Astrology’s Higher Octaves

This book illustrates the power of astrology to facilitate emotional healing, to aid the life of couples and families, to guide the development of careers, to promote focus and purpose in daily life. It combines therapeutic astrology, the astrological study of relationships, vocational astrology, archetypal psychology, dream work, and the synthesis of astrology and music. Through detailed examples, readers learn to refine their interpretive skills and to practice astrology as a vital catalyst for both inner work and outer works, a way to achieve integration.

Influenced by Jung’s interests in astrology and dream analysis, the author presents a potent technique combining astrology and dreams, where awareness of parallels and synchronicities between dream imagery and planetary symbolism amplifies the truthful messages both convey, showing clear steps forward for transformations at crucial transitions. He illustrates how vocational astrology, informed by career counseling theory, helps us choose optimal occupational paths and fosters strategic timing and steady accomplishment in the realm of work.

Readers also learn the method of diurnal astrology, which enhances the enjoyment of daily tasks and activities, sharpens our sense of purpose, and aids effective time management.

Reviews 

There’s no finer teacher than years of experience helping flesh-and-blood human beings navigate their tangled lives. Greg Bogart’s latest book is steeped in the wisdom he has gained working day-to-day in the astrological trenches. To my ears, there is not a false note in these pages, and readers will find many fresh ideas and perspectives capable of passing the fierce tests of the counseling room. Once again, Greg Bogart has given working astrologers a treasure.
• Steven Forrest, Author of The Inner Sky

Greg Bogart’s wonderful new book gracefully opens the door to an understanding of higher frequency astrology. Viewing the horoscope as a journey of growth potential—instead of fatalistic determinism—moves the reader toward inner wisdom and empowerment. As a therapeutic astrologer, I particularly appreciate Greg’s perspective—that the planetary cycles (transits and solar arcs) affecting the natal chart offer opportunities for powerful personal development. The rhythmic movement of the planets helps us to achieve our life purpose—to refine and polish the soul. And his chapter connecting astrology to music is brilliant! I’ve often experienced astrology as musical chord progression and tonal discord yearning for resolution. Greg invites us to integrate all of our senses and resonate with the horoscope, and we’re indeed led to a higher octave of experience and understanding. I have high praise and deep respect for this book, so mindfully written and beautifully communicated, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the fine art and genuine craft of astrology.
• Kathy Rose, Roseastrology.com

Combining spiritual psychology, astrology, yoga philosophies, and conscious dreamwork, this book is conversational and personal—not another astrological cookbook. I picked up unique gems of interpretation in this enjoyable read, geared toward professional astrologers yet suitable for all serious students of the craft. The final section on astrology and music is particularly fresh and inspirational. 
• Kay Taylor, Author of Soul Path Way 

Greg’s pioneering work in the integration of astrology and psychotherapy is a huge support and inspiration to those of us on this path.  Here Greg speaks with the voice of a Wise Elder.   
• Andrea Conlon, M.S.W., Astrologer and Psychotherapist 

Greg Bogart’s masterful understanding of archetypes, dreamwork, and the power of sound offer a unique window into how astrology can help awaken and transform consciousness. Through sharing personal experiences as well as many examples from his client work, he eloquently illustrates how astrology is an invaluable tool in emotional healing, vocational guidance, and a method of enriching all areas of daily life. The breadth, depth, and originality of Greg’s insights in Astrology’s Higher Octaves will be valuable to both seasoned professionals as well as beginners interested in a very grounded, yet deeply spiritual approach to astrology. 
• Stephanie Austin, M.A., Ecoastrology.com 

Greg Bogart has provided the counseling astrologer a roadmap for sharing the practical and spiritual message of the planets to help clients make decisions in tune with their core values. He shows how astrological patterns shape each person’s path forward, transforming everyday events into an evolution of consciousness.
• Carol Tebbs, former President of Kepler College

Greg Bogart has written a book that’s bound to become a classic in our field.  Some astrology books are instructive, some fun to read; “Astrology’s Higher Octaves” is both.  Without reservation, I recommend it to all of my colleagues. It will be on my reading list for my correspondence school. Greg’s way of explaining the techniques he uses is simple; the case studies concisely illustrate his points. He weaves together therapy, astrology, and musical cosmology in a refreshing way. It’s one of those very few astrology books worth more than a single reading.  
• Bob Mulligan, Author of Between Astrologers and Clients

Written by one of the most experienced astrologers, authors, and psychotherapists today, The Astrology’s High Octaves is a masterful and much needed compendium of the therapeutic uses of astrology.  For the psychotherapist and astrological counselor alike, it describes how astrological archetypes can open up paths for healing.  Dr. Bogart illustrates how clients can participate with their charts by yielding to the meanings that arise synchronistically in planetary symbols and in life.  Clients can then attune to the presiding energies and make choices for their own betterment. The psyche of the client and the astrological symbols collaborate in the healing process and attain a kind of Dao of astrology.   
• Gisele Terry, Marriage and Family Therapist, former President of International Society for Astrological Research

This book provides a multi-layered approach to astrology as a tool to understand and evolve the human psyche. It addresses the astrology of emotional healing and therapy, relationships, dream analysis, vocational orientation, and then sound and harmonies, weaving these components into a holistic vision. Author Greg Bogart details each of these layers using examples of public figures, clients, and his own life anecdotes, emphasizing practical application of this higher knowledge. Greg’s eloquence makes this a truly captivating and insightful read.
• Maurice Fernandez, President, The Organization for Professional Astrology

With grace and wisdom, Greg Bogart passes on his knowledge of how to use astrology with clients and for self-growth. This is a manual for the next generation of astrologers, but even the most experienced practitioners will find new ideas as the text builds to a crescendo with the chapter on music and astrology.
• Arlan Wise, Vice President, The Organization for Professional Astrology 

With the reemergence of technique-driven, formulaic systems in our field, it is more important than ever that we consultant astrologers have a person-centred, therapeutic approach to horoscope interpretation. In order to help others, we must know how to articulate the birth chart and be in dialogue with clients. In this masterful, illuminating book, Greg Bogart guides the reader with compassion, authority and wisdom towards these important goals. In particular, his work synthesising astrology with career counseling theory demonstrates how we can use astrology to navigate career cycles and professional crises, and to express our talents while accomplishing our inner calling in the outer world.
• Frank Clifford, Principal of the London School of Astrology

It’s a great thing when a book is both interesting and fun, and this one is certainly both.

• Armand Diaz, PhD., review from Astrology News Service

I want to make sure you all know about Greg Bogart’s new and brilliant book. Greg, in his accessible authentic way, weaves his years of experience as an astrologer, psychotherapist and spiritual practitioner into this jewel of a book. Demonstrating many tools we can apply, he is practical, philosophical, expansive and grounded.

As he has in other books, but brought to an even higher level here, Greg integrates case studies, autobiographical material, and astrological and psychological technique, emphasizing work with different astrological cycles.

A master dream worker, he melds this with his clinical and astrological work. As a musician, he ends with a wonderful chapter on musical principles and astrology—describing how both astrology and music are connected in our journeys of self-transformation.  This book truly takes us on a microcosmic and macrocosmic journey. Thanks Greg!

• Sara Diamond, PhD, JD, San Francisco, CA

A book review by Sara Diamond of Greg Bogart’s newest book

Astrology’s Higher Octaves: New Dimensions of a Healing (Ibis Press) is Greg Bogart’s distillation of his career of 40+ years. Well-known as a therapeutic astrologer, he is also a scholar, professor, prolific author, householder yogi, and musician. In client work, he uses Jungian-style dream interpretation, career counseling techniques, and psychotherapy along with modern astrology.

Published in 2020 at the Jupiter–Saturn–Pluto conjunction, the book’s chapters are based on presentations Bogart has given for various astrological organizations, accompanied with ample charts. The topics flow smoothly from one to the next, giving a full picture of Bogart’s range of practice.

He opens with a chapter on therapeutic astrology, an approach he thinks is best suited for astrologers who are also trained mental health professionals. Because of the variety in how people respond to planetary placements, he doesn’t use astrology to diagnose specific psychological conditions. Instead, he sees therapeutic astrology as a form of yoga, “a practice of self-unification through awareness of time and life cycles.” He doesn’t “read” a chart for a client, but rather has a dialogue with them. He might ask them to describe how they express Mars in a particular house, or what happened at a time when an outer planet transited their Sun. He focuses a lot on Saturn, both natally and by transit, helping people to see how their lives have matured and pivoted during these critical phases.

There’s also a chapter on correlating dream material with planetary transits. Not only are astrology and dreams both governed by the principle of synchronicity, but all “astrological techniques assess the forces coalescing in a given moment, and how they visibly manifest in experiences resonant with the archetypal symbolism of the planets.” He tells a story of a night when he was walking his dog Kona and fumbling for his keys. Kona suddenly darted across the street and bit another dog in a vivid display of Aries aggression and predator-versus-prey instinct — right as the Full Moon in Aries conjoined Uranus.

Bogart also shares his technique, called Simplified Diurnal Astrology, of watching astrological archetypes manifest in daily life occurrences. He looks at the chart of a given moment, and then plans his next action based on transiting planets near angles and lunar aspects. It’s not horary — asking a specific question at a specific moment — but more like electional astrology, as “attunement to the daily motion and aspects of planets trains us to wait for an auspicious time for certain experiences, or to initiate certain actions.” There are more, and less, opportune moments to make a social phone call, or to rest, or to avoid an argument. It is “the astrology of the present time and how to examine its potentials.” It is a practice of being here now.

Bogart’s astrology is imminently practical. One of the things I appreciate most about this book is how it moves from the sublime to the worldly and back to the sublime again.

In his chapter on vocational astrology, Bogart shows how he helps clients “awaken the powers of each planet.” He credits the work of well-known vocational astrologers including Charles Lunz, Noel, Tyl, Joanne Wickenburg, Judith Hill, and Faye Cossar Blake. A non-astrological career counselor will have clients take assessment tests and report on career-relevant “traits and factors” they are consciously aware of. Vocational astrology takes a different approach because it’s not just about self-reporting. In one of Bogart’s examples, a young woman came to him wanting help in seeking a job. Based on the Sun–Venus–Mars conjunction in Cancer in the fourth house of her chart, he suggested that she look into the fields of property and hotel management, which she did. Over a 30-year career, she moved from a job as a desk clerk to becoming the vice president of a major hotel chain. Would she have discovered her calling without astrologically-informed career counseling? Maybe not.

The book is also a bit of a memoir, as Bogart weaves in pieces of his astrological career. In 1978, when he was 20 years old, an astrologer he had met at his guru’s ashram in India explained to him that with his natal Jupiter–North Node conjunction, he’d eventually become “a teacher, a lecturer, a counselor and advisor.” With natal Saturn in Sagittarius, he has worked in book and magazine publishing, proofreading, and in academia. (I’m about the same age as Bogart, with the same outer planet and nodal placements, and have had a similar career.)

Bogart wrote the book’s final chapter during his recent progressed Balsamic Moon phase, “a period of internal closure, ending, and completion of a long 30-year cycle.” Throughout the book, he emphasizes how he uses astrology in practical ways to help himself and others be more productive in daily life. “But now,” he writes, “I want to go in a different direction, because things are changing for me.” The chapter, “Sound of the Cosmos,” hints at where his astrological focus may be headed, i.e., how astrology and music are related disciplines, both about time and rhythm. “Astrology,” he writes, “aids our intelligent movement through time, in the world of work and human relations, but it’s also about mysteries, beauty, and subtle, vibrational matters that I intuit have something to do with the music of the cosmos.” In this chapter, his writing takes on a lyrical tone.

While astrology may serve each person’s individuation processes, or help get one’s material life in order, or resolve psychological and interpersonal dilemmas, its purpose has a “higher octave” as well. “Astrologers who develop themselves in accordance with the natal chart sound rich, chordal tones of personality, and thus become distinctive individuals,” writes Bogart. Personality, when “refined and unified by astrology evolves into a great song.” This is astrology as a transpersonal yoga, a way of attuning oneself to what many mystics experience as an inner sound, that which hums ineffably like the planets do, eternal and beyond our unique individuality. “Wise astrologers,” Bogart concludes, “choose how to sound a tone in the universe — to be an emanating source, a creator.”

Astrology’s Higher Octaves is a book for every astrologer’s shelf. It’s the kind of book that a beginning astrologer will find inspiring because it’s a model for how to integrate astrology with other professional practices. Experienced astrologers will enjoy reading it as well, because it shows how an esteemed colleague has built a successful career and personal life with astrology as a key note.

Sara R. Diamond, Ph.D., J.D., has practiced law in the San Francisco Bay area for 19 years. Before that, she was a University of California, Berkeley-trained sociologist and author of four books about US politics. She is currently completing Astrology University’s four-year certification program.

 

 

Excerpts from Astrology’s Higher Octaves

Preface
As esoteric as it seems to some people, astrology is actually very down-to-earth—a discipline blending mysticism and pragmatism for the enhancement of life. Intelligent astrologers use this knowledge to get their lives organized, to flow through life gracefully and skillfully, meeting goals and coping with adversities, growing in consciousness through each challenge. The imaginal, the strategic, and the magical converge as we, the conscious astrologer, become established in the bindu, the point of consciousness, seat of visualization and manifestation.

As much as I resisted the very idea of the subject at first, the doctrines, worldview, and practices of astrology have been a positive, beautiful influence in my life. This knowledge has been the guiding pole star steering me through many changes and events, shaping my vision and affecting me on many levels, in different domains. Now, after almost 40 years as a practitioner, I’m taking this opportunity to describe several different ways I apply astrology in my life and in my work as a counselor. In this book I describe how astrology enhances the enjoyment of daily activities, facilitates emotional healing and transformative life review, synchronizes with the archetypal symbolism and vivid messages of dreams, guides the development of careers, and teaches us to discover and express the distinctive vibrational tones and music of the individual personality. I also touch on the connection of astrology with the broader tradition of esotericism and its emphasis on transformation through the practice of creative imagination.

I have always found that astrology fosters skillfulness and accomplishment. Awareness of each day’s transiting planets helps guide my attention to the full spectrum of everyday tasks with a sharpened sense of purpose and meaning. This idea is the basis for the technique of Diurnal Astrology, a method that bolsters our practical intelligence and efficiency in daily life, the topic of Chapter 4.

Astrology is a beacon to me in the relational sphere, shedding light on patterns of relating, the phases and seasons of relationships, the cyclical changing moods, and the planetary laws of attraction that are linked to the cycles of Venus and Mars. Knowledge of my astrological profile and traits, and of current transits, along with consideration of the natal traits and current challenges of a spouse, friend, parent, or child—all of this creates a basis for more emotionally fulfilling and more committed relationships with others. I spelled this out in Planets in Therapy, Part IV, on the topic of Synastry and Conscious Relationships, and throughout this present volume we’ll study examples of how astrological work can aid an individual’s or a couple’s understanding of relational experiences and patterns of behavior. We learn how relationships have been damaged; we envision ways they might be repaired.

Knowledge of astrology is also immensely helpful in the realm of work and career development, informing us about optimal career paths and the meaning our work has for us at different life stages; it provides wise perspective on the pressures and stresses most people experience regarding work and employment. Chapter 5 describes my approach to the practice of vocational astrology to skillfully guide oneself and others in the world of work. This is one of the key areas of our societal life where the services of astrologers can be most impactful and will probably be in greatest future demand. I show how vocational astrology is enhanced through knowledge of several career counseling theories, discuss how astrology aids us through periods of career crisis, and correlate planetary symbols with the renowned John Holland Typology of six vocational types.

My own occupational path has involved creating a hybrid identity as a professional astrologer and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist—a therapeutic astrologer and an astrologically informed psychotherapist. In two earlier books, Therapeutic Astrology and Planets in Therapy, I described how to integrate analysis of the birth chart and transits to give focus to the counseling process and to gain refined understanding of personality characteristics, key life themes, and highly charged complexes. This present work seeks to further this synthesis with additional examples and some new directions. Encapsulating some key features and assumptions of therapeutic astrology, emphasizing a developmental and process-oriented approach, I describe several characteristics of transformative chart interpretation and invite readers to apply these principles in their own astrological studies and practice.

Many people have a preconceived image of astrology as a system of static personality descriptions and typing of persons based on sun signs. But to me, astrology never feels static. Unexpected things happen in sessions of astrological process work where we contemplate the birth chart and transits to explore feelings and memories, imagine desired behavioral and attitudinal changes, and script out the anticipated timing. The revelation of meanings is spontaneous and often startling.

One avenue I’ve discovered for dynamic process work involves the union of astrology and dream analysis. As a psychotherapist I’m very interested in dreams and their healing messages, and I’ve authored two books on Jungian dreamwork as a treatment modality.[i] What I find especially efficacious is to identify links between dream symbols and planetary symbols and thereby step into the accelerating evolutionary force field of various archetypes—patterns of change and transformation. Combining astrology and dream interpretation tunes us into what is happening within the unconscious mind, which is a place where change originates. Chapter 3 explores how dream images and narratives reflect astrological symbolism, and how this can irradiate dreams with spiritual meanings. Interpreting the symbolism of astrology and dreams together and relating these to our current situation brings the transformative archetypes into life, into the body. Several examples will demonstrate that astrological dreamwork holds great promise as a component of the spiritual psychotherapy of the future.

Later, I assert that not only does astrology aid us in managing the practical business of life, work, and relationships, it’s also a practice that refines us vibrationally in a manner analogous to music. The final chapter on Sound of the Cosmos: Astrology and Music in the Evolution of Consciousness stems from my lifelong growth as a musician—an interest that reflects my natal Venus conjunct Sun and Moon, Venus square Neptune, and Venus trine Ascendant. I show how astrology is enhanced through drawing analogies to music, and that our evolution has discernible pulse, melodies, harmonies, and dissonance. This chapter is a meditation on the union of two of our most uplifting and rejuvenating human activities.

The tantric thread that runs through these variegated aspects of astrological practice is that in all of these realms of work, daily life, and in dream narratives, we experience the living archetype manifest in time. Archetypes are the key structures of human consciousness—for example, the hero’s journey; they are luminous fibers woven into the fabric of time. Astrology shows that the manifestation of archetypes has predictable organization and identifiable timing. We experience how archetypes, recurrent patterns of experience and behavior, identified by Jung, are present in the here and now, pointing the way, showing us the shape transformation wants to take. Astrologers observe and experience the living archetypes constantly emerging in daily occurrences, in synchronicities and dreams. I believe the astrological study of archetypes manifesting in time is a master key to worldly success and spiritual enlightenment. [ii]

This book describes several facets of my approach to practicing this sacred art—an approach that suits my personality and interests, my Uranian quirks and idiosyncracies. I’ve completed this work while transiting Uranus is opposite my natal Jupiter in the 1^st house, so I find myself writing at times in the first person, describing what I personally believe, what is true for me. I present my vision of astrology—a therapeutic healing art, a means of enhanced human relationships; a tool for focused, effective career counseling; a daily teacher of impeccability in the course and conduct of life; a path of self-transformation and a spiritual training that refines our internal organization, so the personality expresses distinctive tones. I seek to unify the practical, vocational, depth psychological, and vibrational aspects of astrology’s prismatic wisdom, sounding tones encompassing multiple octaves. 

[i] G. Bogart, Dreamwork and Self-Healing (London: Routledge, 2009); and Dreamwork in Holistic Psychotherapy of Depression (London: Routledge, 2017).

[ii] This topic is explored in G. Bogart, Astrology and Spiritual Awakening (2^nd edition) (Tempe, AZ: AFA Books, 2014).