In this interview, we delve into the fascinating world of astrology and synchronicity with Ray Grasse. As a seasoned filmmaker, Ray brings a unique perspective to his astrological practice, drawing inspiration from the power of symbols and the interconnectedness of all things. We explore how Ray’s background in film and music has influenced his understanding of the cosmic dance, and how he applies these insights to his work with clients.
How has your background in filmmaking influenced your approach to astrology and the exploration of synchronicity?
That’s an interesting question, and I’ll answer that in two different ways. First of all, I was profoundly impacted as a kid by the imagery in movies that were more dreamlike or fantastic in nature, which included horror and science fiction films, but I was especially obsessed with those Ray Harryhausen movies that built on mythology like “Jason and the Argonauts” or “Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.” Movies like that spoke in a language very different from ordinary movies, and can impact you in a very deep way, if they’re done well. The one film experience that really blew my mind in that regard was the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s “Spellbound,” which was designed by Salvador Dali, and it included a scene of a man running down the side of a pyramid with the shadow of a large bird looming overhead. I was maybe 10 or 11 when I saw it, but that singular scene haunted me for years.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but films and sequences like these were really showing me the power of symbols. Symbols speak to your unconscious mind in a way that words and ordinary stories can’t, not really. When I wound up taking classes in college for experimental filmmaking later on, it was that dreamlike, symbolic power of film imagery that I was most fascinated by. By the way, those symbolic qualities pioneered by experimental film were slowly leaking into popular culture at the time in some unexpected ways, such as closing “stargate” sequence in Kubrick’s “2001,” or the music video that accompanied the Beatles’ song “Strawberry Fields Forever” around 1966 or 1967 – that was pure dream imagery, and you could turn on the Ed Sullivan show to see it in the comfort of your living room. Anyway, when I became fascinated by synchronicity later on, what drew me in, really, was the power that coincidences held as symbols in our lives. Our whole life is dreamlike and symbolic, I came to believe, but synchronicites stood out as high-octane symbols or “messages” that the universe is sending to us.
But I also have to add that music played just as big of a part as film in terms of shaping my later interests in synchronicity and symbolism. My parents were generous enough to encourage my interest in music by giving me piano lessons and buying me a guitar for Christmas one year, and I now look back on that period as absolutely formative to my later studies. That’s because I think music forges neural pathways in your brain, especially when you’re young, that are essentially identical to those which you need to perceive correspondences or symbolic connections when you’re doing astrology, say, or looking for coincidental connections.
When you are playing or singing harmonies, for example, you’re taking two or more different notes and tying them together in these invisible ways, and that’s very similar to what happens when you look for connections as an astrologer. For example, when you look at a horoscope, you have to look for “harmonies” between seemingly diverse things that superficially may have no resemblance whatsoever but are linked in meaning. The traditional terms for this is “correspondences.” A person’s chart may display a connection between Neptune and the Moon, and as an astrologer, you need to be able to see how that set of symbols may relate to any number of other things in their life, like music, or alcohol, or the ocean, or addiction, or spirituality, and so forth. Those are all harmonies of a sort, but symbolic ones, and it takes a very different kind of mindset to see them, and I believe music encourages it.
How does that relate to synchronicity?
It’s really the same thing with many synchronicities, at least the more subtle or symbolic kind. I’ve often told the story about the time a friend I knew was in the process of dying, very sick, and I was riding my bike through the local forest preserve when I suddenly saw a deer in the local river swimming across to the other side. I’d never seen that before, and it really stood out. I somehow knew at that moment that my friend has crossed over to the other side, which turned out to be the case. That sort of experience or connection between the deer and my friend’s death makes absolutely no sense from a purely materialistic or scientific viewpoint, but it does from a more esoteric and synchronistic one. Their was a symbolic “harmony” between seemingly different events, an “acausal connection, almost like two different notes in a musical composition. Many synchronicities involve a symbolic connection between diverse events, but which seem connected in deep analogous ways somehow.
Can you share how your experiences with Kriya Yoga and Zen have shaped your worldview and work as an astrologer?
Sure. As it turned out, I was becoming interested in astrology and mythology around the same time I started studying with teachers in the Kriya Yoga tradition, which was when I was 19. These things all tied together for me. One of the things that most fascinated me about the first teacher I studied under, Goswami Kriyananda of Chicago, was how he spoke so casually about astrology, as if he just assumed to be true and real. He’d talk about how the fact that Mars was affecting someone’s chart, and that was why they were getting into fights; or how Saturn was crossing over the Sun in the U.S. horoscope right when Nixon resigned, and those two events were somehow connected. It was mind-blowing to me at the time. Along with that, he obviously took for granted the fact that certain events in our lives were symbolic, or possible omens, which was an entirely different way of looking at the world than I had been taught in school, and one that most would simply dismiss as “superstitious,” like when one talks about black cats being unlucky or how you don’t want to walk under a ladder. But what the yogis and mystics were talking about was obviously much more sophisticated than those sorts of folk beliefs. It all prompted me to really look more deeply into the whole subject of symbols and coincidences in our everyday lives, and it led to the writing of my first book, “The Waking Dream.”
What themes or concepts do you find most compelling when exploring the intersection of mythology and astrology?
Back in the 80s and 90s, there was a huge interest in things like “finding one’s personal myth,” or trying to understand how one’s life is a kind of “hero’s journey.” I was caught up in all that like everyone else, and it led me to studying with teachers like Joseph Campbell, who would come through Chicago every year and offer weekend workshops on various aspects of mythology. At any rate, I realized during all of that time that astrology could be an important key toward unlocking those things, because the themes in one’s horoscope really revealed the myth you were living. For instance, the horoscope for a person like Marlon Brando showed a very dominant emphasis on Mars and Aries. That suggested he was living out the myth of the warrior, you might say, which could be used either constructively or destructively. On the positive side, it made him a crusader for civil rights and indigenous peoples, while on the negative side, he got into a lot of battles during his life time, both professionally and personally. That’s an extremely simple way of explaining it, anyway, because an astrological chart is actually a complex network of themes and archetypal principles.
But back to your question, I wouldn’t say there isn’t any single theme or concept I find most compelling, as much as just the general way astrology illumines those archetypal themes that weave through one’s life, for good or ill. I think that’s especially useful for young people to know, by the way, because you’re so confused when you’re in your teens or twenties about who you are and where you should go with your work, and the horoscope can give some very helpful clues in that regard, at least when presented in a nuanced and mature way by a good astrologer. Not every astrologer is equally good at that, needless to say , anymore than every doctor or therapist is equally good at what they do.
How do you balance your diverse pursuits, from writing and photography to music and astrology?
I think it’s essential to have some sort of aesthetic or artistic outlet in one’s life besides just writing or astrology, as way to keep one’s sanity intact. Writing engages the more logical side of the brain so heavily, and you can get very unbalanced if you pursue just that all the time. I think that’s a big part of the reason why so many writers wind up being alcoholics or heavy drug users, because they’re trying to counterbalance the more rational with the more non-verbal, feminine side of their natures. It’s a real danger that many of those in the literary arts have to confront. As a result, if I’m spending X number of hours writing articles or books every day, I have to spend a certain amount of time working on more artistic projects, like photography or banging around on the guitar, or even just looking at movies or listening to music. I also find getting out in nature every day or two is important, since that also has a healing effect, a more feminine, emotional quality that balances out the “drier,” more logical side.
What do you find most fulfilling about your astrological practice with clients from around the world?
When I feel like I’ve genuinely helped people find some sense of meaning or direction in their life, that’s very fulfilling. Astrology is a very powerful tool, and it can completely change someone’s life. But that’s also a tightrope, because you can also change someone’s life for the worse, if you’re careless. That’s why I’m very careful not to tell people what to do so much as help shed light on their options. I wrote an essay years ago, which is in one of my books but is also online somewhere, titled “On the Perils of Telling People What to Do” which goes into all that. I cite the old Star Trek “Prime Directive” of non-interference, and that’s a real razor’s edge. How do you talk to people about their horoscopes and their lives in a way that gives them insight, but without overly interfering with their lives and destinies? That’s not easy, and it’s a challenge faced by counselors of almost any kind. But it can be done, I believe. I think the most fulfilling thing, though, is when you see certain potentials in someone’s horoscope that they themselves may have sensed but didn’t quite accept or fully believe yet, and when you point those out to them, you can see the shock of recognition or even excitement at having that affirmed by an outside source.
There’s one other thing which I’ll add to that, a very different one. People often come to astrologers when they’re going through a hard time over something, and the most unfortunate thing we all tend to do when things go bad externally is to blame ourselves. If we lose a job or a marriage, say, we somehow think we’re a failure, that we’re somehow deficient as a person. But as an astrologer, you may look at their chart and see that Saturn has just moved into their seventh house or across their midheaven, say, in which case almost anybody will experience serous challenges in those areas. Hearing that the problems they’re experiencing may be related to some shifting of the cosmic gears can be strangely reassuring to people.
What do you mean?
Well, it’s as if learning the suffering they’re going through has a reason to it, and it’s not just their imagination. The analogy I sometimes use is, you set out to have a picnic in the local park with your partner or family, and a tornado comes through and tears everything up. You don’t say to yourself, “I’m such a bad person and a failure for this having happened!” No, you realize it’s a natural force happening, a cycle, and you don’t take it so personally as a result. It’s much the same with these life-changing planetary energies that affect a person’s life. It’s not something you necessarily take personally, you realize it’s really objective forces at play moving through your life. Hearing that explained to them by an astrologer can often cause a person to breathe a deep sigh of relief, as though they can let up on themselves a bit.
It can also help them to realize it’s something that has a beginning, middle and end, and will not necessarily typify the rest of theie life. Our natural tendency during difficult times can be to magnify our present problems out far beyond the present, to think, “My God, is my life going to be like this forever?” Astrology can help someone to understand the shelf-life of situations, for better or worse. So that’s another big value that astrology can play in someone’s life. There are times when you look at someone’s horoscope and see they’re going through horrendous aspects at the time. On the one hand, you don’t want to sugar-coat what you see, or for that matter even lie about how difficult it is, but when you let them know it will be over at a certain time, that can be surprisingly reassuring in itself. Astrology has a number of benefits, and that’s one of them.
