Larxene wrote: What I wanted to know was, if you cannot see anything that can help the person improve his life, what do you say to them?

I would rise above astrology and take the "higher" plane of viewing it all from a spiritual perspective, as astrologers we should always remember that God or "The creator" (however you want to put it), gave birth to the Universe and thus astrology in general. I'm not going to get into philosophical arguments about it, just stating my views at present.

No matter what we see or don't see in any astrological chart to help or aid a client can always be overthrown by spiritual philosophies which of course can encompass established religions etc..

Larxene wrote: But perhaps it is a matter of perspective.

Exactly! I've been through depressive times but came out in one piece. In the end of that phase, I realised its truly about perspectives and the relevance of it to pressing on in life.

No matter how dark you feel your depression, all things must pass, nothing lasts forever, except maybe parts of the Universe, but that's another topic altogether.

Obviously, with a lot of sensitivity (as others have said.)

However, I think the astrologer can distinguish between empowering and disempowering interpretations of a given horoscopic placement. This doesn't mean pasting a happy smiley face button on a heap of bad news. It does mean using the horoscope as a tool kit rather than a weather report.

Waybread wrote: Apr 24, 2014 3:32 am

It does mean using the horoscope as a tool kit rather than a weather report.

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Hey Waybread

Welcome back to the real world (=virtual reality)!

Michael

Thanks, Michael. We're spending the month of April desert camping in southern Utah, but making occasional stops in RV parks to catch up on laundry, showers, email, and groceries. Off tomorrow for 4 more days in the back of beyond.

Re: my previous post. I note that Ptolemy compared astrologers to doctors. A doctor wouldn't merely diagnose an illness, but would prescribe a potential antidote, as well. Ptolemy reasoned that if complete fatalism held sway, doctors wouldn't bother trying to cure diseases. And he was quite the determinist!

I view horoscopic placements as having multiple potential outcomes. We have some choice as to whether we focus on their "celestial, terrestrial, or bestial" manifestations.

This is a really interesting thread and I need to come back and read it again. I like that not everyone parrots that the stars don't compel, or whatever the new age unthought-out clich? is. What I have seen from studying astrology is that the stars do indeed have a lot of effect that the person is powerless to change. I wonder if the answer is about Time itself? Once we come down that birth canal we have no choice, our fates are already made, but astrology is ruled by Uranus, which lies outside Time, and maybe once you understand this you can get some perspective, and maybe peace and calm, but still not change events that happen in Time.

If you look at history, most people had horrible lives, and the current age is often described as the Kali Yuga, a very dark time in spite of apparent material well-being for some of the earth's inhabitants at least.

Fleur, if humans are powerless to change whatever the stars have decreed, then explanatory or even causal mechanisms become important (not to mention, a big can of worms.) Humans become nothing more than mechanical wind-up dolls, sort of like the old Energizer Bunny who would hop around unless his batteries ran down. An alternative view is that stars and planets function more like time-keepers, comparable to the hands on a clock. The clock doesn't compel anything: it marks events.

Then you also have to consider that each planet/point has multiple meanings, and although they may overlap they are not identicial. Is the moon your mother, your emotional nature, your home, or your dreams?

This is why I believe that the chart will express itself in some fashion, but you can change a disempowering interpretation into a more empowering one.

Waybread, I think that the combinations of transits to a chart at a particular time know exactly how they are going to manifest, down to the tiniest detail, and there is no way the person can turn it round to mean a good outcome if that isn't what is indicated, neither can they make a different interpretation of the planets involved manifest. That is pure new age "The Secret" rubbish that only makes the person blame themselves for something that happened to them that was a hundred per cent outside their control.

That isn't to say that astrologers know how to interpret a set of transits that are happening together at a particular time, and a fair assumption that most astrologers are way off the mark, but that doesn't preclude fate or that the transits themselves know exactly what they are doing, just that astrologers don't know how to interpet accurately.

I don't think it is being empowering to tell somebody that they can change something that they can't change. That is called blame.

I think it can be empowering to give somebody insight into the deeper parts of themselves, which transcend time. But not to tell them that they can change physical events when you suspect that these are going to be, by any usual measure, failures. That is like telling an abused or murdered two year old that what happened to them was their own fault.

Fleur, let's unpack your last post to me.

You wrote:

I think that the combinations of transits to a chart at a particular time know exactly how they are going to manifest...the transits themselves know exactly what they are doing.....

Since when is a transit endowed with its own consciousness? Who or what exactly "knows" a particular outcome in advance?

If I gave you a mystery chart, I think you would be hard-pressed to predict the minutia of the person's life, "down to the tiniest detail." The evidence for or against an extreme form of astral determinism is not at present subject to either confirmation or refutation, so it is purely a matter of what you believe.

I take your point that astrologers' skills may be limited or that they make mistakes, but this is hardly an endorsement for either astrology or for astral determinism.

I know that people can take a potentially difficult transit and turn it into something empowering, because I've done it multiple times myself, in my own life. Examples available upon request.

I have no interest in "New Age Rubbish" and have not heard of "the Secret," sorry. So they aren't where I'm coming from.

I will say that a truism of modern astrology is that, to the extent that you find a given transit to be difficult, that is probably the extent to which you haven't mastered what that planet represents in your life. [And no, I don't mean extreme catastrophes that strike entire populations.]

You've simply made up your mind that people are unable to change anything in their lives. This isn't an observable fact, but merely your belief. Whether you chose this belief or were somehow "destined" to believe it, I can't say.

There's no blame in any of this. I've lived long enough to have experienced my share of serious disappointments, and it can be a big relief to feel that I couldn't have changed what happened; that the disappointments were somehow in my stars. Yet even the stoics argued that we can choose to face difficulties with courage and equanimity.

For many centuries, astrology flourished under Christianity and Judaism, which taught that people make moral choices (misnamed "free will.")

Neither determinism nor a choice-centered astrology are necessarily affiliated with any particular branch of astrology.

And let's take determinism to its reductio ad absurdum. No need to be nice to people, observe any kind of laws or rules, or look after your children's safety (if you have children.) Because their lives are going to unfold as they must, anyhow. Indeed, tell the children that it's OK to play in traffic, because they won't get run over if the "transits" say otherwise. Drive on the highways as fast as you want, and tell the police officer not to give you a ticket because you had no moral choice in putting your foot on the gas pedal.

Then this all begs the question of who or what you think "transits" (planets?) really are, and how they manage to control the minutia of your daily life, such as when you blow your nose.

waybread wrote:
And let's take determinism to its reductio ad absurdum. No need to be nice to people, observe any kind of laws or rules, or look after your children's safety (if you have children.) Because their lives are going to unfold as they must, anyhow. Indeed, tell the children that it's OK to play in traffic, because they won't get run over if the "transits" say otherwise. Drive on the highways as fast as you want, and tell the police officer not to give you a ticket because you had no moral choice in putting your foot on the gas pedal.

I think we are programmed to behave "as if" we had effect and this was all real. The instinct to protect ones young is just about the strongest, in all animals. Just recently in the news was a story of a girl being attacked by seagulls for trying to move a baby seagull off the road. And authorities, ruled by Saturn which is Time, act as if there is moral choice down here, and also traffic police have to deal with the immediate dangers of the road. We aren't able not to behave in this way.

I am sure that Madeleine McCann's parents were very careful teaching their children about the dangers of roads, and driving carefully. This is deeply ingrained instinct. But it didn't stop fate from doing what fate does.

As for being nice to people, one of the people I ever met who was particularly good at being nice to people, I recently found out was sentenced for organising a boiler room scam. I never liked him, from the moment I met him, but was assured by a couple of people that this was my fault and he was ok and a good person. (It was his Jupiter).

These are superficial compared with how fate acts.

waybread wrote:Fleur, let's unpack your last post to me.

You wrote:

I think that the combinations of transits to a chart at a particular time know exactly how they are going to manifest...the transits themselves know exactly what they are doing.....

Since when is a transit endowed with its own consciousness? Who or what exactly "knows" a particular outcome in advance?

It was a figure of speech. You know what I mean. We can speculate about what these forces really are.

waybread wrote:
If I gave you a mystery chart, I think you would be hard-pressed to predict the minutia of the person's life, "down to the tiniest detail."

I already said that astrologers are particularly bad about making accurate predictions, and none are totally accurate.

This does not contradict fate, only the astrologer's ability to understand the chart.

waybread wrote:
There's no blame in any of this. I've lived long enough to have experienced my share of serious disappointments, and it can be a big relief to feel that I couldn't have changed what happened; that the disappointments were somehow in my stars. Yet even the stoics argued that we can choose to face difficulties with courage and equanimity.

But we can't turn around difficulties, unless there is something in the chart and transits that says that we can.

If you were living in a Greenland Viking settlement in the middle ages, when they were dying out, possibly to do with the little ice age, and starvation forced them to eat their dogs, you couldn't have turned around what history and fate were doing to you and your people.

You might argue that if the Viking settlers had befriended the Eskimo and learnt how they survived, then they would also have survived, but this didn't happen, and there were likely strong reasons why it couldn't have, just as unchangeable as a little ice age. Any more than a seventeenth century doctor treating plague victims could know about antibiotics.

Try looking back on one of your disappointments, preferably a distant one that is no longer so painful you can't look at it without getting upset. Try to go deeply into it, and you will find how deep its roots were and how you couldn't have changed it.