Building worlds within worlds: the necessity of play
“The arena, the card table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court … are all in form and function playgrounds, temporary worlds within the world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. Inside the play-ground a peculiar order reigns.”
– Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: The Play Element in Culture.
When we are under levels of stress and activation, as many of us are within the realities of the current world, one of the first so-called ‘indulgences’ dropped is creative expression and symbolic imagination. When survival – physical, emotional, psychological – is at stake, our attention (and practice of astrology) often narrows to seeking functional answers. At such times we tend to err towards choosing a narrow path that promises predictable outcomes.
Experiential astrology invites us to instead stay inside the unknown. To choose the wilder, more genuine path of emergence where we are supported to play as a way of listening for and taking each next step.
Planetary Play
Creative play with the planets — also known as astrodrama — involves stepping into a role that helps you experience and express an area of a horoscope (your own, another’s, or that of a particular moment in our collective sky). While planetary play can be facilitated and unfold in myriad ways, at its core it cultivates a number of key astrological skills:
One, it hones your skill of feeling into and following an archetypal energy. Giving it a little more space in your body and noticing what comes up. Tracking where your attention goes, what materials you’re drawn to, how your body is called to move – all of this is part of the symbol speaking and an opportunity for you to deepen your listening.
Two, it strengthens your capacity to say Yes, No or how much to an archetype. We all have a multiplicity of creatures (god/desses, planets, instincts, injunctions) inside of us. Astrodrama helps us practice being in a creatively empowered conversation with such complexity.
Three, it offers opportunities for giving expression to this archetype — turning the energy up or down as necessary to be in a spontaneous yet choice-full, metabolizable and creative relationship with it. To practice being seen and felt in that role, releasing it, and integrating the experience.
Experiential astrology is unique in that it’s an opportunity for you to sacrifice — make sacred — your creative expression in service of one another, in service to the symbols themselves and in service to the collective consciousness.
“Being able to see my system from outside helped me see something new and find more compassion for myself.”
— Odyssey Course Participant
More Experiential Astrology Modalities
Experiential modalities have also included (but are not limited to, as they are always emerging and evolving with us): story-hearing, story-telling; art-making and other imagistic processes; listening to and making music; body movement and dance; attending to dream and memory; as well as other careful crafting of altered states to attune and engage with astrological symbolism, fellow humans, the circle of animals (zodiac) and our many relations of lands, seas and skies in subtle and sensitive ways.
As we let our bodies be moved by the centaur of Sagittarius or the sea-goat of Capricorn, we make space for fresh insight to arrive and fertilise our knowing.
As we let Piscean impressions come through watercolor, we invite what was previously unseen to be revealed. What was previously un-felt, to be felt.
As we meet in the dark we discover the Scorpion’s capacity for penetrative perceptions.
As we touch clay, we are touched by the clay, touched by earth's matter and the mattering of earth.
These sensuously enacted conversations, held and shared in a communal inquiry offer respect to the active intelligence of astrological images and symbols, allowing them to be re-cognized – seen and known again.
Giving play a place at the table
We feel play is imperative, of deep necessity and an act of resistance — even survival. We resist and refuse the conditioning and consensus that play is frivolous and excessive. Playing helps us remain agile, awake, attuned and aligned in times of crisis and collapse. To stay open and connected with and to others in collaborative and care-full ways.
We play because finding our way, alone or together, depends on discovering responses that remain hidden — not permitted by the reigning order of consensus, within and without. When we cast a ‘play-ground’ as we do with our experiential astrology containers, we give permission for more life to come forward. We make a sacred space for an expansive range of relational alliances, zodiacal and beyond, to enliven. This in turn helps craft and align our consciousness with deeper patterns of time, felt experience and knowing. Resources and resilience emerge from an expanded sense of connectivity that we can feel bereft from while inside calcified orders.
By tending play-grounds with exquisite attention and care, allowing the deeper details of our storied lives to be heard, we also unlock fun, pleasure and satisfaction in the most unlikely places. We offer relationship rather than reaction to the most not-fun aspects of life. Discovering this agility, nimbleness and spaciousness is strengthening for the heart and grows our capacity to hold & hear within the constraints and constrictions of trying circumstances.
In these ways and many more, we step into felt presence of “temporary worlds within the world”, opening room in our hearts for the unimaginable.
Your Turn
We invite you to take a moment and reflect:
How do you currently feel about the notion of “play”? How do you see yourself “playing” as an astrologer, astrology student or astrology lover?
Is there a place (sign, planet, aspect ..) in your horoscope that’s currently asking for more of your attention? How ready or warmed up do you feel around letting this creature come more into your felt experience? Is there a way you could play with turning up this energy today just a bit (i.e. without going beyond what you’re warmed up for)? This could be through the clothes you wear, a meal you prepare, music you listen to … Track what comes up and notice what helps you feel resourced in this process.
Again, we welcome you to reply to this email and let us know how it goes.
to sacred play and tending our play-grounds,
Nicole & Amanda