Hermes-Hestia Center for Living Astrologies Experiential Astrology Practitioner Program
2025-2027 Cohort Begins November 2027
2025-27 Program Prospectus
Program Purpose
The Experiential Astrology Practitioner Program empowers students with astrological fluency to deepen and develop their capacities as practitioners facilitating individuals and groups to have living experiences of astrological symbolism; to engage in a full-self way with the living sky and psyche. The 18-month program is a hybrid of online and on-land courses, with 220 hours of live small-group interactive class and case consultation time; as well as at least 30 hours of client contact in a practicum project.
The skills and capacities you will develop and deepen in this program can be described in three broad areas (each of which is detailed in the final section of this document, “Curriculum Focus Areas and Practitioner Competencies”):
Mythic-Imaginal: immerses students in the mythic context of astrology and enables students to creatively recognize, engage, and work with symbolism, myth, and mythic figures in their own lives and the lives of others.
Relational-Psychological: supports students in developing astrologically-grounded and psychologically-sophisticated relational models of practice, including multiple modes of case conceptualization and ways of understanding and working with the interpersonal field as a locus of archetypal expression.
Embodied-Experiential: prepares students to facilitate living experiences of astrology for people in individual and group settings - including astrodrama and action methods, dreamwork, embodiment and movement, art and making, play, ceremony and ritual.
The program is grounded in personal and direct experience of living astrology. You will be asked to make your own life and experiences the laboratory of astrological learning. You will have multiple opportunities to experience practices and approaches from both ‘client’ and ‘practitioner’ roles — so that the learning is taking place in an action-based way, not only theory. And you will develop communities of practice with other astrologers working this way around the world.
Educational Philosophy
Our educational approach holds that the primary instrument of meaningful astrology is the participating consciousness of the astrologer and their capacity to engage with astrological symbolism, fellow human beings, and all our relations in mythic-imaginative, relational-psychological, and embodied-experiential ways.
Our approach recognizes astrological technique as the beginning rather than the end of astrological practice. Each student will enter with technical knowledge from various astrological disciplines, bringing diverse ways of orienting to the symbolic sky. The focus in this program is the development of a living relationship with sky and psyche; if we are anchored in imagination, relatedness, and body, we will naturally learn, grow, and work with the help of the technical models that are most alive to us and best suited to the place, the moment, and the webs of relations in which we are situated.
Astrological theory and technique practiced from this place take on deeper dimension, assisting us in connecting more profoundly with symbols and cycles, life and all creatures, allowing us to do our astrological feeling, sensing, thinking, and sharing with our relations, so that our human talents for language and concept do not separate us but rather weave us and those we work with into creative, life-enhancing connection within and around us. The techniques and theories themselves then also naturally evolve and change as they are brought into deeper levels of service to symbol, self, and world.
Program Structure
The 18-month program is a hybrid of online and on-land courses, with 220 hours of live small group class and consultation time as outlined below; as well as a m30 hours of client contact in a practicum project.
3 One-Week Full Cohort Intensives (40 hours each = 120 hours)
Intensive One: Immersive Experiential Astrology Retreat
Intensive Two: Hands-On Facilitation Practice and Shared Learning
Intensive Three: Hands-On Facilitation Practice and Shared Learning
36 Biweekly Online Small Group Sessions (2.25 hours each = 80 hours)
Discussion and experiential engagement with assigned readings and core concepts drawn from a wide range of sources including and ancient and modern astrology, ancient epic and drama, psychoanalysis, archetypal psychology, cultural studies, eco-philosophy
Group case consultation (cases from participant’s practice)
Practicum design and case consultation
Small Group is 6-8 people (approximately 1/3 of the full cohort)
The 36 sessions are divided into four 9-session rounds each inspired by the Twilight Planets as tutelary guides:
Series 1: Hestia/Vesta: Cultivating and Tending the Secured Symbolizing Field
Series 2: Hermes/Mercury: Fluency and Practice in Experiential Symbolic Process
Series 3: Chiron: Developing the Client-Practitioner Relationship – Healer/Patient, Querent/Oracle, Teacher/Student
Series 4: Demeter/Ceres: Engagement with Deep Field of Experiential Work
6 Full-Cohort Online Sessions (2.5 hours each = 15 hours)
Before and after each in-person Intensive
3 One-to-One Meetings with Program Director (1.5 hours each = 5 hours)
Custom mentoring, practicum design, feedback
Practicum Project (30 hours direct client contact)
Designed by practitioner in consultation with program director and cohort during first half of the program
Examples: providing individual experiential consultation using specific methods developed by the practitioner; facilitating a three-month astrodrama group offered locally; creating and sharing an astrological art exhibition; developing an astrological history-writing collective; developing an online experiential astrology course; and so on
Presented at an online or in-person Case Colloquium
2025-2027 Key Program Dates
November 2025 - June 2027
One-Week Intensive Dates (full cohort):
March 22-28, 2026, Santa Fe
September 13-19, 2026, Santa Fe
June 13-19, 2027, Santa Fe
Online Sessions (6-8 students enrolled in each, shuffled at program midpoint):
· Group 1: Every Other Tuesday, 9am-11am Pacific, begins November 4
· Group 2: Every Other Wednesday, 5pm-7pm Pacific, begins November 5
· Group 3: Every Other Thursday, 9am-11am Pacific, begins November 6
Application and Participation Requirements
The program is limited to 20 participants each cohort.
Application may be made through emailing hermeshestiacenter@gmail.com to inform us of your interest and receive an application link. Applications are on a rolling basis as they are received (note that some spots are currently filled and early interest suggests the program may fill by July/August 2025, therefore it is suggested to apply early). Applicants must satisfy the following criteria:
Pre-requisites: 40 hours class time in online or in-person experiential astrology courses/groups led by a program-linked practitioner (20 of these may be completed concurrently in the first six months of the program); sample classes include:
Living the Signs of the Zodiac – Fire, Earth, Air, or Water (Online): each in the series counts 20 hours
Twilight Planets, Night Planets, Day Planets, or Outer Planets (Online): each in the series counts 20 hours
Iliad, Odyssey, Argonautica, Euripides (Online): each counts 20 hours
Other online or in-person experiential workshops, courses or retreats with Jason Holley
Note: If you have not yet taken any experiential courses with Jason Holley, here is a list of upcoming eligible courses which will complete in time for beginning the practitioner program in November.
Intermediate Astrological Fluency
Planets, Signs, Houses, Aspects, Timing Techniques
Some depth in specific cosmology (such as Mythic, Hellenistic, Traditional, Evolutionary, Psychological, Others)
Interview to assess program fit and readiness, including:
Personal readiness for experiential education in a group setting
Specific interests, passions, and personal learning objectives
Intentions and plans for practicing and sharing the work
Support, resources, community while enrolled
Astrological comfort and capacity
Financial Arrangements
The total cost of the Program is $6595. The general payment outline for the 2025-2027 cohort is:
· Time of Enrollment: $2195
· March 2026: $1500
· July 2026: $1500
· November 2026: $1400
Given the limited number of spaces and the experiential container of the program, all payments as received are non-refundable for any reason.
Additional Program Benefits
While students are enrolled in the program, they are eligible for 15-20% discounts for participation in other programs of the Hermes-Hestia Center such as the “Living the Signs of the Zodiac” series taught by Jason Holley; the “Planets as Living Symbols” course taught by Jason Holley and Gray Crawford; and courses and webinars offered by Jason and associated faculty on topics in psychological astrology, ancient Greek epic and drama, and experiential astrology.
Practitioners who complete the program are also eligible for practitioner-only ongoing courses, workshops, and retreats designed to support continuous practice and development, as well as the pleasure and support of being with a committed community of practice.
Curriculum Focus Areas and Practitioner Competencies
The curriculum builds practitioner capacity in several competencies. This list is not exhaustive nor are the items mutually exclusive. The areas overlap and cannot cover all the ways the work operates.
Symbolic-Imaginal
Skills and practices in this area enable students to creatively recognize, engage, and work with symbolism and archetype in their own lives and the lives of others, and to bring imaginal consciousness — critically and relationally inflected — to all experiences of life and astrological practice.
· Custodial and Reciprocal Ways with Stars and Stories: Practitioners develop themselves in a custodial and reciprocal relation with the fields of astrology, myth, and story.
· Recognition and Tracking of Astrological Symbolism: Practitioners deepen their tracking capacities relative to the planets, signs, houses, and aspects in astrology and consciousness through cultivation of their own knowledge base of myth, story, ad tradition, and through the deepening of felt-sense awareness of symbolic signatures.
· Hermeneutics and Symbolic Process: Practitioners develop working models of symbolic process, divination, and the capacity to facilitate, educate, and engage this process with clients and students.
· Diachronic Awareness: Practitioners study the history and development of astrological symbols, technique, and story, and develop a habit and capacity of situating these in the context of the natural and cultural environments in which they have taken place.
· Story-hearing and Story-telling: Practitioners develop their capacity to think and experience in story, as well as to track story-threads in narrative and events and to weave these threads in creative and invocative storytelling.
· Facilitation of the Reflective Symbolic Function: Practitioners actively build the capacity of themselves and their clients to enter into symbolic modes of consciousness and to make use of full spectrum of consciousness and experience (somatic, sensuous, relational, emotional, mental, languaging, spiritual) to facilitate symbolic encounter.
· Embedding Technique in Imagination: Practitioners actively situate astrological techniques, frameworks, and diagrams in dynamic relation to imaginative, sensuous participation with life, and develop the capacity to track when story and technique bring greater or lesser connection.
· Cultivation of Reflective Presence: Practitioners actively practice states of consciousness which support symbolic engagement: awe, mystery, wonder, curiosity, openness. Practitioners train patience, open-endedness, and receptiveness in symbolic work to allow astrology to speak.
Relational-Psychological
This focus area enables to students to deepen their understanding and capacity to engage with psychological complexity in self and others, as well as with the ecological and relational fields in which astrological practice and human connection are embedded. The lenses, models, practices and skills offer ways of seeing and navigating intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics, to work creatively and respectfully with the interpersonal field:
· Empathy, Attunement, Resonance: Practitioners develop capacities in tracking emotional, somatic, spiritual, and relational process and states of people they will work with.
· Setting and Tending the Relational-Archetypal Field: Practitioners develop skills in creating “secured symbolizing fields” for experiential work, rooted in care, boundary, and relatedness.
· Interface of Personal, Relational, and Archetypal: Practitioners track and work with the interpersonal and archetypal field using a wide range of lenses and models.
· Self-as-Ecosystem and Intrapsychic Complexity: Practitioners develop multiple models of imagining the human experience drawn from multiple cosmologies and cultures, and develop their capacity to track states of self and self-organization in clients and students.
· Self-Awareness and the Use of Self: Practitioners develop a deeper fluency in their own psychic self-organization, vulnerabilities, and develop the capacity to self-track during experiential work with clients, and to make use of this information in work with others.
· Ecological-Relational Perception: Practitioners develop their awareness of the deep embeddedness of individuals in webs of relations, social and cultural backgrounds
· Dyadic Field Dynamics: Practitioners develop modes of perceiving and participating effectively in one-to-one dynamics with clients and students.
· Group Field Dynamics: Practitioners develop modes of perceiving and tracking group process, as well as developing capacity to facilitate group dynamics in service of experiential astrology.
Experiential-Embodied
This focus area empowers students to facilitate living experiences of astrology for themselves and others in settings ranging from individual consultations to group settings. Students will be exposed to all modalities below but also supported in in-depth development in one or two specific areas:
· Land-Based and Place-Based Practice: Practitioners develop attentional practices and attitudes to the development of relatedness with Place, Land, and the webs of relations in which they are situated, as well as capacities to facilitate this experience of embeddedness for others.
· Ceremony, Ritual, Play: Practitioners develop skills in understanding, creating, and facilitating spontaneous and structured modes of ceremonial, ritual, and play; including the engagement of ancestors, spiritual sense-perception, altered states, and connection with the more-than-human world.
· Eliciting the Maker-Author-Player-Lover: Practitioners develop skills and practices to assist students and clients in accessing their own creativity, personal authority, and confidence in engaging with astrological symbolism.
· Ethical Awareness and Inquiry: Practitioners develop heuristic models for evolving ethical standards of practice suited to the nature of their experiential modalities; as well as cultivate a lifelong orientation to ongoing ethical inquiry and consultation with communities of practice.
· Art-Making and Creative Expression: Practitioners develop skills in designing and facilitating craft and art as a means of invocation, participation with, and representation of, astrological archetypes.
· Somatic and Sensuous Ways of Knowing: Practitioners develop skills in facilitating sensuous and full-bodied experience of astrological symbolism in themselves and others.
· Dance, Movement, Kinesthesia: Practitioners develop skills in engaging movement and rhythms as a means of astrological engagement and revelation.
· Desire, Sexuality, Eroticism: Practitioners develop skills in recognizing and working with desire, sexuality, and the erotic as modes of astrological engagement and revelation.
· Astrodrama and Action Methods: Practitioners develop skills in creative enactment of astrological symbolism.
· Modes of Mediation: Practitioners develop a sophisticated understanding of how archetypal content arises and can be engaged; as well as the ability to step-up and step-down engagement by clients and students in the service of experiential astrology.
Sample Program Texts (most materials are articles/videos provided to students)
The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal, David Abram
Soul, Symbol, and Imagination: The Artistry of Astrology, Brian Clark
The Moment of Astrology, Geoffrey Cornelius
The Dream and the Underworld, James Hillman
The Signs in Myth and Psyche, Jason Holley
Astrology Alive!, Barbara Shirmer
Sand Talk, Tyson Yunkaporta
About Jason Holley
Jason Holley (he/they) is the founder and lead faculty of the Practitioner Program. He has been a practicing astrologer for over 30 years and was a psychotherapist (LPCC) for 18 years. Jason grew up in astrology, through mothers and grandmothers stretching back to his great-great-grandmother, who was a tea leaf reader in West Virginia where he was born. For the past 20 years he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Jason has facilitated several thousand hours of living and embodied experiences of astrology for individuals and groups in Australia, North America, South America, and Europe. His work is grounded in long study and practice of mythological storytelling, archetypal psychology, psychodrama and action methods, meditation and ceremony, and ecopsychology and relational-somatic therapies. He has spoken and led workshops and courses at most astrological conferences and organizations in the US, UK, and Australia, including NORWAC, Astrology University, ISAR, AFAN, UAC, the School of Evolutionary Astrology, FAA, APA, CPA-MISPA, CAMS, and Kepler College. Jason is also the convener of the first Living Astrologies Conference being held in Santa Fe in October 2025.
Jason’s work in experiential education also includes 10 years as faculty at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, an accredited graduate school for counseling and art therapy whose experiential teaching philosophy he helped to develop; he taught courses in Psychology of Consciousness, Human Sexuality, Career and Life Development, Addictions, and Trauma, all with astrological components. Jason also worked for several years as a Practice Manager at the Advisory Board Company where he led design and teaching of experiential leadership courses for healthcare executives at 1500 hospitals and health systems in the US.
He is currently completing two books: Living in the Circle of Animals, an invitation to an ecological mode of astrology rooted in dream and myth; and Constellations of Meaning, a psychological exploration of Greek, Roman, and Mesopotamian stories of the twelve zodiacal constellations, following on his Myth and Psyche course offered through Astrology University.