Astrologi är i sanning en konstart - och en konstart som erbjuder astrologen många vägar att uttrycka sig på. En av mina favoritböcker, "Sexual Personæ" av Camille Paglia, beskriver detta på ett bra sätt genom att kontrastera den uråldriga visdomen som kan hittas i "pagan astrology" med det synsätt som hittas inom kyrkans trosläror och modern vetenskap: läs ett underbart utdrag här.

I min ungdom blev vad jag åstadkom inom bildkonst och musik alltid uppmärksammat och uppskattat och idag kan jag ångra att jag inte fortsatte att utveckla dessa talanger, men jag stötte ju på astrologi som fängslade min fantasi så mycket att jag kände mig tvungen att fördjupa mig i det. Inte för att jag vill kalla mig geni, men följande citat beskriver hur jag upplevde det då: "Talent does what it can; genius does what it must." --Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Tyvärr finns det ingen utkomst av astrologin så jag trillade sedermera av en slump in på datorer och IT och det är vad jag ägnat mig åt yrkesmässigt de senaste 15 åren, men mitt intresse för stjärntydarkonsten har jag aldrig släppt.

From the fabulous book Sexual Personæ by Camille Paglia, Chapter 7. Shakespeare and Dionysus: As You Like It and Antony and Cleopatra:

"Astrology, even more than alchemy, was one of the great symbol systems of the Renaissance. Its iconography pervade Renaissance art, book illustration, and interior décor. The formidable combined forces of Judeo-Christianity and modern science have never succeeded in wiping out pagan astrology, nor will they ever. Astrology supplies what is missing in the west´s official form of sexual personae. Waging war on astrology, the medieval and Renaissance Church promulgated the distortion that astrology is fatalism, a flouting of God´s Providence and the necessity for moral struggle. But the predictive part of astrology is less important than its psychology, which three thousand years of continuos practice have given a phenomenal subtlety. Astrology does insist upon self-discipline and self-transformation. Judging astrology by those vague sun-sign columns in the daily paper is like judging Christianity by a smudged shop window of black-velvet day-glo paintings of the Good Shepherd. The idea that the stars literally influence men (by a falling fluid, an influenza) is plainly untenable. But that the movements of the constellations are a clock by which earthly changes can be measured is less easy to dismiss. I subscribe to what Jung calls synchronicity. Things happen in complex patterns of apparent coincidence, noticed by the keen eyes of the artist. Astrology links man to nature, its major point of departure from Judeo-Christianity. The Greek word zodiac means circle of animals. Most birth signs are symbolized by animals, whose character astrology identifies with human types. Our behaviorist age is generally resistant to the idea of genetic traits, for individuals, sexes or races. But ask any mother of a large family whether personality is innate or learned. She senses the child´s inborn shyness or aggression from earliest infancy. People who dismiss astrology do so out of either ignorance or rationalism. Rationalists have their place, but their limited assumptions and methods must be kept out of the arts. Interpretation of poem, dream, or person requires intuition and divination, not science."