2020 FAA Conference Speaker Jason Holley
Jason Holley is an astrologer and psychotherapist in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His focus is long-term psychotherapy focused on the embodiment of soul and ensouling of body. He has taught widely on astrology, psychotherapy and myth, including at UAC, NORWAC, online with Astrology University and in graduate counselling education. He has written for The Mountain Astrologer and online. He currently teaches and mentors therapists integrating astrological insight into psychotherapy.
Jason is also an educator in the US psychotherapy community in the areas of character structure, trauma, addictions, dissociation, sexuality, and LGBTQ+ issues. (AB, Transnational Cultural Studies, Princeton University; MA, Counselling, Southwestern College)
Lectures
Of Wildness and Chastity: Scorpio Psychodynamics
The Greek story of Scorpius occurs in the context of the tumultuous relationship of Artemis and Orion. This ancient tale, told in many ways and from many vantage points, brings a kind of moonlight into the darkness of Scorpio territory, helping us to understand the psychodynamics of Scorpio placements and transits. Familiar Scorpio themes of passion, intensity, envy, and betrayal take on greater dimensions and complexity. We will consider how Scorpio placements reveal ever-shifting self-states of hunter and hunted, pursuer and evader – and especially how these self-states cycle both within a person and between people in relationship.
Astrology and the Re-membering of Psyche
Urania, Muse of astrology, was the daughter of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. When client and astrologer-therapist gaze into the night sky via the natal chart, we participate in the Orphic mysteries, wherein the Soul was said to gaze into and drink from the pool of Mnemosyne to remember rather than forget its many experiences and identities. When we enter the sacred space of inner stargazing together, what has been dismembered and split off can be re-membered and embodied. In this talk we will explore how experiential art-based psychotherapy can facilitate a therapeutic journey of re-membering inspired by the muse of the birth chart.
The Descent of Dark Beauty: The 8th House and Eros
The 8th is the house where the Sun leaves his traditional rejoicing place, and ‘idles’ falling into Night. In modern astrology 8th House planets carry this notion of a fall into darkness narrated by terms such as shame, blame, invalidation, perpetration, death. These experiences terrify Day consciousness, but we will draw from ancient myth and modern psychotherapeutic journeys to discover how the descent through layers of shame and vulnerability may open into a Night consciousness of eros, mystery and unfathomable depth.
Post-Conference Workshop
Believing in the Night: Moon, Venus, and Mars in Relationships
Rilke famously wrote, ‘I believe in the night’. The ancients said the same of the planets that modern astrology associates with relationships –the Moon, Venus and Mars – assigning them to the night sect. We feel contact from others most closely – and often alarmingly to our put-together daytime selves – when they connect with us through Lunar needs, Venusian attractions, and Martian passions. In the shifting and often-destabilizing spaces of night and relationship we encounter mystery and depths that cannot be seen in daylight. With aid from ancient myth and modern psychotherapy we will ‘psychologize’ traditional teachings on sect and explore night mysteries found in every chart.