With or Against the Wind
On Sympathetic and Antipathic Approaches to Time
I’ve never been able to believe that time itself demands anything of us. It moves on, indifferent, while we try to make meaning of what arrives. But I have noticed how certain seasons—astrologically, emotionally, even physically—draw us into them like tides, and how others press too hard until we seek shelter. Over the years, I’ve come to think less in terms of right or wrong ways to meet a moment, and more in terms of how much we can bear—and whether we are choosing to lean in, or to lean away.
Astrology offers a language for this. Not just of events or potentialities, but of posture—how we hold ourselves in the storm or stillness. In that space, I’ve found the distinction between sympathetic and antipathic timing quietly transformative.
They’re not doctrines. They’re not techniques. They’re gestures of relationship.
To Enter the Moment Fully: Sympathetic Timing
There are times when what’s arriving at the threshold is not something to be resisted. It’s something already pulsing through the marrow, something calling itself forward with or without our consent. Grief, for example. Or rage. Or the deep, raw beauty of something unraveling so that something else might live.
A sympathetic approach doesn’t try to soften the moment. It listens, and then says yes. It opens the door with intention.
When I’ve worked under Pluto’s shadow—personally, or in holding space for others—I’ve sometimes chosen to time rituals or sessions precisely when that Plutonian energy is strongest. Not to court pain for its own sake, but because the resonance helps reveal what’s already alive. There’s a strange kind of mercy in that coherence. The ache is there either way, but naming it, meeting it, creating a space where it is allowed to speak—sometimes that’s what allows it to change.
But there is risk. The edge between intensity and overwhelm is thin, especially when what’s rising is ancient, unspoken, or tied to trauma. Sympathy, in this context, requires discernment. Not every wound needs to be reopened. Not every archetype benefits from invitation.
The art, I think, is in knowing when deep contact will heal—and when it will consume.
To Offer Balance: Antipathic Timing
And then there are times when the atmosphere is already too much—too dry, too heavy, too loud. Saturn sits on the chest and says endure, and the body forgets how to rest. In these moments, antipathic timing becomes a lifeline.
I remember a season when Saturn had me convinced I was failing at something I couldn’t name. I was tired, brittle, trying to think my way out. It wasn’t strategy I needed. It was softness. A small Venus transit passed overhead and instead of doing more, I let myself listen to music, cook a simple meal, sit in candlelight with no agenda. I didn’t solve anything. But something softened. I could breathe again.
In client work, this often means calling in counterbalances: lunar timing when the world feels jagged, pleasure when the psyche has been clenched too long. It’s not bypass. At least, not when done with care. It’s the offering of another voice in the room, one that says you don’t have to stay here forever.
But the line is real. If antipathy is used to avoid the hard thing entirely, it becomes a kind of dissociation. A retreat not toward healing, but away from presence.
And so the question lingers: does this help us stay with ourselves? Or is it just another way to disappear?
The Choice is Not Binary
These approaches are not sides to be chosen. They are movements within the dance. Some days we meet the wave face-first. Other days, we tread water and wait for the wind to change.
In practice, the decision is often quiet. It doesn’t come from a chart alone. It comes from listening—to the body, to the tone of someone’s voice, to the soul’s subtle language. Is there capacity here for more depth? Or is what’s needed now a return to the surface, to warmth, to rhythm?
Even within a single process, we shift. First we descend, then we surface. First we hold, then we let go. And astrology, when approached relationally, gives us a way to hold these movements with reverence. Not as commands, but as invitations.
Attunement is the Point
I’ve stopped thinking of astrology as something that tells us what to do. It doesn’t lead. It mirrors. And in that mirroring, it shows us how we might relate differently—not just to time, but to ourselves within it.
Sympathetic and antipathic approaches aren’t about alignment versus avoidance. They’re about attunement. About meeting the moment in a way that honors what’s already true, and what might be needed to make space for something more.
The deeper I go into this work, the more I realize I’m not trying to control the winds. I’m just learning how to sail a little more kindly—with or against them, depending on the day.