Relativity of Good and Evil

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Light and darkness. Good and evil. Order and chaos. The reason I love Hellenistic astrology so much is that it describes life as we know it, both “good and bad”.
Prior to finding it, I was desperate to heal, to find an easy solution, an instruction to follow, the way to “wish in the right way” to get what I want, to fix my broken life. In the New Age world, you find abundance of miraculous recipes for enlightened life. That path took me down into a very deep hole - thank you, I had enough. 

I believe that it is not helpful to whitewash our experiences. Most often than not, we come to a reading during challenging times and what we need is to be heard and validated. Astrology can do that by acknowledging true nature of our experiences, by providing insight and offering reflection on both uplifting and challenging parts of our chart.

Hellenistic astrology often gets a bad rap for using the categories of benefic and malefic planets. But isn’t our life a mixture of good and bad and aren’t these categories relevant? Your beloved grandma dies and you inherit a house. We would naturally put a label negative on losing our grandma and a positive one on having a place to live. 

But is it just so black and white? House can become a big burden and we might realize that we are not able to afford a house we inherited. And while we wouldn’t consider grandma’s loss as inherently positive, with the distance, we might be able to see how this event has shifted our life in a positive direction.

It is same with benefic and malefic archetypes. Some planets are bringers of life and growth in our lives while others are bringers of  restriction, inhibition and death. This does not mean that Saturn is “bad” and Jupiter is “good” as I’ve illustrated on the example above.

Good and bad are relative categories and they are intertwined.
There is always a speck of light in the darkness and speck of darkness in the light.
For me, the spiritual practice is not about reaching towards the light trying to become enlightened. Rather it is about acknowledging both light and darkness in my everyday life as true magic happens when you’re suddenly able to see painful experiences of your life as inherently beautiful.


Keep hope alive, keep dreaming.
Petra


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