Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer magazine. Reprinted with permission.
This interview was conducted by Adam Sommer for his podcast on October 16, 2015.
Adam Sommer: Welcome, Mark, to the Exploring Astrology podcast. Thank you so much for coming on the show!
Mark Jones: Thank you for inviting me.
AS: It’s so great to be able to hear you so clearly via Skype, even though I’m having Internet problems here at home.
MJ: The 21st century does bring some magical things, doesn’t it? We can have an intimate conversation while thousands of miles apart, and relatively effortlessly, without paying for it or making any grand gestures. Only 150 years ago, we’d have had to travel for months to speak to a particular person.
AS: To give everyone a little background, I recently heard Mark speak during the Evolutionary Astrology Network’s online conference, “Real Money and Lasting Love. It was a beautiful conglomeration of Evolutionary astrologers speaking about their passion. I believe the title of your lecture, Mark, was “Radical Empowerment: The Nature of the Pluto–Uranus Square.” It was, in many ways, a great inspiration for me. A lot of the references you mentioned really hit home — especially the work of Rupert Sheldrake and Stan Grof, who have been incredibly important in the development of my own work.
I’d like to start with a question about how you combine your long-time practice as a Psychosynthesis therapist with astrology. How did the two come together for you?
MJ: I’ll start in a strange location and then work my way back. Recently, a colleague was speaking at a Psychosynthesis conference in Rome, and the two of us were privileged to gain access to the Institute of Psychosynthesis. It’s located in Florence, Italy, in the home of the founder, Roberto Assagioli. Right away, we noticed boxes of files piled up on the floor, and when we went through them, we discovered they were all on the topic of spiritual astrology, in English! How ironic that I should make this discovery years after I had trained in Psychosynthesis, and years after I’d already become an astrologer! I had completed Noel Tyl’s Masters in Counseling Astrology program, then began the Psychosynthesis training, and went on to study the evolutionary work of Jeffrey Wolf Green around the same time, graduating from all in 2002. After the training, it took quite a while to build a private practice, and then there was the ongoing endurance test of hours of regular therapy clients each week. With all of that going on, I put astrology on a back burner.