. . . but not without shadow Rob Brezsny Jun 9, 2026
I’ve been an astrologer since I began studying astrology at Goddard College at age 19.But I’ve never been a traditional astrologer. I love the ancient art too much to keep peddling its most fearful inheritances. Over the centuries, astrology has absorbed a heavy cargo of dread, including curses, afflictions, exiles, and warnings of cosmic bad luck.I’ve spent years reading the same sky that the dread-ridden practitioners read, and I’ve arrived at different conclusions about what it’s trying to tell us.On this Freedom from Fear holiday, I will offer disclaimers to refute the doom-mongering and uphold the zoom-and-boom approach to living our magical lives.
1. I don’t use any version of astrology that claims some planets and some houses are “malefic.” There are no villains in the solar system. There is no celestial body whose essential job is to ambush or ruin you.So, for example, Saturn isn’t a hooded executioner; it teaches discipline, patient structure, the dignity of limits. Mars isn’t a brute; it grants courage, drive, and the holy capacity to fight for what we love.To brand a planet or a house as evil is to misread the gift inside the intense packaging.Read more about my understanding of Saturn: tinyurl.com/BlessingsOfSaturnRead more about my understanding of Mars: tinyurl.com/MarsWithinUs
2. I don’t believe that planets are in “detriment” or “fall” in particular signs. The notion that a planet is crippled, demoted, or exiled simply because of which signs it happens to occupy strikes me as an astrological caste system: as if Venus in Scorpio were a broken instrument, or the Moon in Capricorn a wounded animal. I know people with Venus in Scorpio and Moon in Capricorn, and I guarantee you that those placements don’t hobble or torment them.No to all that noise. In fact, I relish the hypothesis that every placement is a particular intelligence—a specific flavor of power, a distinctive way of getting things done—not a defect to apologize for.
3. I don’t regard planetary retrogrades as inherently problematic. Mercury retrograde, in particular, has become pop culture’s favorite scapegoat, blamed for every dropped call and missed text.But a retrograde isn’t a malfunction. It’s a different mode: a turning-inward, a season for review, revision, recapitulation, and second looks. The backward-seeming motion isn’t the universe glitching. It’s the universe inviting us to circle back and finish what we left unfinished.My understanding of Mercury Retrograde: tinyurl.com/RetrogradeMercuryRead more about retrograde planets in general: https://tinyurl.com/y89kuwa6
4. I don’t think we should do anything differently when the moon is “void of course.” I won’t tiptoe through my life, postpone my decisions, or hold my breath because tradition warns that “nothing will come of” what I begin during those hours.I start my projects whenever the spirit moves me. The cosmos isn’t waiting to penalize my timing.Read more about my understanding: tinyurl.com/PraiseMoonVoidOfCourse
5. I don’t treat the aspects of square and opposition as being inherently negative and troublesome. The so-called “hard aspects” are engines of growth, not glitches in the wiring. Tension isn’t the enemy of a vivid life; it’s one of its primary creative forces.A square denotes friction that strikes a spark. An opposition is the dynamic, generative tug between two truths that both deserve to be honored. Smooth and easy is lovely, but it’s less likely to make us braver, deeper, or more alive.
6. I don’t believe that solar or lunar eclipses portend peril or distress. Eclipses are thresholds, hinges, and dramatic punctuation marks in the ongoing narrative of our lives.They’re portals: moments when energies can be released and new modes born. To greet them with anxiety is to mistake intensity for worrisome twists.More about my understanding of eclipses: tinyurl.com/EclipsesAreInvitations
When I periodically lay out my approach to astrology on social media, some readers are alarmed, even angry, as if they imagine I’m a first-class spiritual bypasser. One sneered, “So you practice astrology that strips away negative aspects and shadow?”That’s a big, unjustified leap from what I actually say.The answer is no, I’m not stripping away shadow. I’m not saying everything that ever happens is cheerful, positive, and easy. What I’m refusing is far more specific: the assignment of fixed, fatalistic, fear-based verdicts to the phenomena of the sky. I’m questioning the medieval bookkeeping that decides in advance which configurations are curses and which are blessings, before we’ve even had the chance to live them.Shadow is real. Difficulty is real. Grief, loss, struggle, and the long dark passages of a human life are real, all worthy of our intense attention. As a chaos magician and dreamworker, I am on intimate terms with what’s unresolved, wounded, and not-yet-redeemed. I work with the shadow every single day and have for years. It’s one of my deepest callings. It’s an important reason why I am such a diligent dreamworker.The difference is this: I don’t believe the shadow is a punishment handed down by malefic planets. I believe it’s raw material: teachings that invite us to grow into a more beautiful and resilient version of ourselves. The squares that grind against us and the transits that jolt us out of our habits are the curriculum. They’re not sentences pronounced by a hostile universeTo strip away shadow would commit the grave error of toxic positivity. I have zero interest in that. PRONOIA—my conviction that the whole of creation is conspiring to move us in the direction of liberation—isn’t the denial of pain. It’s the radical trust that even our pain is conspiring to liberate us.
So here’s the core of how I practice:All omens deserve to be interpreted in ways that provide guidance and teaching. All configurations deserve to be read as messages about how to live more skillfully, love more fiercely, and wake up more fully: including the comfortable and the uncomfortable aspects, the flowing trines and the disruptive squares, the new moons and the eclipses.All omens are revelations about how to successfully wrangle with our problems, perpetrate liberation, ameliorate suffering, find redemption, and perform the tricky maneuvers and ingenious tweaks that enable us to slip free of our mind-forged manacles and discover the deeper meanings beneath our experiences.Those manacles, as William Blake understood, are often forged in our own imaginations. They are made of our fears, inherited superstitions, and half-conscious agreements about what we’re allowed to become.And astrology at its best is a locksmith’s art, not a fortune-teller’s racket. It hands us the picks and shims and skeleton keys. It shows us where the lock is, and how the mechanism turns.An omen isn’t a verdict handed down from on high. It doesn’t tell us what will be done to us. It’s an invitation that reveals what might be done by us and through us and with us if we’re cunning and brave and generous enough to read it as a teaching rather than a threat.I read the same sky every other astrologer reads. I refuse to read it as a rap sheet. To me, it’s a love letter that includes, among its tender passages, the hard and holy lessons we need to learn.
