire to destroy it, the Virgin and the Watercarrier together express love; they are the ‘north’ and the ‘south’ of the universe, its two poles, which, bound by the force of mutual attraction, create a magnetic tension.
This beautiful idea was echoed as early as the fourteenth century, in the work of the divine Florentine. This is how Dante ends his Divine Comedy:
The love that moves the sun and the other stars.
But that isn’t all the ancient legends have to say about the Virgin and the Watercarrier. It turns out that these two figures, which move the world by the force of their mutual attraction, have other, deeper and more complicated meanings. They appear to be the figures of a young girl and a mature man, but when we look at what they are doing, it turns out that each of them represents an element that contradicts this embodiment.
Aquarius, the Watercarrier, is presented in a desert landscape, giving water to fish. He pours it out carefully from a jug that is always full. The Virgin, meanwhile, sits or kneels gazing dreamily into the distance, a goose-quill pen in her hand.
What is the significance of these objects, these poses and these occupations?
Let us note, first of all, the fundamental difference between the two figures: while Aquarius is clearly busy with something (pouring water from a jug), Virgo cannot be said to be doing anything much. She dreams, she gazes – perhaps she wants to write? – but this cannot be called work.
Next, let us recall what water symbolises. Water invariably signifies a source, a beginning. It is the materia prima. In the Indian tradition, for instance, water is the source of the Cosmic Egg; in the Hebrew Genesis, at the dawn of all things, the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters. For this reason water is always associated with the female element, with fertility, with dark, unknown depths and life-giving powers.
And indeed, did life not begin in water? Did it not creep out to land from the dark womb of the sea?
Aquarius, then, although embodied in the form of a man, actually represents all that is female. By giving water he gives life; he watches over life’s creation. And at the same time, with the sound of splashing water, he beckons, he tempts.
And what about Virgo? We have already observed that she sits idle, lost in thought, holding a goose-quill pen