Interview
with
DARBY COSTELLO
in
MERCUR MAGAZINE
November 2002

Mercur: Darby, I begin with a typical starting-question: How did you discover astrology?

Darby Costello: It was in the air during the 1960s in America. I was part of that generation which came of age during that time. Five of us had gone down to Central America, Yucatan, to live for a time as close to nature as possible. We were eating nothing but fruit, meditating, exploring the inner and outer worlds. We had each brought two books with us - I can't remember why only two - probably we were trying to get away from our social conditioning, which we had decided was too bookish, not experiential enough. One of the books was about Astrology. I read it in one long afternoon, in a hammock under the trees next to the house. When I finished it, I remember I stood up, walked into the house and said, "I'm going back to the States to find an astrology teacher." Circumstances conspired with me and a month later, unexpectedly, I found myself in California. I immediately started looking for a school and was told by someone that the best schools were on the East Coast, so I made my way back to Boston and found two schools flourishing. I got a job, a roommate who was studying astrology and a bicycle, and enrolled in both schools immediately. One was run by Francis Sakoian and Louis Acker and the other by Isabel Hickey and both were full of students. I stayed in Boston for almost two years, completely immersed in my astrological studies.

M: And then?

DC: And then I came to Europe, intending to go to Africa. One of the people I'd been working for had sparked my interest in divination and healing amongst the tribes of Southern Africa. Then I'd met someone who lived in Johannesburg and had invited me to come down sometime. After many adventures I arrived in Johannesburg in June 1971. Fortune led me to a man who was running a small museum. He was dedicated to recording and save the work of the sangomas, or witchdoctors, but he needed someone to help him. He was close to several sangomas and over time I was accepted, allowed, invited into their world. We began building an archive of information, so that one day, when their rituals and practices were lost, there would be a record. I became part of the museum team. Meanwhile, in my 'spare time' I began doing charts for people, and eventually began making my living from it. The museum had small funds and most of us had work outside of it. Mine really ran parallel to my research - I was recording the information given to me by diviners and becoming one myself, in a different way.

M: Your life has been unusual. Doing astrological charts and living with witchdoctors at the same time. How did these experiences influence your ideas on astrology?

DC: The sangomas, or witchdoctors, did not directly influence my ideas on astrology. But I spent seven years with them and learned a great deal about human nature, the different dimensions we inhabit, ancient ways of holding and counselling people, the price and discipline of 'working with the spirits' as they phrased it. I spent so much time with women of great wisdom, experience and humour and how could I not learn both wondrous and very simple things? I got so used to being with them - they influenced my practice enormously. But they had no astrology themselves and most of them, to my great frustration, didn't even know their dates of birth! I was always speculating, guessing, imagining their charts, but never got them for sure. I suppose they taught me to be simple, uncomplicated with people, and to respect my 'spirits,' and my art, above all things. They taught me how important discipline is, and how much we need colleagues to keep us from getting what we would call 'inflated' with our own specialness, and also to have equals with whom we can compete and play and fight and love, colleagues who will keep us humble, but also help us to hold our dignity when we are amongst people who don't share or understand our world of 'spirits' or planets, in our case. They had great feasts once or twice a year and I see our astrological conferences like that. Places of sharing and struggling and learning and of regaining our humility and our pride too.

M: What is your message? What is your aim? What do you want to bring to people through astrology?

DC: When I was younger I had a message and an aim - I wanted everyone to know how brilliant astrology was and how much difference it could make to your life to understand yourself in terms of your chart and to work 'with the stars' in shaping your life. I thought that everyone who learned it could not help but become wise and compassionate, if not at once, then certainly quite soon. I don't think that's true anymore. I think some people should not come near astrology. It can only give them weapons to harm themselves or others. "His Saturn is on my Moon - that's why he is so awful to me." That sort of thing. I don't think I have a message anymore, unless it has to do with the development of wisdom and compassion, but that can be sought in so many ways. My aim is to continue to refine my own nature and the practice of my art, astrology. I would like to bring a sense of space, a sense of the cosmos to those who find astrology - the knowledge that we are particle and wave in a greater reality, and yet individual and time-contained too, a cosmos unto ourselves and capable of being responsible for our own lives. I suppose I am still an idealist - my idea is that one can develop oneself through astrology.

M: What are your priorities, in which fields are you interested, by what astrological ideas are you touched most?

DC: The summer after graduating from university I read Dane Rudhyar's The Pulse of Life, and then went on to read others. Through his words I was awakened to the reality that each of us, each atom, image and thought is part of something greater and that each of our lives reflects, in its own seasons and cycles, the seasons and cycles of what we call the cosmos. His images and ideas set my heart on fire. When Liz (Greene) wrote Saturn, I was in Africa. Someone gave it to me. I read it, and it happened again. My heart leapt in recognition. I had studied astrology in Boston, read the English books on astrology too, but when I read Liz - that was it. She was writing directly to me. That's how it felt. I was reading through all the volumes of Jung at the time, and working with the sangomas, and doing charts, and then Liz's books set my mind on its own course. She had the same effect as Dane Rudhyar and Carl Jung had on me - reading them I began to think creatively myself! When I arrived in London, so much later, intent and circumstances brought Liz and I together. Since 1988 I've been teaching at the Centre for Psychological Astrology - the school she began with Howard Sasportas in 1984. I see astrology as a way to bring light to the patterns and cycles of a person's life. It can, if approached with a certain kind of respect and attention, reveal things about the psyche and further, ways of navigating the currents of one's life. It can give all sorts of information about oneself, one's time, era, and place in the community as well as very interior dimensions of the soul.

M: You travel a lot in Europe and you lecture also at the CPA in London. On the other hand, you are American. Are there vital differences between Europe and the United States as to the use of astrology, in practice and in theory?

DC: I'm not really qualified to answer that question. I haven't lived in America since 1971. And I've only begun to meet American astrologers in the last 5 years! My first visit as an astrologer was at UAC 1998, in Atlanta, Georgia. Since then I've been twice more, and enjoyed meeting American astrologers very much. But I simply don't know - I suppose America has every sort of astrology you could imagine, being such a huge and dynamic country. Perhaps Europe is attached more to older ways of working - not so experimental. I am told by my European friends that Psychological Astrology does not have much of a voice in most of Europe. I teach in Germany, Norway, Holland and now Austria, occasionally in France, and my way of looking at the chart seems to be well received, and I am classed as a psychological astrologer. I live and work in London primarily and so am most closely involved with the English astrological community, which I love profoundly. It has such vitality - all sorts of different ways of doing astrology live together and although there is the usual squabbling amongst people, the overall sense of community is very strong, very rich.

M: Is there something you dislike in the European world of astrologers? If so, how could we change that?

DC: The only thing I dislike in any world of astrologers is the notion that whatever astrology one group approves of is the only one worth doing. A certain sort of Fundamentalism. I think it comes out of insecurity and envy, and it's dangerous and stupid. We have people like that in England too, but it seems balanced by a philosophical tolerance that includes and accepts all sorts of approaches, from the traditional schools with their roots in medieval European astrology to the Vedic schools, to experiential workshops and lectures on cycles and moments in history, on and on, so many different ways of doing astrology. I'd hate to be in a community where only certain approaches were "approved".

M: You have written the book "The Mars Quartet" together with Liz Greene, Lynn Bell and Melanie Reinhart which is presently being translated into German and will soon be published by Chiron Verlag. You have written another book all by yourself "The Astrological Moon". What is your next big project?

DC: I've also written a book called "Fire and Water" and another called "Earth and Air". Along with "The Astrological Moon" they have been published by the CPA press in the last few years. I do have a book or two in my mind, but before that I want to write a few articles or papers. I'm a very slow writer, but I love the process, and I've been asked to write something for the Dutch journal "Symbolon", and I am working on one or two other things which will find homes eventually. I like the idea of working in that smaller format, so I'll probably do those before anything else. Next year, in August 2004, I've been asked to give the Carter Memorial Lecture, at the annual English Astrological Association's conference in York. Now that is a wonderful honour, and I plan to spend a lot of time working on it from the beginning of next year. After that, we'll see. Many exciting possibilities abound! Fritz also asks for a small vita on your personal life as far as you want to do this. I don't know what to do with this - it's too vague. So I'll stop here and you can tell when you've read it if there is something else to say, or what you might need to leave out. Good Luck!! I hope the translating is not too difficult.

©Darby Costello , November, 2002