Open sign from Mexicali Blue in Kingston, NY. Photo by Eric.
Months of study preceded my embarking on the 2012 readings. Each of them takes about two working days to prepare, including research, recording and writing the interpretation. After casting the charts, I did the audio recordings first, starting with a practice run through the signs in forward order (these are not posted), and then followed that by doing three audio readings per sign proceeding around the wheel in reverse order, from Aries through Pisces to Taurus. There is about 90 minutes of audio per sign.
I finished that on Dec. 24, hung out that evening with my dad and his wife Yael, and began the written sections the next day, proceeding at one written sign per day, ending at 2500 to 3000 words per sign. Then I went through all the signs and edited them up to about 4,000 words each. Through this process, I recorded the Top Five Events of 2012 (free audio linked from the right-hand margin).
The forward-reverse-forward process brings out different qualities of the signs and shifts the orientation alternately between soul level and personality level, helping me integrate the two seemingly different levels into one idea. The audio and written readings cover some overlapping material, but more often present differing, complimentary approaches to reading the signs.
I use solar houses and the whole sign house system described by Rob Hand in his monograph Whole Sign Houses. I explain this in an audio on the Resources page called “It’s All About the Houses,” an idea I got from horoscope writer Patric Walker (1931-1995).
This whole exercise orients me on the more frequent interpretations (“horoscope columns”) that run monthly and weekly through the year. There’s hardly any chart I’m going to look at for the next 12 months where I don’t have a pretty good idea of the territory. This helps a lot for both horoscopes and for coverage of news events that spontaneously emerge. What’s interesting is that I’ve done the charts from a personal/psychological perspective first, and then I go through similar charts covering public events that reveal themselves as the year – that is, time – unfolds.
