Living Myth and Astrology with Jason Holley Imaginal, Relational, Embodied Ways of Knowing
Astrodrama Retreat, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2022; Grove of the Nymphs near the Temple of Apollo in Bassae, Greece Sacred Sites Tour 2024; John Singer Sargent, Chiron and Achilles, 1925; Ganymede and the Eagle (Zeus), Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1829; path to Cave of Mary Magdalene, Astrology and Love Retreat in Provence, 2023.
O Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, luck-bringing messenger of the immortals . . .
- Homeric Hymn to Hermes
The word Zodiac means a “Circle of Animals”. Astrology offers that each of us is an ecosystem — teeming with inner parts and beings all with their own experiences of life, mirrored by the planets and stars. It also reminds us that we humans are one animal among countless others, embedded in rich and intricate webs of relations with our ancestors, spirits, fellow creatures, lands, seas, skies. The symbols of astrology invite us to deepen our connection with all life.
We can follow the deep rhythms of planetary cycles into a conscious relationship with the Circles of Animals inside and around us. Relational, embodied, and experiential approaches to myth and astrology empower us to recognize and respond to the continuous calls of our ancestors, fellow creatures, and the instinctual, symbolic, and archetypal worlds. To listen deeply and patiently when the symbols speak. To embrace the instinctual and the imaginative. And to love. In Audre Lorde’s words, “to make our own lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible.”
About Jason Holley
Jason Holley has been a practicing astrologer for 35 years and a practicing psychotherapist (LPCC) for 18 years. Jason grew up in astrology and divination, stretching back to his great-great-grandmother, who was a tea leaf reader in the West Virginia hills where he was born and grew up.
Jason’s work focuses on engaging with stories of earth and sky in a way that enhances life and our connections with all our relations, in our shared sensuous and animate world, and in the inner ecosystem of creatures we see represented in the horoscope.
Jason leads online experiential courses and on-land workshops and retreats, and sacred site pilgrimages. He facilitates a living experience of astrology and story through methods developed from long study and practice of storytelling, archetypal psychology, psychodrama and action methods, ceremony, ecopsychology and relational-somatic therapies.
In 2014 Jason founded the Hermes-Hestia Center for Living Astrologies, now home to a Practitioner Program in experiential astrology, as well as the first Living Astrologies Conference to be held in October 2025.
Jason has been an invited speaker for most US and international astrological conferences and organizations (including NORWAC, ISAR, UAC, FAA-AUS, EAC, AFAN, Kepler College). He has been a faculty member of Southwestern College, a consciousness-oriented counseling and art therapy graduate school, for 15 years, teaching Psychology of Consciousness, Addictions, Career and Life Development, and Human Sexuality. He is also faculty for Astrology University and the Center for Psychological Astrology - Mercury Internet School (CPA-MISPA) online, as well as the newly-established Center for Astrology, Myth, and Symbol (CAMS). He has led workshops and retreats in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Greece, the UK, and the US.
Jason 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 the Greek, Roman, and Mesopotamian stories of the twelve zodiacal constellations. Since 2005, he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in an ongoing apprenticeship with the piñon, cottonwood, mountains, and many creatures who have lived together in the high desert for millennia.
The Hermes-Hestia Center
The Hermes-Hestia Center offers in-person and online workshops, webinars, immersive retreats, and mentorship programs taught by Jason and others in three primary areas:
Mythic Astrologies: immerses students in the mythic context of astrology and enables students to creatively recognize, engage, and work with myth and mythic figures in their own lives and the lives of others.
Relational Practice of Astrology: provides students an astrologically-grounded and psychologically-sophisticated relational model of consultative practice, including multiple modes of case conceptualization and ways of understanding and working with the interpersonal field as a locus of archetypal expression.
Experiential-Immersive Astrology: prepares students to facilitate living experiences of astrology for people in individual and group settings - including astrodrama and action methods, dreamwork, embodiment and movement, and working with symbol, image, art, and ritual.