How Long ...?

Reading a textbook of psychological astrology can have a similar effect to reading a medical dictionary. Especially if the author includes analysis of the charts of some of the more spectacularly unsavory characters from history. Before the end of the chapter you know that you have the astro-psych equivalents of several serious diseases.

No, it’s not true.

We all have all the planets and all the houses and all the signs in our charts all the time. It’s the emphases that make us different from each other. It’s the Moon through its orbit that connects us geometrically with every planet and everything beyond every month. Which is one reason why our moods rise and fall by the hour, and why Shakespeare said, “… for thy complexion shifts to strange effects after the Moon…”

Image from Pixabay

And each element in a chart wants to express itself in that unique combination of its nature and yours.

Take a moment in someone’s personal astrological experience like transiting Mars conjoining natal Mercury in the 3rd and sextile the Moon.

It could hit as simply as an impulse to drive too fast on the way home.

It could be an actor on a Saturday night after a few too many cleansing ales, suddenly declaiming the “How all occasions do inform against me …” speech from Hamlet (Act 4, scene 4) in Russian. I have witnessed this exact phenomenon btw. (the late great Jeffry Wickham, George III tour circa 1993).

Equally, the same planetary combination could manifest as a silent lecture for a paying audience on advanced martial arts by an Aikido master in the form of a physical demonstration. I believe I have seen this too.

Same energy, same potentials, different levels and forms.

I came to the focussed study of astrology in my mid 50s. In hindsight I realize there were opportunities to have begun this earlier, but the timing was what it was. And that’s fine.

Except that no matter how hard or dedicated my study of this endless subject is or becomes, I will never in this lifetime quite achieve the seasoned practitioner vibe of one who has been at it for decades.

I have used an unverifiable substitute solution.

In the first year or two I was excited to gain knowledge and insight and connect the dots with other parts of esoterica ⎯ tarot for example ⎯ transpersonal psychology, the Western Mystery Tradition … that kind of thing. Oh yes, and theatre too.

And then, believe it or not, I received, as the saying goes, “a download.” A non-verbal psychic package, one that I confidently expect to spend the rest of my life trying to understand.

I soon began offering readings to anyone who would stand still long enough and from time to time people would ask me, “How long have you been doing this?”

And I would answer truthfully, “Oh, three, maybe four months.”

And for some extraordinary reason, at that point the client seemed to lose confidence.

Once I realized that the expectation was of a more seasoned practitioner (and fair enough), the next time I was asked the question I responded differently, “Oh, three, maybe four lifetimes. As a matter of fact, back in Alexandria before the library was lost, I used to study with someone who was a close friend of Claudius Ptolemy.”

Claudius Ptolemy, image in public domain

And that was much better from the point of view of customer confidence.

And possibly not untruthful.

Who knows?