Planetary Influences

December is the season of Yule, an ancient word meaning Wheel. This is the time of year when we recognize that the wheel of life is in constant motion, turning and ever evolving. No-thing lasts forever, and yet everything is eternal.

It is also my birthday month and with the power of my solar's return I often feel the intense planetary influences. Just recently Skyler asked me how it was decided what certain things or territories the planets rule, i.e., Mercury ruling communication or Jupiter representing abundance. Frankly I was pretty spent from explaining the optical illusion of 2-D that makes it seems that Mercury goes backwards (with my props: the mayo jar, an apple and an orange). So I defered the answer to my friends and this great responses came from Victoria Bearden and I wanted to share it with you.

In ancient times, our predecessors were pretty damn smart. And they figured out a lot of "scientific" stuff that we still use today. Like Arithmetic, which is actually very mystical, especially at the higher levels. And the ancients looked up at the stars, A LOT. As they got to know mother earth more and go more in tune with her cycles and seasons, and saw different Forces of Nature, like earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and the like, they started recording what they saw and what they learned. First they did this verbally, through writing stories, and then with pictures, like the cave paintings, and finally, with written words. Eventually, as they watched the night sky, they realized that certain stars didn't move, and others did. And some of those moving stars were very bright.

They began to "chart" the course of these stars and planets and realized that there was a rhythm and there were cycles that repeated and changed. Then they put 2 and 2 together and saw that when certain things were happening up in the heavens, they seemed to regularly correspond to things happening on earth. Then they noticed that the things happening up in the night sky seemed to affect people, too. So they watched, looked and listened for a long time. And they told each one another what they observed.

Pretty soon, they made up "stories" about these "wandering stars" or planets. They named them and began to understand the kinds of things that these planets seemed to "rule" over. So, in a sense, they began to think of these planets as entities, or, if you like, deities, as they certainly seemed to have a lot of power over what happened on earth and what happened to people.

Hence, through a long process of observation, experience, story telling, and trial and error, Astrology was born. The planetary gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon that we use today, in Astrology and Astronomy, all have their origins in much older stories of gods, goddesses, and mythologies. So the information is very ancient, indeed. And although some of it came from observation, and some from science, and some from experience, some of it probably came directly from Spirit. Or maybe even from extraterrestrial visitors that thought we might need a bit of a helping hand or some insight to help us understand ourselves, our world, and our Universe a little better.

VIctoria gives some rocking astrological readings. If you're interested, drop her a line at V1Bear@aol.com.