Medical Astrology Book Review

I often get questions about my favorite books on clinical herbalism, herb-drug interactions, alchemy, and medical astrology; it seems like everyone  wants to know what I’m reading. This inspired me to start a series highlighting books that have shaped my understanding of herbalism, medical astrology, and related fields. We have an in-depth post on building your herbal library, but in this new series, I’ll spotlight some of my favorite books and share a little about them and why I like them.

Our first book is “Medical Astrology: A Guide to Planetary Pathology” by my teacher Judith Hill. When I first got this book, I had only read two or three books about medical astrology, but they always left me wanting more depth.What frustrated me about those books was that they veered away from medical astrology halfway through. Suddenly, the author was talking about crystals, chakras, energy healing, and Reiki, and that’s all fine and good, but that’s not medical astrology.

When I got my hands on this book, it struck me how direct and to the point it was, yet felt deeper than anything else I’d read up to that point. I appreciate that Judith is a scholar on this subject. She studied the old medical astrologers like William Lilly, Richard Saunders, Joseph Blagrave and of course, Nicholas Culpeper, gathering and synthesizing their insights into her work. All of this comes together here in Judith’s foundational text on medical astrology. If you’re just getting started and thinking, what is medical astrology? What do I need to know? What’s the foundation of this system? This book is a great place to start. 

One of the things I appreciate about how Judith lays this book out is that she highlights some of the most critical points you need to consider when doing a health assessment based on medical astrology. That’s how it begins. From there, the nine key points of health assessment build on the foundation. 

The Six Sign Polarities

Most medical astrology books go through the 12 signs and their physiological correlations:Aries rules the head and Taurus the throat, Gemini the lungs, arms, and hands. And then with Cancer, you have the stomach, the breast, and on down through the body.

The way Judith talks about the 12 signs is brilliant. She explains that rather than thinking in terms of 12 signs, think in terms of six sign polarities that generate the organ systems—I’ll discuss this topic separately because it’s really important. You just can’t look at signs in isolation, rather you look at six sets of fundamental qualities that exist in opposition to one another. 

For example, the Taurus-Scorpio axis. Taurus governs the throat, ears, lower jaw, and neck—this whole region. Scorpio governs the pelvic region, which encompasses the colon, bladder, and reproductive system. 

But when we consider these as opposing qualities of a singular system, interesting connections are revealed. With Taurus, the throat is where you swallow food, it governs the ingestion process Scorpio is the other end of the tube with the colon, governing excretion. This connection is exemplified during puberty, when the voice begins to change (Taurus), and at the same time, the reproductive system matures (Scorpio). The Taurus-Scorpio axis becomes triggered during that time. I found her section on the signs fascinating because it doesn’t see them in isolation. It sees them in connection and relationship with one another, and if there’s one essential key to astrology, it’s all about seeing patterns, connections, and relationships.

Planetary Qualities

After laying the groundwork with sign polarities, Judith moves into planetary influences on health. I like that she organizes these by chapter and, again, by relationships. Judith talks about the sun as the battery and your life force and the moon as the distributor of that life force. She discusses the connection between metabolism and the planets. The Sun, Mars, and Saturn work together to generate metabolism. How hot you burn or cold you are depends on your relationship with these planets. She lumps Saturn and Mars together as the malefics and Venus and Jupiter as the benefics (a classic understanding) and discusses what this means and their implications for health. Even the benefic planets can generate health problems, as we all know that too much of good thing may not be so good anymore. 

Judith gets into each planet as it goes through the 12 signs and possible ways that a particular planet in a specific sign could manifest in health problems. Her approach demonstrates how to understand the dynamic of a planet to sign relationship. The planet represents a particular quality or characteristic that is present within a certain organ system, represented by the sign. 

One issue with this body of knowledge that I see, is that many people treat it as “cookbook astrology,” so to speak. People often use a book to look at their chart, and they think, “Ok, I’ve got Saturn in Sagittarius.” So they look up Saturn and Sagittarius and read about it, but they don’t read Saturn in Aries, Saturn in Taurus, Saturn in Gemini, all the way around. I don’t think it’s a good way to think about it and it’s a mistake to study in that way. It’s essential to read each planet in each sign to understand how that planet influences the sign. But on a deeper level, to develop a deeper understanding of the qualitative factors of the planets and how they express in each sign of the zodiac.

Judith describes each planet as an energetic quality, quite similarly to how we tend to understand the energetics of plants. Each planet has a certain quality and characteristic present within a particular area of the body, as represented by the sign. As you read through these, you’ll see that a specific quality of Saturn in Aries manifests very differently than in Taurus or Gemini. However, you can still see Saturn’s golden thread of influence through the different parts of the body. 

Lunar Nodes– Excess and Deficiency

Another big takeaway for me in this book is Judith’s emphasis on the lunar nodes as necessary medical signatures in the chart. These represent a fundamental pattern discussed in every tradition of herbal medicine— excess and deficiency. Look at traditional Chinese medicine; everything has a dynamic of excess or deficiency. Is it yin deficiency? Is it an excess of yang? Ayurveda is always looking at things in terms of either excesses or deficiencies of certain doshas. 

Excess and deficiency is a fundamental polarity in herbal traditions. It is essential for differential diagnosis as well as specifying what remedies are indicated or contraindicated. For example, one of the main ways we would differentiate something like a headache is by determining whether it’s an excess or a deficiency-type headache. You’re going to treat it very differently based on that information. 

The excess-deficiency pattern is reflected in the lunar nodes. Judith calls these “entry and exit doors,” classically associated with the head and tail of a dragon. This concept is useful for assessing specific pre-conditions in the body for weaknesses, strengths, excesses, and deficiencies. Generally we look to the north node as a potential area of weakness and deficiency and the south node as an area of excess, accumulation or stagnation. It’s incredibly helpful and is an important area of the natal chart to assess for medical purposes, it also has important implications for our spiritual development.

The Four Elements and Three Modes

The next piece Judith discusses is the four elements and the three modes. I always thought that was an interesting way to organize the material. The four elements and three modes are foundational. When I teach this piece, I typically start there before discussing signs. From my perspective, elements and modes are the building blocks for the signs. If we understand the elements, the modes, and the planets in-depth, they all come together in the signs. Signs are much more readily understandable if you understand these building blocks because you know their constituent elements.

That said, from Judith’s perspective and experience, the Elements and Modes are less useful patterns to focus on within a chart unless there is a clear dominance of one. So if someone has say ALL of their planets in Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, the Fire Element certainly becomes an important governor of the individual. If everything is in say Gemini, Sagittarius, Pisces and Virgo, the Mutable mode becomes of prime importance to understand. But these configurations are less common, and thus Elements and Modes are discussed later on in the book. 

Judith has a section on transits and progressions, which is very important since it is they that reveal the current astral influences on the individual.Then, there are some fascinating topics, such as how to find a safe surgery date, antidotes and treatments by planet type, as well as diagnostics, are also covered. 

Who is this book for? 

This book is for anyone interested in medical astrology, and it’s essential whether you’re just getting going or on your way to becoming more advanced. It’s a great reference and one of the most important modern medical astrology books. 

It’s crucial to consider from whom and where the information comes. Judith is a master on the subject who’s outspoken about teaching and sharing this knowledge at a scholarly level. She has a practical approach and has used this work in her own practice for a long time. Judith is a lovely person who is very knowledgeable and humble, which I appreciate.

Even if you’re advanced and you’ve been doing medical astrology for a long time, you’ll appreciate Judith’s unique way of explaining things—for example, the information on sign polarities and elective surgery dates. I had never heard anyone talk about that, and it clicked many things into place for me. It could be because I hadn’t been studying medical astrology for long when I read it. I was in my early twenties and just getting going. Nonetheless, whenever I return to this book, I pick up on a few more things each time.

Recently, I had a client who was quite sick with a degenerative neurological disease. Multiple sclerosis was the official diagnosis. I observed his chart, looked around, and searched for contributing factors. It was the first time I had worked with Multiple Sclerosis. Of course, we’re talking about the brain and nervous system. There are some primary areas I tend to go to when I’m thinking about a chart and a particular organ system affliction. I thought, “Ok, there’s autoimmunity here, likely there’s inflammation, it’s the nerves.” I looked in the places I could think of and thought, “Nothing’s really happening here. What’s happening?” So I decided to open my book and see what Judith said. Lo and behold, there it was in a place I initially hadn’t thought to look, which was Sagittarius. And when I returned to the chart it was right there clear as day, all kinds of stuff going on with Sagittarius—something I hadn’t initially thought to check.

My point is that I’ve been doing medical astrology for some time now, and I certainly don’t know it all. But this is a book I constantly return to and reference, and it has been very useful for me. Hopefully, it will be for you too. 

Pick up a copy of Medical Astrology here on Amazon. Judith does self-publish this book (Stellium Press), but the links on her website just take you to Amazon so apparently you can’t buy it directly from her.