When I was first studying astrology, someone recommended that I read a book called The Moment of Astrology by Geoffrey Cornelius. It’s a book about horary astrology (pronounced hor-erry), the astrology you do when a client asks you a specific question
It’s usually based on the chart for the time that the astrologer becomes aware of the issue. It’s a weird form of astrology because it’s not based on the ‘birth’ of anything, or anything much happening; it’s the intersection of thought with the cosmos, and then, by some miracle, the chart that’s produced can often be read following a set of guidelines that are more strict than the rules of baseball, but which point to some useful information.
Geoffrey sought to explain horary as the exception that proves the rule — that is, as the basis of all astrology. In doing so, he wrote a book that debunked the pseudoscientists who would debunk astrology as pseudoscience.
He unravels the ideas of people who would try to prove astrology’s validity with science. Along the way, he did a fine job of showing the weaknesses in the scientific method. The only thing that survives his analysis is astrology itself, though he makes it clear why most astrologers don’t understand what they do or why it works.
He demonstrates that astrology is a divinatory system that works at the intersection of time, space, symbols, consciousness and some spiritual force that’s not quite possible to define.
You get chapters like “When the Wrong Chart Works” (a study in the two birth times of Diana, Princess of Wales) and a reading of a random chart stuck in with an article attacking astrology that’s not supposed to mean anything — but it reads as legibly as a clear photograph.