The Sky Speaks — An Astrologer Reacts to the Claim That Astrology is a Science of Energies

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today I'm going to respond to people who claim that astrology is a science of energies. I don't personally believe that this is the case. I would describe astrology as a language of signs, omens and symbols.

What is the difference, though, between these two paradigms, an energetic paradigm of astrology, let's call it and a symbolic one. Is it even that big of a deal? Well, I'm going to tell you about the differences between the two paradigms, maybe a little bit about their history.

Why I think we should at least be thinking about this. We should questions like this are really good for us to be thinking about as astrologers, even if we differ in the conclusions that we come to.

So I also invite you to have a different opinion from my own, a different way of seeing things, but to enjoy this conversation, because the more intentional we are about reflecting upon astrology and what it is and what's actually going on, I think the smarter we are as an astrological community.

I think that there are some real problems with thinking of astrology as a science of energies that I will present to you today and why I prefer thinking of astrology as a language of symbols, but I'll let you decide for yourself what conclusion you know that makes the most sense for you.

In order to do this, I want to highlight some ways, some very common ways that people have of talking about astrology energetically, for starters.

So I'm going to take you over to YouTube right now, and I want to preface this by saying that I mean absolutely no offense. This is not meant to antagonize or attack anyone. It's merely I'm just using I did a search.

I literally searched astrology as energy in the Creative Commons section of YouTube, and found a couple of instances where people are talking about astrology in the language of energy or energetics, and I think they make good examples.

So this is not at all meant to pick on the person you see on the screen right now or any other astrologer, because as I go along today, again, I want to tell you what I think is actually useful when it comes to talking about astrology as a form of energy, or energetics.

So I'll make that clear and so again, just not to pick on anyone here, but here's this lovely woman who's has a guest on her show, and I want you to just notice the name of the book that she is there to talk about logical wisdom, particularly concerning the deeper lessons of the eighth and 12th house.

Today, we're diving into her groundbreaking book, and that is called astrological energy, maximize the power of your birth chart. Okay.

First of all, astrological energy Max the maximize the power of your birth chart. This is a language of energetics, placing astrology in what we might broadly call an energetic paradigm.

Now, again, my point today is going to be to sort of take issue with this, but I don't mean any offense to this, because I don't think there's only one right or wrong way of thinking about what astrology is, even if we do come to different conclusions about it.

I like dialog. I like debate. I think it's healthy to do so and so. Again, no offense to any of these practitioners. Let me back this up, though, and I want to take you back to the search page that came up in the Creative Commons.

Here's another title you can see here at the top of the page, cosmic breakthrough, astrological energy, maximize the power of your birth chart. That's the title of the book. Again, in the video, in the way that it was titled, I'm going to go down one and show you another creative commons entry where a gentleman is talking about some of the astrological transits of 2025 particularly the ingresses of Saturn and Neptune into Aries.

And listen to how he talks about it. If I get it to load here, let's see if it's gonna cooperate or not. Let me pause. Okay, here we go. Sorry, I had to load that here. All right, let's, let's hear this. Talk to us about the astrology of 2025 in 2025 we are going to see this influx of Aries energy.

Okay, what I want you to notice is that he says, In 2025 we are going to experience this influx of Aries energy. So in this way, we're describing a planetary transit as though it has an energetic effect, unanimously, meaning broadly, collectively.

Of course, we'll maybe experience it personally. I'm sure he has room for that in his paradigm, but it's going to be this influx of Aries energy, and so he's talking almost like a weather pattern, right?

And this is a very common way of thinking within the energetic paradigm that there's an this energy front, that energy front, like storm fronts or cloud pressure systems or what have you.

And it's a very common way of thinking about astrology. And he goes on in this video to continue demonstrating this, this kind of thinking. But just write that. There in the beginning. You can hear it. Let's hear it one more time.

2025 is a year that I don't think anyone will forget, because tell us about the astrology of 2025. In 2025 we are going to see this influx of Aries energy, right?

So there it is an influx of Aries energy that we all are going to see system, systemic influx energy. Notice those words. They're very important in terms of, sort of giving us a sense of what the paradigm is here, and this is important for us to think about.

Again. You might be like, Yeah, isn't this just obvious? But no, because this, it turns out that this paradigm is, broadly speaking, not the only paradigm that we have for how to think about astrology itself and what's going on, but it's so common that we sometimes don't even question it.

Go down, lots of energy in the sky, the evolutionary astrology message, unlocking Capricorn, the true power of Saturn, energy, unlocking energy, energy and astrology. March of 2025 galactic Astrology of 2024 energy forecast.

So you can see the idea here is not for me to be blasting anyone. It's simply to be showing you what we're what I'm talking about. This is, this is the paradigm. So that's the first thing.

Now, the reason that I think that this is consequential, let's talk about that, because you might be going, Yeah, well, like, what's wrong? Isn't that, like, a valid way of thinking about what astrology is doing? It's like these energy fields or something like that.

And maybe because I could be wrong about all of this, but let's just think about this a little bit more. Let's talk about the word energy from the Greek. Comes from energeia, and I may be pronouncing that, maybe not pronouncing that correctly, which means to be in a process of actively working, to be engaged with working or acting upon something.

So when we say planetary energy, or when we use the language of energetics, influx, Aries, energy, energy report, etc, we are unconsciously starting to operate within a causal, mechanistic metaphor or paradigm.

I think it's a metaphor which is the level at which I think it's best used to talk about planetary energies as a metaphor, sure, and I'll explain more about that in a little bit.

When we think about the word energy, though its historical use, is in terms of cause and effect within mechanisms or machines that can be understood and described in terms of actions of cause and effect.

When we say planetary energy, we are unconsciously importing a mechanistic metaphor as a way of describing reality and astrology itself. That's really important.

It's important because, historically speaking, astrologers have not always thought about astrology from the standpoint of a causal, mechanistic or energetic perspective.

When we go back all the way till about to about the time of Aristotle. It's from around that time forward, which is not the dawn of astrology, but actually several 100 years later, that Aristotelian thinking starts influencing astrologers, and astrologers very gradually, over hundreds of years, start adopting a more mechanistic, causal, empirical, mechanistic way of thinking.

So all that being said, it is relatively recent for astrologers to embrace a causal understanding of astrology itself. Doesn't mean it's wrong. Doesn't mean it's right. It's just very recent, going all the way back to the dawn of horoscopic astrology and the forms of astral Omen divination that precede horoscopic astrology.

It is thought of astrology itself is thought of as a living language of a living cosmos that speaks through the language. And the language is a language of signs, omens and symbols from the Greek word for symbol, symbolon or symbolon, not sure how you pronounce that.

Again, the sin piece of that word from symbol means together and Balan that that part of the word means to throw so the overall meaning of the word, etymologically, is a collection of things that are thrown together or cast together meaningfully.

Also, there's this really interesting etymological history. History of the word that has to do with two tokens or halves of a tablet that, when joined together, would prove your identity, or possibly something like kinship.

And so one of the original meanings of the word symbol is of separate things that brought together convey something greater than themselves, two pieces of a tablet that apart from one another, don't have the same meaning as when they're brought together, and they represent something bigger than either of themselves, individually, and even something bigger than themselves when joined.

And so the word symbol conveys this power that different aspects or elements have of coming together to convey something of a reality greater than themselves.

In astrology, the planet as symbol is about taking assortments of things that we find in this world, and when they are brought like woven together, they point to something transcendental beyond this world.

It's very important that we think about that, because this world and this other world were meant to be joined through the act of learning and practicing Astrology, the transcendental world of the mind of God or the universe is meant to be brought into our mortal understanding, our minds, whether we're philosophers, sages, seekers of wisdom, it's that bringing of the transcendent world into this world that provides a path for enlightenment and so a symbolic way of thinking about astrology is a way of thinking about the sky and its patterns as a living language that bring all sorts of things together, our experiences internally, externally, the stars, the patterns of nature and through the way that they're brought Together meaningfully, they point to something greater than this world beyond this world.

The other very important part about that is that the world beyond this world is thought of as eternal, timeless, a causal, nonlinear and this world is thought of as linear, and we experience an illusion of things being bound in time.

And in this world, we experience something of an illusion of causality, when actually reality is more a causal synchronistic and eternal. For example, Plato said time is the moving image of eternity, which means that this language, in the way that it throws various things together meaningfully through a symbolic language, is meant to be a medium by means of which we experience a reality and a truth that goes beyond time, space and causality.

So how? How far can we get along that path of moving toward a transcendental understanding if the language keeps itself caged in causality, that's the question that we should really be meditating on.

When we talk about planets as energies, we're subtly reinforcing that this world and its causality, its time boundness, its causal mechanistic features, are supreme, when actually the language of astrology as symbolic is meant to take features of this time bound world and in very mystical ways, by means of weaving them together in patterns point us to something beyond, something again that is not linear, not time bound, that is eternal, that is a causal, not mechanistic.

Time is the moving image of eternity. If we reflect upon things meaningfully, symbolically in a non linear way within this world, we start accessing a different form of consciousness that goes beyond causal, mechanistic, empirical, etc.

So again, the question becomes, how far can we get along that path if everything in astrology stays trapped itself in a time bound, linear, mechanistic, causal framework, and that's precisely I would argue what we're reinforcing, if the only way we have of thinking about astrology is in terms of energies, because that word energy means being in work or acting upon, this is, let me show you the most common way that cause and effect is taught in elementary schools.

This is the most common way that cause and effect is taught. Check this out. This is it. One thing leads to another thing in. Order in sequence, super, super simple.

So now I know that many people nowadays are open to the there's many scientists that I respect and love, and I'm not anti science. I'm not anti causality. I'm not anti physics or empiricism, but I know that those are features of a certain dimension of reality and that there is more.

And so I'm able to compartmentalize what empiricism is and what it's useful for, but also compartmentalize it within a much bigger, sort of non linear, mystical sense of reality. And I think that's really important.

And unless we're doing that astrologically, I think we get into trouble. That word energy again, to act upon, to be at work, to be acting upon or to be acted upon, that's energy.

Now is that a very real part of my experience, absolutely, and it should be right. We're living in what is very clearly an energetic reality. There are energies. We act upon things and things act upon us.

There's a causal, mechanistic framework. If you don't believe it, ask a diabetic, how simple and causal, something like blood sugar and insulin and glucose and all of those things like we should I'm not looking down my nose upon the causal framework of things, but at its roots, astrology was not originally conceptualized as energetic in this way.

So we then have to ask ourselves, what does that mean, if we're thinking of planets as acting upon us, and then I work with the energy of the transit, which means I act upon it, and it acts upon me, and then cooperatively, in this physical matrix.

We're creating things through a kind of planetary language of cause and effect. The planet acts on me. I act on the planet, and that creates an outcome.

Or if I, quite commonly will say, if I don't act consciously alongside of the energy of the planet, then it'll act upon me, and I become the unconscious vessel for an outcome that I had no involvement in.

So all of this is taking place, though, within a paradigm that sees planetary transits as like energy fields, and I act upon them, and they act upon me, and so on.

Here's, if you can, if you can, try this exercise. This is, this is a and again, we're going to go back to YouTube. We go back to YouTube, and I want you to consider that this is actually what reality looks like, if you had to visualize it, this is closer to what reality looks like than the domino sequence that you just watched.

Okay, so let's watch this. You took your gummy first. But what I want to highlight about this is first and foremost. Think of this as reality and think of it as never having a beginning and never having an end. It's more like just thisness.

So so many mystical paradigms have taught us this. But this is Plato saying time is the moving image of eternity. Time is showing us the changes in structures and shapes within a mandala.

However, if you reflect deeply upon it through the language of astrology, for example, and other mystical practices, you come to see that you're living in the midst of a matrix mandala that has no beginning and no end, and therefore anything you choose to describe within this moving, shimmering mandala with no beginning and End is merely a way of describing something eternal.

Just now, when we say, for example, example, that karma is an operating law of the universe. A basic way of translating that meaning into this perspective would be to say, remember, karma means nothing but cause and effect, that for every action there is a reaction.

I. All we are saying that karma is within this transcendental, eternal perspective of reality, is that the changes in one facet are connected to the changes in every other facet.

That there's an interconnection between one thing moving and changing and another within this huge, holistic mandala that itself has no beginning and end. This is why karma itself is described as Anadi, which means without origin, without beginning.

This is what also makes it so hard to describe karma as moral, because once you're within this framework. Do you see how the perspective of time space change cause and effect? If you're perceiving all of it from within this moving mandala is beyond morality.

Morality is simply a language set that allows us to describe a relative perspective of experience within it. And some people would say, Oh, my God, that you know that that means that reality is without morality.

No, it means morality is just one way of describing experiences within eternity. And this is also why sages in almost all traditions say that to be enlightened doesn't mean that you become amoral and without morality, but it also means that you don't mistake being good for being enlightened.

You it. Now, when we say the Venus energy or the Mars energy, and I'm experiencing it, and you know, work with this energy or that energy, one of the problems is that that way of thinking about things tends to work better in the domino sequence of the visual that I showed you, the Domino's being knocked over.

When we say Venus is going to come through this year, and it's going to have this or that effect and this or that energy, and you can work with it in this or that way to get this or that outcome.

We're subtly, we're still really situated within the domino world. Is that world false? No, but that, that picture of the dominoes, I want you to imagine that from within this mandala, that's merely a way, one way.

It's like a metaphor causality itself is like a metaphor for describing change within an eternally fluctuating living being called reality.

So this is helpful, like this is honestly why psychedelic experience, mystical experience, are so closely tied together. They're so similar, and the conclusions are remarkably similar to one another, that mystics who have achieved things in altered states, meditation, long periods of fasting, etc, are often parallel to people who have had really intense, psychedelic visionary states.

And of course, many entheogenic shamanic indigenous traditions from all over the planet are conveying these mystical ideas in their own ways as well.

So in a mechanistic frame, the planets cause or transmit energy and we receive within a kind of cosmic machine. In a symbolic frame, the planets are signs of participation.

They're like mirrors through which we speak to and relate to each other, or to reality itself. Ancient astrologers in the earliest era of Hellenistic astrology weren't really thinking in energetic terms, yet, they thought in participatory, symbolic and imaginal terms, the heavens were alive.

They weren't a system of forces, but a field of living symbols revealing the divine through image. In other words, astrology is more like this, what you're looking at and what it's really meant to do is, as you're moving through the time bound, linear experiences of life, the month that Saturn moves into Aries, or the month that Neptune moves into Aries, the mandala will shape shift and move and undulate, and as it's doing so, the Language of astrology is meant to throw together various aspects of your experience alongside of the mandala so that you can speak with the experience, so that the experience can speak to you, so that reality can talk to you through the experience, and you to reality in exchange.

Change, because reality is providing us with this kind of timeless mandala that allows our experiences to be thrown together with celestial patterns in a way that talks that's a it's just a different paradigm.

And again, like I don't have any problem with the use of the word energy, or planetary energies as metaphorical, because it's, you know, it's like handy, and it just kind of works, you know, and especially when we think of energies a little bit more subtly, it's not like hammer hitting a nail.

Most of the time when we talk about astrology, we're thinking about the energetic framework as a way of describing psychological, emotional we're talking about energies in a way that I think is already more nuanced and interesting.

So I don't have a problem with the metaphorical use. It also becomes really important to understand how ancient philosophers thought about what the soul is and how the soul relates to symbol.

So the word psyche is the word for soul in the Greek and psyche is said to perceive itself, by means of reflection and by means of images. In other words, it comes to know itself by relating to itself in others.

And what are others, if not other presences, other images, other beings that can serve as a mirror. And so the point of reality from the perspective of the soul, is not mechanistic, but relational reality is a living, relational being, and a mechanistic way of talking about it starts to objectify it at a certain point.

This is why I think at a certain point we have to stop thinking about astrology as energetic as energies, because it starts to subtly reinforce objectification of ourselves and of the cosmos and of the soul.

The soul is a subjective, personal being that's intimately exchanging love and thoughts and voicings with the universe. And astrology is a language by means of which it is meant to do so and come to understand itself as a transcendental being.

So in doing that, it's more appropriate to say, like when Saturn and Neptune enter Aries, rather than saying there's an influx of Aries energy. It's more appropriate to say, right now, the experiences that you have can be deeply reflected upon in terms of this symbol, in terms of these symbols, or this transit in this sign with this host as its ruler, etc, etc.

It's more like saying at this point in time, the best reflective medium that you'll have for speaking with your experience. Because the point of reality is the relationship with you and your experience with you.

And reality as experience is to take the symbols in the sky, use them sensitively as a reflective medium for participation and intimacy.

You see how that's very different than saying this energy is acting upon me, and then I'm going to act upon it, which then places as a premium, an outcome.

You you tell me how good does it feel in a relationship with another living being to think with that other being in terms of what you can get out of it, in terms of an outcome, right? It's it. It's objectifying.

So again, at a certain point, energetic metaphors and ways of thinking about astrology objectify ourselves and the cosmos. I want to show you something that I think is a really helpful way of thinking about what a symbol is and what astrology is, because this might all feel a little dense philosophically, and I get that it's, it's a weighty conversation about astrological epistemology, like, what is this that that we're doing, and what's the best paradigm that supports an understanding of what this is?

And again, I just want to say I'm, although I'm passionate about this perspective, at the end of the day, I'm more concerned that we'd be thinking about these things and having these conversations.

I want people to pause and go, Well, is this an energy or not, and if not, then what is it have? Most people don't stop to think about those things.

Someone tells them that you're it's an energetic paradigm, and they just run with it and start talking about Venus as an energy. And I'm not against energy, like I a lot of the times I'll be like, Ooh, that was a weird energy.

Or. This is a weird and so I love that metaphor of energy, but I also don't know what the fucking energy is. At the end of the day, I have to be really intellectually honest with myself and say that I can't claim with some kind of certainty that I know that that is what is happening, or what a planetary transit is, or whatever.

And I'm, let's just say that I am provoked by that question of like, well, what is this? Right? So anyway, all right, here is, I think, the best way to think about what a symbol is in relationship to the soul.

So again, imagine you're in that moving mandala rather than a domino sequence. You're in that mandala has no beginning and no end, and you're a part of it. You're in it can't ever be out of it.

And somehow the most beautiful thing to do in this living mandala is to awaken your understanding of yourself as a part of it, and take greater pleasure and intimacy and create more depth and meaning by your participation, because you're awakening to your part in it.

All of the Miss, I can't think of one mystical tradition that doesn't tell us that that's what's going on. So let's say that you This is how to think about a symbol.

Let's say that you walk into a dark room and there's a hole in the wall and there's a beam of light coming through the hole. Here's what a symbol is.

A very cheap, basic, unenlightened perspective of a symbol would be to point at that beam of light in the room and go, that's a beam of light, right? You're just describing what it is on a like super basic level, a more advanced mystical understanding of what a symbol is, would be to do the following.

You walk into that beam of light, and as you stand right in the beam of light, by means of that beam of light you look through the hole in the wall out into the world, and that beam of light becomes the means by which you see the world.

That's what the psyche is doing when it relates to life. Astrologically, it's as though, for a moment when you when the planets enter Aries in the spring of 2025 that we had this past year, rather than thinking about it as an influx of Aries energy.

What I want you to imagine is that the beam coming through the wall, and there's, maybe there's multiple beams coming through the walls, right? But this beam, this beam coming through the wall, is the Saturn Neptune and Aries beam.

And as your experiences are unfolding and you're making choices in what feels and looks like a very linear, causal material world, the invitation astrologically, is to step into the beam of Saturn Neptune in Aries symbolism, and then by means of that symbol you relate to reflect upon and participate in the unfolding of your experience.

It gives you a means by which to see your own soul, to see the soul of the cosmos and to experience it that, properly speaking, is what a symbol is.

The psyche comes to know itself by reflection upon its own images and the images of others. It comes to know itself by reflection upon itself in the mirror of symbols.

And what are symbols? They are things thrown together that collectively lead to something bigger than themselves. There's all of these rays of light that come together in a beam, and by means of that beam you see.

So even the sunlight provides us with the all the little fibers of light, all the little strands of light, they come together, you step into that beam, and by means of which, you see something bigger than even the beams of light themselves.

Collectively, you see the world by means of them. That's a symbolic understanding of what astrology is. And it assumes that astrology's real function is non linear, a causal and eternal.

It's taking you into the mandala as the primary experience of reality. This is why astrology works best as a form of active reflection, contemplation and meditation upon experience, even more so than a prediction.

Of experience. In my humble opinion, it's always been this way, although it's it's amazing that the patterns in the sky pointing to the shifts in the mandala can tell you about what experiences are in the process of unfolding, and you can do something like prediction with them still to relate to the events of life from a transcendental, eternal perspective is perspective is the point.

So you have to step into the beam at some point for there to be spiritual benefit in doing astrology, which is also why all the channels that do nothing but pump out information about what's going to happen to you are not serving us spiritually.

This energy, that energy, work with this energy, get the most out of that energy, objectifying. Now think about this image, very similarly symbols in the stars, the constellations, the fixed stars of the Zodiac, the various layered meanings of each sign of the zodiac, from modality, quadruplicity, triplicity, gender, planetary hosts, exaltation hosts, decan and bound rulers, things that are thrown together that lead to something by means of which we can we can see something bigger.

The constellations themselves are collections things thrown together that point to something bigger. We say, Oh, they made up the constellations. No, what they did was an act of symbolic recognition, recognition or prayer, to throw things together, is art.

This is why it's always so offensive when people say, Oh, astrology, don't call it an art form. Call it a science bullshit. Call it an art. Call it a symbolic art.

And by that we mean that we can see the meaningful arrangement of things thrown together that lead to something bigger. It's like saying, look, look at the constellations.

Look at the zodiac. Look at all of these beautiful patterns in the way they're thrown together in this language. And what does it show you? It shows you something bigger than all of this.

And there you are in that mandala. There you are moving through eternity, these little beams of light that collect together, and by means of their collection, point to something larger.

I can't I just, man, I just can't keep calling them energies all the time. So, but on that note, let me offer some, I don't know, an olive branch to all of my friends and all of you beautiful people out there who probably talk about astrology energetically often, I want to talk about what role I think that can serve if we understand that within, from our perspective, there are forces acting upon us, that we act upon.

It's not that that does that there's not a reality to the causal. Causal dimension of things is real. I think as long as we understand that when we're talking about planetary symbols, that to speak of them energetically is to speak about them as they exist and are experienced on only one plane of reality, the causal plane.

And on that plane, it can be very helpful to be like, Man, that Uranus energy, or like, I'm making this today, as Mercury is opposite Uranus. It feels like it.

So on one level, I can just simply recognize like, yeah. It's a handy metaphor to be like, Oh, feel that mercury, Uranus energy today, and people who study astrology and who track transits will know exactly what I'm talking about, because they'll have had experiences that reflect that same thing.

So I am completely what I'm okay with is this sort of collective agreement among astrologers that it just kind of works to talk about planets as energies.

I don't. We don't need to be like, strict, dogmatic. They're symbols, not, you know, I don't want to be like, like, that narrow minded about it, because, yeah, it's just like, convenient, and it speaks to a certain level at which we do experience planetary energies.

So there's part of me that just like, contradicts myself here, and I'm like, yeah, it's totally fine. However, what I encourage you to do, which I myself do often regularly, is I catch myself.

And let's just say I'm talking with my wife, who knows this about me very well by now, and it's today's Mercury opposite Uranus. I'll say something like this, the I'm reflecting on Mercury opposite Uranus today in light of this and this and this that happened, and I'm and then what I will try to do will be to think about the experience.

In terms of the archetypes and vice versa, and just be an active reflection and contemplation upon the symbols in the sky in relation to my experiences, my thoughts, etc, taking that active, contemplative, reflective space allows for me to step into the beam of light and see by means of symbols.

And it just allows me to step out of this, like, rat race of an energy world that we seem to want to stay in all the time. And then, you know, in another moment, as I'm in the rat race of life, which is like, you know, part of it, I'll be like, Man that that mercury, Uranus energy.

Do you see what I mean? I think if we can do some compartmentalizing, and know how and when to kind of loosely talk about astrological energies, knowing that they are metaphors, that they speak to only one plane of our experience, and then actively reflect upon symbols, and if we use both in our languaging, I think we're going to be doing a real service to other people who are just learning astrology, to people who have questions about what it is.

This is a fun episode, and it really it allows me to art. I think this is the first time I've tried to articulate this on my YouTube channel before.

So, you know, this is always like a first time to try to explain something like this. I hope it was, yeah, I hope it was thought provoking and interesting.

I hope you have a great rest of your day. No no promotions for the day, because it's a weekend episode. So we'll see you again tomorrow. Bye, everyone.