Ari Moshe is a renowned spiritual teacher and astrologer who brings a unique and transformative approach to personal growth and self-discovery. With a deep understanding of astrology and a profound commitment to spiritual awakening, Ari guides individuals on a journey of inner exploration and soul evolution.
How did you first become interested in astrology as a spiritual study, and how has it influenced your own soul evolution?
I developed an interest in astrology as a spiritual study during different phases of my life. One powerful experience was when I was a teenager and realized that astrology held genuine significance. Although I didn’t fully grasp its potential or what it could reveal, the mere acknowledgment of astrology’s authentic reality prompted profound questions within me. This defining moment happened when I was in high school, in an orthodox Yeshiva, where we learned in Talmud class that the “Jews are above the stars” – meaning, there’s a common view in orthodoxy that astrology doesn’t hold power over the Jewish people in the same way it does for the other nations. That teaching was profound for me, not so much because of the whole idea of whether it “works” for Jews or not, but because it validated that the ancient rabbi’s believed astrology was real. It’s like telling your child, “Don’t worry, the boogie man won’t hurt you because the boogie man doesn’t hurt little kids”. Wait, this means the boogie man actually exists? Please tell me more!
During my early twenties, as I delved deeper into astrology and began reading astrology books and online sources, I became somewhat disheartened by much of what I was reading. Most teachings failed to address astrology from a spiritual perspective in a way that resonated with my blossoming spiritual awareness. I recognized myself as a soul, knowing that who I am encompasses more than just my personality, interests, likes, dislikes, and challenges.
The sources I encountered for studying astrology just didn’t run deep enough for me. That’s when I came across Evolutionary Astrology (EA), and it instantly clicked with me. Jeff Green’s words spoke directly to how the astrological chart reflects our soul’s intentions for growth in this lifetime. This resonated deeply within as it went beyond mere personality; illuminating everything in our lives as profoundly relevant to our ongoing soul-growth and awakening.
Could you share some insights from the lineage of Evolutionary Astrology as taught by Jeffrey Wolf Green and how it continues to shape your teachings?
The core teaching of Evolutionary Astrology emphasizes that the total circumstantial reality of each soul’s life is absolutely relevant to the soul’s evolutionary needs. While the curriculum of life can be immensely challenging at times, and there may be aspects we don’t comprehend in the present moment, everything holds significance for the soul’s growth.
One of the valuable insights gained from practicing astrology through the lens of EA is the way it helps us to observe our life experiences objectively. We can ask the question, “Why did this happen?” Or, “Why am I experiencing this?” Not from a place of blame, shame, or guilt, but as a way of seeking insight that truly serves to lead us back to ourselves into deeper soul-level self-awareness. In this way, we can uncover meaning and evolutionary potential within every life experience. This is infinitely valuable.
The EA approach involves specific technique/ methodology that revolves around the inherent relationship between the soul and the ego structure. The soul creates the ego structure/personality as a vehicle for its evolutionary purpose. In other words, the total human experience is the vehicle through which the soul plays out its evolutionary intentions. This reference point for interpreting my human experience continues to help me to rise above the seeming immediacy of life’s challenges and cultivate deeper soul-awareness. What’s really going on WITHIN me? How can I grow from this? Everything points back to the soul.
How do you integrate the wisdom teachings of A Course in Miracles into your approach to astrology? How do these two disciplines complement each other?
The intersection between A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and my practice of Evolutionary Astrology is incredibly enriching and meaningful to me. A Course in Miracles, on its own, is a comprehensive teaching that can be applied to every aspect of life. It addresses the essence of forgiveness, healing, and correcting the errors in our thinking.
The course teaches us to utilize time and this life experience with a singular focus on forgiveness and healing. It trains us to orient our minds towards miracles, which involves offering every experience, stress, problem, or challenge for reinterpretation and guidance from the Source beyond our own limited thinking. Prayer and emptying our minds of personal convictions play a significant role in this process, allowing for the Truth to guide our lives and lead the way. Miracles relate to the idea that from the perspective of love, anything is possible, and every experience can be used for healing purposes, no matter how difficult it seems to be. Love is the source of all miracles.
In this sense, a core teaching in ACIM is that there is no order of difficulty in miracles just as much as there is no order of difficulty in problems. All problems reflect the same mistake in our thinking: the belief in separation, and all healing reflects the same correction: a return to the Truth, to unity. This is a very powerful non-dual perspective! It invites a total reorientation to the world that we think exists.
When I bring this understanding to Evolutionary Astrology, it beautifully expands upon and accentuates the teachings, allowing for a more profound and helpful integration.
EA teaches that all experiences point back to the soul’s evolutionary intentions. What does that actually mean? Evolution of the soul points to the ongoing process of generating and exhausting desires until the only remaining desire remaining within the soul is the desire to reunite with the Source. The world that we see and experience is a reflection of our inner desires, that which brought us into this world of experience in the first place. In this sense, we take everything that we think is “out there” and use it as a directive to look within, to become more honest with ourselves, and take full responsibility for our inner reality. Jeff Green often emphasizes that the soul is 100% responsible for the total of its life circumstances. And similarly, workbook lesson 304 from ACIM teaches, “perception is a mirror, not a fact”.
The main difference between EA and ACIM is of course EA is a psychological tool as well as a philosophical framework. This tool provides a means for identifying and understanding the specific nature of the soul’s evolutionary path. It’s very individualized according to each soul’s journey, each natal chart. ACIM is a set of teachings and philosophical framework that regards all evolutionary paths as essentially the same, regardless of the form of the curriculum. The 365 lessons of the course, which one can practice throughout the year, is a mind training course with the sole aim of teaching us to become miracle-minded; to heal our perception of separation. This is applied indiscriminately, in any and all areas of life experience. For this reason, the teachings of the course can be applied within any modality, practice or study.
With all that being said, it might be fun to provide an example of how the teachings of ACIM support the practice of EA in a specific way. Let’s look at Saturn. Saturn corresponds to the boundaries of our conscious awareness, encompassing everything conditioned, formed, and related to time and space. It represents the limitations and parameters of our physical incarnation in total. Working with Saturn involves cultivating mastery and agency within these temporal conditions. From an EA point of view, Saturn represents the template that the soul creates from which it will work out it’s evolutionary reasons for being here. Thus, we can understand Saturn as simply defining the parameters of the Earth school within which we are learning and working through our desires.
Another important dimension to working with Saturn is the archetype of alignment and ethics. Alignment and ethics correspond to what is supportive for functioning here in a good way. We can call that “right” whereas “wrong” is simply “not right”. For example, following traffic laws, getting adequate sleep before a big test, eating well, protecting your kids from running across the street etc. When we act not in alignment, there are natural time-space consequences that manifest which then impose specific limitations on our life experience. We get a traffic ticket, or worse, we get into a car accident. All of this then serves the purpose to help teach us right alignment. When I act this way, my life tends to not function very well.
An issue with Saturn however is when acting out of alignment becomes associated with shame. Instead of “I made a mistake, here’s what I can learn from it” one thinks, “I am a mistake, I am wrong in my being. I am deserving of blame or punishment”. This shame can be directed towards oneself just as much as it can seem to be projected outwards. Same thing. Shame itself is an obstacle to actually learning from experience. It keeps oneself enslaved in a made up jail of judgment.
In the same way, Saturn can reflect the way in which an individual is living their entire life, raising a family, earning money, living responsibly as a well-respected member of society – all because somewhere deep inside they are trying to gain the approval of their father, or mother, or some deeply internalized idea of a judging god. One might find themselves living their whole life working in order to gain the approval and recognition of others. The structural reality of the life they created might reflect a good-looking form, a life of doing the “right thing” but without any joy or meaning on the inside and a deep sensitivity to the perceived judgments of the outer world. It’s a harsh and unloving life.
The Saturn work for all of us means taking responsibility for our lessons of alignment, but also cultivating our own self-authority, making our own responsible decisions in life, knowing that there are no external authority figures judging us for how good or bad we are. It’s all inside.
Applying the teachings of ACIM to this Saturn dynamic, we are invited to look deeply at all of our assumptions and convictions about this world and what the world is for. We loosen the world from all we thought it was, and in that loosening are all of our strong ego fixations, our beliefs of who we are, what we need to be, and what the world needs to be for us.
ACIM teaches, “The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use it constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning – ACIM T-1.I.15:1-4
This perspective beautifully adds more spiritual depth and insight into my understanding of Saturn from an EA point of view. The limitations and parameters that come with Saturn are not ultimate rules or fixed constraints; they are temporary conditions designed for our learning. The purpose of all things within time and space, including the challenges and limitations we face, is to use them for the purposes of our healing. When we fail in our learning it just means we are still learning and will try again. There’s no harshness or punishment involved at all. There’s no space for shame or blame in this perspective. This perspective shifts the focus away from materialism or from attaching significance solely to physical achievements.
ACIM teaches that we all have free will and can choose to practice using time in helpful ways. It is up to us how we choose to discipline our minds, and time will repeat itself endlessly for as long as it is helpful for our learning. Thinking of time in this way is a beautiful reframe of Saturn!
I’ll end this piece with one more quote, from the Manual for Teachers, which is the 3rd and final book of a Course in Miracles. “As the course emphasizes, you are not free to choose the curriculum or even the form in which you will learn it. You are free, however, to decide when you want to learn it. And as you accept it, it is already learned.”
Your love for music is an integral part of your life and work. How does music contribute to the exploration and understanding of astrology and spirituality?
I’ve taken some time to reflect on this question because I’m actually very curious about this myself.
Music absolutely does contribute to my understanding of astrology and spirituality, but it’s not as if I pick up a guitar and then suddenly, I have an insight about Uranus. It’s more like I pick up a guitar, and I allow myself to enter into a different vibrational space. In this space I feel more embodied, present, and connected to my inner being; a more awake, confident, creative, devotional and sovereign expression of who I am as a soul. I think this vibrational state is one with realization. I might understand something new about Uranus because I am having a more pure direct experience with my own being, which is one with Reality. Another way of saying that is, all insights come from the present moment because that is where everything is, and music and son can be a direct entry point into the present moment.
I also think more broadly that music and song helps me to nurture more of my whole being and live more from my heart and soul. In that sense, creative and devotional musical experience nourishes and complements my intellectual work. All the communicating and teaching work I do, while it can be inspiring and devotional in its own right, is also highly intellectual. Music balances that out and keeps me connected with the greater dimension of my being. I also really enjoy spontaneously weaving song into my astrology teaching. A lot of my songs are simple prayers or meditations on the Truth. This is helpful in integrating/ connecting more deeply to the teachings themselves.
Lastly, there is one more thing I’d like to share that is also somewhat of a mystery to me. Often in a session I will do sound work. The sound work is a way of me shifting vibrational states and accessing a clearer vision of the soul whom I am working with. It helps me to sense the soul’s reality beyond my ordinary conditioned thinking. Sound vibration is often a way that I find myself naturally landing upon or dropping into, a clear seeing of the soul dynamics reflected in the natal chart – more so because I’m connecting more with the soul itself, not the representation of it. I’m intrigued by this, have some insights about it, but mostly just want to continue to experience and discover it.
Could you elaborate on the concept of astrology as a tool for soul evolution? How can individuals use astrology to gain deeper self-awareness and navigate their spiritual journeys?
Using astrology as a tool for soul evolution leads us back to a fundamental question: What is it that we truly desire? When we have a genuine longing to understand ourselves and are willing to honestly examine our life experiences, even the challenging ones, astrology can serve as a valuable tool for illumination. It provides a framework to view everything from an impersonal perspective, supporting us to step back from the immediate intensity of our experiences and objectify them. By employing astrology in this way, we gain a broader understanding of what is unfolding on a soul level and how we can engage with our life in a helpful way.
When it comes to actually studying and learning how to interpret charts in this kind of way, that just takes a natural combination of devoted practice, lots of exposure to looking at charts, and the cultivation of life wisdom woven through it all. Everything that we experience is fodder for our learning, and in turn provides ever-deepening layers of insight and understanding of astrology as a tool for soul-evolution.
Most of all, no matter how much or how little we think we “know”, if our knowledge is used for love, any and all knowledge is helpful. I also believe that insight and comprehension come more quickly through the demonstration of knowledge; witnessing and experiencing the actual reality of what one is learning. In this sense, I think someone just beginning their astrological studies, but if approached with the right attitude, can know a lot from just a very little.
If you would like to find out more about Ari Moshe, visit https://arimoshe.com/
