Liz Greene is one of the most influential astrologers of the postwar period. Building on the work of predecessors such as Alan Leo and Dane Rudhyar, she drew lessons from 20th-century psychology, particularly from the writings of C. G. Jung, to create a psychological astrology that is rooted in the understanding of psychology as consisting of dynamic processes rather than personality descriptions. Beginning with Saturn in 1976 and Relating in 1977, she has produced a remarkable series of books which have deepened and elaborated her original insight that astrology is as much about what we can become as who we are. She holds a doctorate in Psychology as well as the Diploma of the Faculty of Astrology Studies (she is a Patron of the Faculty) and is a qualified Jungian analyst. She is Director of the Centre for Psychological Astrology, which she formed in 1983 with the late Howard Sasportas. For the Centre’s training and seminar series, see www.cpalondon.com

I met Liz in London on August 14, 2001 to conduct this interview. In view of the disaster of September 11, her enunciation of the Saturn-Pluto zeitgeist has taken on a profoundly prophetic air.

The original article appeared in the American astrological magazine "The Mountain Astrologer" (Dec/Jan 2002). The edition is still available on their website www.mountainastrologer.com

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Nick Campion: To start with, Liz, I’d like to talk a little about Pluto, the planet of the moment, especially in view of the current Saturn-Pluto opposition. I’ve been reading what you wrote about Saturn and Pluto in your book Saturn; you stated that, when these planets combine, "there often seems to be a carefully and deliberately organised movement towards some sort of self-destructive experience."[1] You added that the person may be aware of this obsessive movement but may not be able to control it. I have that Saturn-Pluto opposition squared my Sun at the moment, so I was thinking: "How can I be conscious about it?" In fact, how does one become conscious of something? Have you experienced that opposition this year, in terms of your clients? Has it been noticeable?

Liz Greene: Oh yes, very noticeable. There aren’t many people who are not getting it in one form or another, because it doesn’t just involve planets in the mutable signs. It is also hitting things by semi-square and sesquiquadrate. That pulls in all the cardinal signs as well. So, yes, a lot of clients are beginning to put on their armadillo suits.

Nick Campion: Do you mean that they’re getting into a self-protective posture?

Liz Greene: That’s one reaction to it. I think it is a very common reaction - and probably a natural reaction. Saturn is much more individually graspable, whereas Pluto feels so overwhelming that the initial response is to pull into Saturn and try to defend oneself against Pluto. It is not "wrong" to do that. It is an inevitable, natural thing to do. But it is not necessarily the best thing to do. The aspect will work itself through anyway, but that certainly seems to be what people are doing.

Nick Campion: In view of the respective planetary positions, do you think that there is a particular Gemini-Sagittarius character to this Saturn-Pluto opposition?

Liz Greene: I think so, because it seems to be raising issues that have to do with morality, as well as with knowledge versus intuitive realisations of some kind. It is creating a lot of intellectual polarisation. There are ideas being battled out, although the form that the Saturn-Pluto opposition takes can be very concrete in lots of people’s lives. With all the conflicts that seem to be arising on both personal and collective levels, it is ideologies, concepts, belief systems, and bodies of knowledge that are at stake, even behind whatever wars are being fought.

Nick Campion: Is there one particular example at the moment of an ideological clash that you’d point to?

Liz Greene: Well, how about Northern Ireland? That’s been going on for a very long time, and I don’t think that it’s unique to Saturn-Pluto, but it may enter a new phase now.

Nick Campion: The Sun in the chart for the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (December 7, 1922) is at 14° Sagittarius.[2]

Liz Greene: The Sun and the Descendant are within five degrees of each other. The chart for southern Ireland[3] and the chart for the U.K., including Northern Ireland, are one day apart. They are both getting Saturn-Pluto.

Nick Campion: Yes, often with a complete inability on either side to identify with the other’s point of view. Or even acknowledge there is a point of view. What archetype do you think Pluto corresponds to? Is it slightly artificial to say, "This planet is this archetype and that planet is that archetype," as if they existed in little boxes?

Liz Greene: Yes, it’s artificial.

Nick Campion: You spoke about Pluto at one point as Lucifer, the dark angel who brings the night, and you spoke about Pluto somewhere else as feminine and then also as the archetype of immortality and the endless cycle of death and rebirth.[4]

Liz Greene: I don’t think you can say, "Here’s this planet, here’s this archetype, they match," because that’s trying to squash two different symbolic systems together. They will never fit properly. It is probably better to see planetary symbols as having family relations with a whole range of images, all of which combine in different ways. One of the Plutonian archetypes is certainly Lucifer. One of them is the Fates. One is Goethe’s Mephistopheles, and another is Kali. There is a whole range of mythic images that can help us to get some sense of the Pluto principle. It is almost impossible to articulate it, except in poetic metaphors. There is an intelligent life in substance itself, which seems to be associated with the life force in living things. It is nature itself, or the life force in nature, that will survive. And in order to survive, of necessity, it must go through permutations, changes, death processes that break down forms when they have reached their sell-by date and then generate new forms. We experience Pluto as something destructive, so we then look at Mephistopheles. Or we experience it as nourishing, so we look at the Great Mother. Or we experience it as fate, so we get the image of the Moirae, the Greek Fates. Because of the various ways we experience it, we need several different images.

Nick Campion: Pluto was discovered in 1930, and astrologers often talk about the connection between fascism and the eruption into consciousness of the Plutonian archetype. It’s such a strong correlation that it’s difficult to ignore. But do you think that, since that point, the Pluto archetype has been stronger?

Liz Greene: I don’t think it has gotten stronger. What has happened is that we are more aware of it, as something operating both in society and in nature, than we were before. But I don’t think it is stronger. And although it is difficult to ignore the rise of fascism and the discovery of nuclear power, I think we need to be careful, because dictators, genocide, massive collective invasions, upheavals, and deaths have occurred for as long as we have. The difference is that there is now an awareness of the Pluto archetype as something which we have named. We have become aware that it is something operating in the world, and this awareness may give us more room to use or abuse it in a conscious way. That doesn’t necessarily make it stronger. It just means that we start taking it on board, rather than enacting it in a blind and oblivious way.

Nick Campion: In terms of the enactment of things, I was reading The Horoscope in Manifestation.[5] At one point, you say to one of the people in the seminar: "You are in the play," and this person replies: "What, I’m in the play?" and you say: "Yes, you are, enacting Jupiter." So, how do you expect people to enact Pluto? How would you begin to approach somebody who came to you with an incredibly strong Plutonian problem?

Liz Greene: I would first want to hear, and talk about, what they are feeling and experiencing with that problem. The outer planets can feel so overwhelming that it is easy for the person to lose their boundaries completely. That’s what people go through under or during the course of Pluto transits. Anything that can help the person to get perspective on what they are experiencing helps immediately. Whether the feeling of being overpowered is internal or external, it is very important for someone to be able to say, "I am feeling desperate. I feel as if everything around me is dying." It’s important to try to find a ground where there is an individual rather than just an overwhelming tide. So I would always start with how the person is feeling, before I start talking about what the planet might mean. What sometimes happens is that people disconnect from what they are feeling because they get very scared. I have noticed that, for some people, when they come under Pluto strongly, the sense of being overwhelmed is so scary - especially if there is a fragile ego - that they disconnect from it. And then they start behaving like Pluto. They are taken over by whatever is bubbling up.

Nick Campion: So, behaving like Pluto would mean what? Obsessive?

Liz Greene: Obsessive.

Nick Campion: Confrontational?

Liz Greene: Not necessarily confrontational. Pluto can be very circumspect although still locked in an attitude of "This is life or death, and I have to win or I will be destroyed." That is what makes people behave very badly sometimes. They get into power battles and they start manipulating, or they set themselves up in some way whereby they are victimised by something very powerful. Pluto isn’t necessarily confrontational. It is locked into a pattern of nature itself and is a force which will either grind over everything or become the victim of everything.

Nick Campion: Putting oneself in a victim position in relation to authority sounds like the classic Sun-Pluto combination.

Liz Greene: It is certainly one of the classic manifestations. Do you mean natally, or in transit?

Nick Campion: Natally. But would you draw a distinction between natal and transiting aspects in that way?

Liz Greene: Yes, I would, because if it is natal, it is an ongoing process. If it is a transit without a natal aspect, it’s an experience that a person will go through, but it may not be one that they need to build their lives on. But if it is there natally, then it is necessary to get some idea of what dimension of life is essential to take on board and live with. You have got to make some kind of relationship with it.

Nick Campion: If somebody has the Sun-Pluto natally, they may well incorporate it into their state of being, so when a transit of Pluto occurs, they might feel it to be far less profound, perhaps, than someone who has the same transit but without the natal position.

Liz Greene: Well, maybe not "far less profound," but maybe far more familiar. The individual might say, "Yes, I know this one, it is just that the volume has been cranked up a bit." Whereas if there is no natal aspect, it’s more like: "What is this?" It helps a lot if you have Pluto links with your Ascendant, Sun, Moon, Mercury, or have the planet angular when you come under a Pluto transit, because there is already a sense of the Plutonian dimension of life. It requires humans to accept something at work in life greater than themselves. You can’t manage Pluto without that acceptance. If it is already there, then navigating the kinds of things that arise under the transit is easier if you know the name of the animal. It can be freak-out time if you don’t know the name of it.

Nick Campion: So, obviously something perfectly useful that people gain from going to astrologers is that they learn the name of the animal they’re dealing with. The astrologer will give them a label, and they can then objectify the label or somehow give it a presence, a personality, which they can relate to.

Liz Greene: Yes, it is the same process by which techniques like active imagination or dream work operate. If you can give whatever you are experiencing a container through a symbol, like an astrological symbol, or a painting or a drawing or a piece of music, you have created distance between it and yourself. You may not objectify it in the sense that you now know what it is, but it gives you a sense that you can make a relationship with it rather than being swallowed up by it - and then you can bring consciousness to bear on it.

Nick Campion: What distinction would you draw between Moon-Pluto links and Sun-Pluto? Is Moon-Pluto going to have more to do with the family?

Liz Greene: I think so. Moon-Pluto operates much more through the physical and psychological inheritance. One experiences the Plutonian dimension of life viscerally, either in the body or through the feelings or through relationship. It operates at a gut level, whereas Sun-Pluto tends to translate more into something that affects, or is part of, one’s journey, one’s destiny, one’s purpose and direction.

Nick Campion: In The Horoscope in Manifestation, you said to a member of the audience with Pluto square Moon, "You are carrying complexes related to the family inheritance, the wounded world, the suffering of others, and the sense of obligations which such suffering invokes."[6] That sounds more past-related, as opposed to Sun-Pluto, which is more future-related.

Liz Greene: Yes. Moon-Pluto carries a big wardrobe with it. Family objects are in the attic and basement.

Nick Campion: Skeletons in cupboards?

Liz Greene: It’s skeletons in cupboards. The child born with Moon-Pluto knows that life is very dangerous. Nothing is permanent, everything could be destroyed. There is no real sense of being able to relax and have a nice safe time, because there is an inbuilt understanding or inbuilt instinctive awareness of the cyclical nature of life and the mortality of everything - the inevitability of change. It is that sense of constant danger that could be turned into an extraordinary attribute. It also brings with it a very understandable tendency to depression, because you can’t just go and have a party. You can, but at some point when the clock strikes midnight, you realise that all these people are one day going to get old, and they will get sick, and they are going to die, and what is the point? What are we here for? It brings up all these deep questions and anxieties.

Nick Campion: One point which you developed very strongly in your early writings is the idea that a planetary combination which might have a possible negative consequence also contains the means by which you can do something about it. So, if Moon-Pluto brings a natural tendency to depression, what would be a natural way for somebody to turn that into an upward path, or bring it back to the light, or however you want to put it - and get the smile back on their face?

Liz Greene: I think it may involve not trying so terribly hard to get the smile back. Part of the problem is that we perceive states of depression and mourning as pathological conditions that should be cured. Half of America is medicated in order to avoid depression. Depression or melancholy has a long tradition of being the only state in which you can contact the soul. If you go around with a perpetual smile, that level of life cannot make itself known in a helpful or creative way. The cyclical tendency to depression with Moon-Pluto means, first of all, understanding depression differently - perhaps calling it melancholy instead - to go down into the depths in order to return to the light. All the deeper questions come up. Because everything dies in Pluto’s world, there is a constant grieving for what passes. It is like losing a human being that you are close to, and unless you go through the mourning process, something gets very blocked up and sick. It can actually be helpful to work with depression as something useful and creative, rather than trying to place the smile back on. I think the smile begins to form with a sense of irony. It is a different kind of smile. Also, it can lead to the kind of humour that deals with an appreciation of the absurd.

Nick Campion: I remember once, a long time ago, there was an article in the Astrological Association newsletter, Transit, in which Eve Jackson looked at the horoscopes of the Monty Python team and the prevalence of Pluto.[7] One thinks of images like the sad clown with the tears running down his face.

Liz Greene: Pluto has its own form of smile. It is a bad mistake to think that smiles should always be Steinway smiles, with "have a nice day" pasted onto them. Getting something regenerating and rewarding out of Pluto really means treating the god with respect and not trying to turn him into a bundle of laughs.

Nick Campion: One image that occurred to me while you were talking is the sight one encounters in Mediterranean countries, of dark Catholic churches with old ladies in black, lighting candles, probably for lost members of their family. That’s their form of working with Pluto and loss.

Liz Greene: Yes. It may be appropriate for those cultures. It may not necessarily work in Britain. Also, some cultures are much less frightened of venting grief and the rage that goes with grief, because we quite appropriately should be enraged when things die. Again, if you look at Faust, Goethe had the Sun square a rising Pluto in Scorpio. At one point Mephistopheles says, "What does it matter if this woman dies?" and Faust comes out with an outraged declaration that the death of a single young woman like this is a terrible tragedy. We should experience that reaction in the face of Pluto. It is appropriate because then we clean out the rage and grief. In some cultures, they do this more easily.

* * *

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

© 2001 Nicholas Campion - all rights reserved

Nick Campion is Past President of the Astrological Association of Great Britain. He has been a student of astrology since the early 1970s and has taught the subject since 1980 - for London’s Camden Institute, the Faculty of Astrological Studies, and most recently, for Kepler College. He is also currently a graduate student in the Study of Religions Department at Bath Spa University College, England. Nick is the winner of the 1992 Marc Edmund Jones Award, the 1994 Prix Georges Antares, and the 1999 Spica Award for Professional Excellence. His books include Mundane Astrology and The Book of World Horoscopes. Information about these books is available on his Web site: www.nickcampion.com

The original article appeared in the American astrological magazine "The Mountain Astrologer" (Dec/Jan 2002). The edition is still available on their website www.mountainastrologer.com

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Nick Campion: Since the Second World War, our entire astrological experience of Pluto has been coloured by its long sextile with Neptune; a few years ago, Neptune and Pluto moved into Aquarius and Sagittarius, respectively. At that time, at the AA Conference in 1997, you pointed out that Pluto in Sagittarius had also coincided with the beginning of Romanticism in the mid 18th century, and in Relating, you talk about each beginning of a new era bringing forth its heroes. You mentioned Goethe, Swedenborg, and others as the heroes produced by that period.[8] Do you have any idea who the heroes of this day and age might be, or what they might be like?

Liz Greene: Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Nick Campion: Yes.

Liz Greene: You think I’m joking?

Nick Campion: No. You’ve just put your finger on something there: the amazing fascination for dark mysteries and the occult on television, from Buffy to The X-Files and a host of copies.

Liz Greene: There is a lot of wisdom in Buffy. The Plutonian realm which is portrayed in the series is something mainly evil, which is a very narrow perspective. But it is the way the Plutonian realm interweaves with ordinary life that makes the programme so original. It’s one way of trying to work with this kind of stuff. There is an acceptance of the fact that it is part of life. So we have the absurd juxtaposition of vampires erupting in an American high school gymnasium, yet that is in fact what Pluto does. It isn’t something "other" that you need to dig up - it is everywhere. Like fairy tales once did, these kinds of programmes serve some purpose psychically. That’s why people watch them: They present the inner patterns in a way that is digestible, interesting, and amusing - and you don’t realise that they are providing resolutions at the same time that they are entertaining. They are the modern equivalent of fairy tales. Modern heroes, though - I haven’t seen any lately.

Nick Campion: It is difficult, isn’t it, because we live in an anti-heroic age.

Liz Greene: Definitely. I don’t think our heroes at the moment are going to be recognisable as such, not with Neptune-Uranus in Aquarius. We don’t like heroes; they are politically incorrect. We have to find them in films and in television and in novels.

Nick Campion: So, what happened to the Pluto-in-Leo "Me" generation? Is there something there that says that "I can be a hero too, and therefore I am not going to recognise your heroism"?

Liz Greene: No, I think they are the ones who are creating series like The X-Files and Buffy. They are all Pluto-in-Leo people. The Pluto-in-Leo generation group’s way of participation in that survival of nature, that determination that life continues despite all odds, is to confirm the individual’s creative power. They are still doing it. They are doing it differently from Pluto-in-Virgo, Pluto-in-Libra, Pluto-in-Scorpio people. The generation groups, as Pluto goes through the signs, describe or are a signature for the way the survival instinct - that piece of raw nature in the individual - enacts itself when the chips are down and the individual personality is no longer relevant or is being overwhelmed. Then, you will see Pluto come out.

Nick Campion: Do you have any thoughts about how the Uranus-Pluto generation is turning out? They were the ones who were born during the hippie era, and I remember the period of disillusionment in the 1970s, when everybody was saying: "The hippie era came to nothing." But, of course, the hippies had children.

Liz Greene: Yes.

Nick Campion: And those children are all now in their forties. Punks are now becoming grandparents. I guess we characterise them as the "computer generation."

Liz Greene: They are in their late thirties. They haven’t had their Uranus opposition yet. Yes, they are the computer generation, but I think they are also very much involved with one of the big themes in the ‘60s - trying to get back to nature, natural products, natural cycles, and harmony with the Earth. It wasn’t so much anti-technology as it was anti-industrialisation, and that theme is certainly coming out of this Uranus-Pluto group. All the awareness that is now beginning to come out about what you eat, and the organic food movement, is actually coming from this generation. This seems very much to be what they are achieving in worldly terms, and they are not finished yet. They haven’t even really come into the positions of authority that one would expect in the late forties- early fifties, when people start getting the big posts in government. We have yet to see what more they can do.

Nick Campion: And following behind them are the kids who are now 20, who were born with the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Libra, who I guess are amongst the protesters who follow the World Trade Organisation and the IMF conferences around.

Liz Greene: Yes.

Nick Campion: The Saturn-Pluto cycle is also related very much to the independence of India and Israel in the 1940s: Two ancient cultures, the Hindus and the Jews, had their statehood restored. Would you perceive in Saturn-Pluto individuals a similar archaic influence coming through?

Liz Greene: I think they carry a long past behind them, or there is an awareness of a long past. Historical awareness is something that isn’t an ingredient in everyone’s worldview. Some people manage very nicely without it. Saturn-Pluto does seem to reflect a consciousness of this much longer history which goes back through cycles, through deaths and rebirths and metamorphoses, into the past. Part of its potential great strength is that there is an instinctive knowledge of the relevance of history and the fact that whatever you build historically will one day die.

Nick Campion: That idea, that whatever you build sometime will die, points to the concept of the rise and fall of cultures in line with the astrological ages. In Relating, you write about the Age of Aquarius, how God is - the gods are - now within us, no longer outside us, and science is an Aquarian manifestation.[9] It would seem to me that you could be described as a humanist in the sense that we are now at the centre of things. Also, there’s a cultural relativism, implicit perhaps in all New Age thought, claiming that every age has its version of the truth and none is necessarily superior to any other.

Liz Greene: I don’t think that the astrological ages are any more real in that sense than anything else. But there do seem to be turning points in terms of how human beings define the highest good, or whatever they prefer to call God, and the ways in which they enact those perceptions. So I don’t think that one age is "better" than another in the sense of having more truth. In the ancient world, the gods were perceived as being "elsewhere," and they intervened in human life. We are having a hard time defining the gods in that way now. That may not necessarily imply a greater awareness of the truth. It just seems to be what we perceive as reality now. There is a fragmenting and breaking down of the attribution of divinity to something "out there" to which we pray. That breakdown seems to be causing a lot of trouble, anxiety, and threat, and the response is the constellating of the opposite: rigid fundamentalism. It is a Promethean vision in which human beings are the alpha and omega - everything lies within us.

Whether that is true or not is the wrong question. It seems to be what we are living with, and we are going to be with it for a long time to come. We will undoubtedly make an absolute hash of it for a long time, because it breeds enormous arrogance. With every shift in the perception of deity, we lose something. We gain some new perception, and we lose something very precious. It seems to be more a question of "Can we retain what’s of value from past perceptions, while allowing a new one to come in?" rather than drawing a line and saying, "We’ll throw this old one out." Christianity tried to throw out the pagan worldview in a very ruthless way and, I think, paid a terrible price for the exclusion of what was of value in the previous worldview. We are in the same position now.

Nick Campion: So, when you write in Astrology for Lovers that, as individuals, we are constantly growing into something[10], do you think that human society is growing into something? From what you have just been saying, I gather that you feel quite neutral about that growing-into-something, and the something into which we are growing is not necessarily better than what we have come from.

Liz Greene: It could be better, but I don’t think there is some dictate that says it is definitely going to be. If it is, that may have more to do with our potential rather than with some grand design of evolution. But it is a bit like a human life. By the time you get to a certain age, your experiences have begun to become cyclical, and you start recognising that you have been in that sitting room before. That could actually produce something better in terms of wisdom or in terms of navigating things better or handling them more creatively. Or it may just make people bitter and more destructive, because they get frenzied when they realise they have been there before. I think there is the potential for genuine evolution, but I don’t think it’s a given, and I am not at all convinced it is a plan. It is something that we could actually do ourselves, if we are intelligent enough to manage it.

Nick Campion: I was struck by your attack on New Age gurus in Neptune.[11] I just found it interesting that the outside world classifies all astrologers as members of the New Age and therefore slightly wacky, but here was an astrologer actually criticising the excesses of the gurus.

Liz Greene: I have always liked John Cooper Powys’s line: "The devil is any god who begins to exact obedience." Any authority can become the devil, whether it is "New Age spiritual," in the form of a guru; or orthodox religious, in the form of the Pope; or scientific, in the form of a high-powered academic; or political, when we start giving away our capacity to discriminate.

"Truth" is an awful word because it really depends on the beholder. If we give away the necessity of struggling individually to find what we understand to be true, we are being very stupid. I didn’t really make an attack on gurus as such. You can turn your doctor into a guru. You can turn your government into a guru, which is what the Russians did in the Soviet era and what a lot of people are doing with the British government now. You can turn anything into a guru if you want to be a child who needs a parent who has all the answers. I don’t think that has anything to do with the "New Age." I think it has to do with something in human beings which would rather not put in all that hard work. We are fundamentally lazy creatures, and dependence on gurus is just one manifestation of our laziness.

Nick Campion: There was something else you said about the Age of Aquarius in one of the seminars in The Outer Planets and their Cycles.[12] Somebody asked you when the Age of Aquarius was going to begin, and you said: "For all I know, the Age of Aquarius began last Tuesday," which I thought summed up the ridiculousness of some people’s need for absolute certainty.

Liz Greene: Yes, quite.

Nick Campion: The member of the audience, by the way, responded: "I can’t help feeling disappointed by what you are saying."

Liz Greene: Yes, I get that a lot. Someone is always very disappointed if I don’t give an exact answer. Oh, dear!

Nick Campion: You could also be a candidate for gurudom.

Liz Greene: For many people, yes. I get clients who try to make me into one, and I despair, because I know from the outset that if someone is coming for a chart with that kind of mentality, whatever I give them, they are going to be disappointed because it won’t be The Answer. In fact, I try to avoid clients who come with that package, because I don’t want it.

Nick Campion: Can you tell beforehand?

Liz Greene: Usually, yes. It’s a certain tone. If I ask on the phone, "Why do you want your chart done?" I can pretty quickly spot it. Sometimes it’s okay, but much of the time, if someone is looking for a guru, they are not really looking for anything that astrology can usefully provide. They are looking for a parent/deity who will make them safe and give them the answers that will allow them not to be afraid any more. While I have a lot of compassion for that state - we all go through it one way or another - it isn’t the business of astrology to address it. The insights astrology offers go the other way. All of them really point to: "Get on with it. Get a life and work at it." These insights don’t provide cosmic answers. I think any astrologer who uses astrology to provide answers of that kind is probably not doing their job very realistically.

* * *

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

© 2001 Nicholas Campion - all rights reserved

Nick Campion is Past President of the Astrological Association of Great Britain. He has been a student of astrology since the early 1970s and has taught the subject since 1980 - for London’s Camden Institute, the Faculty of Astrological Studies, and most recently, for Kepler College. He is also currently a graduate student in the Study of Religions Department at Bath Spa University College, England. Nick is the winner of the 1992 Marc Edmund Jones Award, the 1994 Prix Georges Antares, and the 1999 Spica Award for Professional Excellence. His books include Mundane Astrology and The Book of World Horoscopes. Information about these books is available on his Web site: www.nickcampion.com

Liz Greene and I met in London on August 14, 2001, to discuss her work in astrology - and her attitudes toward it. In Part One of this interview (which appeared in The Mountain Astrologer, Dec. 2001/Jan. 2002), we talked about Liz’s thoughts on the current Saturn-Pluto opposition. In Part Two, we cover her background in astrology and her conclusions concerning its nature and practice.

The original article appeared in the American astrological magazine "The Mountain Astrologer" (Feb/Mar 2002). The edition is still available on their website www.mountainastrologer.com

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Nick Campion: Liz, a fairly crucial question to start: How exactly did you get into astrology? Was it a gradual discovery or a sudden revelation?

Liz Greene: It was probably more sudden than gradual. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t conscious of astrology; going back to childhood, I think it was always there. I had no issue about it, but when I was at university, I went to an astrologer to have my own chart done, and that was really the kick off. It intrigued me, and I wanted to know how it worked, so I started teaching myself.

Nick Campion: You must have been in your early twenties.

Liz Greene: I was nineteen. I had some friends who were going to see Isabel Hickey, and they said, "Why don’t you go and get your chart done?" So, she was the person. She seems to have been the main astrological figure on the East Coast of the United States at that time. A lot of people knew her, including Howard Sasportas and Darby Costello[13]. Many people passed through Isabel Hickey’s portals. She was a fairly die-hard theosophist, very esoterically inclined and quite dogmatic. But her astrology was sound, and her belief system suited the times.

Nick Campion: And what were you studying at university?

Liz Greene: Psychology.

Nick Campion: Was that your major long-term interest?

Liz Greene: Yes. It started when I found a copy of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams at the age of twelve.

Nick Campion: So, you were a child prodigy?

Liz Greene: Well, I was certainly a child Freudian!

Nick Campion: Was discovering Freud a real revelation?

Liz Greene: It was a major revelation. Suddenly the penny dropped. It wasn’t that everything Freud said immediately made sense to me, but the presentation of the fact that human beings have another side that they don’t know about - that there are unconscious processes always at work in them - made perfect sense. I knew that anyway, but nobody would believe me. So, here was a piece of writing that confirmed what was clearly visible to me at a very young age. I started investigating. I started reading anything I could on psychology, as well as any literature that dealt with psychological issues. My inspiration was mainly psychology and psychologically inspired literature rather than astrology.

Nick Campion: Was your psychology degree Freudian-oriented? Was it behavioural?

Liz Greene: It was behavioural.

Nick Campion: Rats in cages?

Liz Greene: Yes, rats in cages. And lots of sociology and statistics, which I hated. But I think I understood, even then, that it was necessary to have a piece of paper, a qualification, so I put up with it.

Nick Campion: So, you discovered astrology while you were studying for your degree. Did astrology then open something up when you were nineteen, like the discovery of Freud had when you were twelve?

Liz Greene: Yes, certainly. Astrology made sense of psychology. Exactly as when I discovered Freud, something suddenly went "click". Astrology showed me aspects of ourselves that we don’t normally notice, facets of life which we don’t usually understand.

Nick Campion: And so you saw an immediate connection between astrology and the psychology you had already been studying. At what point, then, did you discover Jung?

Liz Greene: I read Jung at some point in my teens, but it didn’t quite make sense in the same way as Freud. But I went back to his writing in my twenties, and then it clicked.

Nick Campion: And that took place in the light of astrology?

Liz Greene: Yes.

Nick Campion: Were you, at that time, working in the professional world of psychology?

Liz Greene: After I took my doctorate, I did fairly conventional, orthodox psychotherapy, including some Freudian techniques. I hadn’t done any formal Jungian training at that point. I didn’t do that until much later, in 1980. Before that, I did some training with Ian Gordon-Brown and Barbara Somers at the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology in London. That began to give me what I wanted - something that was very deep and thorough, that I could get my teeth into and work with in depth.

Nick Campion: Psychoanalysis gave you that depth?

Liz Greene: Well, yes, Jung’s version of it. I am not a Jungian any more than I am any sort of -ian or -ist, but I felt the training had more scope to help people than the Freudian training.

Nick Campion: Jung himself drew so much from astrology and the esoteric traditions that it is perhaps easier to bring the two together than is the case with, say, Freud and astrology. You moved to London in the early 1970s. I remember seeing your name in Time Out, the London listings magazine, as teaching astrology classes for an alternative organisation and thinking: "Oh, I should go to those" and then getting swept up in something else.

Liz Greene: That was in 1975-76. The organisation was called Gentle Ghost.

Nick Campion: Since then, in all your years of teaching and working with astrology, have you come to a working definition of it?

Liz Greene: Nice question! Not a definition in a "carved-in-granite" sense, no. For me, astrology is a symbolic system. It is a lens or a tool which utilises particular kinds of symbolic images or patterns to make sense of deeper patterns inherent in life that are otherwise impossible to grasp on an intellectual level, even though it is possible to experience them in other, non-intellectual ways. It is a means by which life can be interpreted in terms of the underlying patterns of its rubric. And that’s why I think all the other lenses - like the Tarot, Kabbalah, mythology, literature, poetry, drama, painting, sculpture - are all not only equally valid ways of apprehending those patterns, but have fed into astrology while astrology has fed into them. I don’t think there is such a thing as pure astrology. To say that is like saying there’s a pure English race. Astrology is a lens, a system of symbols.

Nick Campion: It seems to me that, if we take the definition of astrology as a lens, this implies that the astrologer is looking at something; in that case, we can choose to put the emphasis either on what is being looked at or on the looker, the astrologer. Then we can ask different questions, examining how astrologers’ perceptions determine their astrology, or we can talk about what they are looking at, what they are seeing through the lens. Does the lens distort it? Are astrologers looking at anything real? Do you believe that there is something real out there that is astrology and that we are actually looking at?

Liz Greene: It depends on what you mean by "real." The zodiac doesn’t exist in concrete terms. It is the apparent path of the Sun around the Earth, which we have divided into twelve segments; each segment is assigned an image and a set of meanings and behaviour patterns. But the zodiac doesn’t exist in the sense that there are animals floating out there. So, on one level, the whole system is not real. This table we’re sitting at now is the kind of thing that we define as real. If you take reality as something subtler, and you approach reality as being the connections, links, resonances, or correspondences between things, then, yes, these patterns are real. But there is no way that they can be measured in a quantifiable sense, according to instruments of so-called reality. When you ask me that, the whole problem is that I don’t know what you mean by real. Or, rather, I do know what you mean, but if Richard Dawkins asked, "Is it real?" he would mean something quite different by "real" than I do.[14]

Nick Campion: I was using "real" in the Richard Dawkins sense.

Liz Greene: In that sense, no, astrology is not real. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist or that it is not valid, but in his sense, no, I don’t think astrology is real. I believe there is an objective patterning or interconnectedness or unity of some kind or a set of resonances. You can use any phrase you like, whether it is mystical or hermetic or any other language you fancy. And it does exist outside us. It’s not just in the perceptions of astrologers.

Nick Campion: You open Relating with a powerful quote from Gerhard Dorn, talking about the unity of everything:

Knowest thou not that heaven and the elements were formerly one, and they were separated from one another by divine artifice, that they might bring forth thee and all things? If thou knowest this, the rest cannot escape thee. Therefore in all generation a separation of this kind is necessary…. Thou wilt never make from others the One which thou seekest except first there be made one thing of thyself.[15]

That’s a very strong statement of the idea that astrology flows naturally from an understanding of the unity of heaven and earth and of the notion that the astrological experience begins with us. You also acknowledged modern, quantity-based science in the same book, and I’m wondering whether you still agree with words that you wrote 25 years ago. You said that "astrology is ... a map of the system of laws by which the energies of life operate - an astrology vindicated by statistical research and scientific investigation."[16] Does that represent your current thinking? I am interested in that statement because it has been claimed that there has been a change in how astrologers view scientific research and statistics as a way of validating astrology, and that negative statistical results have encouraged an anti-scientific stance amongst astrologers. So, has your own view changed since 1977?

Liz Greene: I think that research is very valuable in astrology, in the sense that it can highlight patterns. Sometimes research reveals patterns that we don’t expect, and our assumptions are challenged. So, yes, it is very valuable for us to do statistical research. However, I don’t think it is valid from the point of view of trying to prove that astrology works, because if you have the kind of mentality that is dead-set against astrology, you will try to blow holes in the statistics anyway. And usually you can take any set of statistics and destroy it. Astrologers can pursue statistical research for their own purposes, but there is no point in trying to convince skeptics. If I do 300 charts during the course of a year for people born with the Sun opposite Saturn, and 80% of them either had fathers who left them when they were young, or fathers who died early, or fathers who abandoned them before they were born, or fathers who were cold and distant, that’s statistical research. I can then say: "Well, 80% of the 300 Sun-Saturn charts that I have done have this kind of psychological pattern." It may then be useful for me to explore further what that Sun-Saturn aspect means. But if I took that research to somebody who defines statistical research in a more "scientific" sense, they would say: "Three hundred people is nothing. What you need is 3,000 and a neutral control group." Whatever you do, they’ll find a way to set other tests. I think the research we do is very important for us. Whether it convinces anybody outside, I don’t really care, to be quite honest. I think we need to do it for our own constant development.

Nick Campion: Then it seems to me that, in terms of definitions of research, what you have just outlined is a qualitative approach based on case studies.

Liz Greene: Yes, in small or large quantities.

Nick Campion: The issue of whether there is anything in astrology that is "out there" and "real" often comes down to the claims astrologers make for particular techniques or ways of constructing a horoscope and the house system. Competing house systems is one of the main problems in astrology from that point of view, quite apart from the problem of the sidereal versus tropical zodiacs. How do we decide which house system to use, let alone which zodiac? You once said that "you should use the house system that works for you." That sounds like you are putting the astrologer in the centre of the equation, rather than the astrology.

Liz Greene: Only in part. I think that all these different structural approaches open a window on something, but it is a narrow window and no single one of them reveals the whole landscape. I think that’s why they all have validity to some astrologers but not to others.

Nick Campion: So would you agree with astrologers who say that astrologers get the clients that they need?

Liz Greene: Yes.

Nick Campion: If you follow that idea through, then it is a very provocative one: There is a client somewhere, in a distant place, who is suddenly moved at a particular time to phone you up and ask: "Can you read my chart?" Is there a sense in which you are summoning that person?

Liz Greene: I don’t know if it is summoning. I think we are back to resonances again. Let’s say the Saturn-Pluto opposition is coming into square to your Sun, and that represents some kind of symbolic picture of what you yourself become at a certain time. You experience, or are buffeted by, or get in touch with, a particular kind of energy. It is both inside you and outside you. You may experience certain kinds of things in your life connected with that opposition. How you deal with them is very individual. You may say, "Right! This is a very hard, tough aspect. I am going to do a Ph.D. under this one" and make some use of it. Or you may lie back and be a victim and say, "Oh, someone’s broken into my house" or "There’s a riot down the road and they burnt my car" or whatever. The nature of the experience is connected to how able you are to deal with what you are at that moment. But equally, as an astrologer, you may get a whole run of clients who are resonating to what you are going through. So, you may see lots of Scorpios, lots of Capricorns, or people who are getting hit by that opposition themselves. People may come to you with a mirror that in some way resonates to the same thing you are resonating to. I don’t think the astrologer summons the client. Rather, when you arrive at a certain point, things that resonate with that will come into your life. It is not causal.

Nick Campion: If you use the word "resonating" to a materialist scientist like Richard Dawkins, he would no doubt have a physical explanation of what resonance is. Are you using the word in a poetic way?

Liz Greene: Well, it is also literal. If you hit a tuning fork, and there is a properly tuned guitar sitting next to it, there will be an audible resonance. However, if the guitar tuning is imprecise, there will be nothing. That kind of resonance happens on a physical level.

Nick Campion: Does that mean that we all respond to the music of the spheres?

Liz Greene: I think that we are part of the music, too. It is a chain of constant chords and resonances.

Nick Campion: Let’s go back to your example of the Saturn-Pluto opposition. If somebody with that transit can choose either to be a victim or to pursue a very structured path, like taking a university degree, then what is the nature of that choosing? Is the ability to make a choice itself linked to another astrological pattern in the chart?

Liz Greene: No. There is something that operates within resonances which psychology calls consciousness. I certainly don’t have a definition of what that is, except that it is Mercurial. Consciousness is like the Mercurial figure in alchemy. It isn’t limited by or bound by astrological patterns. Consciousness inhabits and expresses through those patterns, yet it can operate outside and within and around them, and it is what allows us to make choices. I think that it’s what transforms our way of responding to these patterns. Either we simply are the pattern and we enact it blindly, which is what happens in all the animal kingdoms, or we bring that element of consciousness to bear. The pattern doesn’t then go away, but it gets more notes in its chord.

Nick Campion: Are you saying that consciousness is somehow something extra to astrology, something beyond astrology?

Liz Greene: Yes, I think it is.

Nick Campion: That sounds like what the Neo-platonic philosophers would have called Soul. They would have said the Soul is above the body, above the stars, even. But if consciousness is beyond astrology, what about the so-called conscious planets in the horoscope, like Mercury, Venus, and Mars, as opposed to the outer, unconscious planets?

Liz Greene: No planet is guaranteed to be conscious. The planets should be seen as representing patterns. If an individual is aware of the pattern within them, the planet is being expressed consciously, but, just because it is an inner planet, that doesn’t necessarily make the pattern conscious. Experience has taught me that. People may wander around totally unconscious of what the Moon means in them or what Venus means in them. Whatever pattern of motivation the planets represent is part of human nature, but we can be totally oblivious of it. We project it, we are at its mercy, we are buffeted by it, we become it, we identify with it, we’re run dry by it, but we are utterly unaware that it is us. It looks like it is "out there" or it is happening to us, but it is in us - it is us. The fact that it is inner, though, is no guarantee of its being in any way connected with consciousness.

Nick Campion: But how do we know when we are actually being conscious of something?

Liz Greene: Hard to explain, that one. It has something to do with a sense of standing in a still centre and being aware - not just on an intellectual level but all the way through - of something that you know as your self, but at the same time you are not identified with it. There’s some kind of space between you and it. So, if I am having a Mars transit today, and you say the wrong thing and I get really angry, then if I am unconscious of that anger, I just become angry. I don’t even know I am angry. Out come the abusive words, or I take a swipe at you, or I pour my water over you. There’s nobody home in the sense of a conscious individual. I have no idea of what I am about to do, what I am about to say, what I feel. I just act and then I say: "Oh, I am terribly sorry, I just lost my temper, I didn’t mean to." However, if I am aware, then I hear what you said, and I know I am angry, and at that moment I may even know why I am angry. I may feel the anger, but I am not the anger, which means that I can say to myself: "Did he really mean that? What has he triggered in me?" I can then work on it; if I am still angry by the time I have finished working on it, I can then say calmly: "Are you aware of what you have just said? It was very offensive." Or I can just keep my mouth shut, because I realise that my anger has nothing to do with you: It is my problem.

Nick Campion: Then our own internal thought processes seem to be crucial. If we do see astrology as a language, then could we talk about that conscious state of mind as being Geminian or Virgoan, perhaps? Is it analytical?

Liz Greene: I don’t think that it involves analysis. Some people may think it out in concepts, but consciousness is something that can be watery, fiery, or earthy as well. It is a quality of awareness, which means that one is not identified with what one is experiencing. One stands outside it, not dissociated from it, but outside it enough to actually recognise it. You can recognise it on many levels; it doesn’t have to be intellectual.

Nick Campion: So, when astrologers say in conversation, as they do so often: "Oh, I’m having a bad time because I’m having a Saturn transit," would you regard that as a wrong thing to say?

Liz Greene: Well, I say it too. But I know what I mean when I say it. To talk like that doesn’t really communicate what is going on. It is shorthand. We don’t have a bad time because of a transit. The transit is just a symbolic signature of what we are experiencing. It isn’t causing it. I am not in the business of going around correcting everyone’s speech, and I say it too: "What a rotten day! Saturn’s on my whatever." It’s shorthand.

Nick Campion: So, if a transit is a signature, then that reminds me of the astrological aphorism, one popular with Charles Carter: "The stars do not compel, they incline." Geoffrey Cornelius added: "They don’t incline or compel, they signify." In that sense, are transits best seen as signposts rather than causes?

Liz Greene: I also think the planets signify. I don’t believe they impel, compel, dispel, or "do" anything. They are simply signatures.

* * *

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

© 2001 Nicholas Campion - all rights reserved

Nick Campion is Past President of the Astrological Association of Great Britain. He has been a student of astrology since the early 1970s and has taught the subject since 1980 - for London’s Camden Institute, the Faculty of Astrological Studies, and most recently, for Kepler College. He is also currently a graduate student in the Study of Religions Department at Bath Spa University College, England. Nick is the winner of the 1992 Marc Edmund Jones Award, the 1994 Prix Georges Antares, and the 1999 Spica Award for Professional Excellence. His books include Mundane Astrology and The Book of World Horoscopes. Information about these books is available on his Web site: www.nickcampion.com