I’m going through a spiritual crisis. How can astrology help me?

If you have recently experienced some kind of spiritual crisis and are looking for help understanding and integrating it, this article is for you. I will take you through how working with a trauma informed astrologer can honour the spiritual wisdom of your experience, while situating it within the bigger picture of your life, and your destiny. This can offer reassurance, grounding as well as inspiration.

My work is all about supporting people to navigate life after big, powerful experiences- experiences that we could call transpersonal -because they connect us to something beyond ourselves. It could be anything from a blissful awakening experience to a manic episode to a dark night of the soul- or all three.

So what might be the role of astrology in this process of integration and transformation?

As a practitioner and eternal student of astrology, specifically ancient western astrology, I have found it to be a powerful ally in my own process, and in the lives of friends, peers and people I support.

Here’s a little background on what I mean by ‘ancient, western astrology’ and why it can be such a profound healing tool:

In the ancient world, natal astrology (where the life of an individual is studied) emerged around 500 BCE. It was born from a time in history where a diverse variety of Mediterranean religions, Mystery Schools and philosophical ideas were blossoming, along with advances in mathematics and astronomy.

Ideas about the nature of reality, the soul, divinity and the heavens were shared by Platonic, Pythagorean, Orphic and Hermetic wisdom traditions which included astrology and the zodiac. I share this to highlight something that is perhaps obvious- practiced correctly, astrology was deeply spiritual and was discovered as a way to embody the insights of some of the ancient world’s most well-known and profound thinkers.

For the sages who practiced it, it served as a reminder of their eternal nature amidst the diverse rollercoaster of earthly experiences. My teacher, Adam Elenbaas puts it beautifully:

“Astrology trains our minds to see eternity within the fluctuations of our material lives, especially the ups and downs of our destiny path”.

With this ancient form of divination as an ally, we are able to see the diversity of experiences (including the hard ones) as part of something bigger. This perspective is probably not new to you, but what astrology offers is to see, literally written in the heavens, the archetypal signature of whatever you are grappling with: Troubles with a partner, issues with a child or a parent, a change in financial situation, or, mental, emotional or spiritual sorts of crises and transformations. Trying to remember that whatever each moment brings is part of a larger, divine picture becomes easier with astrology because it offers more detail about that picture, infusing life with meaning, depth and soulfulness in a grounded and pragmatic way.

With spiritual crisis, there can be a sense of being shaken to the core. If you’re reading this, then you know: This is not just the furniture of your life being moved around, like a new place to live, a new job or spouse.

It is like realising the life you thought you had, with all that nice furniture, doesn’t even exist in the way you thought it did.

There’s no going back from this kind of experience and your life will change. This can be both liberating and destabilising; exciting and paralysing; joyful and terrifying.

Without the right support, this is the point where some people go mad- too much has changed too quickly within the psyche. 

Reality is not what I thought. So what the hell is this? Who am I? Am I everything? Am I nothing?

Cue existential crisis and/or psychotic breakdown. This is what happened to me, and I am very thankful to have come back from those extreme edges of experience. But I am also so happy I went, because going to those edges has given me certain perspectives that I couldn’t have gained from any other place.

With the right support, spiritual crisis doesn’t have to go to those extremes, and for some people it just never does. Either way,

the role of astrology in these times of existential upheaval is to validate this turning point as meaningful, important and a part of your destiny path. In other words: there’s nothing wrong.

Spiritual crisis can feel very isolating, like we are the only ones in the world going through it. With astrology, the nature of those isolating experiences is expressed through planetary combinations that speak not just to an individual’s pain and challenge, but to an archetypal domain of reality. This honours the individual’s strife by weaving it into a larger tapestry of valid human experience, reminding us we are not alone. As Adam says,

“To have your pain validated and reflected by the heavens is dignifying”.

 The archetypal, collective nature of planetary signatures also grounds the individual by locating them within something much bigger than just our own personal experience. This can be useful because sometimes spiritual crisis can involve grandiosity and a feeling of Oneness that eclipses the rest of life and the needs of people around us. By reminding ourselves we are just a drop in the vast ocean, as well as the ocean itself, we can rest easy in our humble human life, without squashing the seed of awakening that is emerging through our crisis.

Modern astrology tends to emphasise manifestation and self-empowerment more than the ancients did. This is fine, but what’s valuable about traditional astrology is the recognition of larger forces beyond our control, and the stoic practice of acceptance when difficulty comes our way. There is a humility in this approach that can be a real remedy for the feeling of being ‘all-powerful’ manifesting machines that new age spirituality and/or spiritual crisis can incur. This way of thinking can bring a lovely high and a feeling that ‘we are doing it right’ when things go our way. However it can easily swing the other way into confusion or self-blame when life brings us disappointment, inconvenience, pain or grief.

Another way that astrology can help integrate spiritual crisis is because it describes cycles of time. Every cycle (or transit, as they are known in astrology) has a beginning and an end.

To know where we are at in a difficult cycle can be incredibly reassuring and give us the strength to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

When the experience of spiritual crisis involves deep depression, suicidality or intrusive/ psychotic thoughts, the knowledge that we are in a particularly challenging area of astrological weather can be life saving.

A word of caution though; The use of transits and cycles in astrology, when used incorrectly can do more harm than good. We can even start to blame the planets and wish they’d just leave us alone. This is to misunderstand astrology and to misunderstand life. Life will not leave us alone, however much we wish it would sometimes. Sure, in three months time, that tricky transit will have moved on, but challenging experiences are going to keep coming in some area of life, along with joyful, confusing, intriguing and shocking ones. Our job is to be present to it all as much as we can, moment by moment by moment.

If peak experiences are part of our journey, as beautiful and pleasant as they are, they aren’t meant to be a final refuge. We are not meant to hide out in perfection. The world needs us too much for that.

There can be a sense of failure or disappointment when peak experiences come and then fade away. We might go through a cycle of yearning for a certain experience, attain it, experience it passing away and then feel in a kind of void, seeking another hit as soon as we can. This is the cyclical nature of experience that can grab us whether its money power and success we want, or final enlightenment. The ancient greek word for planet translates to ‘grabber’ which points to our tendency to be ‘grabbed’ by the material world, or whatever transit we are going through.

Again, astrology aims to remind us that all earthly experience- the highs, the lows and everything inbetween is like water rushing through a river bank. If we try to cling, the water stagnates. We all do it, but what’s wonderful about astrology is that as transits come to us again and again we can notice, with curiosity and self compassion, the ways in which we are ‘grabbed’ by material circumstance. Awe and wonder can arise as we remember that this moment, difficult as it mght be, was written in the stars,  helping us to be with life, however it is right now. 

Spiritual crisis contains a seed of potential that can transform our lives from being led by self-centred agendas and demands to expanding beyond self-concern. This shift from the personal to the transpersonal is not about pursuing ideals but about being in service to the whole of life, through the remembrance of who we are. 

A final word if spiritual crisis is bringing you to astrology - it’s very important to choose a trauma informed astrologer with some therapeutic skill and spiritual wisdom. What you’re going through is profound- and deserving of someone who can honour the transformative potential of what to some people might look scary or crazy. Go with who resonates and trust your gut, remember that you are the authority on your own experience and astrology is just a map offering a different perspective.