Four Moons Astrology- Donna Woodwell, Austin, Texas

This is the eighth in a series of articles on Green Astrology, originally published in NCGR Enews, June 14, 2008.

This week Pluto retrogrades back into Sagittarius until November, so it’s time to wrap up our Green Astrology series.

Over the past few months, we’ve looked at the green movement through the lens of astrology. We’ve also looked at a few strategies for creating a greener lifestyle — the three R’s of ecology “Reduce-reuse-recycle,” lunar gardening, green travel, using new media technologies and building intentional communities.

But, it’s impossible to talk about living green without eventually getting around to a fundamental issue: Consumption.  Our modern society is unsustainable over the long term because we consume more than the natural environment can sustain.  Without addressing that issue, there can be no true Green Revolution.

It hasn’t always been that way.  Throughout most of human history, the production of goods – food, clothing, transportation and other items used in daily life – was the task of householders and artisans.  Economies were built on the trade of locally produced hand-crafted items made of natural materials.

Then, at the dawn of the 20th century, technological advances enabled industrial capitalists to invest heavily in new factories that could produce commodities on a mass scale.  But mass production can’t exist without its partner phenomenon: mass consumption.  So, by the 1920s the advertising industry was created to make sure we wanted to buy the products produced by those factories.

Almost a century later, the effort to turn us into consumers continues unabated. We are told hundreds of times a day that we are flawed beings, that there is something wrong with us.  Advertisements on television, newspapers, the internet, and billboards all say we’d be happier, sexier, smarter, trendier, more loved, if we just buy the latest gizmo on the market.  The messages are as pervasive as the chemicals in our food, water and air, and just as impossible to escape from completely.

Where, you ask, does astrology fit into all of this?

Like many of you, I’ve met clients who came to their first reading with trepidation.  Their fear?  That an astrologer will cast a birthchart and prove that there really is something cosmically wrong with them.

I play soothing music and feed my clients cookies and herbal tea, but it’s not until we start to look at their chart and they hear these words that they start to relax: “This is your birthchart. It’s just a reflection of who you are. You are a unique being, with unique talents and challenges. That’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

And this is what makes astrology truly radical.  To quote Master Yoda: “Luminous beings are we.”  We don’t need to buy stuff to fill the void, we only have to recognize who we truly are.

This awareness is a gift astrology may give the world, one that is desperately needed in our time of environmental crisis.  No “Green” strategies and survival techniques will be sufficient to meet the coming challenges if they are not accompanied by a change in our consumption habits and the way we relate to the material world.

An astrological vision is also an ecological vision.  We can all practice Green Astrology!