Internal Planetary Systems
Internal Planetary Systems is inspired by Internal Family Systems and is designed to create space for compassionate self-actualization, using the planets in our astrological birth charts, as our internal parts. The planets describe the condition of our parts on several levels.
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The beginning of Internal Planetary Systems
I created Internal Planetary Systems when I recognized the impeccably aligned parallels between the archetypes and planets of astrology, and the Internal Family Systems therapy model. Astrology is not only, in my opinion, the original parts work, but it also relates beautifully to several other healing techniques including archetypal psychology, and narrative therapy. Archetypal psychology seeks to create self-understanding through explorations of internal archetypes and how they express themselves. And the narrative model challenges standard myths and constructs, seeking to empower the individual in relating to their experience through authoring their own reality with self-compassion and aligned values. Internal Planetary Systems integrates the ancient archetypes of the zodiac, the narratives and myths they enact and pass down through generations, and the parts that articulate different characteristics both empowered and disempowered.
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What is Internal Planetary Systems?
Internal Planetary Systems is inspired by Internal Family Systems and is designed to create space for compassionate self-actualization, using the planets in our astrological birth charts, as our internal parts. The planets describe the condition of our parts on several levels.
First, the planet itself represents an archetype, it is a character that is playing a role on a stage (the house) set with particular scenery (the zodiacal sign). To use another metaphor, The planet is a character or creature, living in a certain landscape (the house) with certain environmental qualities (the sign). Venus, for example, is the goddess of love, beauty, relationships, values, and justice. Internally she represents our romantic expression, our creativity, feminine divinity, pleasure, values, and relational body.
Mars represents our martial faculties; it is the warrior within, or for more gentle folks, the hill we would die on. Mars embodies our desires, our efforts and passions, it is our willingness to bleed for a cause and our determination. It is our vital energetic force, the power that lives within our body, motivates us, and provokes us to action. For the rest of the planets, you’ll have to take my course or do your own exploration.
Second, the location of the planet, the house it is in at the moment of the native’s birth, describes the stage where it enacts its role. The location of the planet indicates the part of the native’s life that experiences a concentration of that particular energy. Themes of this location will be magnified and illuminated. Perhaps the native has several planets in one house, this is called a stellium when it is 3 or more, there they will notice a focus of meaning-making and purposeful growth. The lessons for the native and that particular part of themselves will be most evident in that area of their life.
1st House: the self, identity, the body, style, presentation to the public
2nd House: resources, values, worth
3rd House: the neighborhood, siblings, communication style, ideas
etc. …for all 12 houses
Third, the condition of the planet, the sign where it resides, gives us insight into the resources it has access to and the ways this part expresses itself. The zodiac sign that the planet, the part, resides in at the moment of the native’s birth, is like the scenery on the stage where it plays its part. Some signs offer much support to a particular planet while other signs are recognized as a challenging landscape for that planet to navigate. Of course, challenging realities often make for resilient and resourceful people. Some even say demanding dynamics build character.
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And finally, there is a simple, yet highly effective technique that I use to describe the age we first integrated the part embodied by each planet. It is called the pinball method and it makes operative the degree of the planet. The age we began learning crucial lessons about that planet is illuminated by the degree. We are invited to reflect, meditate, and or journal on the year that corresponds to the degree of each planet to gain awareness of how our relationship to that planet began. Much like Richard Schwartz’s technique recognizes the various ages of each part, the planets are located at certain degrees within each sign of the zodiac and this degree speaks to the age. For a planet located at the 9th degree, the tool becomes, a meditation on the 9th year of life and what that year taught us about the qualities, characteristics, and behaviors of that planet. This allows us the potential to integrate the lessons of each planet by the time we experience our Saturn return, a time defined by lessons of discipline, maturity, intentionally set boundaries, and commitments. The Saturn return occurs by the 29th year, and the degrees, 0 to 29, of each sign ensure we have at least met each planet before our 30th solar return.
How does Internal Planetary Systems work?
Archetypes help us to organize and categorize the characteristics, patterns, and relationships that shape our world. By deepening our relationships to the archetypes and the planets, we can understand the nuances of these cycles and significations. The myths and stories that are embedded in our culture, ourselves, and our ancestry, form who we are and how we relate to the world and the identities we are embodying. Archetypes articulate and embody the “metaphors we live by” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).
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Intentionally cultivating relationships with the planets externally, supports an internal process of relationship building with our complex, internal parts. Exploring the archetypes and the nuanced narratives and themes they portray reinforces the compassion we can offer ourselves as we navigate self-actualization. Even the astronomical cycles, as simple and familiar as the full moon, can offer us immediate relief as we acknowledge a pattern of disturbed sleep on a monthly basis. This knowledge can inform and mobilize our self-awareness and self-care practices affording us a solid foundation on which to heal and transform.
The native is invited to recognize and reflect on each of the planets in their chart, their placements in both house and sign. The degree of each planet offers coordinates to the year that is punctuated by the first integration of that planet and its archetypal significance. Special attention is paid to the planet ruling the chart as I believe it may be best related to as the highest self. The native takes particular inspiration from the constellation on the horizon at the moment of their birth; this is the rising sign or ascendant. The celestial body that governs the rising sign, therefore becomes something of a muse for the native throughout their life. A Sagittarius rising, for example, is ruled by Jupiter and is invited to embrace empowering expressions of the God of Thunder. By asking ourselves, “what would [insert ruling planet here] do?” we can pray to the solar system, offer reverence to our patron god, connect with the archetype that stretches across time and space, and offer ourselves faith and compassion in an uncertain world. It is well-studied that faith offers peace in disturbing times, making astrology a particularly powerful tool of connection and transformation.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
As we practice reflecting and relating to the zodiac and our internal parts, we learn to sustain connection and recognize patterns internally and externally. By watching the orbits of the planets in the sky, we can prepare to meet challenging moments with mindful awareness and celebrate ease and prosperity with reverence and gratitude. We can witness and honor the depths and complexities of the people we are in orbit with, by offering understanding to their expressions of the archetypes they are called to learn from. The lessons we can learn from history become undeniably clear, calling for the presence of mind, body, and spirit in our current time/space so we may transcend historical patterns, learning from the past.
Why is Internal Planetary Systems valuable?
“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.”
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Astrology is a meaning-making system. It articulates thematic areas of transformation, reinforces ancient archetypal narratives, and embodies celestial cycles. By developing awareness and understanding of each of the planets in our chart, how they thrive, and where they are challenged, we can recognize the multitudes within while connecting to the cosmos. We can increase capacity for self-acceptance through an intentional approach to the diverse and complex parts of ourselves. As we cultivate a deeper relationship with the different elements of our internal world, we can connect more purposefully with the time/space we are born into.
Actively participating in the zodiacal journey of the planets in our solar system through observation and self-reflection offers opportunities to live with a sense of wonder and purpose that is fortifying and dynamic. Transformation and healing become as playful as it is purposeful when we connect to our internal world with compassion and a sense of belonging in time and space. This presence, connection, and transformation is what Internal Planetary Systems offers us.
Everything does not Happens for a Reason
Everything does not happen for a reason and why this is not a trauma informed statement. The healing power of meaning making and the logo therapy technique.
I will never accept that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ but as someone who believes in the power of faith, and someone who desires to assert my own sense of free will, I have chosen to believe that I can make meaning from anything.
That is not to say I can make sense of tragedy or justify the unjust, but in an effort to find peace, I can accept that I become stronger through the endurance of the catastrophe.
As someone who has survived sexual assault, I can hardly imagine a way I could be convinced that what happened to me, what happens to more than a third of the women in the world, was reasonable or happened for a reason. Neither am I willing to attach to a victim identity. Instead, I have chosen to make meaning of my experiences. This practice of meaning-making is by no means my own innovation, in fact, I imagine it is as ancient a practice as the development of mythology. Just as myth is the creation of a story, the telling of a tale for the understanding and sense-making of an entire culture, so too is meaning-making, the process of creating a story from the fragmented, chaotic, and seemingly meaningless parts of our inner culture.
Our own narratives are, more often than not, a reflection of the myths of our culture.
The real challenge comes when we attempt to liberate ourselves from the toxic mythologies of our own cultures. The stories of blame and shame seem to punish us just for being born into a world full of dangerous and violent narratives.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, a book I cannot recommend highly enough, Viktor Frankl recounts the atrocities of surviving the Holocaust and explains the therapeutic technique he developed. He refrains from many of the narratives that depict the incredible violence of this genocide, instead focusing on the opportunities for meaning-making that he would develop into the therapeutic technique called logotherapy, the therapy of making meaning. As with all senseless violence, there is absolutely no justification or reasoning that can be used to address the Holocaust, instead, the author makes meaning of who he is and how he became who he was meant to be. Despite the irreconcilable losses and violence that Frankl endured, he was able to shift his perspective from one of victim of circumstance to one of purpose. His purpose? To survive. To endure the impossible, to go on to make meaningful written works, and to fulfill his sense of purpose as a therapist with a greater understanding of traumatic experiences than most. Not only did he live on to create meaningful therapeutic techniques and texts, but Frankl credits his ability to maintain a sense of meaning as the reason he was able to survive torture and enslavement in the Nazi internment camps.
Frankl seems to have created an inner narrative that could sustain him even in the face of the murder of his wife, parents, and all of his family. Not only this, he maintained a sense of purpose and trust in his purpose whether he survived the internment camps or not. He continued to provide medical care and relief to his fellow prisoners even as he was tortured and fell terribly ill himself. In the face of senseless violence, he stayed connected to his own reasons for living, his own meaning of it all. Though there was no reason Viktor Frankl should have faced the devastation he endured, from his own sense of free will and belief, he created meaning and purpose, tools that helped him survive spiritually and literally.
In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté, an infant when he and his mother fled Nazi-occupied Hungary, the renowned physician and author speaks to both the empowering and disempowering qualities of myth. He begins his book with a critique of the modern myth of productivism and the symptoms of ill health we have normalized in the name of work, propped up by certain concerning practices in modern medicine.
He demonstrates the power of myth and how significantly it impacts human behavior and therefore our culture and sense of health and well-being.
Finally, he calls on the power of myth to guide us to more sustainable and regenerative behavior. He points to how, generations ago, people took lessons of moral obligation from mythology, learning how to grow food sustainably and treat one another well from ancient mythological resources. Without regenerative cultural stories to guide us, what meaning do we make of our experience as over-worked and highly traumatized beings, paying handsomely to live in a culture that challenges our health at every turn?
While Nietzsche said “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” he couldn’t have meant that trauma itself makes for stronger stock. Instead, the overcoming of adversity, the growth in spite of violence, and pain is the fire where strength is forged.
No one should have to be so strong as to look assault or any trauma in the face with the determination to go on, yet so many of us are called to this strength training. We face it, hopefully with the support system that reminds us that nothing we have ever done deserves the trauma we have received. The kind of fortitude that we must find within us is our reward granted in the face of a punishing society full of false and toxic narratives.