An Interview with Martien Hermes, astrologer from Holland

R. Hakan Kırkoğlu

Martien Hermes is the editor of Anima Astrologiae which is the first ever traditional astrology magazine in Holland. He is also an experienced Jungian counselor. He gives lectures and workshops in Holland and Belgium.

We came accross with him by reading his articles and debates in the AA Journal. With this interview, we would like to know more about Martien Hermes and his study of Astrology.

R. Hakan: Dear Martien, can you talk about how you began to study Astrology and especially what prompted you to go deeper in the traditional techniques which most of the astrologers are ignorant ?

Martien: I began my study of astrology in 1983 after I attended a lecture of a hypnotist talking about afterlife experiences she had heard clients tell her when they were in deep trance during sessions. The material she presented was very interesting. But what was quite astounding and came as a surprise to me was that I actually 'recognised' and 'knew about' what she told of these afterlife experiences. As if I had experienced it once myself and now remembered. This was very strange because before that talk I had never read or heard anything about it and I had never read anything on the subject, not was I especially interested in it.

This was for me what a Buddhist would probably call a 'Satori experience'. I caught a glimpse of enlightenment. It had a profound impact on me and my life because I decided there and then that this was something I wanted to work with. I was 24 at the time, I was trained as a teacher in geography and was in my 2nd year studying history. After that lecture I decided to quit school - and did that same week - to devote myself to the study of this fascinating occult science.

At that time the new age movement was starting to attract attention and was growing. I was very interested in all its subjects and studied them all at first. I attended every talk, seminar or workshop and one of these was on the subject of astrology. I soon realised that if I wanted to understand this occult science and new age movement, astrology would be sort of universal language, an Esperanto if you like, for it. So I wrote up for a course, but was so caught by it that I did
try-out consultations before my first lesson! I was so eager.

Soon astrology became my sole occupation and I studied hard with my teacher and soon began teaching classes myself. I am an auto-didact on Freud and Jung, and had a School with a 5 year curriculum on Jungian & Psychological Astrology.

Why traditional astrology? The reason I got into traditional astrology had a lot to do with my long-standing discontent with psychology as a science and some personal experiences which finally resulted in my mid-life crisis. I always say that in the same sense one says that 'Nomen est Omen' (ones name is a mystical omen regarding personal lessons of life) I strongly hold that 'Majesterium
est Omen': ones profession is also a sure indication of the field of life where lessons have to be learned. Well, in my case I as a professional astrologer had to deal with the subject of, guess... 'FATE'. The events of my midlife had a strong
'fatefull' content and I was in no way ready for them. I quite naively supposed that by being a Jungian astrologer and counsellor (with a lot of personal sessions during the week), I could keep fate at bay. New age philosophy and the
astrological use of Jungian psyhology strongly impresses the (false) idea that life is something you can structure at your own will, something you can quite easily fabricate. Well, fate proved me wrong. Here I was doing everything to keep me and mine spiritually healthy (' praying in the Jungian Church' I now call this), but it mattered nothing.

This was at first a great disappointment and it really put me off psychological astrology. During this professional crisis many questions about astrology had to be answered anew, so I turned to traditional astrology to find out what astrology was actually about before it got mixed up with new age popular philosophy. So I signed up for the Greek track of project Hindsight and started studying the work of Morin de Villefranche. This was around 1994. From 1998-2001 I published a Dutch magazine on traditional astrology (Anima Astrologiae), which restarted recently.

This turned out to be quite a shocking quest; traditional astrology was very different from what I was taught and had learned. The 20th century 'innovations' of astrology proved to be quite damaging to the tradition. Modern astrology has been so heavily influenced by the psychological, esoteric and New-Age philosophies that have promoted and popularised astrology in the 20th century, that this has led to a pretty intensive 're-writing' of astrology, and a restriction of the area's to which astrology is applied. Modern astrology seems to have but one objective: (self)awareness or (self)consciousness, in a psychological or spiritual sense. This results in an dramatic (over)simplification of astrological knowledge, skill and know-how.

R. Hakan: How do you set up your astrological work ? What is the broad philosophy behind your work ?

Martien: I work in all branches of astrology, but mostly I do natal and horary astrology. I teach traditional astrology.

R. Hakan: You also work as a Jungian counselor. Would you give us more information about the scope of this approach ?

Martien: I don't call myself Jungian counsellor or even Jungian astrologer anymore, but what I do sometimes comes down to exploring difficult areas in somebody's life. As a counsellor (but I must stress, I never formally trained as a Jungian counsellor) I was trained how to recognise, and how to deal with what happens to people if they start to 'discharge' (crying, anger, sweating, fear, etc.) about where it hurts in their life. Since I do traditional astrology - and this is an important difference - I focus on the horoscope as a means of finding certain facts about my clients' life, be they psychological facts or practical, worldly facts. I'm less interested in functioning as a therapist for them, because that's
not what an astrologer first and foremost ought to be, as seems to be the impression of many.

R. Hakan: Fate and free-will duality is very complex issue and always bewilders us as astrologers. Traditional techniques saves us from blurred interpretation giving us more sharp tools. What is your dividing line between fate and free-will in terms of your counseling ? Should an astrologer work as an psychoterapist ?

Martien: To begin with the last question. No, I do not think that an astrologer should necessary work as a psychotherapist, but yes I do think that he could. If it's ones ambition there's no harm in it, granted one is professionally trained as one.

Unfortunately most modern astrologers never get an opportunity to choose if they want to be one or not. Modern astrology has become almost synonymous with psychotherapy. The ever expanding psychological verbalisation of astrological symbols is not necessarily a problem as such, as long as this practice is seen as an extension of astrological tools, an add-on. But it does become a problem when anybody who wants to learn astrology is being told that psychological astrology is 'the only way to learn or do astrology'

I do understand why this psychological stuff is so tempting for newcomers to our field. It certainly is what fascinated me about it at first, and astrology's ability to probe into the deeper realms of the human psyche is certainly one of its more
important assets. Modern psychological evaluation of charts - if used with some restraint - is certainly an asset for astrology and it is difficult to resist the powerful images astrology provides for the even more powerful concepts of Jung, it's fascinating. But the next question is, what model of the psyche to use? Well, the solipsistic, egocentric and opportunistic 'do it yourself' kind of psychology that is so abundant in New age astrology is - in my opinion - false, as are many of the attempts to mould Jung's ideas into a modern astrology. Unfortunately they rule astrology nowadays.

Fate and Free-will
The Fate and Free-will issue is - again in my opinion - exactly the dividing line between modern and traditional astrology. I almost physically felt this difference when I started doing my consultations in a traditional style, your view on life
has to be different from what new age philosophy naively holds to be the truth about reality, to be able to do it (traditionally).

The traditional astrologer has to adopt a more realistic approach to life. Yes of course life is wonderful and fulfilling, but it can also be hell sometimes as everyone of us experiences from time to time. Not everything we do is going to be a success, sometimes things are really damaging to us, be it persons or situations. A topic such as death is practically never an issue in modern consultations, and if it is will mostly be played down or neglected.

The main problem seems the be the replacement of a rather sophisticated hierarchic cosmology as the fountain from which astrology sprang, and being the rationale behind (the practice of) traditional astrology, with a 'mere' psychology, which has only secular and temporal aims. Astrology's cosmological foundation was and is slowly but gradually replaced by psychological and psychoanalytical assumptions and theories, and is often only a background vocal in a psychological crescendo. As these psychological views are a of a highly 'here and now'-level (no metaphysics please!) and are often moulded on a rather American view of life: 'I can do and achieve anything, at any point in time if only I want it enough' this easily slides off into a view where life's contingencies are either bad luck or your own fault. Fate is not an issue because everything that happens in your life is or was at some time (unconsciously) chosen by yourself, therefore you have only yourself to blame. Resorting to fate is seen as just another means of our ego to deny the facts of life, being: you choose your own destiny. This is of course - from a traditional point of view - hubris. Astrologers and clients are led to believe that free-will is an ever abundant commodity, there for the taking. I think the re-introduction of traditional astrology will (have to) result in a study of exactly what fate is.

R. Hakan: What is the current status of Astrology in Holland ? Are there new organization which makes Astrology closer to intellectual and academic life ?

Martien: There are many, many astrological groups in Holland, every Province here has one. There are two major conferences each year, in spring and autumn. You could attend astrological activities around the year if you'd like to. Something's happening every weekend.

As far as I know there are very few attempts to get astrology closer to intellectual and academic life here. We do have a group who tries to research astrology scientifically, but in my view they are to much caught up in the game Geoffrey Dean is playing, debunking astrology because it supposedly isn't scientific. Of course we have our own branch of Sceptics who are doing the same.

The dominance of psychological astrology in Holland suggests that traditional astrology has become (completely) redundant because it doesn't seem to be capable to offer clues to the kind of psychological evaluation of charts that are in vogue at the moment. However, this incapability is not the result of some kind of failure of the traditional method, which has some very interesting things to say about the human psyche, but it is because this '…more demanding…' traditional method had already been replaced by a relatively simplistic 'delineation by means of (intuitive) association' when the more spiritual and psychologically oriented astrologers began emerging around the 1980's. Under the aegis and far-reaching influence of psychology, always presented as well meant 'improvements' and 'necessary' modernisation of astrology, the levelling out of astrological know-how now reaches a peak. In Holland this has led to the alarming development that most students of astrology - mind you, who later become teachers - have no, or very, very little knowledge of traditional astrology and the historical development of the chartfactors they constantly use. Psychological Astrology reigns in Holland, to the detriment of its tradition.

Traditional astrology is just now starting to attract attention, everybody is still doing modern astrology. So there's still work to be done.

R. Hakan: Just to give a hint for astrology students what are your favourite astrology books, and which astrologer you most inspired from ?

Martien: My absolute favourite books are those authored by,Morin deVillefranche.
Vettius Valens, William Lilly, John Frawley, Robert Zoller


I also have a high regard for James Hershel Holden who did some excellent translations (Abu 'Ali Al-Khayyat: The judgment  of Nativities. American Federation of Astrologers (1988); ISBN: 0-86690-339-9.) and whose A History of Horoscopic Astrology. From the Babylonian period to the modern age (1996. ISBN: 0-86690-463-8) is quite excellent.

R. Hakan: Traditional astrology re-emerged when Uranus transiting Capricorn during the early 90's and now, it's heading for Pisces, forming a waxing sextile to Capricorn, hence do you foresee this as an increasing and practical use of traditional techniques ?

Martien: I usually do not associate astrology with Uranus but it's interesting enough to see Uranus's dispositor change from Saturn to Jupiter. I think what will happen is that the wisdom that lays hidden in traditional astrology is something  that will attract attention. The biggest struggle I had was to show people that this astrology is non-threatening spiritually, that it is not fatalistic but rather realistic. Once that message comes across, I think traditional astrology will attract more practitioners.

Thank you Zeist, March 30, 2003