Customer Reviews

Astrology Inside Out

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been a serious student of astrology and a chart reader for the past 10 years. A few years ago, I came across Bruce Nevin's book and since then it has become one of my main reference texbooks, and a permanent source of inspiration for meditation excercises with my students in my astrology seminars. The intelligent and sensible combination of astrology with other spiritual traditions and meditation practices, is the books's best asset. Easy to read, yet serious and profound, this book is a must for all those who use Astrology as a tool for self-knowledge and realization.

Astrology (real astrology, not the kind you find on the comics pages of the newspapers) has always been intriguing to me and I've always wanted to find out more about it. But, although I've been interested for a long time, until now I've been put off by the unknowable and seemingly unlearnable nature of astrology. Astrologers seem to speak in tongues, using words such as sextiles, trines and conjunctions that are meaningless to me, or, worse, using what seem to be normal English words such as square or planets or influence in ways I couldn't divine. They use crabbed symbols and cryptic signs, undecipherable abbreviations. Why bother, I thought.

Bruce Nevin's book has changed all that. He still uses the crabbed symbols, the cryptic signs, and the undecipherable abbreviations, but he makes it easy to understand what they mean. He does not start with a long list of terms and definitions. Rather, he begins slowly, on an intuitive base, to explain what astrology is, why it seems to work, and where it came from, building an overall framework to hang the technical material on. Terms and concepts are introduced gently, and worked into the overall framework in a sensible way. The book is not cluttered with great gobs of detail. I never felt lost and yet by the end of the book I learned an enormous amount about astrology in general and my own chart in particular.

Mr. Nevin begins with unusual assumptions: that to be meaningful, an understanding of astrology has to come from within and be applied first to ourselves; and that the best way to discover the meaning of the various aspects of astrology is to find them out for ourselves through meditation.

These assumptions are just backwards from the way astrology is usually taught, and thus the title Astrology Inside Out. And these assumptions are what made the book work for me.

The basic methodology of the book is to take one concept and structure a set of meditative exercises around that concept, then move to the next concept, with its own set of exercises, continuing until all aspects of astrology are covered. Then the separate concepts are brought together holistically. There are no long charts of birth dates and times, no unwieldy calculations to do. Mr. Nevin essentially says "Trust your own insight," and then he shows that it works.

The book is in two parts. Part I, entitled "Astrology Inside Out", begins with a general overview of astrology, where it came from and how the various concepts arose. It then explores in three sections Houses, Planets, and the Zodiac. Each section contains full explanations of what these are. Much of the information comes through the guided meditations exploring various aspects of each topic. For instance, Planets discusses what each planet symbolizes, and has exercises to help you connect that symbolism with your own life; describes the symbol and a color for each planet, shows how the symbol developed, and has exercises to help you find for yourself how the planets interact with the houses and the zodiacal signs for you.

As you go, you record your experiences and insights in a journal. You discover on your own how the pieces fit, and develop your own chart based on your insights during the exercises. Part II, "The Horoscope: An Owner's Manual for Your Personality", goes into much more detail in developing this chart and helping you sort out what applies and what doesn't, and why. I think I would have been happy just with Part I, actually. I found the journal and the meditations to be helpful on their own, whether or not I learned astrology from them. But by the time I got through Part II, I had a firmer grasp of who I was and why. And I learned astrology. I learned enough astrology to go back to the natal chart I had had done for me some years ago, the one with all the funny squiggles and blue and red lines, and figure out what it meant. That was the clincher for me.

The book includes three helpful appendices. Appendix A covers the theory of astrology, Appendix B give both the, theory and some techniques of meditation, and Appendix C lists where to go to get more information and has several blank forms you can use as you go through your meditations.

I found the book to be informative, helpful and interesting. I would recommend it for anyone who, like me, always wanted to know more, but never quite knew how.

D. J. Ruppert is a freelance writer, interested in astrology, psychic phenemona, and all sorts of wierd things. She lives in Maynard MA with her son, two cats, and a fish named Harvey.

[This review was written more than 10 years ago. I am posting it with permission. The book has been continuously in print since 1982. That speaks for itself. --Bruce Nevin]