A week in astrology world
I’m not long back from Faculty Summer School, always an intense experience (in a good way!). This year I was teaching on the weekend course and also gave a workshop on the Wednesday afternoon. The rest of the time I was able to attend other people’s talks, which was a wonderful luxury.
Teaching at Summer School is always an amazing experience. There are Faculty students and also folk who only connect with the Faculty at Summer School, or never have before. There are super experienced astrologers and folk just starting out on their journey. Our weekend course was a masterclass in chart interpretation and many brains were fried in the process! After an evening introduction with ideas about how to generally approach a chart (clue: literal or deterministic interpretations are not usually useful!) we launched on Saturday morning into natal chart interpretation with my excellent colleague Alejo (and what a joy to teach together in person like that!). A whole chart in a morning, one for us to demonstrate and another for the students to work with. A lot to do by lunchtime and everyone rose to the challenge magnificently. In the afternoon I led the sessions on forecasting, so even more brain-frying. Putting together a whole forecast is hard work, especially in just a few hours! On Sunday morning we brought it all together and looked at how to synthesise all those vast reams of data, which might be my favourite part.
And then I went to the river, to soothe my Mercury in Pisces mind with some literal immersion. With Mars in Taurus in my 4th house, getting out into nature and moving through it is crucial to keep me grounded and energised. My Summer School experience always includes early morning runs and this time a swim too - because swimming in the Thames is surely a bucket list experience and Portmeadow is glorious.
Pretty sure I always look this silly when I’m teaching…
My tarot workshop was over-subscribed, which is both gratifying and a little nerve-wracking. I might run it again on Zoom - so let me know if you’d be interested. We looked at the correspondences between astrology and tarot, in theory and also in practice. There were many beautiful tarot decks in evidence, many rich and enthusiastic conversations. I complained about Victorian patriarchal magicians, always a pet peeve of mine.
The Moon’s Nodes were active on my chart during Summer School week and showed up in connection after connection. I went to talks on medieval rectification techniques and the ever thorny issue of house systems. I went to talks on the astrology of siblings and of surrogacy and of immigration. I set out to broaden my intellectual horizons - to honour Uranus currently squaring my Jupiter - and it was so. much. fun. One of the joys of Summer School is the conversations you find yourself having over breakfast or lunch, everything from your grumpiness at your Venus placement (ahem!) to obscure medieval tarot decks. It really is an immersion in astrology world, a place where everyone speaks the same language. See you there next year?