Why Does It Work?
In my work as an astrologer, I am always intrigued, sometimes vexed, by the way many understand or don’t understand astrology. There is a large group of people who are very quick to mock it wholesale without knowing a thing about it. But then there are also people who are too quick to accept it, also without knowing a thing about it. They just vaguely believe in it because it seems to be vaguely accurate – Aries people are like this, Scorpio people are like that. Yes, we laugh: it is so true, I am just like that. I find it amazing how many people will acknowledge that they do, in fact, fit the description of a Pisces very well but then don’t wonder further why on earth that would be the case.
Some people will take it further and seek to visit an astrologer. Many astrological clients seek out a reading because they are in a very difficult or impatient time in their lives and they need something to let them know that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. They are looking for a source of hope, a feeling that things will work out just fine in the end. I’ve learned that a person will very often turn to an astrologer with the expectation of getting vague but soothingly positive reassurances: yes, you should date him; yes, you will get that job; no, he will not cheat on you.
An astrologer is under a great deal of pressure to give these sorts of assurances even though – to the dismay of the client and to the credit of astrology – it doesn’t really work that way. Other times, a person who is not comfortable with the unexplained or unexplainable, will listen to an astrologer with vague mistrust – potentially open to what they are being told, but also determined not to be led down a path of airy-fairy nonsense.
I myself, as an astrological reader, usually end a session wanting to fall on my knees and tear my clothes in a mixture of fear, horror and bewilderment. Many times I have stared at a client – someone I have never met before – and searched deeply in her eyes for the shock and fear that I think should be there, only to find that she just shrugs and accepts that I could know so much about her personality, childhood and current state in life; that I would be able to ask whether she met someone significant in the middle of March of this year – maybe around March 10 to 18 – and for it to turn out that not only did she meet someone at that exact time, but that that person is the very reason why she wanted to talk to me in the first place.
Perhaps from the client’s perspective, those are lucky guesses or just my fulfillment of her expectation that I can pull off a bit of psychic showmanship or magical tricks, or perhaps that I’m some type of Sherlock Holmes and am just effectively reading her body language. However, from my perspective, the astrological reading is proof to my hypothesis that, for example, a natal arrangement of Pluto square a Mercury–Saturn conjunction in the first house means the client is probably stubborn in her ideas and resistant to outside opinions; that transiting North Node conjunct her Ascendant in mid-March means she probably met someone significant at that time and that it will be a relationship that will feel ‘karmic’ to her.
For those unfamiliar with astrology, that last paragraph is perhaps a morass of unintelligible jargon. This is the language of real astrology – it goes far deeper than the superficial and almost entirely faulty version you find in the short horoscope quips that are published in newspapers. The common criticism about these horoscopes – that it is unlikely that every person born in the same month has the same characteristics and same daily fate – is entirely correct. Newspaper horoscopes are hogwash and I never read them (anymore). Real astrology is highly complex, multilayered and terrifyingly accurate. But in order to show this, it is necessary for me to give a basic run-down of how one calculates and then reads a horoscopic chart. So, for the next few entries, I ask you to bear with me as I bring readers who are unfamiliar with this perplexing science up to speed on its basic premises. Without it, the rest of this analysis will make little sense. Once the nuts and bolts are out of the way, then the real fun begins.
