About Matthew Stelzner

I grew up in suburban central New York, in a very secular family, the son of a Neuroscientist. I did not have a very religious upbringing, and by the time I went to college I was, at best, agnostic. I applied and was accepted to Colgate University as a Biology major, but by the end of my four years there I had converted to being a Religion major. What happened during those four years was complex, but the key thing was that I had several powerful spiritual experiences, and I awakened to a new view of the cosmos and my place in it. This personal spiritual awakening presented some major problems, however, for although my experiences were profound, they were happening in a context of a secular family, a secular society, and a disenchanted cultural cosmology.

In the fall of 1993 I was at a personal low point, a dark night of the soul. I felt completely lost, adrift at sea. I had recently completed college, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It was in this darkness that I found a book by Stanislav Grof entitled “The Holotropic Mind.” It was in this book that I first read the term “Transpersonal Psychology,” and this was the first time I had read of a field of study where modern western science was coming together with spirituality and religion. This was the solution to my inner split: a field of study that emerged out of western scientific culture, but honored and integrated all forms of mystical awareness.

I immediately began to do some research to find a graduate school where Transpersonal Psychology was being taught. I applied to several, but was ultimately accepted to, and decided to attend, California Institute of Integral Studies. I enrolled in their Integral Counseling Psychology MA program, not really sure if I wanted to be a therapist, but very happy to be taking classes at an institution that honored all of the parts of my being. I was not really aware that Stan Grof was teaching at CIIS when I enrolled, but I was delighted to be able to take a class he was offering my second semester there. The course was titled “Psyche and Cosmos,” and was being co-taught with Richard Tarnas. This was a course that explored the intersection between Transpersonal Psychology and Western Archetypal Astrology.

I had been a little curious about astrology prior to this class, but I certainly didn’t have a passion for it. I was mainly interested in having the experience of Grof’s teaching, but by the end of the first day of class I knew that I had found much more than I had bargained for. Here were two grounded brilliant men speaking with confidence and clarity about the art and discipline of astrology. They were sharing extremely compelling evidence that astrology not only worked, but that it worked with a degree of precision and artistic regularity beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I had the sense that the class marked a historic event: the first time in centuries that astrology was being taught with seriousness and sophistication in an accredited graduate institution. I still feel that it was an incredible flooding of grace for me to have participated in this course, and I will be forever grateful to the forces at work that guided me there in January of 1995.

I was particularly struck by the power of Rick Tarnas’ teaching. He had a way of organizing and presenting the evidence for astrology that was simple and clear. He obviously was a major innovator in the field, and had devoted over 20 years to a deep personal engagement with the techniques and practice of astrology. Like other great innovators, he had studied the basics of the field and then had made them his own. Tarnas had a way of seeing through the complexities of astrology and was able to focus in on the most compelling and clear evidence for its validity.

It was immediately clear to me that astrology was going to be a major part of my life, and I began to passionately explore it. I took every astrology class that Tarnas offered (I had completed the course work towards a Masters degree in counseling psychology, and I was now enrolled in a PhD program in the department that Tarnas taught in at CIIS) and also studied with other astrologers. I read every good astrology text I could find, and listened to tapes of many famous astrologers. But in the end, I returned to the simple clarity of Tarnas’ approach.

My experience with many other astrologers was that they were teaching in an overly complex way. Tarnas kept it simple; through his background in archetypal psychology, he saw archetypes first, and symbols second. He saw astrology as primarily about the cultivation of one’s “archetypal eye” and not about the mastery of obtuse medieval astrological techniques. He saw astrology as a process of “learning to honor the gods,” and had moved beyond a “human-centered” astrology to a fully Transpersonal astrology. Instead of teaching astrology primarily as a tool for understanding human beings, Tarnas taught astrology more as a devotional spiritual practice, where one strives to understand the nature and will of the divine, and through this understanding better participate in the co-creative dance of the cosmos.

As a result of that first class with Tarnas and Grof I also was drawn to pursue Grof’s technique called Holotropic Breathwork. I became a facilitator of that work, and I later became a staff member for Grof’s training organization where I worked for a number of years. I am very grateful to Stan Grof, and also to Tav and Cary Sparks who now own and run that organization, as I was very fortunate to develop as an astrologer within that community. For years I was the “court astrologer” for the breathwork training, and I was able to give many consultations to workshop participants. It was incredible good fortune for a young astrologer like myself to have had such a rich opportunity to gain practice working with clients in such a unique setting, and I will be forever grateful for the experience. I am also very grateful to Stan Grof and the Sparks’ for inviting me to teach several training modules on the connections between the breathwork and astrology. These experiences were a very powerful initiation into the art of teaching and group leadership, and I was so fortunate to gain the experience in such a wonderful community.

Even though my work with Grof Transpersonal Training was very rewarding on many levels, it also required many weeks of travel each year, and it was very much an all-consuming commitment. In 2007 I could see that I was not living a balanced life, and I was really starting to feel burned-out. I realized that I needed to simplify my life, and after nearly ten years of working for Grof Transpersonal Training I resigned to focus more exclusively on my astrology practice. Since then I have been devoting a lot of time to my own inner work and spiritual practice, as well as focusing more time on my astrology work. I feel like I am really starting to find my own unique voice as an astrologer, and the recent work that I have been doing with my clients has been exciting.

I now feel like I have more time and energy to devote to writing and other creative projects, and in the coming months I plan to start writing a blog where I will share some of my experience with this archetypal approach to astrology. I also plan to write an introductory textbook (tentatively titled “Participating in the Great Powers: The Spiritual Discipline of Archetypal Astrology”) which will provide a detailed overview of the fundamentals of this approach. I also plan to have more time available for teaching and mentoring new students who wish to begin the adventure of learning archetypal astrology. Astrology has enriched my life in so many ways, and I hope that I can help others awaken to all that it has to offer.