Astrology in Dante, C.S. Lewis, and Tolkien - Forming A Healthy Astrological Worldview Beyond the Sensationalism

Hello! It’s been a while since I posted, and if you want to jump ahead to what I’m getting, at please click on Marcos Monteiro’s blog post on astrology and numbers. The main point of this post is that we aren’t separate from nature, or from astrology, and that the numbers don’t lie, either.

I realize that many people getting interested in astrology come to me with the Western-Google’d view of astrology. What I see is a new level of worry, anxiety and fascination with what the current planetary cycles are doing to people. Many clients want to know all about the latest Saturn into Pisces, or Pluto into Aquarius, as if these slow-moving planets have dominion over our personal lives. They’re slow-moving alright….which means the cycles take time to complete. No sense worrying about it…

In this fascination with planetary cycles we can lose track of our own will and desires. The fact is that through horary I can (if I can answer correctly!) tell you when your house will sell; your next romance will start; your power will get turned back on, etc. We can do this because a horary chart is simply interrogating the reality that is. Here’s the catch/truth: I CAN’T tell you or know what you will do….you have free will and are able to make decisions in your life. “What will I do? (they cry)” — you’ll do what you choose to do. We’re both fated and we have free will, and both are necessary.

How this shapes up in Dante, Lewis, Tolkien, and numbers.

I wrote in the previous newsletter about Dante. He mixes astrological symbolism everywhere in his poem, and does that wonderfully. It is informative and a delight.

C.S Lewis tried to fashion each of the books in his “Chronicles of Narnia” after the symbolism of the planets, with less wonderful results. - Marcos Monteiro

As Marcos points out, when we are actually IN the astrology/worldview like Dante/Tolkien, the whole thing feels natural since our worldview is aligned with the astrology, and therefore the numbers and the stories make sense. When we stand outside of it the whole thing starts to feel contrived, a bit like when C.S. Lewis tried to make the astrology fit.

By taking a breath and trusting we’re all part of the moving process, that change is constant, and that we have free will, we can maybe enjoy these great texts a little more. There is no Saturn “out there” cajoling us. WE are Saturn. When we parse out our lives to the astrological drama I see on Instagram, etc. we have little ability to navigate our lives as each planetary ingress/eclipse/ etc. speaks of yet-another transformation and growth opportunity. Our patterns are not limited to these incomplete planetary cycles because astrology is far more reaching and complex than any one daily transit.

By engaging the astrological symbolism and learning it as a complete worldview we’ll begin to relate to it more, and see our lives as part of a heavenly web we’ve been woven into, held and supported. By reading Dante, Tolkien, and looking for symbolism both in the texts and in our lives at every corner we can feel a part of the process, rather than at the whim of whoever is writing the daily astrological weather report.

In other words, don’t give up your agency to the daily astrology writer. Let it all inform a much more eloquent worldview.