Depth-psychological astrology is not sun sign astrology. It does not tell you what the week will bring. The tradition developed by Liz Greene in the 1970s and 80s, extended by Howard Sasportas, Richard Tarnas, Dane Rudhyar, and Stephen Arroyo, reads the natal chart as a symbolic map of psychic structure. Each planet is a living archetype. Each aspect is a tension the psyche is organized around. Each house is a domain where those tensions play out in lived experience. Saturn in your fourth house is not a curse on your home life; it is the archetype of limit and self-knowledge pressing against the roots of identity.
The foundational move is Jungian. Greene, trained as an analyst in Zurich, developed her reading by treating chart placements as structures already active in the psyche \u2014 encountered the way complexes are encountered in analysis, with resistance, projection, and eventual recognition. The outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) mark where the personal biography opens onto something transpersonal \u2014 larger than the ego\u2019s story about itself. That axis between personal constraint and archetypal depth is where the most useful chart work happens.
What the Reading Covers
The scope of your reading depends on what you bring. A full natal interpretation engages the luminaries (sun and moon) as the core polarity of the personality, the Ascendant as the instrument through which that personality meets the world, planetary placements as specific archetypal themes, major aspects as the psyche\u2019s primary tensions, and house placements as the domains where those themes are lived. If you bring a specific life situation, the reading is organized around what the chart reveals about that material.
The Tradition
- Liz Greene. The foundational Jungian astrologer. Saturn (1976), The Astrology of Fate (1984), The Luminaries (1992). Chart as psychological map; planets as archetypes; fate as what the psyche has not yet integrated.
- Howard Sasportas. Co-author with Greene. The Twelve Houses (1985). The clearest contemporary treatment of house placements.
- Richard Tarnas. Cosmos and Psyche (2006), Prometheus the Awakener (1995). Historical archetypal astrology \u2014 tracking the correlations between planetary transits and cultural patterns.
- Dane Rudhyar. The pre-Greene founder of psychological astrology. The Astrology of Personality (1936) is still essential.
- Stephen Arroyo. Astrology, Psychology, and the Four Elements (1975). The four-elements frame through a depth lens.
How the Reading Works
You provide your birth data \u2014 date, time if known, and place. You name a life situation you want the chart read against (this is optional but strengthens the reading considerably). Sebastian draws on Seba\u2019s library of depth-astrological and Jungian texts to generate a reading grounded in the primary sources, citing inline. Readings run 1,200 to 3,000 words depending on the depth you choose.
What a Reading Will Contain
An engagement with your chart\u2019s central polarities and most structurally important placements. Inline citations from the depth-astrological tradition\u2019s primary texts. Where your chart opens onto territory the library covers in depth (Saturnian themes, Plutonian themes, outer-planet transits), the reading draws on those sources directly. Where the chart\u2019s meaning depends on your lived specifics, the reading names that and holds the question open.
Further Reading
Start with Liz Greene\u2019s Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil (1976) \u2014 the book that launched the tradition. The Astrology of Fate (1984) is the deepest treatment of the outer planets. For the historical-archetypal frame, Tarnas\u2019 Cosmos and Psyche (2006). For a contemporary technically-sophisticated approach, Demetra George\u2019s Asteroid Goddesses (1986) and Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice (2019).