Modern Astrology

Definition

Modern astrology is the strand of Western astrology that took shape from the late nineteenth century onward. What marks it out: it shifted away from predicting events and toward reading psychology and character; it folded the planets discovered beyond Saturn (Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846, Pluto in 1930) into the birth-chart toolkit; and it carried Sun-sign astrology into the wider public through early twentieth-century newspapers and magazines.

In Tradition

Astrologers today see this school as built up in layers: the Theosophy-influenced popular work of Alan Leo (1860–1917); Dane Rudhyar's humanistic synthesis (*The Astrology of Personality*, 1936); the Centre for Psychological Astrology line founded by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas in London in 1983; the archetypal-cosmological school of Richard Tarnas; and the evolutionary line of Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green. Each strand leans toward self-development and finding meaning rather than treating events as fixed fate.

In Practice

If you work in the modern idiom, you tend to read for psychological depth rather than to predict events. You use the outer planets to mark generational and deep archetypal themes, draw on Jungian vocabulary — anima and animus, the shadow, individuation, the complex — alongside the planetary symbols, and read the chart as a map of growth rather than a fixed forecast. The modern entry-points include Rudhyar, Arroyo, Greene, Sasportas, Hand, Tarnas, Forrest, Tompkins, and Brady.

Historical Origin

Alan Leo's *Esoteric Astrology* and the *Astrologer's Magazine* circulated through Theosophical channels in the early 1900s; Rudhyar's *The Astrology of Personality* (1936) drew the humanistic reframing together using Jungian vocabulary. Greene and Sasportas founded the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London in 1983; Clare Martin's *Mapping the Psyche* extends the same line. Holden treats the modern school as a distinct twentieth-century departure, documented through both periodical and book-length sources.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading