How do you learn astrology?

A friend just wrote to me and asked me how one learns astrology — or rather, how she can. I just wrote this reply and will post it for the benefit of all who are curious.

Hi…

I may not be the best person to ask. I learned the work after seven years pre-preparation of spiritual training and therapy. Then I began a process of reading, writing and adopting mentors. I learned because I was on a mission, responding to a calling. I use the same basic method to guide my learning process today.

I think the single most important thing someone can to do learn astrology is go to therapy. No matter what comes out of the clients or the charts, you have to be aware of the issue yourself and know how to handle it in the client.

I have my teaching method for astrology itself (not counseling, I do teach that professionally but that is another matter), which involves starting with basic writing and mundane (news/event) astrology. I want my students right in the soup, working in realtime, on non-personality oriented charts (i.e., initially mostly on events, not natal).

One learns this craft by doing it, basically, every hour of the day. Mentorship is also important, but there are a lot of frauds out there, and people who are waaaay to cerebral about the work in my view, or driven by will-to-power, to use a term from Alice Baliey. Astrology is a human skill in the first instance; a little goes a long way. The better question than how to learn astrology is how to use what you know, as you learn it.

All of this said, reading certain books helps. My articles are also designed to be studied, not just read. This is one reason why I leave in my notes and chart data, and cover contemporary events people know about.

Astrology will not be real to you until it BECOMES real…until it pops off the page, till you feel that little echo of how old the work is, the echo of direct contact with truth like a space opening up, and until all the incredible complexity (it is by far the most complex divination system) emerges with simplicity and elegance.

For that reason, it’s essential — essential — to learn simpler divination methods and their history (runes, tarot, I Ching), so you can get the feeling of interacting with the “divinitory force,” trusting the random factor (the birth time or event time, in astrology), allowing in its information and instructions while maintaining your freedom of thought.

Think of this as the equivalent of throwing a rubber ball against the wall and learning how to catch it when it bounces back, before stepping onto the pitcher’s mound to throw a baseball. The throw, bounce and catch are the basic dynamic of the process (requiring plenty of hand-eye-muscle coordination), then it gets more complex from there, especially with other people involved.

In the end astrology is, however, A HUMAN SKILL, requiring A LISTENING SKILL, and imo only safe when practiced primarily such. Since you can mess a person up for years by uttering one sentence, you need to have the feel, and cultivate it in an environment that protects you and your initial study clients — then ongoing. Most astrologers never get here. Many do some serious damage to some of their clients.

Here is an article I’ve written a couple of years ago designed to guide the profession onto more solid and humane ground, and get it away from the whole “magical power” thing that so easily slips in.

http://planetwaves.net/astrologynews/849488903.html

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PS, therapy, therapy, therapy — and other healing skills. Learning some homeopathy has helped me profoundly.