Evolutionary Astrological Music Monday

A relevant song to lead me into today's post: "In My Next Life" sung by Merle Haggard, written by Max D. Barnes.

Last week the topic of planetary nodes came up in commentary on this post.
While searching online for more information on planetary nodes, a branch of astrology known as Evolutionary Astrology kept cropping up. I've investigated this branch of the astrological family tree before, and have tried to feel enthusiastic about it, due to a few well-known popular astrologers being involved. I couldn't quite do enthusiasm, curiosity was the best I managed.

Aspects of reincarnation - it plays a major part in Evolutionary Astrology - have been featured in past posts linked below, they're worth a look, also for commentary there. I'd like to feel confident about past and future lifetimes being possibilities for us all, but I can't, and remain, probably for ever, a student of the Don't Know School.

Archived posts touching on reincarnation:

Reincarnation
Reincarnation - Another Look at Tallan
Wednesday Woo-woo: Past Lives

During my search the other day I found a long, painstakingly thorough and even-handed, piece by astrologer & therapist Glenn Perry on the topic of astrology's role, or lack of it, in reincarnational thinking:
A Critical Review Of Reincarnational Astrology. A paragraph from the piece is quoted below:

One might anticipate that evolutionary astrologers will argue that their stories work precisely because the South Node symbolizes karma from past lives. Yet, it cannot be overstated that all one can actually know about the South Node is that it appears to correlate to a deeply ingrained, inborn pattern of feeling and behavior, just as the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant correspond to deeply ingrained, inborn patterns. This is all that we can actually observe. Over time, one might notice a shift in behavior from what is more familiar (South Node) to what is less familiar (North Node), and back and forth, until the polarity is maximally integrated over the course of the life. Astrologers can embellish this simple observation with all sorts of esoteric meanings and karmic entailments, but it doesn't change the fact that all we can know is what we can observe. To claim any more than this is to draw a dogmatic conclusion from ambiguous data.

I see Moon's Nodes as just sensitive points and/or cyclical markers, in a natal chart, nothing more than that so really, I stand a few steps back even from Mr Perry's view.

Part of the author's concluding paragraphs:

The commercialization of reincarnation through the sale of astrological readings, books, and computer-generated reports casts a tawdry shadow over the entire field. The law of karma is at the core of virtually every spiritual tradition that has exerted influence throughout recorded history and is arguably the deepest, most profound of all moral teachings. Likewise, the doctrine of reincarnation refers to the immortality of the human soul and outlines the means by which the psyche finds its way home—reunited with the source of its own being. For astrologers to commercialize these sacred doctrines for personal profit through a pretense of transcendental knowledge is ethically indefensible. Merely believing in reincarnation does not entitle one to make up stories of past lives and then sell this information to the gullible masses. Such a practice exploits the credulity of clients by fraudulently portraying the astrologer as having knowledge not actually possessed.................

Standing ovation on this:

....The best remedy against the seductive but ultimately false security of self-sealing doctrines is critical thinking, without which astrology will remain forever in danger of contamination by noxious and spurious claims. False prophets abound in fields situated in the heavenly realms. And true believers are their life-blood. Every individual astrologer needs to take special pains not to become either one—neither a false prophet, nor a true believer.

I began with a song, and will end with one - this song seems to be looking back to a past life rather than onward to a next life....but who knows where or when?"