I’ve been a professional astrologer for over twenty years, but the story really begins back when I was six years old. I was handed a book — The Compleat Astrologer — by my mother. “There’s too much math for me,” she said. Besides, the book’s original owner (my then-twenty-year-old half-sister) had been hauled away by the cops for what everyone assumed would be the last time.
That’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years: astrologers usually come from screwy family backgrounds somehow. Also: the book is still available and still a classic.
Fast forward a couple of decades and I had gone through college to learn psychology and counseling, and I was dissatisfied. Helping people is what I wanted to do, but traditional techniques always seemed to result in scatter-shot results. For a while I secretly integrated astrology into more mainstream techniques, and I started to get results. It’s one thing to come to the conclusion that a client is having a bad time with their children, but it’s quite another to be able to tell that client that these problems (which started about ten months ago) are a result of Transit X, and should be wrapped up in another four months.
The more I did this, the more there was no looking back. I had become an astrologer, and could only bill myself as such. I had traded in prestige for results. Frankly, I am a HUGE fan of “results.” The more I understood astrology, the more I could see the actual mechanics of why this person gets along with that person, but trouble always flares up over scheduling or sexual mismatches or communication styles, or what have you.
If psychology is like decoding the plot of a movie you’re watching, then astrology is like decoding the plot of that movie with a copy of the script in hand, and an interview with the director and writer as to what their thoughts were during filming. It’s simply more comprehensive and easier to make sense of the movie with all that additional background material at hand.
Oh, and also: astrology can predict the future. How can you say no to something that both tells you why your mate is acting up AND how long it’s going to last? That’s why I’m an astrologer. I like helping people, and I like seeing how the individual parts add up to a Whole Person, and how those parts interact with other Whole Person’s parts, and with the world around them. And yeah… predicting the future accurately is pretty cool too.
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Whether by choice or personal tastes, a lot of astrologers end up specializing in one way or another of doing their work, and what issues they deal with. Although astrology can be used to find answers to pretty much anything, I find myself drawn again and again to matters involving human relationships. Why does this one love that one? Why can’t those two work things out? What am I doing wrong when it comes to understanding you, and vice versa? Psychology is pretty good for that sort of thing, but in my experience only astrology seems to grasp a lot of the mechanics and timing of personal and interpersonal issues.
The timing of matters is particularly important. When do I start my business? Should I go on vacation now or next month? Astrology has answers for those things too. I often tell clients: “any psychic can tell you that ‘everything happens for a reason’… but it takes an astrologer to tell you that ‘nothing happens a damned minute before it’s supposed to.'”
So even though my goal is to help people the same way a regular counselor or therapist would, I get my results from a wide variety of of both natal and predictive techniques: transits and secondary progressions and eclipse charts and even a little Vedic Astrology where it fits. Basically, I go wherever the answers are.
Also: the idea that Your Life and The Universe are strangely yet deeply connected really, really rocks. If you’re looking for some answers of your own, send me an e-mail and I’ll tell you more!
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