Astrology is spirituality for many people. It’s your personal dislike of astrology that leads to you setting it apart from religion and spirituality.
As for ways it has been used radically? Sure.
Jessica Dore is a licensed social worker, with a masters in social work, and ten years experience in clinical psychology, self-help and behavioural sciences. Her book Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance and Growth applies the methods of cognitive behavioural therapy while using the metaphors and symbolism of Tarot as tools for self-reflection.
Alice Sparkly Kat, from Zengzhou, has a book, Post-Colonial Astrology: Reading the Planets Through Capital, Power and Labour which examines intersectionalities of oppression and the co-option of those very ideas by the capitalist class to continue to subjugate oppressed minorities and prioritize self over community.
Chani Nicholas, a Canadian astrologer whose wife founded a domestic abuse survivors charity, and who speaks publicly for queer and trans rights, wrote You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance a book about using astrology as a tool for self-reflection, self-determination, and feminine empowerment, which advocates for a deeper understanding of your emotional and physical needs and the importance of conflict resolution in all relations.
The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries by Zsuzsanna Budapest, while not one I would particularly recommend, does include important insights into women’s health and nutrition as an integral part of maintaining feminine power.
These are just the ones I know of.
My ancestors practiced a form of astrology that was violently suppressed by missionaries, so I was never given the opportunity to connect with or understand it from a cultural or spiritual place. But in a society where the subjugation of women and queer people is so deeply engrained, there are countless examples of predominantly women and queer people embracing a spiritual practice that allows them to feel some semblance of control, work through self-acceptance and self-governance (especially when legislative bodies work so hard to stamp out bodily autonomy) and begins to radicalize them in an understanding of how their material conditions are a direct response to the oppression of the ruling capitalist class and their accrual of wealth through primogeniture.
Such conversations do not in my opinion, run counter to the goals of communism.
And, again, if your personal experiences with astrology are negative, you would be more than free to have such discussions in such a community so that we can work to ensure that counter-revolutionary tendencies in spirituality can be held to account and worked through.
It’s truly no different than any religion in that regard: that is to say, there are religions that have been used to justify unprecedented levels of oppression and genocide, but the belief itself is not the problem, unless the purpose here is to demand atheistic purism, a thing no AES attempts, and was a violent stain on socialist Albania’s history.
Astrology is not spirituality for me and never will be. I can not wrap my head around these things. I don’t even know whether we are talking about same thing. You don’t need to use astrology for bad things, it in itself bad at what it profess to do. Use spirituality anyway you like. And do not put words in my mouth.
I mean, it is factually spirituality for other people, so that’s all there is to it, whether you can wrap your head around it or not.
Not really sure where I put words in your mouth, but that wasn’t my intention, I apologize that what I said came across that way, I’d be happy to change something if you could be more specific.
Anyway, there’s no productive use in continuing this conversation, you’ve decided your personal opinions on astrology supercede all others and don’t intend to so much as concede that others engage with it spiritually.
Astrology is spirituality for many people. It’s your personal dislike of astrology that leads to you setting it apart from religion and spirituality.
As for ways it has been used radically? Sure.
Jessica Dore is a licensed social worker, with a masters in social work, and ten years experience in clinical psychology, self-help and behavioural sciences. Her book Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance and Growth applies the methods of cognitive behavioural therapy while using the metaphors and symbolism of Tarot as tools for self-reflection.
Alice Sparkly Kat, from Zengzhou, has a book, Post-Colonial Astrology: Reading the Planets Through Capital, Power and Labour which examines intersectionalities of oppression and the co-option of those very ideas by the capitalist class to continue to subjugate oppressed minorities and prioritize self over community.
Chani Nicholas, a Canadian astrologer whose wife founded a domestic abuse survivors charity, and who speaks publicly for queer and trans rights, wrote You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance a book about using astrology as a tool for self-reflection, self-determination, and feminine empowerment, which advocates for a deeper understanding of your emotional and physical needs and the importance of conflict resolution in all relations.
The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries by Zsuzsanna Budapest, while not one I would particularly recommend, does include important insights into women’s health and nutrition as an integral part of maintaining feminine power.
These are just the ones I know of.
My ancestors practiced a form of astrology that was violently suppressed by missionaries, so I was never given the opportunity to connect with or understand it from a cultural or spiritual place. But in a society where the subjugation of women and queer people is so deeply engrained, there are countless examples of predominantly women and queer people embracing a spiritual practice that allows them to feel some semblance of control, work through self-acceptance and self-governance (especially when legislative bodies work so hard to stamp out bodily autonomy) and begins to radicalize them in an understanding of how their material conditions are a direct response to the oppression of the ruling capitalist class and their accrual of wealth through primogeniture.
Such conversations do not in my opinion, run counter to the goals of communism.
And, again, if your personal experiences with astrology are negative, you would be more than free to have such discussions in such a community so that we can work to ensure that counter-revolutionary tendencies in spirituality can be held to account and worked through.
It’s truly no different than any religion in that regard: that is to say, there are religions that have been used to justify unprecedented levels of oppression and genocide, but the belief itself is not the problem, unless the purpose here is to demand atheistic purism, a thing no AES attempts, and was a violent stain on socialist Albania’s history.
Astrology is not spirituality for me and never will be. I can not wrap my head around these things. I don’t even know whether we are talking about same thing. You don’t need to use astrology for bad things, it in itself bad at what it profess to do. Use spirituality anyway you like. And do not put words in my mouth.
I mean, it is factually spirituality for other people, so that’s all there is to it, whether you can wrap your head around it or not.
Not really sure where I put words in your mouth, but that wasn’t my intention, I apologize that what I said came across that way, I’d be happy to change something if you could be more specific.
Anyway, there’s no productive use in continuing this conversation, you’ve decided your personal opinions on astrology supercede all others and don’t intend to so much as concede that others engage with it spiritually.
Yes, we can end here. My personal opinion is informed by my experience and reality of my place, which is different from yours.