In the quiet landscapes of Southwest Ohio, Brad Kochunas, M.A., finds harmony between the stars above and the depths of the human psyche. A retired mental health professional turned therapeutic astrologer, Brad weaves together the wisdom of eco-philosophy, Zen, Daoist thought, and indigenous spirituality to illuminate the intricate tapestry of the human experience. In his latest book, Dark Skies: Select Readings in Therapeutic Astrology, Brad invites readers to explore astrology not as fortune-telling but as a profound tool for self-reflection and healing. With an eclectic love for film, cool jazz, Baroque music, and Delta blues, his worldview is as expansive and nuanced as the constellations he interprets. Join Mystic Mag as Brad shares insights into his journey, the intersection of astrology and mental health, and how his unique approach helps individuals navigate the complexities of life by charting their inner cosmos.
Your latest book, Dark Skies: Select Readings in Therapeutic Astrology, explores therapeutic astrology. How do you see astrology as a tool for mental and emotional well-being, especially in a world increasingly dominated by clinical approaches?
Astrology is famously associated with Uranus, disrupter of the status quo. It can function as a catalyst for change. When our situations seem out of our control, astrology suggests there are deeper guiding factors at play despite the chaos we may be experiencing. These can be challenging and undesirable but perhaps a necessary disturbance that keeps our wheels turning. Astrology can inspire faith in the uncertainties and processes of life. Mental and emotional well-being may not be a direct concern for astrology.
Astrology as I think of it is an imaginal discipline, more closely related to art, poetry, drama, literature, and myth than to science, rationality, and positivism. It’s a tool for evoking questions rather than answers; questions that push us deeper into uncertainties in ways that generate further questions and on and on. Answers tend to stop the flow of creative imagining.
Astrology can be a bottomless well from which we may endlessly draw fresh insights and meanings that can deepen and enrich our lives, spurring creativity. I think consultations are more valuable for people seeking not simply answers to their problems but who want to go deeper into more ultimate concerns. People who prefer to see an astrologer for solid answers for getting their problems fixed might do better to see a cognitive-behavioral therapist. Unfortunately, the pendulum continues swinging in the direction of clinical approaches that understand the world in one way only and tends not to allow other approaches unless they play by the rules of the scientific establishment.
How has your immersion in eco-philosophy and green spirituality shaped your approach to astrology and mental health?
It has grounded my perspective in earthiness. The importance of terroir, of place, of landscape, of human and more-than-human life as the fruitful expression of the planet. Alan Watts, over fifty years ago, wrote that we don’t come into this world, we come out of it. The moment and place of our emergence is the creative coalescence of the entire intelligent ecosystem that surrounds us.
Rather than recognizing that our birth charts are reflections of our interior sky, many astrologers prefer to look to the heavens believing the planets possess agency and influence over our lives rather than mirroring them. The well-known axiom in astrology, “As above, so below” (which seems to privilege upper over lower), is only a fragment of the complete sentence found in the Hermetic Emerald Tablet. The rest of the sentence reads, “As below, so above,” suggesting a mutual dependency, neither solely causing the other. One way of fantasizing this is to picture the environment out of which we emerged as a jigsaw puzzle with one tiny piece missing and our birth, in that moment and place, fills that small gap perfectly.
In considering mental health, if the chart is perfect, imaging the way of the heavens, then it suggests we should be cautious about wanting personal change or trying to manipulate planetary transits for our own benefit. Generally, people seem to want to be other than they experience themselves to be. They wish their circumstances were different, that they had done that instead of this, that they want a better job, a different spouse, a less troubled childhood, to be less anxious, less depressed, etc., etc. Yet change occurs naturally on its own; witness the seasons, the birth, growth, maturity, decline, death, and new birth of things whether stars, islands, rivers, or species. Reality appears to be processual not static. Movement and change are the nature of things. All comes to completion in its own time. There is no need to push the river.
Two components of mental health are adaptability and resiliency, coming to terms with and accepting the actuality of a situation heals and enriches a life. The past and future don’t exist except as memory and anticipation, we have only this moment that is real and complete. If an upset client is lamenting the past or fearful of the future, therapists would like their client to get grounded by asking them to attend to what they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell to contact the sensuous reality of the present.
Some people express a sense of alienation, isolation, or rootlessness undergirded by the belief that they belong elsewhere, that somehow, they are a spirit or soul that has come to earthly existence from some other plane or dimension (their true home), and to which they will return to in some personal form after death. This complicates their base feeling of not belonging to nature, they have been spoon fed this dualistic belief (spirit/matter) by culture, religion, society, and education. It leads to the idea that humankind is special, the crown of creation, and that the world is only here for our exploitation of its resources. We believe that human beings have intrinsic value while the rest of nature has only instrumental value and thus its value resides only in its usefulness to us. This is the “Big Lie.”
Astrology can help us in this by reconnecting humans to cosmos with which we share a common ancestry, our species like all species exhibit the same cycles and rhythms, that we have our own seasons, storms, drought, periods of growth and decline and that a healthy humanity requires a healthy environment. Astrology displays our connectedness by fantasizing the global sky as our inner sky.
Zen and Daoist thought often emphasize simplicity and living in harmony with nature. How do these philosophies influence your astrological practice and interpretation?
Zen and Daoist thought have taught me that impermanence, imperfection, incompletion, are the markers of existence that foster compassion; a quality that contributes to being a good counselor and astrologer. They also demonstrate that there is only process, no things, no singular eternal entities called a self, just the great flowing natural process that we stabilize and call a world.
In terms of interpretation, the chart reveals a dynamic pattern with rhythmic regularities. One cannot look at a chart and say this or that person is such and such or has experienced thus and so. The chart allows an astrologer to sketch an image hypothesizing how that person might present in the session, but the chart doesn’t come alive until the client begins to speak, to share their story, to disclose their planetary play, to be heard by an astrologer who is present to them.
As a retired mental health professional, what lessons from your career have deeply influenced your astrological work?
Well, I worked with men for three decades who had been convicted of a single or multiple felonies ranging from property crimes to crimes of violence, some who would get out of prison and some who would not. The first lesson was to learn compassion for these human beings and to regard them without judgment (that is something the legal system already did) if I was going to be helpful. The second lesson was discovering that whether we are an adjudged felon or in a prison of our own making, if we wish to find a modicum of satisfaction in life, perhaps even contentment, it is necessary to make the most of the hand we’ve been dealt, to accept our circumstances, to stay present with a fully attentive heart, and blossom in the soil we’ve been planted. Over the years, I was able to run classes for grief and loss, yoga, spirituality and mental health, meditation, and astrology for these fellow travelers.
What inspired you to write Dark Skies? Could you share a key insight or transformative idea from the book that you feel readers will connect with?
This book of essays is an effort of hope. As an elder watching my contemporaries depart, I wish to make a mark on my world rather than leave a stain. My thinking about astrology has always been uncommon and marginal, providing a very different perspective than one normally finds in the astrological literature.
I think a key insight in both this book and my earlier work, The Astrological Imagination is the revelation we experience by sheltering and exploring the darkness in our lives rather than bemoan it, hide from it, deny it, or get rid of it. Our personal losses, struggles, difficulties and disappointments, flaws, failings, and weaknesses often reflected in the chart by squares, inconjuncts, and oppositions are in effect growth inducing rather than malignancies needing to be excised. These rough aspects hold nutritive value for health though often hard to swallow, difficult to digest, and sometimes slow to pass through. Still, they help deepen our character, nourish soul, widen perspective, and extend our compassion. By accepting the necessity of our dark times as well as the bright, we descend toward being grounded in the heart of wholeness.
And so, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity to discuss my recent work, Dark Skies.
