from Cosmic Confidential. Access to the 2010 annual edition of Planet Waves is free to all readers through Monday night at midnight, California time. For access please go to this link. –efc
Dear Friend and Reader:
Let’s start with a reminder: astrology is a form of divination. It is not a science and it is an odd sort of art; it’s the kind of art we expect life to imitate. As a writer of fiction and nonfiction, I assure you that it finds its home somewhere in between the two. I am using the charts — many of which are published here — as the outline of a story. This is the interpretive part. We all agree that the chart is there. Astrologers don’t all agree what belongs in a chart; I use a lot of current discoveries. The story charts tell is up to the storyteller.
That would be me in this case, but then you respond to that, and tell yourself another story based on what I offer. I have done my best to leave my margin notes in the articles; that is, to tell you what aspect I’m interpreting. My opinion is designed to cast the issues in a way that is helpful. I try to state problems in a way that lends itself to solutions. But with astrology, we are all making up stories.
Beware you’re doing this. Pay attention to the narratives you tell yourself about your astrology, and what they are based on. In my method of reading charts and telling stories, I take the role of creative problem-solver and inventor. Knowing something about what people go through, and how people in my society (which I consider to include the North America, the U.K. and Western Europe, all places I have lived) think, I design ideas that get us around the usual psychological pitfalls, and offer alternative ways to view our lives.
When I predict, I try to be archetypally predictive, explaining the basic conditions and presenting options. I don’t say, “You will get a great new job,” but rather, “This is a good time to make some changes in the work that you do, and move toward what you want. This is a good time to rethink your notion of what a career is.”