One Screen, Two Movies (But Worse)

There's a prominent issue that I've been following the research on for the past year. I won't tell you what the issue is because I would prefer not to be deplatformed, but let's just say that it's an issue that has affected everyone's lives in a profound way. I noticed that what I was seeing in the research wasn't matching what was being presented in the media, and that people's responses to the issue tended to split along party lines. It occurred to me that if the media was able to create one picture of an issue that didn't correspond to the available research, that they could easily make two. I said so in an internet forum, and one of the responses pointed me to a blog post by Scott Adams: 

Good Example of Our Two-Movie Reality

I agree with what's in his post, but it seems to me to not go quite far enough. It is true that each of us looks at new information based on our prior knowledge and beliefs, but there's more going on. The media outlets are not only taking advantage of that tendency, but they are also selectively presenting information. Team Red will be shown things by their preferred media outlets that paints Team Blue in the worst light possible, and Team Blue is shown things that makes Team Red look bad. Team Red will not be shown things that make a Team Red elected official or candidate look bad, unless it's to distract from something even worse the person has done, and the same goes for Team Blue. 

It's true that outrage is good for ratings and web traffic, but there's something deeper going on. The mutual hatred between sides makes it less likely for people to get together with people from the other side and compare notes. This is important because neither side is right about everything. If one side was right about everything, that would make the other side wrong about everything, and both sides have some people who do their own research. One of them would find out and tell the others. By the way, this kind of arrangement is trivially easy if one group of people controls both sides' media outlets. 

So what do we do? My recommendation is to do what they don't want you to do: find someone from the other team who is willing to talk, and compare notes. Don't try to convert the other person; just compare notes in a search for the whole truth. 

1984, Version 2.0 (Cloud Edition)

I watched the 1984 movie two weeks ago and I'm reading the book now. It seems to me that the book and movie could use some modernization based on advances in technology and organizational techniques:

• TV screens that can look back at you and hear what you are saying was a logical next step given the technology at the time, but now we can do better. We can reduce the TV screen to the size of a short paperback book and have everyone carry one around in their pockets or purses.
• Big Brother doesn't need to be done by government. Outsourcing and privatization are things now and the book would be made more relevant to current times by incorporating elements of each. The cell phone companies would be an obvious choice for this function. 
• The Ministry of Truth also doesn't need to be a government function. Mainstream media today already presents a consistent message. We could bring the book up to date by having them manage what is official truth. And there's no need to bother with memory holes; burning old documents is wasteful and increases our carbon footprint; everything important is online anyway. If the old version of the official truth is more than a couple of weeks old, just leave the old articles up; only a handful of people will even bother looking and even if they tell others, no one will care. If it hasn't been two weeks yet, just change the article in place. No one will notice.
• The Thought Police was a good idea at the time, but we now know that trying to completely eradicate wrongthink is an unnecessary waste of resources. We could improve the book by having wrongthink allowed, but reducing its ability to affect others. Let people think what they want, even let them post it on social media, but take it down if it goes against the official truth as outlined above and gets too many views.
• And while we're on the subject of social media, the Two Minutes Hate seems unambitious. If we add social media to the book, we can have hate 24/7/365. 
• In the book, razor blades were hard to come by but gin was plentiful. Again, good but outdated. We can bring the book up to date by having barbershops be closed but marijuana dispensaries open. 

I believe that if we make the above changes to the book, it would be both more relevant and timely.

NOTE: Explicit permission is hereby given to everyone reading this post to copy, re-publish, or otherwise share the contents therein. The grant given applies only to this post. No attribution required.

Skeptics and Other Hazards

If you make it known that you study or practice astrology, you will from time to time encounter people who don't believe in it. You will also encounter people who believe in it, but also believe it's the work of the Devil. Ironically, the second group is usually easier to deal with, as you can generally point to a quote in whatever holy book they happen to be using that will support astrology. That won't work with the first group as they have no holy book, and in fact, no central authority. However, they are every bit as dogmatic as the second group.

The first group refers to themselves as skeptics. You might expect that to mean that they are skeptical about things until shown evidence. If that were true, they would reserve judgement until studies were done. The history of astrology skeptics is quite different. They do studies based on their assumptions about what astrology is, then publish those as proof that astrology doesn't work.

Furthermore, members of this group have no problem with saying that astrology is not valid, even if they know nothing about astrology. So they are not really skeptics, they are deniers. And because they do not know what they are denying, you have no hope with them.

The skeptics typically define astrology as the belief that the position of the sun and the planets relative to the earth at the time a person was born determines his and personality. The good news is that this is not true. The bad news is that what astrology really is will be even less palatable to the skeptics.

Astrology is simply the study of cycles as marked by the cycles of planets from the perspective of us here on earth. Astrology relies of the concept of an interconnected universe. In such a universe, the cycles of planets mirror other cycles which control everything. Under this concept, the Planets don't control anything but are simply indicators. And the natal chart doesn't determine a person's life; the life a person decided to have determines when and where they will be born.

In any case, argue with them at your own risk.

The other reason to be wary of those groups is that astrology is still illegal under laws against fortune-telling in some locations, and members of these two groups will be most likely to file a complaint.

tl;dr: Don't argue with fundamentalists, whether materialist or religious.

Astrology's Image Problem

Imagine a foreign exchange student from France or Italy comes to America for a visit. For some reason the host family takes him to either Denny's or McDonald's for every meal. He'd be entirely justified in concluding that American food is bland and possibly not even really food. However, that conclusion would be incorrect.

The average person's exposure to astrology is similar to the exchange student's experience with American food. Instead of being fed with nourishing concepts like the planets, the houses, aspects, reception and the like, they are fed bland Sun sign stereotypes. What's worse, few of them ever find out that there's more to astrology than that. Since everyone knows people who don't conform to the Sun sign stereotypes, many of them draw the conclusion that astrology is bullshit. It's not, but they have no way of knowing that.

Good astrologers know that there's more to people than their Sun signs. Unfortunately, good astrology doesn't sell books and newspapers, at least not in the quantity desired by those who are footing the bill. What's worse, someone who wants to study astrology in detail is faced with laundry lists of "this planet in this sign means X" and the like. Astrology, let's face it, is complex, and modern culture likes to oversimplify.

So what's the answer? I'm not sure, but I do know what would help: A fundamental change in the way we teach astrology, specifically a return to basic principles, and more specifically presenting traditional astrology to beginners first. Why traditional astrology? Because it's a system built on basic concepts. Once the beginners have sound knowledge of the basic concepts, they'll be able to derive everything else herself, and they'll have a solid base on which to add modern innovations.

This doesn't solve the problem of newspaper horoscopes and Sun sign books, and we still have materialist "skeptics" to deal with. I'm not worried about either. There's an old saying that nothing can beat an idea whose time has come. My feeling is that the materialist paradigm has already started to collapse, along with the current economic paradigm and a bunch of others. Our time is almost at hand.

An Infinity of Infinities

As a starting point, I'll present for you a grossly oversimplified model of the universe. First there was the Infinite. The Infinite was everywhere and everything. Even the word "was" is inaccurate as the Infinite was outside of time as we know it. Whatever the Infinite thought was real; after all, nothing else existed. Since the thoughts of the Infinite were still within the Infinite, they had the same properties and could create their own thoughts. So at this point we have an infinity of infinities. But things didn't stop there.

At this point, the Infinite and all of the thoughts for infinite generations were together within the Infinite. One of the thoughts had a thought of being separate from the rest. Since the thoughts of the Infinite were real and could create thoughts that were also real, that resulted in the experience of being separate from the rest. I'll leave out a few steps for the sake of brevity. Suffice it to say that, according to A Course in Miracles, that's why and how we are here in this place of pain, limit and lack.

This is the starting point, but what if the thought of being separate wasn't a mistake? Here's my theory: we're here to experience the underlying unity and limitlessness described above. Naturally, this won't happen overnight, but each of us has as many lifetimes as needed. But since we'll be doing this as people, each of us will have this experience from a different perspective. The effect will be that we will have multiplied infinity by itself, which in my opinion was the original plan.

Why You Should Learn Traditional Astrology

If you would like to learn astrology, I think that traditional astrology is the best place for you to start. This is because traditional astrology is a system built from basic concepts. It is therefore easier to learn because the ideas build upon each other.

The typical modern astrology book has lists of planet/sign and planet/house combinations. Few of these books give any indication of how the author derived the meanings of those combinations. Traditional astrology, on the other hand, gives you the tools to derive the meanings yourself.

Some of you may know that the Zodiac signs are based on the seasons, but how many of you knew that the sign rulerships are also based on the seasons? The two brightest objects in the sky, the Sun and the Moon, are given rulership of Leo and Cancer respectively, the parts of summer with the most daylight. Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is assigned the two surrounding signs, Gemini and Virgo. Venus, the next closest planet, is assigned the next two signs, Taurus and Libra, and so on, until Saturn, the furthest of the visible planets from the Sun, gets the two signs of winter, Capricorn and Aquarius, with the least daylight.

Traditional astrology does not use the outer planets: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Because of this you may think that something is missing. How can traditional astrology function without the dynamic force of Uranus, the dissolving mist of Neptune, or the death-like transformation of Pluto? Traditional astrology has its own drama, orchestrated by the fixed stars and antiscia.

The fixed stars are just stars; they are called fixed to distinguish them from planets, which were also called wandering stars. These stars have been given names that don't really mean anything by modern astronomers, but their old names are quite colorful. Regulus, for example, was formerly known as the Heart of the Lion. Antares was formerly called the Heart of the Scorpion. There's even a medusa's head (Algol)! Some of these stars can have a  dramatic impact on a chart when prominently placed. For example, Regulus being close to the Midheaven in a chart can indicate fame and fortune for the native, but the fame may be of the fifteen-minutes variety and the fortune similarly short-lived.

Now let's talk about antiscia. An antiscion (antiscia plural) is a shadow point of a planet. If an antiscion of a planet falls within a degree of another planet, it can indicate a secret connection between the two. For example, if the antiscion of the First House ruler (which represents the person) is close to the Seventh House ruler (which represents the person's partners), that could indicate a tendency to have secret affairs.

But what if someone doesn't know what time they were born? You can still answer questions for them by using horary astrology. Horary astrology answers questions based on a chart of the time and place of the question. What kinds of questions can it answer? Well, England's
most famous astrologer, William Lilly, had a famous question about his stolen fish. He ordered a shipment of fish from a local warehouse and found out later that it had been stolen. Based only on an astrology chart, he was able to work out a description and location of the
thief, and caught the thief with some of the stolen goods.

Traditional astrology can tell us about more than individuals and their stuff. Mundane astrology tells us about cities, states and countries, using the same princples as natal and horary, but there are more charts to work with. Conjunctions between Jupiter and Saturn
happen roughly every 20 years, and set the tone for the following 20 years. You can also cast a chart for the moment the Sun enters Aries each year, and charts for full moons, new moons and eclipses. Lilly used techniques like these to predict the Great Fire of London years before it happened.

If you'd like to learn more about traditional astrology, I'm working on a book about the subject. The book will be on leanpub.com, and I'll post a link later.

Traditional Astrology Course

I'm still working on my book on traditional astrology, but I'm taking a break to teach a four-week course on traditional astrology for beginners. The course will take place next month at a local New Age store in Michigan. I'll post after the course is done to let you know how it went.

Primary Directions in Traditional Astrology

Primary directions are a time-tested prediction and timing technique used in traditional astrology. They are similar to secondary progressions, but use degrees of what is called right ascension instead of degrees of the Zodiac. Right ascension degrees are different from Zodiac degrees in that they take into account the different amounts of time that Zodiac signs take to rise above the horizon. The differences arise from the fact that the Earth's orbit is elliptical, while the Zodiac is a circle by convention. In secondary progressions, one day's activity in the ephemeris after the birth time is taken to correspond to one year in the native's life (the native is the person whose birth chart is being examined); in primary directions, the planets move by one degree, more or less (there are different methods), per year of the native's life. The interaction between the adjusted (or directed) positions and the natal positions can mark events in the native's life.

Here's my chart. The house cusps are not shown because I use whole sign houses, where the entire sign where the Ascendant falls is the first house, the next sign the second house, and so forth. The arrow pointing to the left is the Ascendant; the upward-pointing arrow is the Midheaven. How it works is that the planets move clockwise through the chart as they would during the course of the day; a quarter of the way through will cover the native's entire life.

The first event I'd like to point out happened in September 1989 and was marked by Pluto advancing upward to meet the Midheaven. At the time I was starting my senior year of college, but I had to leave due to finances. That event completely transformed my career as Microsoft was recruiting heavily on campus at the time and I could very well have ended up working there had I graduated. So you can see that the event worked similarly to a Pluto transit of the Midheaven.


The next event also involves the Midheaven, this time with Uranus as the directed planet. This was in late 1993. At the time, I was working at an investment bank in Boston, in a department that managed stocks for pension plans. I developed stomach problems due to the stress levels, and in February of the next year, one day decided I couldn't do that job any more and gave notice. So the event was similar to a Uranus-Midheaven transit.

The last event I'll cover involves Venus, which was directed to the Midheaven in the summer of 1998. The major event was a trip to Russia to meet my future wife. I came back engaged and got married a year latter. The subsequent divorce ten years later was marked by an aspect between the Midheaven and what's called the antiscion (a shadow spot) of Mars.

If you'd like to try working with primary directions, I recommend using the program Pymorinus. Book Three of William Lilly's Chrisitan Astrology gives instruction on how to use primary directions.

Disclaimer: the first rule of predictive astrology is that no event can happen unless it is indicated in the natal chart. The technique given here is used to determine when events will happen, not if they will happen.

Free Astrology/Tarot E-book

It's time for a publicity stunt!

From now until the end of 2011, I will make the e-book version of my new book, Better Living with Astrology and Tarot, available absolutely free to anyone who requests it. To request it, send an email to all DOT are DOT wonders AT gmail DOT com.

Work in progress: Traditional Astrology for Beginners

I'm working on a new book. It's about traditional astrology, and differs from the other books on the subject by being targeted at beginners. All of the other books I've seen so far on the subject assume the reader is a practicing astrologer and familiar with all of the basic concepts.

My book will explore traditional techniques as used by William Lilly and the Arabic astrologers. I'll explain each technique from the ground up, starting with the basic concepts. Some of these techniques are no longer in use, but can provide unique insights into a chart.

I'll keep you posted about my progress.

Better Living with Astrology and Tarot

My new book, Better Living with Astrology and Tarot, is now available at lulu.com. The book explains astrology and Tarot starting with basic concepts, and shows you how to use both for planning personal development.

What is Divination?

For the purposes of this article, we will assume that the universe was not the result of a random incident, but was instead designed. We will also assume that the design is holographic; that is, information about each item and event also exists at other times and places. We will assume further that events in the universe are not all the result of random chance, that at least some of them were planned by the designer to provide learning opportunities.

Divination, then, is the art of using tools that work with the interconnected nature of the universe to get information about events and any lessons those events may have been intended to teach. Two popular examples of divination tools are astrology and Tarot cards.

Divination is useful because by getting information about future events, we can decide to learn the lessons those events are intended to teach up front, therefore mitigating the effects of those events, or in some cases, rendering the events unnecessary.

As an example, let's say that John Doe goes to see an astrologer. The astrologer notices that the planets Saturn and Pluto will soon be in a stressful alignment to where the planet Venus was at John's birth. In astrology, the planet Saturn signifies restriction, selectivity and focus, and sometimes fear, while Pluto signifies transformation, and Venus signifies how we value things and people. The astrologer tells John that he should examine his attitudes about what he owns and the people in his life. He tells John this because the alignment mentioned above is known to cause financial stress and changes in relationships.

Now John had been in the habit of making unnecessary purchases using credit cards.  John has a choice at this point: he can take the astrologer's advice or ignore it. If he takes the astrologer's advice, he would probably think things over and conclude that it's more important to have nice people in his life than nice things. He could then decide to put away his credit cards and spend more time cultivating friendships. If he ignores the advice, he will end up in bankruptcy court around the time the alignment happens, and eventually reach the same conclusion, but he will have learned the hard way.

What's important to note about this example is that the astrologer didn't simply tell John what was going to happen. He told John something better: what to do about it. Most importantly, he gave John the opportunity to learn a needed lesson the easy way instead of the hard way. This is how astrology and other divination tools are meant to be used.

The Twelve Houses

Learning about the houses in astrology can be overwhelming for beginners. I hope that what follows will provide a good foundation for further study.

Let's start with the four angular houses. The first house can be described in one word: "Me." Similarly, the seventh house can be described in one word: "You." The fourth house: "Inside". The tenth house: "Outside". This is a gross oversimplification, but it's a good starting point.

The other eight houses provide support to the four listed above. For each angular house above, we want to count four houses counterclockwise from the angular house, and we want to count four houses clockwise from the angular house. I'll explain why later. The counterclockwise house describes what the angular house needs to operate, and the clockwise house describes what the result of the angular house's operation will be.

I'll use the seventh house as an example. The seventh house describes interaction with others. A prerequisite of interaction with others is communication, which is governed by the third house, the counterclockwise house from the seventh. Results of interaction with others include friendship and group activities, which are governed by the eleventh house, the clockwise house from the seventh.

Now, let's take the houses in order. The first house has a base meaning of "Me." Other first house topics include personality and the body.

The second house is the clockwise house of the tenth house ("Outside"), so it will describe results of what you do outside the home, which for most people is work. So the second house describes resources and possessions.

The third house is the counterclockwise house of the seventh house ("You"), so it will describe prerequisites for interaction with others. Thus, communication and moving around in the immediate environment.

The fourth house has a base meaning of "Inside"; specific topics are emotions (inside you) and the home.

The fifth house is the clockwise house of the first house ("Me"), and describes things that come out of you, for example, creative work and children.

The sixth house is the counterclockwise house of the tenth house ("Outside") and describes prerequisites for activities outside the home: daily work habits and health.

The seventh house has a base meaning of "You" and describes significant relationships, including enemies as well as life partners.

The eight house is the clockwise house of the fourth house. Results of activities inside can include sex and death. The traditional other meanings of shared resources derive from a composite of the seventh and second houses, which I'll discuss briefly later.

The ninth house is the counterclockwise house of the first house, and provides support for you in the form of philosophy, religion, and higher education.

The tenth house has a base meaning of "Outside". The main outside activity for most people is work and career, but the tenth house also describes reputation.

The eleventh house is the clockwise house of the seventh house ("You"), and describes the results of interactions with others: friendship and group activities.

The twelfth house is the counterclockwise house of the fourth house ("Inside") and describes prerequisites for harmony inside: fulfilling karma, and getting past limitations.

There are supplemental meanings given to the houses by combining the house relationships. For example, if you were to use the second house as a starting point, the eighth house is directly opposite and therefore has the same relation to it as the seventh house would have to the first. So a common meaning given to the eighth house is the resources (second house) of others (seventh house).

Finally, I'd like to thank Robert Corre for the idea of using the angular houses as a base.

Traditional Astrology: Planetary Rulerships

I've been studying Hellenistic and Medieval astrology for about a year, and I've found some of the discarded concepts to still be useful today. One of those concepts is the set of traditional planetary rulers. This is a little different from modern rulers in that the traditional rulers not only gave their nature to the sign they ruled, but were also responsible for the activities of the house(s) where that sign was present in the chart.

Let's say, for example, that we are looking at a chart with a Scorpio Ascendant. Using the Whole Sign house system, that would place Leo in the Tenth House. In this case the Sun, or the native's basic identity, would be responsible for career and reputation. My special advice (it actually applies to everyone) for the native would be that he needs to decide who he is, and have all of his actions reflect that chosen identity.

The other difference, and this partially follows from the first, is that I don't assign rulerships to the outer planets: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. My belief and experience is that these planets have far-reaching effects as opposed to being restricted to one or two areas of life. They change whatever needs to be changed.

There's also a basic logic to the way the Zodiac signs were assigned to planets. Each of the Planets, except the Sun and Moon, were assigned two signs, one active (Fire or Air) and one passive (Water or Earth). There's a good reason for the exception: since the Sun represents identity, ego, and self-consciousness, there is no passive side; similarly, since the Moon represents the subconscious and emotions, among other things, there is no active side.

The Sun and Moon, the two luminaries, or brightest objects in the sky, are assigned Leo and Cancer, which correspond to two of the summer months, when there is a maximum amount of daylight. The other planets are assigned one sign on each side, in order of their distance from the Sun. Mercury is assigned Gemini and Virgo; Venus is assigned Taurus and Libra; Mars is assigned Aries and Scorpio; Jupiter gets Pisces and Sagittarius; finally Saturn is assigned Aquarius and Capricorn, the signs corresponding to two of the winter months where there is the minimum amount of daylight.

The exaltation signs have a similar logic, but to understand it requires the concept of day and night planets. The ancients say that the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn are day planets; the Moon, Venus, and Mars are night planets; Mercury can be either depending on whether it rises before or after the Sun. The day planets have exaltation signs that are in a trine relationship to one of the home signs: Jupiter, for example, is exalted in Cancer, which is in a trine relationship to Pisces. The night planets have exaltation signs that are in a sextile relationship to one of their home signs: Mars, for example, is exalted in Capricorn, which is in a sextile relationship to Scorpio. Mercury is neither a day or night planet, so it is exalted in one of its home signs, namely Virgo.

Whether you use the traditional rulerships is of course up to you, but it may add some depth to your readings to at least consider the concepts above in addition to the modern rulerships.

Update on Proposed Q&A Site

I renamed the Astrology Q&A proposal to Divination, and included Tarot and Numerology. There's a lot of synergy between the three, and all three will be used in the book I'm working on. If you're interested in having a nice place on-line to discuss any of these topics, I encourage you to visit the site and sign up.

EDIT: The stackexchange site didn't happen, but it turns out that there's a new site devoted to astrology questions and answers: astroknowlogy.com.

New StackExchange Astrology Site

I've proposed a new site on stackexchange.com. If enough people sign up, they'll host the site free. Please visit and become a follower.

Work in Progress: Better Living through Mythology

Last Sunday, I was at a local Tarot group meeting. We were discussing correspondences between the Zodiac signs and the Court cards. Someone at the meeting asked for recommendations for a book covering the correspondences in detail, and none of us could think of any, so I decided to write my own. The correspondences will be the core of the book, but the book as a whole will be about the use of astrology and tarot to plan your personal development and spiritual path. At some point in the future, I'll have a draft on line. I'll keep you posted.

Easy World: A Spiritual Path for the New Millenium

One evening after work a few years ago, I was driving home in the middle of rush hour, and suddenly noticed that there were very few other cars around, and that I was getting a lot more green lights than usual. At the time, I wondered if I had unwittingly entered a parallel universe.  It turns out that I did, and that the parallel universe even has a name: Easy World.


Getting to Easy World seems easy enough at first glance: "I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy." Just say that, breathe, relax, allow and enjoy. There's a catch: you have to leave a few things behind in order to stay in Easy World. No, not your money or possessions, it's actually a lot worse than that. You have to leave behind your fears, worries, anger, and (this is the one most of us will have a problem with) negative judgements.

Those of you who are fans of A Course in Miracles or who study Taoism will find yourselves in familiar territory here. So is the book a waste of time? Why not just buy, for example, the Tao Te Ching?

Here's why: the Tao Te Ching is a great book, but it was written a very long time ago, for people of a different culture, in a different language. I'm sure a Westerner could understand it to a degree after years of study, but I'm even more sure that it wouldn't be to the same level as someone who lived in China when it was originally written. The great books and myths of the past have to be restated periodically in current language and culture. Choosing Easy World is a perfect example of why: anyone can read this book and get the basic point right way, and they are automatically on the path just by trying to stay in Easy World for as long and as often as possible.

Modern Astrology and Hellenistic Astrology

For the past year, I've been studying Hellenistic astrology intensively with a long-term goal of determining how much of it is applicable to modern-day people and concerns. Hellenistic astrology is astrology as practiced by Greek-speaking people around the Mediterranean Sea between 1400 and 2000 years ago. Fate is much more emphasized than in modern astrology, but that is most likely a reflection of the philosophy (Stoicism) current at the time. Modern astrology, on the other hand, is very much about psychological issues and avenues for personal development. This suggests a synergy which I'll discuss shortly.

The cornerstone of stoicism, as I understand it, is the concept of the universe and the events that take place within it as being an orderly, interconnected system. In fact, some of the Stoic writings go so far as to say that the universe is the body of God. Events in this paradigm are not seen as random, but instead as planned by something much bigger than all of us. This brings to mind a modern saying: "Everything happens for a reason." The fact that we still say this even though we officially have free will and independent lives indicates to me that we're still (in America, at least) Stoics at heart. Because Hellenistic astrology is based on that philosophy, I think it essential that it be integrated into common practice.

That brings me to the synergy that I alluded to earlier. Hellenistic astrology is descriptive; it describes the native and a roadmap of the native's life. Modern astrology is prescriptive; it offers suggestions about issues that need to be addressed, and needs of the native that may need more attention. My contention is that the two styles of astrology are complementary. More on this later as I work out more of the details.

Book Review: Predictive Astrology

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the things astrology can do for us is predict coming influences and their possible effects. If you are interested in learning how to do that for yourself and possibly others, Predictive Astrology: The Eagle and the Lark by Bernadette Brady is required reading. I've been following my own transits (the interactions between the current positions of the planets and their positions in the birth chart) for the past year and a half. With the aid of this book, I now have a solid understanding of how transits work and some familiarity with progressions, which model the continuing development of the planets in the birth chart.

The eagle and lark in the title are from a parable given at the beginning of the book. According to the parable, the lark wants to sing to the gods, but can't fly high enough, so he enlists the help of the eagle, who can fly higher than any bird, and together they visit the gods and the lark sings to them. The eagle represents reason, the lark intuition, and both are essential in the practice of astrology. The book, of course, can only help with the reason and technique part; on the other hand, you probably don't need help with intuition, though you may think you do.

The book gives solid explanations of both transits and progressions, how they operate, and how to predict their effects. A powerful tool given in the book is called a time map, and is a graph of transits and progressions during a time period. The time map uses another tool called the transit grid, which lists the transit type and the houses (which represent areas of life) that will show the causes of the related events, the place where the main action occurs, and the areas that will be affected as a final result.

This book isn't for beginners (they should read Astrology for Yourself: How to Understand And Interpret Your Own Birth Chart first), but I recommend it for anyone who seriously wants to learn astrology.