Customer Reviews

The Real Astrology

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

 

 

John Frawley's the Real Astrology gives a clear and accomplished introduction to the art of horary astrology as actually practiced in 17th century England, particularly by the illustrious William Lilly. Horary astrology looks at the chart of the birth of a question, rather than a chart of the birth of a person. Horary allows for incredibly precise and accurate concrete predictions of actual events. Frawley explains the techniques of horary astrology clearly and concisely and the Real Astrology is vital for anyone interesting in learning or mastering horary astrology.

Other reviewers have apparently found Frawley's relentless assertion of the superiority of traditional astrology not to their taste. All I can say is that many traditional astrologers have left modern for traditional, but I am not aware of any traditional astrologers who have forsaken it for modern. The ability of traditional horary to make such amazingly accurate predictions is supremely seductive. Don't be put off by other reviews, take it from a practicing traditional astrologer, Frawley's Real Astrology is the real deal!

This astrology book fires the loudest, if not the first shots in the war of traditional astrology vs modern psychological astrology. There are many who believe that the time has come for such a strong stance. With modern techniques becoming more and more inclusive of points to deliniate, as well as assuming a gauzy new-age mindset, the practice of pure predictive astrology has come dangerously close to losing its original direction. In this regard Frawley pulls no punches. He points out where (in his opinion) modern astrology fails in being truly useful, and how the study of William Lilly's classic "Christian Astrology" contains much that astrologers need to accurately assess any chart. It is an inspiring read for those who are ready for its message, offering many laugh-out-loud moments as Taurean Frawley skewers yet another sacred astrological cow. But aside from the snarkiness, there is great depth to his ideas, and it is obvious that Frawley has spent significant time contemplating some profound philosophical concepts. He seeks to tie many of them together to form a foundation of meaningfulness to astrology which has, so far, been dominated by the very recent beliefs of the Theosophists. I give it 4 out of 5, because I would have liked to have seen far more explanation of his ideas, and less vitriol. For more on his techniques, we must look to "Real Astrology Applied," the follow-up to "Real Astrology."

I am a licensed psychologist with a fulltime practice as a more or less "modern astrologer" according to Frawley's dismissive description. But this is absolutely irrelevant, because Frawley's book represents the most delicious reading! Is Frawley arrogant, as other reader says? Anyone that charges for his personal courses as he does -they must be the more expensive available in the world-would certainly not be categorized as "modest"! And so what? The Real Astrology is very well written, highly amenable, and from Frawley's perspective as a Traditionalist, he is absolutely right. The Astrology that he and others like him practice is the Real Astrology from the perspective of the Tradition.Anyone with some kind of first hand experience in the Western Esoteric Tradition must know that Frawley is right in his disapproval of the modern-psychological approach. Is he vitriolic? Indeed! Again, from the point of view of Tradition, in its deepest Spiritual meaning, the slaughtering that "modernism" has done with Classic Astrology fully deserves a strong reprimand. Traditions looks at Astrology as a Sacred Art inmersed into a hierarchical Universe. Psychoanalysis -to name just one of the many "traditional" deviations- in all its forms is the precise counterpart of this Approach. Frawley does a lot for inviting the posmodern reader to come again and restore the forgotten World of the Soul, in a society that has sorely lost its Way for the pursuit of empty lights and technocratic games. A highly recommended and exquisite book!

Unlike many of the reviewers here, I am not a practicing astrologer but rather a "lay person" who uses astrology and is conversant in the theory.

Previous reviews have enumerated the merits of this work. I concur with all of them. I knew nothing of traditional/horary astrology and this work certainly gave me a good overview. So intrigued was I that I immediately sought out one of Frawley's students for a reading. For a historical perspective, please see the fascinating book "The Fated Sky" by historian Benson Bobrick. There you will gain an understanding of the power of Traditional Astrology as it has been practiced over the ages and the geniuses who have used and developed it.

Mr. Frawley rightfully (and with derisive humor!) takes modern astrology to task. Much of modern astrology is overladen with pop-psychology and a lot of modern astrologers have projected onto the unfortunate planets the latest in vogue psychobabble to issue from Marin County, California. In regards to this, Terence McKenna once noted that the various schools of psychology sound like hawkers at a medieval faire...each different and each trying to sell his wares. Tainting astrology with such ephemeral waste bastardizes the art.

On the other hand, Frawley appears to be dismissive of ANY new trends in astrology. I am not sure of the value of, say, archetypal astrology whose source of inspiration are the works of CG Jung. However, unlike the pop-psychology/astrology mentioned above, it does have a serious school of thought from which it springs and some rather important intellectuals, such as Richard Tarnas, in its camp. Rather than engage in serious polemics with the archetypal school, Frawley skirts the issue by wisecracks.

The author's attitude towards anything new in astrology can be summed up by the biblical passage: "there's nothing new under the sun". That is indeed true in many ways but that does not mean that our instruments of investigation cannot improve. There is nothing fundamentally new about the physical world; it's remained essentially unchanged for a long time. But that does not mean that we know all there is to know about it. So it is that we learn new things about it through the ever-developing sciences such as geology, chemistry, physics. In the same way, we agree with Frawley that human beings have not fundamentally changed; however we do not know everything there is to know and should continue to deepen our understanding of humans through the scope of new methodologies in additon to long-standing traditional ones.

Mr. Frawley seems to find the discoveries of the outerplanets- Uranus, Neptune, Pluto- as impertinent...after all, there is nothing new under the sun. In my admittedly limited experience, these planets are important from an astrological perspective. I might be wrong. These planets may be inconsequential, but Frawley's retort that "there is nothing new" is unconvincing.

I hope that these criticisms do not overshadow the praises for the book that I have also recorded. Four stars!

Some readers get angry with Frawley because he is not handing them a step by step recipe book on how to do a chart. Well, there are a dozen of those books out there that give you step by step instructions. Go read one of them. Frawley's book is really a sort of apologetic in a lot of ways. He defends "Real" (that is, traditional, or Renaissance, or Christian) astrology. He defends it first from skeptics and then from modern astrology.

If you don't know the difference, "Real" astrology is based on a world view held in the middle ages that the eternal things are "Real" and the life that we live here on this earth is merely the manifestation of the Real in the material world. If you like CS Lewis and have read most of his works, you will find some ideas that Lewis briefly touched upon further elaborated by Frawley. But, in terms of astrology, Real astrology tells you the hard facts, No, you will not be hit by a bus today, or yes, you will be hit by a bus today. You can pin down Real astrology: was the astrologer correct or not correct? You can't do that with modern astrologers, because they are too nebulous, ethereal, and psychological. They will tell you the high side and low side of every planet. And they have scads of aspects to discuss, in which every planet has equal weight with every other planet in the chart. So anything is possible. Real astrology dispenses with all that. It looks at a planet's strength in the chart. It looks at four possible aspects, and it derives an answer. It gives you a definite prediction.

But Frawley barely touches on "How to" in this book. He glosses those concepts quickly. First, he assumes the reader already knows the basics of astrology. What he's doing is arguing for traditional astrology against modern astrology. And he does a very good job. His book is also entertaining to read, very witty. In a lot of ways, it can be used to defend a Creationist view of the world. But don't worry: the Christian Fundamentalists will not recruit an astrologer, even though he has a far better grasp of what they say they believe than they do.

Frawley shows WHY planets are stronger in some houses than in others. He shows WHY they are stronger in some signs than others. He also divides up some of the niceties of distinction between a planet being dignified vs a planet being "in its joy." Read this book if you are serious about the self discipline and education necessary to be a really good astrologer. Read it if you want another opinion on Creationism. If you want to make money, read Liz Greene and buy a printer/copier to enable you to print off lots of templates and reports. John Frawley is really trying to help his reader THINK like an astrologer.

After reading his Horary Textbook, I waited for this book with great pleasure, and finally got time to read it. While the vitriol and ranting is amusing in places, at some point it just becomes boring. Rhetorically speaking, a clear elucidation of traditional techniques would have gone a long way further to support traditional over modern astrology, while instead the author rants at everything from psychology (in toto, as far as I can tell), secularism, the enlightenment, the scientific method, changing mores and norms, and more. There are small nuggets of knowledge buried in the rest, and so I give the book three stars, because I really do think that Frawley knows his stuff and that that stuff is, in general, pretty solid. He indulges his grumpy tendencies in this book, though, and as amusing as I find his sarcasm, it's eventually just grating, even for those of us who agree with his general thesis: viz., that modern astrology has filled up with barnum statements and claptrap and we could productively go back to renaissance astrology for some interesting insights.

This must be the funniest astrology book I've ever read. John Frawley might be arrogant in his assumptions (though is he entirely wrong?), he is certainly very witty as well as knowledgeable about his topic. His spoof chart of Hitler as a nature-loving, sensitive Taurean who has a Libran care for justice had me in stitches. He pulls no punches - he doesn't like magic much either (and I practice magic, so I had to swallow my protests and read on) but he is very detailed in his explanation of traditional astrology and how it works. I was completely new to the subject when I read this book and he won me over. I've since explored other points of view in classical/traditional astrology (including from some practitioners who span both trad and modern astrology), but I often return to Frawley's rigour and clarity - and his wit. Most important of all, he shows, in looking at the essence of planets (the essential dignities), traditional astrology has something that modern astrology, alas, abandoned - and that is a notion of soul, of an essential, spiritual meaning that goes beyond, and deeper, than the analysis of even the greatest psychological astrologers, like Liz Green (someone whose work I enjoy and admire). As seen through the eyes of the ancients, astrology shows the divine both immanent in nature and transcending it - and gives us a glimpse the very soul of the cosmos and its heavenly bodies as they work their strange influences on our planet.

He also made me realise the absurdity of gauging the influence of ever more diminutive bodies, while ignoring the great fixed stars. I also think his view of the modern rulership of planets is correct. While I have observed the influence of Pluto, Neptune and Uranus, I think them unsuited for rulership of signs - and indeed, the analysis of charts where these three are rulers is flawed, IMO. A personal example: I'm a triple Pisces (Sun, Mercury, Saturn); Neptune has NEVER sat easily with me as a ruler of Pisces - it just doesn't suit my character at all: but when I started looking at my chart with Jupiter as the ruler of those three planets in Pisces, it suddenly fell into place. I also found it very interesting to find out that my Mercury was in such a terrible state - it explains many of the challenges I've had in my life in the areas influenced by that planet, both personal and professional, while other planets, as seen through the traditional astrologer's analysis, explain how I've been able to rise to the challenge of my catastrophic Mercury. These are things that had never been analysed in my chart, either by myself (an amateur astrologer) or by a professional modern astrologer, before, in 20 years. While Frawley is not the only traditional astrologer to write about these things, he's one of the clearest and most interesting.

Frawley's book on Horary Astrology is also recommended, it's masterful. No need to fork out thousands of dollars for the course - just practice casting horaries ad nauseam, following his advice! And buy yourself a copy of Lilly, of course (Lilly is available online, actually.)

Frawleys book, called REALY Astrology, is a melting pot of private statements, prejudice and some, but not enough classical knowledge about classical english, mediaval and arabic astrology, in direction of a never existing single origin of Astrology, but Frawley claims this. And forgot dorotheos, Vettius Valens or Firmicus a.s.o. And all the different origins and developments. REALY he believe- or suggested-, Astrology came on earth like a book of revelation, in acient time.

You need an excellent book about the realy different origins, developments and technics since the hellenistic period? Get James h. Holden's HISTORY OF HOROSKOPIC ASTROLOGY; new edited in 2006.

Modesty, a cardinal virtue much recommended by the two Abrahamic religions, Christianity (scarcely a reference to its central doctrine of the trinity in this book) and exoteric Islam (no mention of its inner dimensions found in this book, see e. g. The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought by Sachiko Murata) Mr Frawley claims to be so fond of, is very little practised by him. The author's excessive, occasionally not only rude but vulgar polemics against modern astrology are a boomerang against his purported cause of renaissance English astrology in particular and of traditional astrology in general.

Perhaps, however, Mr Frawley was even more choleric before he studied astrology. Perhaps he feels he does not receive an adequate share of the astrology consultation trade, not surprising if he abuses his clients like he attacks astrologers from astrological schools different from his own. Occasionally entertaining and humorous in light doses, the author's by far overdone polemics become obnoxious and boring as one reads on. Most of Frawley's criticism of 19th and 20th century astrology is indeed warranted but lack of circumspection severely detracts from his book. "C'est le ton qui fait la musique."

Mr Frawley indulges in some of the same incoherence he so eagerly accuses other astrologers of. After explaining that the original horoscopic house system for interpretation was 'whole sign houses', he then states that he uses the renaissance house systems of Regiomontanus and Placidus throughout his book 'because they work'. By representing the astrological charts with equally sized quadrant system houses, the intercepted signs are glossed over and the aspects made difficult to read.

The title of this book should have been "A Real Astrology", not, once again immodestly, "The". Mr Frawley presents only the renaissance English school of Mr William Lilly (Christian Astrology, Books 1 and 2 and Christian Astrology, book 3: An Easie and plaine Method How to judge upon Nativities) with its particularities compared to the majority of Mediaeval astrologers, e. g. use of Ptolemy's bounds rather than the Egyptian bounds and of Ptolemy's calculation of the Point of Fortune. No other "real", id est traditional, periods of astrology like Indian, Hellenistic and Mediaeval with their respective schools until the 14th century CE are presented.

Mr Frawley's repeated insistence on religion in general and on the Abrahamic monotheistic religions of Christianity (unitarian?) and Islam in particular lead one to believe that it perhaps has not yet dawned on him that simple logic indicates the impossibility of a "One" without a "Many", of Fathers without Mothers, of Sons without Daughters, of Spirit without Matter, etc. Frawley places great important on the 9th astrological house whilst ignoring without mention that, in Hellenistic astrology, the 3rd house is the "House of the Goddess". The "God" Mr Frawley mentions so frequently is, when one lists its attributes, in the minds of 99.9 % of believers in the "revealed" religions he esteems, probably equivalent to Jove or to a creative Demiurg. The author does not even attempt to come to grips with the clearly Heathen or Pagan origins of horoscopic astrology, aside from one reference that planetary Angels may be equivalent to Hellenic Divinities.

Some of the content of the book, when the author's spleen seems temporarily empty, e. g. Chapters 4, 5, 10 and 17, is quite good and worth reading but can be found better elsewhere. Fortunately, there are much better books on traditional astrology meanwhile available, for example the excellent non-polemic expositions by Dr. Benjamin Dykes: Introductions to Traditional Astrology and Traditional Astrology for Today: An Introduction, or to Hellenistic astrology by Mr Joseph Crane: Astrological Roots: The Hellenistic Legacy. If one wishes to learn renaissance English astrology, the school favoured by Mr Frawley, the direct study of William Lilly's book mentioned above is by far preferable to "The Real Astrology".

A big part of the book Frawley tells about a legendary stupid modern Astrology, in his opinion. Especelly it's hard to see or to recognize in detail, what the problem is. the modern astrology or the modern astrologers, they are surely an object of hate and never ending stories, in this book. Ok, but must we pay for this? And the so-colled modern Astrology is realy not impalpable, like a bugy, without shape and life.

On the other side, this isn't a serious and sufficiently book about acient astrology or strong foundations or history of western horoskopic astrology. In short sections Frawley tells about several classical astrological elements, in a sight of the classical century of english Astrology, between 1600 and 1700. The author ignores konsequently the different streams in acient time, the different origins - and constitutive hellenistic astrologers.