Astrology and inner wisdom traditions: a reader reply

Dear Friend and Reader:

Every day I get an email from our database that gives me the addresses of everyone new who has subscribed. Sometimes it’s long, sometimes it’s short, but it’s always good news because it means we get to do more for you. You have indeed been subscribing in unusual numbers, and we’ve been putting the profit right where you can see it — here.

Camille. Photo by Dani Voirin.

I’ve lately started dropping emails to the new subscribers thanking them and asking them why they subscribed. I figure, if we’re doing something right, let’s do more of it.

We have an unusually high premium to free content ratio; in other words, if you wrote up a business plan and said that you would have this high of a percentage of free readers sign up for a subscription, your investors might laugh. In addition to being Horoscope Boy, I am the investor, and I am laughing.

Anyway, a reader sent in this rather interesting reply to my request, simply the question, what got you to subscribe? She makes a very good point. Often I do feel like a conversation partner for the world. Have a read, if you’re inclined.

Yours & truly,

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Hi Eric,

Some of the ancient wisdom traditions emphasised that an abundance of counsel from diverse sources is, shall we say, never a bad thing.

People need credible conversation partners. But even the best of the ones we have taken the time to get to know (and vice versa) carry the human flaws which limit us all. These people are immanent to us and familiarity has its weaknesses as well as advantages. What if a trusted person, whose judgment we trust, is correct 93% of the time? We understandably ‘doubt’ on the major issues.

Your writing offers people access to a level of interpretation, not tainted by any distortions of familiarity. I suspect that many people gain access to a kind of ‘transcendent other’ through your work. In a time when God concepts generally are arguably facing their sternest testing since they appeared, there is a draw to your offerings.

Because you manifest Eric in your work (with all your journey’s mapping of human, inner space) you provide extremely useful frameworks for people to self-help. This mode of problem solving involves individuals finding new conceptualities to make sense of self (THE crisis of contemporary experience). Also, self-help proves crucial to so very many travellers on the cosmic journey, since they have found that many significant others throughout life have proven grossly ‘unhelpful’, rather than liberating (this includes modern ‘caring’ bureaucratic institutions made up of a coterie of professionalised disciplines, such as psychiatry, within mental health).

Spirituality/Psychology boundary crossers are crucial to an holistic understanding of the humanum.

Anyhow, the point is, on a more mundane and personal level, that you nail the salient trends I need to be aware of, on both my inner and outer path.

I wasn’t able to answer straightforwardly. But it comes down to this – all people with the tools which can enable people to unlock doors, often rusted stubbornly shut, possess a commodity that is worth money to people on the most fundamental level. What would anyone pay to be free? It’s just that so many aren’t receptive and have numbed out, so that they can avoid noticing they are slaves.

I came to your work when the monthlies were free (May 2004 PW monthly, Taurus – and it, along with numerous subsequent months, was a life saver). I would not have paid at the time, however. My feeling is that a single free horoscope per month in which you specifically open out to people who don’t yet know you well enough to subscribe, would be a worthwhile investment. You still don’t need advertising in my opinion, but something like Facebook would be an outstanding tool to expand your cyber community (with access to the free monthly as incentive). If there was a PlanetWaves Group (you could start you own) then facebookees could invite friends to join and get exposed to the project.

Well, hardly a short response! But one has to say what one has to say..

Alex.

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We are getting Facebook organized; we do have a page at the moment, just not so evolved. Using the horoscope research function (included with all subscriptions) I located the May 2004 Taurus monthly horoscope. Here it is:

Planet Waves for May 2004 Taurus monthly.

You stand in what is likely to be the most complicated period of personal reassessment of your life. Complicated, or so it seems. Life would be simpler if you really understood the way in which you’ve become divided against yourself, and if you could see the influences that keep you that way. The problem has been that, like most vast and ancient issues, this one lurks in a blind spot. But unusual conditions will soon allow you to see something vividly that has long eluded perception: family patterns, your relationships with people who have harmed you, and those that have compelled you to grow. It’s true that you’ve been shaped by external factors, and it’s also true that, finally, you can choose what you take in and take on. There comes a moment when everything stops and you can make a decision as one person, for yourself.