How Should We Think About the Stars?

My course on astrology and tarot

Photo by Farzad Mohsenvand on Unsplash

When I was little my mother had me completely convinced that the moon—with its great big eyes—was watching us kindly and carefully. When we traveled in the car I remember being shocked to see that the moon always followed us. Maybe this is why I’ve always felt there are someones up there, looking back, when I stare up at the sky. I know it’s not rational, but I’ve never wanted to surrender that magical sensibility. It’s one dimension of the enchanted ecology that keeps my heart beating.

Learning about ancient and indigenous astronomy and astrology (cultural astronomy, as some refer to it today) has been sort of revelatory for me. It’s helped to heal one of those radical splits that modernity cultivated in my undoubtedly very modern body: one that’s divorced our form of life from that of the stars. It’s helped me understand why it is that so many people once believed their loved ones ascended (sometimes in the form of smoke, other times through an underground portal) to the skies after death. The stars have, so often, been a form of kin—ancestors in that more than human wild space. The idea, much more acceptable to modern minds, that we are made of the same material stuff as the stars isn’t all that different really. 

This sort of blended thinking—one that brings together the scientific and the spiritual—is the key habit of thought I offer to my students in my course on religion and science. I’ve tiptoed around the stars, in that class. But I’ve always wanted to spend more time on them, with my students. I know that many of them are into astrology. And these are often the same students who are interested in other occult and esoteric practices, like tarot. I’ve even had a few students ask me to teach a class on this stuff, because they know I’m into it in my down time. But I’ve been been hesitant to do so, mostly because of my imposter syndrome. I’m not a cultural astronomer (like one of my heroes, Anthony Aveni) and I’m not a historian of the occult. 

But the older I get the more I shed my imposter syndrome like so much snakeskin. So I decided to think about how a professor in my position—trained in theology but not a Christian, someone whose own identity and research interests are primarily rooted in enchanted ecologies—would teach a course on practices like astrology and tarot. I’ve been developing the course for more than a year, but was finally able to teach the course for the first time as a May term intensive. I wanted to share some thoughts on the course (as well as some book recommendations!) with you. 

The Course

I ended up focusing primarily on the meaning making practices that people cultivate through astrology and tarot. In my department (an undergraduate department in theological studies) we tend to orient our courses around meaning making—it’s a way for us to preserve continuity with the field of theology, but without restricting our course content to Christianity. For me, thinking both critically and constructively about meaning making practices is one of the ways I try to help my students navigate the bizarre (and often exploitative) free market of spiritual goods that’s being thrown at them. 

We spent the first two weeks of the course thinking about the stars (astrology). We spent time reflecting on the historical development of tension between astrology and astronomy (and how Christianity was implicated in this). We talked about astrology in Upper Paleolithic cave art, as well as astrology in a variety of indigenous and ancient contexts. And we talked about how the New Age movement and depth psychology reshaped astrology. We also spent time talking about contemporary American astrological practices, especially Chani Nicholas’ work (because I happen to love her book and her app). And I was able to host a guest in class: the astrologer Peter Mallozzi, a friend of a friend whose practice is called Shelter of Stars.

One of the big questions I kept asking my students was: how should we think about the stars? My hope, admittedly, was that they might come to appreciate the way that astrology can (if we think about it this way) connect us with the more than human world, rather than simply serving as a fortune telling game that predicts or fixates on our individual destinies.

But another part of the course was re-evaluating the way that we think about games. This part of the course wasn’t planned, and was just one of those lovely learning surprises that my students helped me discover as we waded through the new information together. This conversation unfolded as we started to explore the history of tarot which, as most of you probably know, began as a card came and later evolved into a divinatory practice. We did discuss this practical split in the history of tarot. But I’m also keenly aware of how important games are in general, and to my students in particular. Whether it be athletics, video games, drinking games, or D&D, I know that games play an integral role in their social lives. 

So it occurred to me that I might be able to get more of them invested in our conversations about the tarot if I didn’t create a sharp split between gaming and divination, but instead let connections emerge. I actually think that, for many of my students, both astrology and tarot have a game (or play oriented) function in their lives. They allow students to connect with others, and to experiment with giving their life new forms of meaning. I understand that divination practices have historically been used for power politics. But I don’t actually think this excludes them from also being a form of play, or a game of sorts. Even political games, or forms of play, can be full of rituals that cultivate a sense of belonging and community. One of my students told me that the only time their family gets along is  when they’re playing a game together. That’s a powerful (even political) ritual for connection, I think. 

I don’t know if it was this focus on play and games, or if it was just a magical combination of wonderful student personalities in the room. But whatever the case, students were pretty invested by the time we started to talk about the tarot. My goal had been to help students see how skilled they can each be at interpretation and meaning making (skills that, sadly, I think our education system rewards but doesn’t really cultivate). From the very first day, the cards were a powerful agent in our conversation. We had endless conversations about the symbolism of the cards (we used the Rider Waite Smith deck). Even the most reluctant participants would pitch in with their interpretation of the cards. As one of the student evaluations noted, I even managed to get the frat boys (who might have taken the course as an easy May term unit?) excited about the tarot!

The playfulness of the course was also good for me, and it helped to bring out the better angels of my teaching nature. One day, I was trying to come up with an activity to get students thinking about what the anthropologist Susan Greenwood calls the neurobiology of magical consciousness (a relatively mundane but wonderful form of thinking that can be activated by things like symbolism, imagination, and participation). I decided that we should come up with a class symbol (students chose the eight-pointed star, from the major arcana). I sent them into the woods, for a bit, to gather symbol-building supplies. They came back with sticks, stones, pinecones, flowers, and one student with a butterfly who’d landed on his sleeve. We built our symbol on the ground, and then I blasted some music from my Bluetooth speaker and we had an impromptu dance party around it. I don’t know that everyone experienced full magical consciousness. But most of us felt some prickling intimations, I think. At the very least, it was fun.

Our eight-pointed star.

I hope to teach the class again, although I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to replicate the magical combination of people in the room who made this course so lovely. This was, I think, the best course I’ve taught in many years. 

Some Recommendations

I’ve had a few people ask about the syllabus I used for the course. So I thought I would share some of my best finds. If you, like me, are into tarot and/or astrology on your down time, here are a few books I discovered, and would recommend:

Astrology

Jo Marchant, The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars. Marchant is a science journalist, and I’m often really underwhelmed by the treatment that science journalists give to religious ideas and religious history. But Marchant’s survey of shifts and changes in how humans relate to the stars treats religious history carefully. She’s not quite making the argument that the skies have become totally disenchanted, but she comes close. And she does an excellent job of creating resonance between star-reading practices in the ancient and the modern world. It’s not only about astrology, but it will inevitably shift how you think about both astrology and astronomy. This one got rave reviews from a number of my students; her writing is really engaging, but her work is historically serious. 

Nicholas Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World Religions. Campion is a British historian and cultural astronomer. This book is a great teaching tool, if you’re looking for a way to tie astrology into a course on religion. Don’t worry, he completely troubles the term “religion” and admits that not all of the astrological practices he discusses are easily described as religious. Nevertheless, the book sets out a cross-cultural comparative historical perspective on the stars that’s pretty comprehensive for an undergrad course. But the chapters are mercifully short, and engagingly written! So much so, that if you’re just a nerd who’s into this stuff, and you’re not actually looking for teaching tools, you will probably still like this book. 

Tarot

Charlie Claire Burgess, Radical Tarot: Queer the Cards, Liberate Your Practice, and Create the Future. Far and away, the most loved book I asked students to read for the course was this one. For the queer students in the class, who’ve been drawn to the tarot, Burgess was a kindred spirit who helped them better understand the lure and power of the cards. But all of the students really liked the way that Burgess flipped the meaning of the tarot’s divinatory power: they’re not cards that predict the future, but cards that help you create it. This book includes a framework for understanding the cards, in a broad sense, as well as a guide through the meaning that Burgess gives the major arcana and the suits. If you like to actually read the cards, I would say that this book is a must have. 

Nathan Snaza, Tendings: Feminist Esoterisms and the Abolition of Man. I didn’t actually have access to this book until after the course had begun, so I didn’t use the book in my class. But if you want something higher theory than Burgess’ book, this is for you. Snaza offers an analysis of the resurgence of tarot in feminist and queer spaces, and underscores the importance of understanding the cards as queer and feminist. In conversation with Black feminism, witchcraft, and new materialism, Snaza suggests that queer and feminist occult practices, like tarot, offer a kind of decolonial spirituality that helps us to reimagine a life lived in conversation with the more than human world. It’s a book that’s helped me better understand why (and how) it is that the cards have lured me in.

Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot. If you’re not already aware of this book and you’re into the tarot, it’s certainly worth at least little bit of your time. It’s a monster (almost 700 pages!), but is nevertheless surprisingly readable. It’s sometimes a little too Christian for my particular taste (it’s a book on Christian hermeticism, after all!) The author’s sense of what makes magic sacred is a little too captured by christology. But, nevertheless, it’s a fascinating and (at least for me) helpful take on what might make for magic. And (as this piece in The Other Journal illuminates) it helps to challenge old and reductive assumptions that Christians often make about tarot.

A Little Music

In case you’re on Spotify, I thought I’d also share with you the playlists I created for the class. One I actually used in class (for that dance party I told you about):

The other is just a playlist I created, as I was dreaming up and teaching the course (along with some tracks that students added, after I shared the playlist with them). I’ve learned that what makes Spotify better (actually good), for me, are playlists created according to my own weird algorithm. I like to take a specific topic (typically the subject matter of a course I’m teaching) and find as many songs as possible—ones I actually like!—that mention this topic by name in the title or subject matter. So, for this playlist I tried to pull anything (good) that makes reference to stars, planets, astrological signs, and the major arcana from the tarot. Lots of good stuff here, and also some really great stuff (I discovered Grand Master Flash’s “Scorpio”, for instance, and my life will never be the same.)