7 Class Meetings
Prerequisites: TR101 Introduction to Traditional Astrology

It is often stated by its practitioners, that astrology is a language and that we, as astrologers, are reading messages in the sky. In fact, the Babylonians, the originators and earliest practitioners of our art, knew it as the “heavenly writing” of the gods. However, over the years, what most astrologers have focused on is the vocabulary of this celestial language. But have you ever tried to read a foreign language armed only with a dictionary? Over the last 9 years, I’ve been investigating how symbols found in astrological charts are put together when accurate translations are made. In this course we will examine more deeply the implications of considering astrology a language, as well as the grammar and syntax present in its structure. Using traditional timing techniques to examine events, we’ll begin to place the astrological vocabulary that most students of astrology are already familiar with, into coherent phrases and sentences that everyone can read and agree upon. This course will give you the foundation to be able to read any type of chart in terms of life changes.

Class Meeting 1: The Philosophy of Language and Change

The spoken and written word is a mirror of life. Like life, it reflects change. In order to understand how change manifests in our lives, we must understand the nature and structure of change itself. No one knew better than the classical Greek philosophers that events do not happen randomly. Relying heavily on the works of Aristotle, we'll begin to examine how things come about, change, and die in life.

Class Meeting 2: Verbs and Objects: how and what changes

Once we know how change is structured, we can now begin to see how this is reflected in the language we speak and in the language of the chart. We begin by looking at how verbs and objects are depicted in the chart and you'll learn to form basic phrases.

Class Meeting 3: Subjects: who acts to effect change

Grammatically, the subject of a sentence is the actor who performs the action. In astrology we know the actors as the planets. But this is only part of the story. Identifying the subject in the chart along with what we saw last week, now allows us to begin to form complete sentences. You'll see this exemplified in charts and practice sentence translations.

Class Meeting 4: Dependent Clauses: why, when and what about

Now that we have an object and an action, we can now begin to describe the object that is being changed and the reasons for that action. You'll continue to practice with chart examples and translation exercises.

Class Meeting 5: Essential Dignities: the alchemy of change

This week, we examine the role of essential dignities in the process of change. From a functional perspective, the essential dignities are quite important since they play a role in the generation, corruption and alteration of matter.

Class Meeting 6: The Genetive Case: when matter combines

Change is the product of a natal set-up with evolving chart influences. When two charts combine, the grammar gets more complex. Using some traditional timing techniques, we begin to look at how multiple topics begin to combine with each other to give us a more detailed description of our objects and subjects.

Class Meeting 7: Review for Final Exam

This week we review everything we've learned and practice our chart translations for the final exam. Th exam will be take-home.

Required materials:

None

Suggested/supplemental materials:

None