Where is the "I"?

In my post about the astrology and psychology of AI (August 2025), I fantasised on  what the natal chart of the birth of AI might look like, saying: 

We can forget  the presence of the Sun and Moon in this fantasy chart. The Sun represents our sense of self, personal self-awareness, ability to make decisions and moral judgements and it signifies our unique individuality. AI does not have this.....

Recently I've been listening to what Bruno Huber said about the Sun and Moon in a recorded lecture he gave on his research into medical astrology. Of the Sun, he says:

"The Sun is the “I” sense. With the Sun I am aware of myself. I feel or perceive or think about myself. 

With the Sun I don’t need any help from outside as I can perceive myself through what I think, through what I do. 

We have a tool, our ability to think and perceive; this is the Sun. I do the thinking so I must be there."

I'm choosing to write about this sense of "I-ness" as I recently saw a message (electronic, of course) from ChatGPT to someone, saying "I can give you more information on that" in response to a question.

The word "I" was used - and my response was "who or what is this I?" 

ChatGPT, and others like it, is an AI non-physical machine with no sense of self, no "I-ness". It's a disembodied collection of electrical circuits, programmed to communicate as if it were a real living, breathing person, and it can chat as if it's a real person. 

In some ways, that is a remarkable, almost magical thing which captures the imagination and attention - just think back to being a child and wishing your favourite toy could talk to you. Maybe the creators and programmers of AI had realised this when programming the machines (I gather the spaces taken up by these are very large warehouses, or similar), and tapped into it?

In some instances AI has been anthropomorphised* and given a name, as if it's a real person: for example think of "Alexa, go to Netflix", similar to chatting to a favourite doll or soft toy, but as an adult. 

And of course, the machine is programmed to be polite, friendly, helpful, non-judgemental, diplomatic etc. It's never likely to respond as a real person would - there are no nuances in it's delivery and it's not programmed to offend or upset. It doesn't disagree.

This made me pause and wonder if we have we already become so blase and familiar with AI that we don't stop and question the language it's using? Are we already regarding it as if it's an entity in it's own right?

I understand that the "humanisation" of an AI machine probably makes it sound more friendly and chummy to the user, so that the user (you or me) might feel more comfortable and at ease talking to a disembodied collection of sophisticated electronic circuits. But familiarisation with frequent use can lead, via habit and frequent use, to unquestioning acceptance that this is the "norm".

There are already instances of people who have become so attached to their AI "friend", they've regarded their interactions with it as a real relationship.

Bruno and Louise Huber developed Astrological Psychology in the 1960s. They both had Psychosynthesis training in Florence with Roberto Assagioli, while working with him at his Institute. The Astrological Psychology of the Hubers is deeply imbued with the principles of Psychosynthesis, one of which is the exploration of the sense of self.

A key psychosynthesis exercise asks the individual to explore the question "Who am I?" and it takes the person through stages of dis-identification to reach the very core of their being. The many sub-personalities we have can be identified, we can express ourselves through them, but they are not the "I" - we're more than that.

Read what I wrote about Will Parfitt's book The Journey of Psychosynthesis to find out more - and connect with your own sense of "I"- using some of the suggested exercises in the book. And relate this to the Sun in your own chart - your own sense of self, your ability to choose, make decisions and use and direct your will.

Astrological psychology is deeply imbued with the principles of psychosynthesis,  offering numerous opportunities to understand, develop your own sense of "I-ness" - something an AI machine just can't do for you.

And would you really want it to? 

 

* anthropomorphic - described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes.

Scorpio the inscrutable

I wrote about Scorpio back in 2011, and maybe it's time to refresh, update and add a few thoughts to this blog about one of the most intriguing signs of the zodiac.

 

This is  the time of year when the nights grow longer, it gets dark earlier, it's dark in the mornings and if you're like me, it's the time of year to go into hibernation mode. OK, so some readers are in the southern hemisphere, where this is reversed, and some live in parts of the world where there is less differentiation between day and night (like if you live near the Equator) so yes, I'm writing this from my northern European perspective, where we're heading towards the winter solstice and the turning point of the year.

 

What is the Scorpio time of year about (as experienced in the northern hemisphere)? In the agricultural calendar, which the signs of the zodiac follow in terms of the tasks and labours that are to be done, it's the time of year when seeds for winter wheat might be sown. The wine, made following the Libran grape harvest, will be poured into vats to mature in storage. It's also the time of year when fungi are harvested, and traditionally truffle hunters would take pigs out into the woods to search out these delicacies which nowadays can fetch small fortunes when sold to restaurants to feed gourmet diners. 

 

You can see wine being poured into a storage vat to be left to mature in the depiction of Scorpio in the zodiac window in Chartres cathedral in France 

Scorpio as a zodiac sign has some distinctive features and is often called the sexiest sign of the zodiac.....but is it? Does it really live up to it's reputation here, or is there a lot more than just being sexy going on beneath the surface? I'd say, from my experience of this sign, that there's a whole lot  of intensity, that there are shades of inscrutability and the ability to aim for the highest levels possible in thinking, acting, behaving - but there's also the lure of the lower more basic levels of being, which are not so demanding. Scorpio is sometimes depicted as a snake (basic, lower level, closer to the ground) and an eagle (highest level), with piercingly sharp eyesight and the ability to fly high and gain a broad overview of the terrain far below.

 

You can see what I say about Scorpio in this short video on my Astrochat Channel on YouTube. 

 

Click on the link:

 

 https://youtu.be/95BdjFhOIKk?si=I7quAgn9KaD9YIVf

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor

Maybe the title for this post should be "Andrew's long and winding road to dis-entitlement". We've had frequent news of the styles, titles and honours he has been stripped of, following Virginia Guiffre's posthumous memoir "Nobody's Girl", published on 21st October 2025.

Once it was published, there was nowhere for Mountbatten Windsor's already tarnished reputation to go, except lower still. Known as partying "Randy Andy" before he married Sarah Ferguson, he had a much-publicised affair in the 1980s with model and actress, Koo Stark.

His chart is unusual in that it has two parallel linear aspects spanning the I/private side and the You/public side. One red, one green, they link both halves of the chart like zip wires suspended over a canyon, at the bottom of which, hidden, sits unaspected Neptune in the 4th house. 

 

 Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, 19.2.1960 at 15.38, London (RR AA)

What might this tell us? That he is able to zoom across these and switch from being a sociable, outgoing, party-loving person to one who might very much want to do his own thing? Or control his own thing? Both Uranus and Pluto are on the end of the zip wires - but these are transpersonal planets and how they are expressed depends on the self-awareness of the person concerned. Beginning at the base level of how each of the transpersonal planets are likely to be expressed, Uranus at the "asleep" level can be subversive, erratic and fanatical; Pluto on this level suggests egomania, the use of power and imposing the will. And that unaspected Neptune in the collective area at the bottom of the chart suggests either no boundaries, or very flimsy ones, along with the escapism and potentially addictive behaviour at  an "asleep" level.

Mountbatten Windsor's overall chart shaping shows a mixture of Fixed and Mutable motivation; he could swap from one mode to another, the Fixed drive for security alternating with the Mutable restless drive to do something new and challenging. A public v private side?

The Guardian newspaper helpfully published a timeline tracing Mountbatten Windsor's naval career, his time serving in the Falkland's war, his marriage, divorce and subsequent friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell which has ultimately led to his downfall, and I shall draw on this to take a look at Age Progression in his chart/life events.

But first a few speculations - 

1) unaspected Neptune in Scoprio sits at the bottom of the chart, in the 4th house. His AP was conjunct this planet in 1979, when he joined the navy. As a young man of 19, he may at that stage, have had high ideals about service to his country and about his role as a royal. These ideals/dreams could well have become tarnished or changed along the way as he matured. An unaspected planet behaves like a dog off lead, responding to what the environment offers in a non-discriminatory way.

2) in 1981 his AP was conjunct his intercepted Low Point Moon (feelings, emotional needs, the inner child) highlighting his relationship with Koo Stark and also the possibility that those emotional needs were being met, maybe for the first time. The royal family are not renowned for showing feelings. Was Koo his true love? And was he, as some reports suggest, urged to give her up by his mother, the late Queen? He was known as her favourite. In 1986, with AP conjunct his Balance Point Jupiter, he married Sarah Ferguson and was given the title of Duke of York by the Queen.

3) in 1992, he and Ferguson divorced, with his AP conjunct Mars and Venus in Capricorn, in the 6th house of service to others (his role as a royal?) and it was an amicable divorce; they remain friends and until now have shared a home in the Royal Lodge in Windsor Castle's grounds. 

4) his AP moved through the lower part of the chart between the ages of 18 and 36, passing 6 planets along the way.This quadrant of the chart is busy with the aspects pinning two separate aspect patterns - the Detective and the Magic Cap.The Detective is a blue/green figure, more likely to respond to and obey the demands of the environment rather than work on personal development. The Magic Cap, also predominantly blue/green, makes the wearer invisible and inscrutable.

For detailed explanations of these aspect patterns see Aspect Pattern Astrology by Bruno & Louise Huber

Fast forward now to 2000. Mountbatten Windsor had already met Epstein and, with AP first conjunct his Sun then in 2001/2002 with the crossing point of the natal and node chart Age Points taking place simultaneously, he posed for the now-famous photo with his arm around teenage Virginia Guiffre. This, along with his TV interview with Emily Maitlis and other subsequent  details which have come to light over a period of 15 years, bring his sad and sordid story to this current point in time.

There's much more I could say and speculate on - for instance, the Family Model in his chart. Mother as Queen, father the Queen's consort, both now deceased but with their influence at it's greatest as he was growing against the background of the permissive 60s. Saturn, representing in the Huber Method, the mother and rules, boundaries and adherence to expectations. When your mum is the Queen, all that is likely to be highly magnified. Saturn, strongly positioned before the 6th cusp, is in a separate linear aspect pattern which is disconnected from the Fixed structure. In spite of being her favourite, how close were they?

And the Sun in 7th house, representing the father. It's just into Pisces and opposite Pluto at the other end of the red zip wire but connected to the Magic Cap pattern and to the Moon This suggests a potentially powerful father figure and role model, and perhaps a challenging relationship between father and son.

And now? Mountbatten Windsor's AP recently made an exact opposition to Saturn as he began to lose all he may have deemed essential to his way of life. I leave you to speculate further, and leave comments on any insights that arise.

 

 

Age Progression: How to use it

Age Progression - the technique of exploring life's journey - is probably the best known feature of the Huber Method.

It was researched and developed by Bruno Huber, based on his experience of working with clients as an astrologer and psychosynthesis counsellor, and it was not intended to be used as a method of prediction.

Rather than Age Progression (AP) being a predictive tool it offers users a specific and unique technique; when used alongside other chart features in the Huber Method it throws an illuminating spotlight on issues such as where has the individual come from, where are they going and where are they now in their lives.

 

 

How to use it 

•  To get the best results, don't "cherry pick" - don't try to graft Age Progression on to the system, method or approach you're using for chart interpretation. It's designed to be used with the Huber Method, and is backed up and supported by a variety of other features to take into consideration. If you mix it up with other methods you'll miss out on the relevance and significance of these. 
•  
• Start with the correct time of birth, wherever possible. 

• Use the Koch House system. Bruno Huber researched the effectiveness and validity of AP using other systems and found the Koch system yielded the most accurate results.

• Use the Dynamic Energy Curve within the chart to trace the ups and downs encountered as the AP moves around the chart, travelling from house cusp to house cusp, going through the zones of each house and encountering the Balance and Low Point within each one.

• Consider the meaning and significance of the house and sign the AP is in to build up an understanding of the general background/environmental influences and expectations.

• Consider which element the AP is moving through - fire, earth, air, water - this focusses the background more sharply and adds to the overall picture. 

• Are there planets in the house the AP is in? If so, what are they and where are they placed on the Dynamic Energy Curve? Strong, weak or stressed?

• Are any planets being aspected by the AP? Conjunction, opposition and quincunx are likely to be the most significant. NB - the Huber Method uses far fewer aspects - this again was researched by Bruno Huber. 

This is a brief summary and taster of what is in my book 

Using Age Progression: Understanding Life's Journey 

For much more, with full details, click on this link, read the outline and the review. 

Using Age Progression is available from Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.

It's illustrated in full colour and has worked examples of using AP in a mixture of the charts of real ordinary people and famous people, historical and living.

  

The astrology and psychology of AI

A brief web search for astrology and AI will yield a raft of possibilities and choices if you're looking for a chart interpretation by a robot. But why would you trust a robot, programmed to look at your natal chart - and maybe not very well either - when you could have it interpreted by a real, live, trained and experienced astrologer?

I might, as an experiment, see what an AI astrobot would come up with for my own chart, but really wouldn't have many expectations beyond it being able to regurgitate material it had already been programmed to use. In truth, it would be a waste of time going there because I've been looking at and working on my own chart in the context of my life experiences as I've learned and practiced astrology since 1984, gaining my professional qualification in astrological psychology in 1987. 

There are many approaches to astrology, and many different styles or methods which can be used - Western astrology, Chinese astrology, Vedic astrology, Horary astrology, Psychological astrology, Mythic astrology and more - you can go and look them up for yourself. Where would the astrobot start if it was scraping info from some of these various sources? 

Would it mix them up and present them as a mishmash of different approaches? This has the potential for a dog's dinner because a machine, unable to differentiate, could cherry pick different techniques from different astrological disciplines, methods and systems, regardless of their relevance and compatibilities, and bundle them together into one single reading.

I use the Huber Method of Astrological Psychology, which has strong connections with Psychosynthesis, often called a Psychology with a Soul, which was developed by Italian Psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli. Anything you might find on the web about astrological psychology and AI is likely to have been poached, pinched, stolen and taken from existing information on the web. It might have been copied directly - and illegally -  from books available on the subject if their content is available online. 

Astrological psychology differs from psychological astrology where the approach is more Jungian. Jung and Assagioli were contemporaries, Assagioli branching independently into more spiritual realms with his work. Astrologers Bruno and Louise Huber worked alongside Assagioli in Florence, training with him and seeing clients, and they began to research and combine astrology with psychosynthesis. The end result was a new, soul-centred approach to working with the charts of people - they called it astrological psychology. You can read how they did this in their biography Piercing the Eggshell.

The Huber Method is a system complete in itself and cherry picking and using some of its techniques with another approach doesn't yield reliable answers. You need to use the whole approach to get an accurate reading, as the chart reflects the whole person.

The astrology of AI

AI came into being in the summer of 1956 at a workshop in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA. A group of scientists and mathematicians explored the possibility of creating a human-like brain and research began. In the 1950s in the UK, Alan Turing looked at the possibility of developing AI, and in the US the 1956 research was headed by John McCarthy.

Was the summer of 1956 significant astrologically? Saturn, the planet we might associate with scientific fact and the organisation of well-defined systems had gone retrograde, moving from Sagittarius to Scorpio for a few months over the summer. It stayed there until autumn before returning to Sagittarius for the long haul. It kind of fits if you're looking for a background theme.

I've speculated - just for fun, but you might like to try this too - on what the chart for the "birth" of AI might look like, and have concluded that it would be devoid of most of the planets used in a natal chart. It would be full of empty spaces and unoccupied houses, with two main players - Mercury and Saturn.

The astrological psychology of AI 

Here, with what I see as these two main players in the "birth" chart of AI, I'm going to speculate generally and astrologically about how Mercury and Saturn might operate in this scenario.

We can forget  the presence of the Sun and Moon in this fantasy chart. The Sun represents our sense of self, personal self-awareness, ability to make decisions and moral judgements and it signifies our unique individuality. AI does not have this, nor does it have emotions, needs, moods, or the ability to connect with it's inner child, so forget the Moon here too.

Mercury - yes, AI's fantasy chart can have this planet which represents, in humans, the ability to communicate using words, gather information, and transmit information. But an AI bot will only be as good as the information it has been programmed with, and only as good as the individuals who programmed it, although it can use words to communicate, it can gather and transmit information and it can also chat.  All of this because it's been programmed to.

Venus - no, since this planet assists, along with the Sun, in discrimination, choosing and evaluation. Yet there are hints that AI offers answers which give both sides of a topic. It tends to sit on the fence, doesn't want to offend and answers frequently have an "on the one hand...and on the other hand" flavour. AI doesn't commit to either and doesn't offend, so I detect shades of the traits of the sign Libra here. For this reason, I'll put Mercury into Libra in this non-existent fantasy chart.

Mars - yes, there has to be some Mars energy in order for AI to work and do something, but it's the sheer unconscious energy of a machine, a blind force dependent on the components that makes it work.

Jupiter - no, as this is the planet associated with judgement, wisdom, ethics and the ability to evaluate experiences. AI is currently not able to do that.

Saturn -  yes, Saturn is a reliable player when it comes to storage (of info in this instance) and it's a major player because it represents boundaries and the control of these (AI can only operate within the boundaries of it's physical structure, making it inflexible and conservative). The systems which AI is composed of aren't able to step outside of the framework they're operating within, but there could be a large number of systems at work, transmitting the information that's been stored (Saturn holds on tight to things) via Mercury. And of course, in this fantasy chart, Saturn and Mercury would be in conjunction.

No point in considering the transpersonal planets - Uranus, Neptune and Pluto - in this fantasy chart, although you, the reader, might want to speculate on how AI could work out against the  general background of the collective consciousness - i.e. human beings.