Fate and Free Will in Ancient Astrology: An Interview with Chris Brennan

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today I am joined by my friend and colleague, Chris Brennan, of The Astrology podcast. And we're going to take some questions that I did a poll, and I did a poll on Instagram the other day asking some questions that we could prepare for an interview with Chris. And you guys sent in a bunch of really good questions on the topic of fate and free will. In ancient astrology, you've got a whole list of them. Chris, of course, is a world-renowned expert in Hellenistic astrology, author of the book Hellenistic Astrology, and the person that I initially started learning Hellenistic astrology from, so it'll be really nice to have him here today and talk about this age-old question. You know, did ancient astrologers believe that everything was fated? Did they believe in some elements of free will? You know, what were their views? And Chris is here to walk us through that. And also just talk about the subject in general. So Chris, thanks for being here. 

Chris Brennan 

Awesome. Thanks for having me today. I'm excited about this. Yeah, for sure.

Adam Elenbaas  

I've been on your astrology podcast a few times over the years. And it's been just really cool to see how massively popular The show has become. And all of the really interesting guests and topics you cover. It's pretty much the number one reference that I have for students in my programs. If I'm like, hey, you know, outside of class, what are some supplemental things you can check out? It's like, oh, every episode of the Astrology podcast to start with. So yeah, it's just it's an easy place to send people.

Chris Brennan 

Yeah, well, it's been great because you were in some early episodes like I want to see in the 50s was one of your first appearances. So you've seen my progression with the podcast over the years. And I've also been happy to see the progression of your YouTube channel and other stuff over the years as well.

Adam Elenbaas 

Yeah, well, it was you and a few other astrologers who were launching into the podcast territory and YouTube territory that really inspired me to get going with it. So yeah, a lot of mutual love and respect for each other's work. Well, we have this; I did an Instagram poll, knowing that you were going to be on and knowing that one of the most popular topics that I get questions on throughout the year, both from students and programs as they're learning Hellenistic astrology or getting introduced to traditional astrology or maybe even horary astrology. There are always questions about fate and free will. And you know, when you read some of the Hellenistic texts, if you ever if people do that, they'll also read a style of delineation or, you know, when when the ancient astrologers are teaching the techniques, and just the language and the tone for some people can feel sort of fatalistic. And what I find really interesting is, you know, there was this really it was, it was actually pretty diverse, the ancient worlds wasn't just like, there wasn't just one view about fate and free will. That's something that I really appreciated about your book, Hellenistic astrology, the lengths you went to, to kind of outline what different people thought, and you know, that there were different schools of philosophers who practiced astrology, and that there were different views about fate and free will. So I'm really excited to get into that today. 

Chris Brennan 

Yeah, I mean, the ancient astrologers, you know, we think of them as these remote-like people that must have been doing this occult-like obscure thing, but in reality, the astrological community back then was just as diverse to some extent as it is today, at least in terms of different views on the purpose or what you're supposed to be doing with astrology. And, you know, a lot of the debates that they were having 2000 years ago are still debates that we're having today. So there's, there's a lot that's relatable there once you get past some of the initial language and cultural differences.

Adam Elenbaas 

Well, that's a great starting point. I think I got 40 or 50 different answers to the poll. What we're going to talk about is fate and free will; what are the questions that you guys have? And I put it out there to my audience? The number one question that was repeated in, you know, different, different ways of phrasing the question, but it all was basically, were ancient astrologers fatalistic that they believe that every last element of life down to the smallest details were faded. Is that/was that the predominant worldview?

Chris Brennan 

The way I usually answer this is, uh, usually, like maybe like ten years ago, I realized trying to come up with an overview of how to answer this question. And I came up with this diagram that kind of explains things and kind of shows things in an easy manner to understand, which is the signs versus causes debate overlaid with another, overlapping circles of complete determinism, which is like those astrologers who believed that everything was predetermined versus partial determinism, which is that a group of astrologers that thought things were only partially predetermined or partially faded? 

And I think this is a really good way to visualize the issue. But one of the things that are built into that diagram that I think is really important to understand is, it's either it's the spectrum is like complete determinism versus partial determinism because there weren't any ancient astrologers that thought that nothing is fated or that there's no predetermination whatsoever. Because I think the basic premise of astrology was that there is some sort of concept of fate that exists out there and that the planets, and especially astrology, is an access point to understanding that. And that, to some extent, that's the entire purpose of what we're doing here is trying to understand fate, especially the fate of individuals and what will happen in individual people's lives by looking at the alignment of the planets at the moment that they were born, which is the birth chart. 

So I think that it's really important to understand and get out of the way, right from the start, that it is a very fate-oriented or fate-focused practice. And that is part of the backdrop of the understanding of all ancient astrologers, essentially. And that's why I subtitled my book, Hellenistic Astrology, The Study of Fate and Fortune, because that was really part of my thesis of the book was that somebody came up with a system in the ancient world for studying fate. And they were actually successful in doing that.

Yeah, maybe another question that came in that would be a nice one to throw in here is, is there a simple definition of the word fate? And also, people wondered if it differs at all from the word destiny. And we're both of those use words used in ancient astrology, and how would we define fate in maybe in the first place?

Chris Brennan  

Yes. So fate one of the ways that the stoics defined fate was an orderly sequence of events. That's in accordance with some sort of divine plan. And I think that's the broadest definition that's still relevant and more or less at the basis of our definition, our understanding of that word today, in a way that I think an ancient astrologer in ancient person would still very much understand and relate to, how would you, how would you define it? Or what would you add to that? 

Adam Elenbaas 

Yeah, I like that a lot. And I'm not sure I would add anything to it. Other than that, there's a sense of a meaningful orderliness or unfolding of events. And that, Yeah, and I think I think the reason that people often gravitate toward the word destiny is that destiny too, I don't know if I'm my distinction is the correct point or not. But it seems to me that the word Destiny just implies that that meaningful orderliness of events is somehow special, like, or that it's affirming, in some way, of like, a, has a little bit more of that ring of like, heroic calling to it or something. But I sense that the words have been closely interrelated throughout the history of astrology and that they wouldn't be just too different from one another. What do you think?

Chris Brennan  

Yeah, that's a good point that fate, especially partially due to the Christian context of Western society, came to be seen, eventually, as a negative thing or as a bad thing. And it's often associated with, like, the repressive versions of fate, or the idea of predetermination, that there are things that are outside of your control that you can't change, you can't do anything about that, or like the bad things in your life. And that became a point of contention with Christianity, which was very free will oriented, against some of the tendencies toward fate orientation in ancient astrology. But there are also positive versions of fate. Like, you know, meeting the love of your life, or the person that you'll spend the rest of your life with through a chance encounter, or, you know, getting lucky and meeting somebody on a subway, and that leads to a career change that makes you find your life's work or something like that is like the positive version of the fate construct. And I do think we've used the term destiny in order to try to refer sometimes to that more positive version of fate or manifestations of fate. But it's still, to me, kind of like the same concept, essentially.

Adam Elenbaas 

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly how I feel about it, too. I'm wondering if we could go back to that diagram. And I could ask you a few questions about it.

Chris Brennan

Sure. 

Adam Elenbaas  

It is such a nice diagram.

Chris Brennan

It's pretty, pretty advanced in terms of my illustrator skills.

Adam Elenbaas 

So let's go through each one. And maybe, just so if someone were to look at the circle of complete determinism, could you give a brief definition of what that would look like? 

Chris Brennan

Yes, the complete determinism would be the astrologers in the ancient world who said that everything is predetermined, and this would be very much following in the stoic line of thought, where stoicism in the first and second century BC, as well as the first and second century, AD, stoicism was very popular, and it happened to coincide with the rise in popularity of astrology. And we don't know which one was first; we don't know if it's that stoicism was popular. So then astrology became popular as well, or if it's because astrology was popular that stoicism became popular at the same time. 

But regardless, the people that tend to fall in the complete determinism camp are the people that tend to align with stoic philosophy that held that the entire universe was created as this meaningful sequence of events that unfolds from the beginning of time until the end of time. And that, because it was created in this perfect way, by this divine sort of creator, person, which the universe is like an extension of that everything is ultimately like, perfect. But also, it means that there's a perfect plan that's underlying everything, even the negative events in the world. 

So the astrologers on this category tended to believe that everything was predetermined and that the purpose of astrology was to study your future so that you knew what you had to accept, whether the good things or the bad things, and that you could then approach all events in your life with a greater sense of moderation and purpose and meaning by the sort of understanding your life narrative ahead of time, and being prepared for it ahead of time. So it doesn't knock you off of your sort of spiritual path of trying to achieve moderation in all things.

Adam Elenbaas 

Right. And I'm reminded of some of the texts in your book that you quoted, where this philosophy is sort of expressed in, you know, people like Vettius Valens where he says, you know, let's, with this complete, you know, like, equipped with this knowledge will be soldiers of fate, and we'll be able to, like, kind of accept the ups and downs of life, and there's others, like a bunch of others in that philosophical portion of your textbook that are really nice, that kind of illustrate the same worldview. Let's accept our fate and that somehow your happiness is determined by how well you can kind of accept whatever your fate is; that's sort of like the meaning of happiness.

Chris Brennan

Yeah, well, it's this, it's like this proposition that they're like, well, if all events are predetermined, let's say hypothetically, then the one thing that you can really control is your internal reaction to events. And to the extent that maybe some things happen, but you could take it one way, or you could take it another way. And that, ultimately, it's going to be better for your soul, in some sense, if you try to adopt a greater sense of moderation and not getting too happy in the case of good things or too depressed in the case of bad things. But then, instead, just try to, you know, encounter all things with a greater sense of moderation. 

And I actually opened the front of my book with a passage from balance where he expresses this very stoic sentiment like that. It's a really famous passage in balance, Vettius Valens, who lived around the middle of the second century in Alexandria, Egypt. And it says,

"those who engage in the prediction of the future and the truth, having acquired a soul that is free and not enslaved, do not think highly of fortune and do not devote themselves to hope, nor are they afraid of death. But instead, they live their lives undaunted by disturbance, by training their souls to be confident, and neither rejoice successively in the case of good nor become depressed in the case of bad but instead are content with whatever is present. Those who did not desire the impossible are capable of bearing that which is preordained through their own self-mastery and being estranged from all pleasure or praise; they become established as soldiers of fate."

So yeah, that that is the more like, you know, stoic and complete deterministic side of things, which really, you know, good. That goes back to a broader thing that we should talk about, which is just a fundamental, which is something I've always said regardless of ancient astrology, with the concept of natal astrology and birth charts. Built into that concept is some inherent notion that at least some events in our lives are predetermined. If you're saying that the alignment of the planets of the cosmos at the moment that a person is born has anything to say about their future character or events that will take place near in their life. And it does imply that some things, at least, are predetermined. So it just becomes a question of, like, you know, how many things are pre-predetermined? Really is the point that astrologers debate about?

Adam Elenbaas  

Right? So if we flip over in that original diagram to the partial determinism bubble, because on the opposite side there was complete determinism, the opposite bubble was partial determinism. So what does partial determinism look like in ancient astrology?

Chris Brennan

Sure, so I think one of the biggest advocates of partial determinism was actually Ptolemy, and part of it was that it was wrapped up in his Aristotelian causal model of astrology, where he thought the planets influenced life on Earth through these different effluxes of different qualities. But as a result of that, part of his statement was that it's not just the planets that influence us, but also different circumstances in our environment, growing up, our family, and other things like that are all factors. There are many different causes that are influencing us during the course of our lives or at the moment of birth. And all of those need to be taken into account. So that astrology is not necessarily like the final matter or the final word on the matter. 

So that's, that's kind of like one example where he's approaching that partially because of his causal views of astrology and how that alters his thinking. But there are also other astrologers like Dorotheus, for example, who didn't necessarily use a causal view of astrology. Instead, it seemed to be more Omen based of astrology, acting as a form of divination, where it's a language that sending signs and symbols about the future. But one of the things that Dorotheus id is in the first four books of his work; he practiced natal astrology and showed you how to read birth charts. 

But then, in book five, he has an entire book on inception, astrology, and Electional Astrology, where you choose different moments in the future that are going to be more or less auspicious for certain outcomes. And underlying that is the idea that if the alignment of the planets can indicate the outcome of something, then you may be able to choose one day that's better for something you want to accomplish or another day that's worse. So you may be able to alter the trajectory of fate to some extent.

Adam Elenbaas 

Right? Yeah. And so on the partial determinism side, you have the idea that, in a sense, it's like life is a little bit like, rather than a straight line with all of these hash marks indicating the events of your life in a completely determined way, it's a little bit more like a 3d chess board, where, you know, there are parameters, and there are, you know, there are the moves that you make, may have some different outcomes. But there's still a sense that there, there's, there's like, maybe it's not the best analogy, but if there's a set of parameters, or there are certain faded outcomes that are still sort of guarantee like they're part built into the game or something. 

And then, and then that kind of leads us into the other two bubbles about causes versus signs. So maybe we could flip into that really quick and just make sure people understand those two. So in the bubble in the top half, there were, if I remember correctly, it was signs on the top and causes on the bottom. Everyone who listens to my channel or listens to me rant on my soap boxes knows that I tend to be more of a signs, not causes, kind of; if I had to guess where I fall, I'd be signs and partial determinism. I sort of land into that camp now that there's only one right or wrong, but that's the one I stand for, you know. So tell us the difference between signs and causes in ancient astrology, so people understand those two bubbles.

Chris Brennan

Sure, I mean the basic premise of the signs. I mean, well, let's start with the causes. I mean, the basic premise of the causes definition is just that astrology works or the mechanism underlying astrology works, that astrology is able to be predictive or tell you things about what will happen, either now in terms of the alignment of the planets in the present, and what then that correlating with events on Earth in the present, or it can be predictive about the future in terms of looking at future planetary alignments, and then being able to say accurately what will be happening at that time, because the planets are literally influencing events or causing things to happen either directly or indirectly through some sort of force or some sort of physical mechanism. So that's the causes approach, broadly speaking, and there are many different conceptualizations of different possible causes for astrology in ancient and modern times. 

And then opposite to that is the sign-based approach, which is just; it just holds that the alignment of the planets just signals or indicates or acts as an omen of what will happen either in the present or the future. But it doesn't necessarily cause it sort of in the same way. The common analogy is that a clock on the wall tells you that it's, you know, 11:57am right now, but it's not necessarily the cause of it being 11:57. Right now, it's just reflecting something that is presently happening in reality. That's kind of the sign-based view of astrology.

Adam Elenbaas 

Yeah, I use sometimes; I also use the example because lots of the people who watch this channel are also into Tarot. And I say, you know, it's, it's with Tarot; usually people don't make. Now, this is me coming from a sort of sign base perspective, but they won't make the mistake of drawing the death card. And let's say it indicates a loss of a job or maybe the death of a grandparent or something. And you don't make the mistake of thinking that the card is causing that. You think to yourself, well, the cause signifies or represents something that's happening. 

So that's another way of putting it, but that doesn't, I want to by saying that, I don't mean to sit here and suggest that there may not be some really, you know, some causal dimension to astrology, I tend to lean in the direction of signs, not causes. But one thing that I was curious to hear about was there these whole people who are more familiar with your work, had some questions about these, the overlap between these things, one person, and it was a kind of a long, articulated thing. So I'm just condensing what this person wrote. So if you're listening, don't be offended. But it was basically like when you're looking at something like the difference between a sign and a cause; they were wondering if, if a planet is a sign that's representing something, Couldn't there be some kind of acausal explanation for how a sign is a sign but also a cause? Something like synchronicity they mentioned. And just a few questions that came in also just wondering if you believe that synchronicity young synchronicity has any role to play in the explanation about how astrology works in general, which is sort of like a whole can of worms, but I thought it was interesting. I'm curious to hear what you

think. 

Chris Brennan 

Yeah, I mean, I think that astrology originated as a form of divination, in Mesopotamia especially, and they were more focused on the sign-based view of things like other forms of divination that we know of today, like Tarot or the I-Ching, or what have you. Where it makes more sense to conceptualize those as sending signs or omens of events are of things that you're asking about at the time and not necessarily causing them, it gets a little complicated. I do think that um, one of the recurring themes with astrology is that ancient astrologers said that astrology was ruled by Mercury by the planet Mercury. And one of the things that's unique about Mercury in ancient astrology is anytime there's a division between two seemingly opposite areas, or opposing views, where you have like benefics versus malefics, or you have masculine versus feminine or day versus night, Mercury always plays this role that's right in the middle, where it sort of straddles the boundary between those two things. And it always has one foot in each realm and can sort of go either way. And even though I tend to also like you conceptualize astrology more as working through signs and omens, I realize it's been in the back of my mind for several years now that as a mercurial arch, that probably implies that when we're looking at a division like this, even though that part makes a lot of sense to us, that there may be some causal components to astrology, that even if we can't fully articulate or understand them, now that may exist and may be out there, so that we shouldn't like completely shut the door to that entirely, which is something I have to keep reminding myself.

Adam Elenbaas 

Yeah. And I think this person was trying to get out, like, what if synchronicity was a way of explaining that there is some secret connection between causality and signs and how that was a really smart observation or idea. I also say sometimes to my students, because they'll say, Well, I really feel the energies of the transits. And one of the things I've said is, well, you know, couldn't it be the case that, like, if you flip a tarot card, the tarot card could indicate different kinds of influences or energies or sensations or whatever we want to call them, that you are actually feeling. And so the power of a sign to signify or represent different kinds of influences or causal forces, doesn't seem it doesn't seem to be outside of the question like, couldn't, why couldn't a planet represent something that you will actually feel? You know, it's still representing it in the same way that you know the clock can represent a sunset in the nocturnal transfer into the nocturnal space. For most people, that's an actual feeling you get. So it seems to me that, yeah, like there's room for these things to be connected, it doesn't when you say that something is a sign, it doesn't mean that there's no sense of there being energies that you can actually feel with astrology, even if the planets are still just representing those. It's a mysterious thing. But yeah, does that make sense?

Chris Brennan

Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, synchronicity was the best modern attempt to bring back or one of the best modern attempts to bring back the sign-based approach and reassert that after many centuries of astrology only being defined in a causal sense, and having lost, you know, a huge part of its origins and its original identity as, to some extent a form of divination. So synchronicity is still really important and useful to explore. I don't know if Jung ever completely settled on something because he changed his mind several different times during the course of his life about different views on how astrology worked, and he entertained different options. So that's something to be careful about sometimes when talking about synchronicity or Jung's work on it in particular, is that, like all astrologers, he was always like, working with this thing, and you could see it worked. But then he was constantly entertaining, like different notions about how it worked, and why it worked and things like that. 

Yeah, but I do think, again, even though because one of the other things is like fixed stars, for example, are so unimaginably far from us. And the light that's reaching us now was, like, sent so long ago in the past in terms of time, that's another one of those instances where, you know, it might not, it makes more sense conceptually, to me that it's acting as a sign or an omen of something rather than being a direct cause of something. But all I'm saying at this point is just that I, I'm more open now and trying to be more open to understanding that there may be causal factors in play than I was entertaining previously because I think like, like a lot of people in our generation, were very influenced by the work of Jeffery Cornelius. And he made this very strong argument for viewing astrology purely as divination in his book, The Moment of astrology. And I think there were a lot of really good points to that, but I'm just trying to also keep open some of these historical debates, and that there may be many different sort of nuances to this issue.

Adam Elenbaas  

Yeah, I agree with that. I feel that same kind of openness. You know, Jeffrey came and spoke with my students, and like, it was like, 2014. And we came for a week, and we had this retreat and everything, and, you know, he developed and presented his view as astrology as divination had a huge impact on me. But yeah, over the years, it's definitely it's important to just stay open and to, you know, and just to keep, as you know, someone who works with students and clients all the time, just like you do, and people offering feedback, like there's, there's a component to everyday astrological experience that you can't deny that there's a feeling of an influence in the air, you know, Mercury Retrograde or a Mars Retrograde or something.

Chris Brennan  

Even before that, just thinking back to, like, 2020 and all the outer planet energies that were happening and just like none of us will ever forget, you know that Saturn Pluto conjunction at the beginning of the year in January or, you know later in like six months later the Saturn Uranus when Saturn went into Aquarius in the Saturn Uranus Square. It's like we all began feeling that instability and that rebelliousness and that different sort of energies.

Adam Elenbaas  

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. And so, there's definitely going but circling back around to what you said, just because I know I always get people saying, Where can I learn more about this topic? Well, Chris, you have done some episodes on Jungian astrology on the podcast that people could refer back to. I really recommend if you have never heard Chris's podcast, the astrology podcast, that you go check it out. We'll have a link in the description of the video and stuff like that. But you did some episodes on Jungian astrology. There have been some great books written called Jung on Astrology that were written by Safron Rossi.

Chris Brennan

Yeah, Safron Rossi and Keiron Le Grice, and I did two episodes with each of them on Jung's work, but the one that might interest this listener the most was titled, it was episode 148 titled Jung on synchronicity and the mechanism for astrology. So There's only an audio version of that. But if they Google it, they'll find it on the podcast website.

Adam Elenbaas  

And then, there are a couple of books that have been written by Liz Greene on Jung's studies in astrology. And, you know, you've mentioned those on the podcast before as well. And so, if people are interested in learning more about that this interesting portion of today's conversation, those would be some good books to check out. You can if you just search Jungian astrology on Amazon, you'll find all of the texts that we've just mentioned.

Well, continuing down our list, we're probably not going to get through everyone's questions today; just so everyone knows in advance, I'm going to try to pick some other ones. 

One question that I thought was really interesting was, is fate the same concept as Karma. We know that Indian astrology and Hellenistic astrology have some; there's a lot that they share. There are some big differences too, you know, practically, or in terms of techniques and methods and so forth. But this question was, is fate the same concept as Karma? Are they just different words for the same thing? And if not, are there any, like, really meaningful big differences?

Chris Brennan  

Yeah, fate is mentioned very frequently in, like, all the Western texts and seems to have been the primary preoccupation of most ancient astrologers in the Roman Empire for many centuries. But I haven't found any references to Karma in western astrological text in terms of the actual astrologers until, like, the past century, when Alan Leone's theosophists started, you know, drawing on Hinduism and Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies and integrating them actively into Western astrology. So from my perspective, just from a historical perspective, that's how I look at it from a purely was my historian hat on. Yeah, that's part of that would be part of my answer. 

Adam Elenbaas  

I mean, as someone who, you know, just spent a number of years, got initiated in a, in a yogic lineage and did a lot of reading and studying the Upanishads and the Vedas and so on in the Indian philosophical tradition, it's hugely diverse. So one thing to keep in mind that I would say right away is that there's not like one single way of looking at or understanding Karma in India, just like there isn't one single way of talking about or understanding fate or how much is faded, and how much is open. And so you almost have to think like that. There's a whole philosophical ecosystem in India talking about Karma, what it is how it works. You even have, like in the Bhagavad Gita, you have Krishna saying that not even the wisest sages understand Karma. 

So, you know, I mean, I think it's just it's tempting to want to make the two concepts the same, but I don't think they are. I mean, you see in Plato and other Western philosophical texts, the idea that the soul's actions somehow carry meaning in terms of how it takes its next birth, you know, the idea of the transmigration of the soul, and that somehow, the souls actions have repercussions in future lifetimes. 

But it's not, in my opinion, in the West; it's not like the whole idea about Karma and transmigration of the soul is nowhere near as developed and sort of, you know, you don't hear people talking about fate, in ancient Western astrology, as though it is the same exact thing that Karma is. So you almost like there's a little bit more of the sense, I at least I get the sense in reading the tax and so forth, that you have a little bit more of a concern with this lifetime. Not that there isn't belief in more lifetimes, potentially, among different schools and stuff, but I just get the feeling that the idea of fate is a little bit more about what you're doing right now in this lifetime.

Chris Brennan

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they were entirely focused on this and that the concept of fate was just in and of itself, so it sort of applied to what is your role? Or what is the narrative of your story in this life, and the idea that astrology could help you figure that out, and that in of itself is was just seen as like really impressive if you can use astrology to figure out your current life narrative for the next 60 years or what have you and what your purposes here what you're supposed to be doing. That was kind of sufficient, and I don't think they often went beyond that to asking like, you know, because usually, like, ideas of Karma seem like it then extends concepts of fate to a mechanism of why things are predetermined. And now in this life, by extending the causal chain to before you were born, and the premise that there were actions that you took in the past that led to why things are now. And that's where you get some of the ideas of Karma and reincarnation, even though they're kind of like separate concepts.

I actually saw a poll recently that was kind of interesting from 2021. That said, there was a higher portion of much higher portion of people in modern India today that believed in Karma. But there was a much smaller portion, comparatively, relatively speaking, that believed in reincarnation. But I thought that was interesting that they're not necessarily always completely connected in people's minds necessarily, that they could be, you know, some people that believe Karma is a thing in the present life, but maybe don't believe that extends over into past lives or something like that. So that's why sometimes, even though those are connected, it might be good to sometimes consider them whether they might be defined separately.

Adam Elenbaas 

It's interesting to note that, you know, as far as I understand, Stoics did not place, and we know that a lot of early astrologers were probably Stoics, or that there was a strong connection between, you know, astrology in the Hellenistic world and the stoic school of philosophy. And that stoics were not particularly; I don't believe that they emphasize the idea of a personal soul, that that there that there's an essence that there's like the All Souls are part of like a, a universal or something. But I don't believe there was quite the emphasis on the soul trying to transmigrate through successive lifetimes to reach some kind of personal enlightenment. Is that correct?

Chris Brennan

Yeah, I don't think there was; I mean, the closest you could get to that is just the idea of the eternal recurrence and the idea that the universe is, like, so perfect. In its sequence and orderliness, and the plan, that it has this master plan that eventually the universe would sort of like collapse, but then it would expand or be reconstituted at some point again, and then things would like, repeat the exact same way over again, or something like that in some versions of stoicism.

Adam Elenbaas   

Right. Yeah. And that's a little bit you're gonna get a little bit like there's a different feeling in Indian astrology, not that I'm trying to represent all Indian astrologers right now. But like, for example, you know, there might be the eternal recurrence of the events in the universe might be some Indian astrologers might describe that as, as like samsara, that you're supposed to try to migrate out of that cycle or something like that. So, going back to the original point is that I don't think that fate and Karma are identical, although they're both really interesting and obviously have both been, you know, they've been at the heart of what astrology has been about in the east and West for a really long time. So it's, but they're not. I don't think they're identical, though. And I probably couldn't hash out the differences much more than we've already done. But hopefully, that answers this question a little bit.

Chris Brennan 

And I think it's really important because Karma and reincarnation provide part of the philosophical or religious backdrop that's allowed Indian astrology to continue to flourish over the past 2000 years, whereas in the West, you know, astrology became so closely linked to the concept of fate, that when there was this new religion that came along that said that, if you join this new religion, that you'll be free to fate and you'll be freed of your birth chart. I really think that was actually one of the primary things that led to just this massive rise in the popularity of Christianity at such a rapid pace in the early centuries of the Roman Empire. Just because one of the things that's been little explored is just at the time, it provided an alternative to what we could almost say, in some instances, may have been an over-emphasis on faith by some of the early Stoically-inclined Hellenistic astrologers so that some people might have, you know, seen an alternative to that as like a really appealing alternative. And I think that's something maybe to keep in mind in modern times.

That with the revival of modern astrology that's been useful because it's also emphasized some of the good things about freewill and humanism and at least having the experience of making choices, doing things consciously, trying to improve ourselves, and not adopt adopting an overly fatalistic or defeatist attitude towards our birth chart are just accepting things without trying our best to, you know, manifest positive outcomes or outcomes that are more preferred. There are a lot of good things there in modern astrology that I think are being blended together with some of the techniques and other philosophies that have been recovered from ancient astrology recently that are really good. And we're creating a new synthesis now that hopefully will create a more balanced astrology for the future.

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, that's a great point. And, and a really nice point about why the rise of, you know, the popularity of Christianity and its relation to astrology, being freed from the fate of a birth chart, it's interesting that that recurs in India in places too. I remember some of the texts that purport that I read some of the texts in the bhakti yoga tradition that I got involved in for a while, basically said, you know, one analogy that was often used was that, once you sort of take to the path of yoga, you're, it's like, if you're a fan that's been plugged into the wall, and you have electrical current, spinning the wheels of the fan, and that's Karma. Once you take to yoga, you're pulling the cord out of the wall. And although the blades will keep spinning by momentum, you're no longer plugged in. And then also the idea was that, from that point on, even though you may still be connected to a birth chart, sort of like, well in this is Krishna bhakti. So you know, there are many different forms of bhakti.

Krishna will take over for the administration of your Karma personally, whereas everyone else who hasn't given their selves to yoga will get more of an impersonal objectivist. Like, they'll be grounded by the gears of their Karma. So I think that there have been different versions of that same idea that some kind of religious path can offer you salvation from the birth chart, which is interesting because, you know, in that respect, it doesn't make it sound like the birth charts, a very, you know, kind thing, you know, but what I think what I find interesting is that um, you know, like you said, in one of the, maybe one of the greatest features of modern astrology is really a way of looking at the birth chart as the kind of cooperative tool for self-reflection and personal growth. And, you know, so there's, it's like astrology. Always has an answer, you know, for its philosophical detractors. It's very flexible in that regard. 

There was a question that came along these lines at first that was asking, when astrology came about, speaking of the religions in the early Roman empire in India, stuff like that was, would you would we consider astrology to have been a religion? And if not, like, what was it?

Chris Brennan 

Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, again, it comes back to the Mercurial, the hermetic nature of astrology, where astrology always straddled the line between science and religion. And it was neither holy one nor the other. There were certainly practitioners that would swing more towards one direction or more emphasizing the other like; for example, Ptolemy was more of a scientist and a polymath. And he wrote major works on in different fields of science, like geometry, optics, geography, astronomy, and also astrology. And so, for him, astrology was partially just an extension of an applied physics or something like that. But then there were other astrologers, certainly, where astrology did have more religious undertones, especially as part of some of the hermetic traditions, and astrologers, like Valens, or Fermicus, who treat astrology as this sort of secret knowledge that's meant to be passed down from teacher to student, imitating the hermetic philosophical lineages that would pass Gnosis or like revealed wisdom down from teacher to student for generations as part of these almost platonic dialogues. 

And there were definitely some religious undertones there where they would tell you; they would ask you to swear an oath not to share the teachings with the unlearned or the uninitiated so that it was almost as if it was part of a mystery tradition that was just being passed along, over the course of generations and wasn't meant for like general public consumption. And I think in that context, especially when you then also add in some of the undertones of fate and just the inherent nature of astrology, that it naturally, if it works, to the extent that it works, it naturally raises some spiritual and religious and philosophical questions about what is our meaning and purpose in the cosmos. It kind of implies that we have more meaning or purpose than you might think otherwise than it now actually does, you know, have some religious or spiritual component to it?

Adam Elenbaas   

Yeah, that's a great point. There's a book that I read recently. That reminds me of what you just said; it's a book by a Jungian. His name is Jason Smith, and he wrote a book called religious but not religious. And the subtitle is Living a Symbolic Life. And it's, it is, it's a very, the text is like an embodiment of Hermes. And so yeah, I think it's, I think that, yeah, I've grown to appreciate that more and more because one of the things that I can reflect on recently is, like, people again, who watch my channel know this, but I saw I was part I grew up very religious, you know, preacher's kid. And then just a lot of exploration of religion throughout my lifetime. And one of the things that, so recently, I left a religious tradition that I was a part of, and I had taken initiated name, as everyone knows, and going back to my birth name, and one of the things that I am so thankful for is that astrology had this weird way of perfectly sort of signifying, and symbolizing, the dive that I took into this religious experience, as well as very perfectly signifying the need to leave and go on. And so what I think is really interesting is that astrology seems fundamentally open to and supportive of all manners of experiences; it has a way of reflecting all the different kinds of philosophies that are out there, too. And so I think that's one of the things about astrology that's so unique, is that its symbolic power can kind of affirm and represent just about any kind of religion or philosophy, but it also doesn't have to get stuck in any of them. Which I think is probably why it's so attractive to so many people.

Chris Brennan

Yeah, for sure. That makes me think of a funny thing, like some, of them a couple of the most extreme astrology skeptics I know of when I ever when I found their birth charts; they both had Saturn in the ninth house in a night chart. And it was so funny because it was like, the astrology itself was saying that you would not believe in astrology. And there's a funny kind of a, you know, thing to that.

Adam Elenbaas   

Yeah, yeah, totally. I was like, Well, you know, it's like, someone asked me, they're like, don't you feel like kind of adrift, like you just set aside your religion? You must feel a little lost. And I was like, no, because, you know, Pluto in the ninth house, opposing my son in the third, perfectly represented, you know, my departure from this religious experience, which to me, just filled me with a sense of, of trust in the, in the journey of my life. And there's something about that, although I don't have any kind of religious affiliation at the moment, that felt like a kind of religious experience. I don't know how else to describe it. So I think that's, you know, that's the magic of astrology. 

You know, there's another question along these lines that we're talking about here. Did ancient astrologers believe that your chart included a set of instructions or learning lessons that you were supposed to accomplish in order to evolve? Now, I'll say that, like, right away, that sort of in order to evolve peace, we could tack that on? Or leave that out? I think, either way, is the birth chart, like a set of instructions, whether you believe it's a set of instructions that carries you on to future lifetimes or not, I think we've already established that sort of people debate that, you know, but was there any sense in ancient astrology, that the birth chart contains a set of learning lessons or instructions?

Chris Brennan 

Yeah, I mean, the evolve part just goes back to the evolution part. And I don't think that was a component in ancient astrology, at least, because they're very much just focused on the wonder of being able to cast a chart and look at astrology and be able to say things about a person's entire life and what some of the main beats of a person's life are, or what some of the main chapters of a person's life are in main subjects. And that in of itself is just like really impressive. And sometimes when people want more than that, or they want astrology to be more to do more than that, I kind of think of like that meme of like, Maximus from Gladiator when he's like, you know, in the arena and he's like, are you not entertained by, you know, being able to be able to predict like, all these you know, things about what will happen in a person's future like from the moment they were born until they're 60 or 90 years old like that's already pretty impressive, you know, people let's, let's take that you know, for what it is.

But otherwise, you know, the chart itself. Yeah, I mean, some of the basic placements especially, and that's, that's a reorientation when you're getting into ancient astrology is that, instead of looking at all the placements as being active for the entire duration of the life, sometimes some of those placements will just indicate like a single specific event that will happen at some point in your life that will come to characterize, if somebody was to write a biography about your life that they would write, at some point, that chapter about the time that that one thing happened. And sometimes that's sufficient. And it doesn't have to be something that's continually present and continually manifesting in the same way in order for it to be relevant. It just has to sometimes tell you something that will be significant in defining about a person's life. And sometimes, that's what the birth chart does in some areas.

Adam Elenbaas 

One of the reasons that I go back to at least, again, not wanting to be too dogmatic, and I have a tendency to get really dogmatic about astrology as a divination thing, but the thing that I like to remind people of is that in the ancient world, to go and see a diviner, I'm just using that word loosely. But to go and see a diviner would sometimes require a sacrifice, you know, whether that sacrifice was a long journey, like a pilgrimage, or to it to a temple, or if it was, you know, sometimes literally, like, bring a goat, you know, or something like that. 

Chris Brennan

But, like, beyond meat burger or something in a modern context.

Adam Elenbaas 

 I think it would be exactly. Don't, don't piss off PETA. I think one of the things that we forget is that because we have the software at our disposal because we have daily astrological content because we have scrolling, we know, we're always scrolling, there's a, and some of that's really cool, like, I'm not at all trying to, like, you know. So those are bent, their benefits, all those things, but because of that, it's also easy to want astrology to be like a, something that, you know, we're, it's like, we get overstimulated by it, or we don't know how to unplug from it. And so it's kind of like, yeah, I feel like, if you were to talk to your therapist every single day, therapy would sort of lose its value because it's good to let some water pass under the bridge and then go and speak to a therapist, you know, you don't, you don't want to take note of every single dream you have. Because if you even in like a dream tending classes, they'll say, you know, like, let some dream water pass under the bridge. And then you'll notice that some really stand out. And I think that there's an art to like letting a lot of things pass in life. And then noticing that some things stand out when the things really stand out experiences or events, to use astrology to help us understand them, or to use astrology to prepare, prepare us for a period of time where it's likely that some events are going to stand out. I think that's a really good use for it. But I feel like we can. And I would call that a kind of a divinity mindset, at least. But it seems like if we're always looking for astrology to give us a set of instructions or learning lessons that are ever-present 24/7 all the time, then I think it'll probably disappoint us, or we might get; we might start getting obsessive about trying to improve ourselves. Whereas if you use it in the way that I'm describing, I think that you'll often find that those events will pop up with the set of implicit meaning or learning lessons or something like that.

Chris Brennan

Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot there. One of the things I wanted to mention, in respect to something you said at the beginning of that, was that there's more and more evidence that keeps coming out that astrology during the Greco-Roman period, and especially in the early Roman Empire in Egypt was something that was practiced, not exclusively, but it was one of the things that were practiced in the Egyptian temples. And that when people would come to the temples with an issue or question that there were these priests who would cast a person's birth chart and then try to provide answers within that context, using astrology as a form as one of the forms of divination. And so there was really, not just religious but kind of like a sacred component to that, and much more of a sacred sense to astrology in the ancient world in some instances, which is something that in modern times with the sort of under our current context of like capitalism and the commodification of astrology that we've lost a little bit that probably would have been more present in the ancient world or even would have been more present prior to the past century when astrology was something that was less accessible to just normal everyday people and that you had to have a lot of really advanced training in order to access. So that was one thing I wanted to mention. And then, what was the last part? The second part you were focused on?

Adam Elenbaas 

Just that if we are used to using astrology a little bit more selectively, then I think that there are many astrologers seem to have. 

Chris Brennan

Oh, yeah, just like the frequency. 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah. And it seems to provide us with lessons. And that life, through Astrology, can feel like it's giving you some instructions or lessons. But I think that it's really important. And just in my personal point of view, we not look at astrology like, well, your chart has this set of lessons that you have to learn. But more like as you relate to your life through the lens of your birth chart, you'll find that one of the ways in which it speaks or feeds back to you is that it provides you with a set of what maybe is meant to learn within the context of something, something you're experiencing. But it seems that for it to do that, you have to make sure that you're not obsessing over it like it's a set of instructions.

Chris Brennan

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, during the course of a student or an astrologers career, every astrologer that I've ever known goes through different periods of waxing or waning in terms of the level of frequency to which they pay attention to their own birth chart or their own transits or the birth charts and transits of everybody around them, or, you know, the mundane transits. And like current world events, I think different astrologers go through different stages. And especially early on, there's a stage where everybody does that really intensely and sort of obsessively. And that's okay, to a certain extent, as long as it doesn't verge into being unhealthy just because it's part of the process of learning and immersion. 

Just as if you were immersing yourself in a language if you were trying to pick up, you know, Arabic or ancient Greek or Sanskrit or something like that, like the best way to immerse yourself into languages to, like, go there and live there and just do that 24/7, right. And that's how you really internalize something. But there can definitely be an unhealthy version of that. You know, but for the most part, it's still something that for astrologers, for people that become astrologers. Astrology is like this code, or this language that's happening behind reality that sort of like telling you what's going on at any given moment in time. 

And sometimes it tells you things that, you know, are important pieces of information that may be contrary to what you initially think about events, but then later, it will turn out to be true, which is a recurring surprise that I often have even having experienced that like hundreds of times, I'm always sort of impressed by when my experience of something of events is one way and expect things to go one way, but the astrology is telling me, there's something else going on here. And it's gonna go a different way that the astrology often ends up being true. And I think there's still, though, but where I was going with that is that there's a healthy component to that, which is that all astrologers are using astrology as a process of studying the unfolding of their life purpose or life narrative. And during the course of your life and your career as an astrologer, you will always be digging that up in different stages. And sometimes, coming to new understandings or new realizations about your birth chart is part of a lifelong process of finding out who you are and what you're here to do. And there's something just very beautiful and very interesting about that as a phenomenon that we experience as astrologers.

Adam Elenbaas  

Right? Yeah, that's true. I think there's also this way in which, just naturally living a life and using astrology as a way of reflecting upon it. Sometimes I feel like that is more satisfying to me than using astrology to try to figure out why am I here. What I'm supposed to do? Although I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Sometimes, I feel like astrology is giving me this feedback about how to individuate or what my purpose is, or what the lessons might be in any situation or time in life. There's this other level where it's almost as though astrology is just providing me this room; like you said, are you not entertained? 

You know, like, like astrology is just providing me this archetypal lens through which to appreciate the richness of experience itself. And so, like, even just being able to, like, reflect on the fact that the way something happened, you know, took place while the moon was opposite Mars, you know, like, oh, wow, that got heated. Then I reflect on the fact that the moon was opposite Mars, and somehow I'm just like a balloon in my chest is just blowing up. And wow, it was just changes that I have to experience that and that sequence of events and the consequences. And maybe I have to, you know, makeup with someone after an argument or something. But somehow, astrology itself set aside the lessons, and the purpose just provides us with; it expands our appreciating capacity for experience itself. And I think that it's important to have that kind of relationship to astrology, alongside always mining the chart for like moral or spiritual imperatives or like purpose or something.

Chris Brennan

Yeah, for sure, to retain that sense of just like wonder that it works at all and how rich the languages and how well it can describe these different levels of human experience?

Adam Elenbaas  

Yeah, totally. This is interesting, let's see here. I've got to do this dovetails with another question. So we're talking about fate. And we're talking about instructions, things that you're maybe that you're here to learn. There was also a rich practice of astrological magic in the ancient world. And there were also debates about whether or not astrological magic should be used or not; we're not going to be able to tell anyone what to do or not to do about this. But could you just outline for us, like, what were the views? Was astrological magic used by everyone? But was it used by some astrologers? And not by others? What were the debates like about it? And what would be some examples of how astrological magic was used in relation to the birth chart?

Chris Brennan
Yeah, I mean, I think there was a tension in the Hellenistic tradition in the Greco-Roman period between some of the astrologers that were more Stokely declined, inclined who thought that you should, the purpose of astrology was to learn your fate so that you knew what things you needed to accept in the future, and wouldn't be blindsided by stuff. And I think that's really important to emphasize because it's the one philosophical principle or precept that just gets repeated amongst almost every astrologer. So that it must have been like this commonly agreed upon like thing of like, that's what we're doing with astrology, that's one of the primary purposes, whether you're fully deterministic, or even just partially deterministic, that there's some element where you're trying to learn the future to know what you have to accept and, but then there were other traditions,

You know, going back to Mesopotamia, even because astrology and Mesopotamia and like 1000 BCE, they would do it for the city or the state, but then sometimes they would do it for the purpose of then figuring out what propitiation rituals would then need to be used in order to ward off any negative things. Or sometimes they'd try to get, you know, cute with it and do things like the substitute King ritual, where it's like, if there's a negative element for the king, then let's switch out the king for like a week or two until that passes, and then we'll put the king back in, and different stuff like that.

So there's clearly a pre-existing tradition that had some magical notions of finding out the future so that you can try to avoid it, almost as if as a form of time travel or something like that, and of working with time in order to manipulate or control it. And I think that came back and continued into the Hellenistic tradition where there was this separate magical tradition that said the purpose is to learn your fate in order to know how to change it or how to alter it. And that through different magical means, you might be able to do this. And I found this one really amazing text from, I think, this third or fourth-century alchemist named Zosimos, who preserves some passages from these two astrological texts that we're debating about this, and one of them was attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, and the other was attributed to Zoroaster. And the Hermes text, interestingly, is the one that arguing for more of a stoic position on fate that aligns more with authors like Valens, where it says you learn the future in order to learn what you have to accept. And that's the purpose of astrology, and then you have this as zoroastral text that says that you can learn your future, your fate through astrology, but then you can do certain magical things in order to attempt to avoid or mitigate certain things. So I think this was a debate that was happening in the ancient world with different astrologers on different sides or at least coming from different perspectives.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, students asked me about that all the time. And I think it's for each individual to explore, and it's not a black and white thing either, and just kind of going into another question that was asked was, Do either of you practice or used astrological magic and if so, to like what extent why or why not? I thought, okay, well, I can speak to this personally, and Chris, if you want to answer, you can, you can also decline; but I said, you know, my or my answer is, you know, so I don't, I tend to be a little bit more, more like I read the Tao Te Ching and the I-Ching. And I tend to be a little bit more about learning how to align; I would say if there's any kind of magic in my practice, it's an alignment-based practice; it's sort of like, using the astrology as a way of helping me maybe reflect upon if it's the right time to do something or not, you know, or maybe figuring out how to adjust my approach within something I'm doing.

So there's, I feel like there's a sense of, of trying to align myself with the right time or the right season or the right moment, or to use the planets as a kind of feedback to walk down the path, maybe in some kind of cosmic harmony or something, you could call that a guess a kind of magic. But it's probably a little bit closer for me to that sense of, just like sort of not trying to assert my will or manipulate anything so much.

But at the same, I can say that, by the same token, you know, I spent about a decade of my life working with Ayahuasca is definitely like a plant medicine that's helping in, you know, one way of describing is that you're using it to try to remediate things that you're dealing with psychologically, or if you want to call it karmically or something.

So, my wife and I teach a program that we just started called Roots and Spheres, which is a monthly Moon circle where we track the astrology for the month, but we also diet a plant teacher that we feel could help us to find that right alignment within every lunar cycle. So I think it's probably, I'm guessing that there would probably have been a lot of astrologers throughout history like this, where there, there may have been the, you know, go pick your herbal medicine under the side of the moon under this in this sign or, you know, use this herbal medicine for this kind of ailment, but while still, broadly speaking, trying to walk a path of acceptance, rather than, you know, willful domination or manipulation of astrological energies.

But my point being that I don't think it's been black and white. I don't think it's like, well, either, you just sit back and passively accept every last thing. And there's no practice of any, any kind of magical remediation or anything. Or it's like, you know, you're making an amulet every day to try and manipulate every last thing. So I'm guessing that a lot of practitioners throughout astrological history have sort of fallen in the middle someplace. You want to take a swing at this question, Chris.

Chris Brennan
Yeah, there's so much there. And I like what you said. I mean, one of the things to be aware of that comes through really clear in some of the Stoic philosophers is sometimes we conceptualize fate as this external thing like our circumstances. But in the stoic philosophical tradition, it's like fate is not your fate is not just your external circumstances, but also your internal circumstances of like, who you are, like, what your character traits are, what your proclivities towards certain actions are your temperament, and different things like that.

So that it's not just an external notion of fate but even the notion sometimes that some of your actions and your choices might be predetermined as well, and sometimes that shows up in certain techniques like Zodiacal releasing in the Hellenistic tradition, where, especially as a zodiacal releasing from a lot of spirit is very much keyed in with the actions that you'll take in order to find your career and accomplish what you're supposed to do here in terms of the actualization of your will and your internal potential. And it's kind of startling sometimes to see that technique objectively, lining up very well, sometimes with you making important decisions that came not as a result of external circumstances, but sometimes as a result of internal choices that we make that we have the experience of as being completely free. Free will choices.

So there gets a little bit of trickiness there in terms of internal versus external fate and the potential that it's not just your external circumstances that may be subject to fade, but there could be some internal things there as well. But that being said, it's like, I do use one Electional Astrology very frequently, which I think I had a conversation with Austin Copic a few years ago, and like late 2019, I think, on astrology and magic, and that sort of changed my views a little bit and made me realize a little bit more than Electional Astrology really is almost kind of like magic. Because when you're using Electional Astrology, you're Really trying to, at the very least, alter the trajectory of things and put things on a better path or a better course that's more in alignment with the outcome that you would like to see happen.

And that's very much what people that are involved in astrological magic or just magic, in general, are trying to do as well. And it is kind of magical in a way to the extent that it works, that Electional Astrology can sometimes allow you to change things or to make things work out in a way that matches your goal or your desired outcome. And that does, I think that's the area of astrology that gives you the greatest sense of, like, free will and the ability to alter control things for the better, you know, out of anything.

But that being said, nothing will teach you about the restrictions of fate faster than trying to find a set of electional dates. And realizing very quickly that, you know, you don't have unlimited options and that the circumstances of time and location and practicality impose certain restrictions on you. So you're never going to find the perfect ideal electional chart; there's always going to be some things in it that are not optimal or that you don't like and that you end up having to accept as trade-offs for things that you do like. And that becomes an additional sort of interesting part of the fate, and free will dialogue is sometimes having the choice in front of you and being able to make the choice consciously of what the good things and the bad things are that you're going to accept on an ongoing basis by paying attention to the moment in which you're initiating actions and what the potential is in each of those moments every single time. It really gives you a very firsthand experience of the fate free will issue and the interplay between those two areas.

There was one last thing which is just even if things are predetermined to some extent or even 100%. I think as astrologers, something I've always said is that we have to act as if they are not because of the limitations of being able to say 100% What will happen with astrology because astrology is a language that works through symbolism and omens, there's always going to be like a barrier where you can't, it's not like getting at a crystal ball. And looking into the future. And seeing like a movie that shows you exactly what's going to happen in terms of all the details in the sequence of events. Sometimes it's broader than that, even though it can be quite advanced and quite impressive, like how far you're able to go with that in terms of predicting very specific things.

But nonetheless, no astrologer is ever 100% Certain until they get there and they see the full manifestation and the particular way that things work out. And as a result of that, that lack of 100% certainty leaves wiggle room where you should never resign yourself 100% to thinking that you know exactly what's going to take place in the future. And that you should just accept especially any negative things that you think are going to happen in your life based on your chart or your transits or what have you. But instead, we have to always try to push for the best possible outcomes and push for the best possible scenario because oftentimes, sometimes at least as astrologers, if we do that, we'll find that the outcome in the future was not as bad as we expected, or that there was a much more favorable way that things ended up turning out than our initial like pessimistic assumptions or thoughts about something. So I think that's where there's a sort of free will that lies in astrology, even if we're adopting the most deterministic mindset.

Adam Elenbaas
That's a great point. I sometimes use the analogy when it comes to archetypal prediction. You know, if, you know, if, as an astrologer, you're trying to be like David Copperfield, and wow, people. You know, you're probably trying to throw one dart and hit the bull's eye. I think what we're really trying to do as symbolic. You know, as a hermetic activity, that symbolic and archetypal in nature, I'll call it, that is more like taking five darts and just trying to hit the board with all five of them. The likelihood is that if I describe what Saturn opposing a person's Venus could mean, in five different ways, you know, completely unique ways of reading that symbolic interaction. And I try to keep those thematic. You know, for example, the maturation of Venus, Venusian things becoming more of a love relationship becoming more mature like a wine that's aging well or something, or the death of a relationship. I describe them in different ways. It's likely that one of those darts, when I'm speaking to a client, will have hit really close to the bullseye, if not the bullseye. And in doing so, people, there's always someone when they are first learning about astrology, like, Isn't that cheating? It's like, well, no, not if my goal isn't to try to impress someone with my predictive, you know, concrete up concrete, predictive success, like, David Copperfield, you know. And I think that the other thing that does to when we learn to read transits or, you know, astrological understand astrological prediction in this manner, and there are some cases like in horary, where maybe that's not appropriate, someone saying, like, we're trying to conceive will I will we be successful, you may not want to, you know, that there are forms of astrology that I think may be more concretely predictive. And people may or may not be drawn to those or whatever.

If we work this way, with birth charts, then the other thing that we can do is we can, knowing, okay, there's this realm of Saturn, Venus possibilities that are coming in, then if you say, well, there are some fault lines in my relationship, then you know, the strands coming in the next year, what's a good time, if you know that you can start talking like, hey, let's go get some therapy, let's go to counseling together, you can be proactive when you have some sense of where those fault lines are.

Or like, for example, you know, clients will come in, and maybe they have Pluto ingressing into their first house and Aquarius coming up. And I've heard myself say more than a few times to people who know astrology and are worried about their health. Well, don't wait for a crisis. If there are some basic, obvious ways, you know, you might be able to take care of yourself a little bit better. And you know what those are? I don't, but if you know what those are, do them now because, you know, what could be the harm in just taking better care of yourself. And then you never know how you might also be creating an environment in which you have a little bit more resilience if you get sick or whatever. So I think, yeah, so anyway, I'm just kind of some feedback about some of those points you made. Really? Yeah, I couldn't agree more with those.

Chris Brennan
Yeah, that made me think maybe there's a way we could summarize that in a sentence. I don't know if this is perfect, but just workshopping this here that the success of astrology is not in how well you predict the exact concrete outcome in each individual case. But rather in how well you can describe the overarching archetype. Because really, astrology, as you said, and as Richard Tarnas says, astrology is archetypally predictive, and that it shows you the archetype that you can describe, which is like the overarching umbrella symbolism, and then there's going to be many individual ways that that specific that symbolism can manifest in specific ways. And that you can access the archetype.

But sometimes, it's harder to get a bullseye on the specific individual manifestation because of how many different factors are involved in doing that. But again, it goes back to that thing, where if you can describe the archetype, it's still going to be accurate and be really impressive that you can do it that at all because realistically, if we step outside of our astrologer bubble for a minute, that shouldn't work, like we shouldn't be able to describe, we shouldn't be able to describe archetypically, like what's going to happen in the future, based on the alignment of the planets, you know, in the present the past or the future, that just from an objective like scientific, modern, like materialist standpoint, like, shouldn't work.

And there are many people that assume before they've actually learned astrology or studied things like transits that it just doesn't work. However, one of our recurring experiences that every astrologer has is just the essential sense of astonishment and wonder that it does actually work, and then trying to see how far you can go with it and how close to making it a sort of predictive science you can get in terms of predicting the specifics, and we take that as far as we can go.

But one of the things that I do sometimes is, like, provide delineations for each placement. I'll do three delineations, where I'll say, here's the archetype. And I'll try to describe the archetype as broadly as I can; have a specific combination, let's say, Venus conjunct Saturn, and I'll say, here's one positive way that this could manifest in a specific circumstance in your life. And then here's a second delineation, that's a more negative way that this could manifest in your life in a specific scenario. And then, finally, here's a third one that is a more neutral manifestation. And then that gives us sort of range of both describing the archetype as well as trying to get more specific about different ways that it could manifest in a range of positive or negative ways on that full spectrum. And then, you know, asking the client or talking to the client about how it has manifested at this point and if it's been on one side of that spectrum of experience or another.

And I think that's important because I saw somebody on Twitter recently that was like a younger student who was kind of complaining that astrologers tended to use chart examples where they already knew what the outcome was. And it was they were focused on a placement but then describing it in the super specific ways of this is how the placement manifested for the client in the super specific way. And they were frustrated because they said, you know, but would you have said that ahead of time, would you have predicted that specific concrete manifestation ahead of time.

I think what's important to understand is when astrologers use these highly specific examples and then describe the outcome, the purpose is to teach students and also for the astrologers themselves to have learned. This is a specific manifestation in a person's life of this archetype. Because it's really important as a student, or for a student, to learn the full range of manifestations because sometimes there can be unique ways that things can come about in a person's life that you didn't expect or didn't anticipate because you just didn't consider that as a possibility. But the more you learn about astrology, and the more you consider different possible manifestations that could happen with different archetypes, the better you can be about trying to make specific predictions in the future.

Adam Elenbaas
Right. And, you know, that goes back to something that I said at the beginning, which is that sometimes I'll find that students of traditional astrology will say, Oh, those texts seem so fatalistic. Right. And I think some of that is actually more about language and tone and culture. Because, you know, if you read, for example, or Fermicus Materna, whose book is like just chock full of delineations, you know, this, this planetary combination, or planets, making aspects and planets and houses, and, and so forth.

And you'll find, you know, all sorts of delineations in ancient texts, but I tell my students, there's no reason to believe that they were that different from us, in the sense that, you know, they would have anticipated not so much, maybe in some cases, they were people who are more super literal, like, if you have this combination, then it means that a wild dog will bite off your arm or something, something crazy. But I think you can read those texts archetypally as well.

So, you know, there's almost, I feel like the texts are written in a way that is teaching you about different manifestations of the underlying symbolic values or correspondences. If you have Venus and Saturn, you'll see a list of delineations. And that list, people, when we read the ancient texts, there's a tendency to want to take that list, literally like a cookbook. And then we think, well, ancient astrologers, they were so narrow and limited and literal, but I don't think they actually were because you see how diverse those delineations were from text to text. And, really, the texts themselves were probably teaching students to think about symbolic interactions on kind of an underlying level, like, here's, here's a list of delineations. But if you're studying astrology, you would be looking at those manifestations as possibilities, not just a concrete list of ways you should always predict.

Chris Brennan
Yeah, it's a metaphorical dog that will bite off your arm, rather than a literal, literal dog metaphorical, metaphorically eaten alive by dogs is how you'll feel during this year. Sometimes. Yeah, and I mean, what you said, the ancient astrological texts all seem to have this pedagogical approach to teaching where they give extreme examples, and they tend to frame especially some astrologers, like Fermicus, who's very over the top, tend to frame things as the most extreme possible manifestation for teaching purposes because those delineations are meant to be evocative, and to point you to the under or the overarching archetype that's underlying those delineations. And then the more that you can understand those evocative examples is pointing to something broader, the better of a chance you're going to have of predicting more specific outcomes or different variations of those outcomes on a spectrum that might be a little bit more neutral or even good.

But first, anytime you want to establish a spectrum, you first have to establish, establish the extremes. So one of those extremes is like, you know, fully benefic. Like what is the best possible outcome versus fully malefic? What is the worst possible outcome? Once you've established those extremes, then you can find the different shades of gray in the middle. And that's really important to keep in mind when you're reading that stuff. That being said, it's like, every once in a while, you know, some of those ancient texts, like you'll see something in the news where it's like, you know, it's 2022 2023. And, like, somebody through a freak accident just got eaten by a dog or something like that, or like a pack of wild dogs or something like that. I mean, still, sometimes extreme, weird, bizarre.

Either misfortunate or extremely fortunate stuff does happen in people's lives and in the lives of people around us. And so it's good to be aware of those most extreme possible outcomes, and what would correlate with that, like, I'm constantly fascinated by, like, on Reddit, there are different subreddits, where people post their stories. And just like these extreme human stories of human experience of extremely positive, extremely negative scenarios that happen in real people's lives, and then just my impulse as an astrologer, to see what correlated with that so I can understand better what that looks like in a chart, and then can be able to talk to people better. If it's a client, for example, if they have something that's just in the neighborhood or the ballpark of that extreme experience, even if it's in a much more, not neutral, but let's say no lower level version of the same thing.

Adam Elenbaas
I think, yeah. And my main point, going back to the start of this conversation, was, you know, the ancient texts are not. Sometimes people will think, Well, we're more symbolic and archetypal now. Right? And they weren't as literal and fatalistic then. And I hope today, what we've shown is that there was actually a lot of nuance in the way that ancient astrologers looked at free will, the interaction between the two, magic elections, or this kind of stoic acceptance, and there's this really interesting cauldron of ideas. And also, the texts themselves, although some of that there can be extremes that these texts were meant to teach people, symbolic thinking, which was not limited to the scope of the delineations in the text itself.

So yeah, I think we've established that pretty well. One last question that I want to talk about is that when I first started studying, and a lot of the time when I, when students come to study Hellenistic, and they've been exposed to like nothing but modern astrology, one of the things that they'll come in with and that I was exposed to when I first started studying to is this idea that the birth chart is nothing but as possibilities that it's just kind of a set of possibilities or potentials. That's the other word I was thinking of. In what we're talking about, with the archetypal combinations, it can almost sound like what we're saying is that, well, it's total potential when Saturn is going to come in conjoined with Venus in your birth chart. That's just there's just a mandala of possibilities and potentialities, and it sort of rests on your shoulder to, like, get the right get it right or something like that. Maybe we can speak a little bit about that idea. And where that comes from, and yeah, just your thoughts about that.

Chris Brennan
Yeah, I think, in the late 20th century, astrology in the generation of astrologers, especially that came into the field in the 1960s and 1970s. When the integration of modern depth psychology, especially the work of Carl Jung, was fully integrated into astrology. In the generation that took up Rudhyar's work, especially with astrologers like Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas and other, you know, actually a number of other a whole group of modern astrologers, they were so because they were integrating counseling dynamics into astrology. They were so concerned about and so worried about not doing harm psychologically to people by instilling them with false fears or scenarios, other things like that would sort of like disturb their mental state, but they almost went too far in presenting an almost Pollyanna-type view of every possible placement which, to a certain extent that, was good that they sort of talked us down as a tradition from some of the worst-case things like always considering Saturn to be negative, which it wasn't necessarily, even in traditional astrology are always interpreting certain things as extremely negative.

You know, there was such an extreme trend to never say anything negative that they went too far. And we really saw the, like, opposite end of that, or there were repercussions of that in instances like, you know, in 2020, for example, where there were a lot of astrologers that predicted that it was going to be a tough time for various reasons and went further or not as far than others.

But one of the things I really learned from that time period in watching the community was just the downside of if an astrologer has a philosophical, it makes a philosophical choice never to say anything negative, then there are going to be some people afterward when a negative event does happen that say, Why didn't you tell me? You know, why did you withhold that information? Or why did you try to spin it in such a constructive light when what I actually experienced was a real-time of trauma and hardship?

And I think that's one piece that we have gained from ancient astrology that's very useful as we've brought back some of that ability to talk about concrete, external events and be a little bit more realistic about when sometimes the experience of those energies or those archetypes is going to be tough. And I think that's helpful and important because I think it's more validating for a client to be able to talk to somebody that's acknowledging real areas of hardship, or difficulty or trauma, and then be able to go from there, instead of just ignoring it or kind of trying to sweep it under the rug in some sort of misguided attempt to, you know, not harm the client by saying things that might be unsettling to them.

So obviously, there's a balance there because you can go too far in the opposite direction of, like, you know, saying things that are negative or making predictions that aren't going to be helpful to the client or could be psychologically harmful. And I do think astrologers should always have the primary, operating number one rule of, like, do no harm in the same way that they have in the medical tradition. But there needs to be some sort of balance there. Because sometimes, when things get unbalanced, there can be unexpected outcomes.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, that's a great point. And I think, you know, I remember, I think it was William Lily, at the beginning of his text on horary astrology, which is called Christian astrology. And that text is not it's an interesting title, but it really has nothing to do with Christianity, per se. But it's just like a great text on horary astrology that he wrote. At the beginning of that text, anyway, he's right.

Chris Brennan
It's a Christian astrology text that's composed of, like, 90% of earlier Arabic Muslim authors that he was drawing on.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Good point. And I think if you did a whole did, you've done some talks on that text, in particular, on your podcast that I really loved. But I'm thinking that it had to do with the climate of religious belief at his time that he named it that, too, right?

Chris Brennan
Yeah, probably because there were increasing like attacks, you know, during the Renaissance and early modern period from the church that were not good in terms of trying to ban astrology or get rid of it, especially, you know, the branch that he really practices, which was horary, which is the branch that it was a lot harder to defend on naturalistic terms as a science because it's just like more obviously, like Tarot or something like that, that just looks like a form of divination?

Adam Elenbaas
So, in the beginning of that text, he says, you know, deliver their hard fate by degrees. I believe that's one of the things that he said, like, if you should come, might, there's something similar that said, in Burma kiss and his note to the students of astrology, he says something about, like, kind of, like, deliver the blows gently, you know, sort of heard of like, and I, I think that's important, because, you know, we might sit down and look and see, oh, there's like, we've been using Saturn Venus example. And you might think, well, based on the situation, it sounds like divorce is coming, you know, based on what the client is telling me and so forth. But you should still you should treat that situation like, well, you don't know exactly what's going to happen. You could outline that as a possibility, among others.

But I think the philosophical point I want to come back to is that even in a situation like that, that doesn't necessarily mean that there what you're saying implicitly on a philosophical level is that there is no fate or destiny whatsoever that it means that it's all up in the air somehow, I think that more often than not puts too much pressure on people. Because usually what comes into that sort of possibility void is the sense that, well, it depends on how conscious you are, what you'll get, you know, is like sort of rides on you and how enlightened you are something like that. And which, you know, there. And again, going back to where we started today, there's, there's some, I think, probably you and I would both land in the camp of there being sort of a partial determinism, and like, there's some relation between our choices and the unfolding of fate. But again, just because we may not be able to say exactly what is going to happen, or we have an archetypal realm of possibilities to work in, is not the same thing as saying that the future is only possible and open and completely just potentiality.

So that's where I stand anyway, where I would say I wouldn't. I can't go that far. I have to say, No, like Hermes, I'm, I'm interested in some kind of relationship between that sense of possibility, potential choice, and a very real sense that fate exists again; otherwise, I'm not sure why we're, how astrology would have come about in the first place. And I think we have to take seriously what the ancient philosophers and authors were saying, which is that this is a study of fate. That doesn't mean that there's no room for choice or possibility. But to go to the opposite extreme to me, it's like an opposite extreme. If you go, everything is completely faded. The opposite would be to say that somehow everything is completely open and nothing but potential. And then again, I think that Hermes probably wants to weave those things together somehow.

Chris Brennan
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think what you said at the very beginning was really important that astrologers know to take any delineation with a grain of salt because they understand that astrology is archetypal, a predictive, and therefore there can be different possible outcomes on that spectrum of positive to negative for any position, and you don't know 100% ahead of time, but a client doesn't know that. And so sometimes a client will take what the astrologer says much more seriously, and that's where we have to be cautious with the way that we word things. And that the astrologer is careful and conscientious of how the client is going to receive what you say. And that there may be different people, depending on their mental state and ability to take in different things, that may be more or less capable of hearing certain things from an astrologer without it becoming detrimental to their mental health. So that's a super important thing to pay attention to and be aware of.

With respect to your last thing, because I know we're getting towards the end of this here, I want to take the position that fate is actually a good thing. And I'm actually very pro-fate. Because I think we need to take into account not just the challenging things that come with certain things being predetermined or faded in terms of hardships that we experienced in our lives but also some of the positive things as well. And that there's this beautiful sort of interweaving of the positive and negative events in our life of, like, the negative hardships that we had to experience in order to have this positive thing later on. Or this positive thing that occurred that eventually had some negative outcome. But it eventually became tied in with our overall life story.

Sometimes when people look back and think of some of those things, you know, they realize once they get to a certain point in their life when things have evened out a little bit, that they wouldn't go back and change it necessarily, or they wouldn't trade it, because if they got rid of some of the hard things, then some of the positive things that they were able to achieve later wouldn't have happened. And so it's part of this entire, like, calculus that you have to add up all of the totality of events in your life that created your life story and who you are, and what you've accomplished and how far you've come. And all of that is tied in with this notion of fate as being the sequence of events according to some meaningful or purposeful sequence, essentially, because the opposite of that, that we have to contrast is the modern, materialistic sort of skeptical notion of everything just being chaos and that we're in a meaningful, meaningless and purposeless universe where like, you know, the Earth is just like this rock that's floating around in space with like, a speck of like mold on it of life that just sprouted out of nowhere. But otherwise, there's no purpose for any of our lives. And we just have to make the best out of it, out of whatever time we have floating around on this rock aimlessly in space.

I think that astrology and its connection with the concept of fate and its ability to access this realm of existence of fate, where it can demonstrate that fate exists. One of the most important religious or spiritual, or philosophical things about that implications is that it implies that our lives are not random or meaningless. But that each of us has some sort of life story or narrative that runs throughout our lives and all of the events within it. And that it also interconnects us with the lives of many other people around us in our family unit, in our city unit, and in our generational unit. And even, you know, down through human history, through the past and all the way through the future. And to me, there's something that's incredibly beautiful about that, which I where I see that as an as a positive thing, a net positive thing, even if it has some negative things implicit, but ultimately, that it's something beautiful and interesting and inspiring, rather than something that's like negative or, or oppressive.

Adam Elenbaas
That is so nicely said. Such a nice way to wrap up our talk today, I think. Yeah, I don't have anything to add. I just couldn't have said it better. Myself, I was so wonderfully put. I hope that today's conversation for everyone listening has been enlightening. We had, you know, far more questions that we could possibly get to, but I tried to capture, you know, the essence of a lot of questions that were very similar in nature and bring them to this conversation today. It's a real treat to have had you here, Chris.

One thing that I'll add as a kind of funny little anecdote is that you know, of all of the clients that I work with, the people that I find that want the most concrete specific information are often the students of astrology. Because I think that as students of astrology, people are working with those archetypal possibilities, and they can flip the jewel so many times. They're like, Can you just help me make sense of, like, this Venus Saturn transit, like, well, what the heck of all the possibilities like, well, what, which one? Should I be really looking for here? Well, yeah, I find that you know, still, people who come in who don't know astrology, who aren't into at all. There's so much more satisfied I've found, in general, with, like, archetypal specificity. So just a funny irony.

Chris Brennan
Yeah, well, I mean, all astrologers, you know, we want to sit; we want to see how far we can take it. You know, almost like astrology is like this car. And you want to see, just like, you want to get it, and you want to see how fast you can drive it. You know you want to see how specific you can get with making predictions about future events that turn out to be true. And I think that's a natural tendency for all astrologers once they learn the potential of astrology. And that's okay because all of us are constantly exploring and trying to figure that out.

And I think, you know, as astrology continues to progress will continue to find both different areas where Astrology can do things that are surprising. And that's been one of the great things about the revival of ancient astrology is finding some of the timelord systems and finding different techniques in astrology that can do things that we didn't think were possible in 20th-century astrology that was less, you know, predictive in its orientation. But then also at the same time, you know, acknowledging and recognizing some of its limits is very important as part of that conversation as well. And I hope that we can find the right balance between those two things and making room for those two things without going too far in one direction or another.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, that's really nicely said. Well, again, thank you so much for coming and speaking. Today. This was really fun. And I hope that everyone who listens to this will have some good things to think about. No doubt, there'll be more questions I'm sure that come up; maybe we'll have to get together again and do a part two or talk again about these subjects at some point in the future. So thank you, Chris, so much for being my guest today. Really, really good to see you and talk to you.

Chris Brennan
Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. And this was fun. And it's been great to see both of, as we said at the beginning, the work that we've been doing in our different spheres and the way that that sort of complements each other in terms of both of our work on Hellenistic astrology and ancient astrology in general. And just raising the public awareness of some of that great work on ancient astrology that's been happening and the different courses that we teach and everything else.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, well, I certainly wouldn't be here without all of the work that you did to blaze the trail and all the good work you continue to do. I want to make sure that there's, Is there anything that I can point people to other than the Astrology podcast, which is where people can listen to all of your great work and maybe become a patron and things like that, but anything else that you would like to tell Are people about?

Chris Brennan
Sure, yeah, just my podcast that I put up four episodes a month at the astrologypodcast.com as well as the YouTube channel for that. And then my book, Hellenistic astrology, the study of fate and fortune, where I tried to write the first comprehensive overview of ancient astrology in modern times. And then, I teach an online course at the astrologyschool.com on Hellenistic astrology that just has over 100 hours of video lectures on different aspects of ancient astrology and especially gets into the practice and the techniques of looking at birth charts and making predictions.

Adam Elenbaas
Awesome. Yeah. If people want to find your book, is it better to go on your website or Amazon? What do you what do you suggest?

Chris Brennan
Yeah, I always joke that it's available in fine bookstores everywhere, but it's really something you just get on Amazon or any online astrology book retailer.

Adam Elenbaas
I couldn't recommend it more highly. It's one of the textbooks that I use in my own course. And, you know, I think that, like, if you're gonna study Hellenistic astrology and you're looking for a starting point, Chris's class, his book, fantastic places to study, of course, you can always also check out my classes @nightlightastrology.com. Really so glad again to have you here, Chris. And let's look forward to doing some more collaborative work down the road.

Chris Brennan
For sure. Thank you so much.