One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is, how can my horoscopes apply to so many people born under one sign? It’s a question I’ve thought about a lot, but have not written about until now.
On Sunday, I promised to explain why I believe that an extended annual forecast written for everyone born under one sign is more dependable than a supposedly custom report that comes out of a database.
Backtracking a moment, when you purchase a ‘custom’ chart report from a charting service, you enter your birthdate and the product is accessed in pieces, from a database. The program creates a list of aspects that apply to you, looks each of them up in a database of pre-written interpretations, and then puts them together as a ‘custom report’. The individual bits can be interesting and even accurate.
But there are a few problems, which I’m sure many of you have noticed if you experiment with these products: there is no astrologer who experiences your chart as a whole. Neither is the product a whole report; it’s in parts that are stuck together. The parts do not relate to, or reference, one another. Aspects are interpreted without the specific signs being taken into account. The program may know you have Venus square Mars, and Venus and Mars in certain signs, but it cannot assemble both. Charting services have not come that far. Even if elements could be drawn from a relational database (which is possible, but it would be many times more work for the writer and programmer because there are so many variables), there is still not one mind processing the entity of your reading, in whole.
When I do the annual reading for a sign, I don’t have any information about you specifically. I don’t know that you have certain natal aspects or natal transits. But I know the astrology of the charts that I am looking at; which are developed intentionally for the reading I’m about to offer. I am able to prepare the report as a whole, based on a coherent reading of the sky. What I lose in certain elements of detail (your exact ascendant, for example) I more than make up for by being able to write as a whole person experiencing whole charts. This evokes the holistic or holographic property of astrology: I tell a complete story and pass it onto you, a complete person. They are likely to have a coherent relationship.
As an astrologer looking at actual charts and making decisions about what I observe, I can see the nuances of the relationships between different aspects and placements, and work with them in a way that responds to the subtlety.
To give an example, a computer program can dial in an interpretation for Pluto in Capricorn. It can dial in its interpretation for Mars in Leo, but few account for the fact that Mars is retrograde in Leo. What I can see as an astrologer looking at a chart is that there is activity in Capricorn; and that Mars has a subtle relationship to Capricorn (exaltation); Pluto and Mars are related (via Scorpio); and I can creatively interpret the whole thing together: how Pluto in Cap relates to Mars retrograde in Leo, for a given sign of the zodiac. Then I can go around the wheel and do it 11 more times, one for each sign. As a human, I can think back in history; I can include illustrations specific to a given unique condition in the sky; I can listen to my readers and my clients; and I can offer this collective wisdom back to you.
If you ask me, this ability to do a real reading of a real chart, written cohesively by a writer trained to interpret; who can write a cohesive interpretation, is the far more effective way to work. That is why a reading like the kind you get from Cosmic Confidential — a whole, complete, alive something — can speak to you as a whole person.
In either case, you’re going to take what works for you and toss what does not. But in the case of a creative work prepared as one thing, written with a theme, created specifically to address an immediate time frame — well, you have something you can have a dialog with, work with, and explore for its essence as well as its specific facts.
Note, this same basic theory applies to a thoughtful and well-written Sun-sign horoscope.
PS, if I ever produce custom-style reports drawn from a database, I plan to invent a solution to the ‘whole chart’ issue. I am brewing up some ideas for how to do this. (Meanwhile, any chart service could go a long way toward highlighting the issue for the reader, making a disclaimer on the purported ‘custom’ thing for the sake of integrity and awareness; and explain that the reader becomes the cohesive interpreter of the report itself, giving a few ideas for how to work with that idea.)
PPS, if you’re into the theory that I’ve described above, here is an article from my archives that describes how astrology is a holographic art.
I want to thank you for your “voice,” Eric. I realized the reason I have loved being a planet waves reader over these last many years is because of the love and passion I felt for being alive in a body was many times inspired by your writing voice, and those of your contributing writers at pw. It’s the authenticity I most appreciate.
It is this voice I refer to that keeps me coming back, keeps me interested, and gives me a language with which to relate to the ‘voices’ within the theater of my own mind.
I have worked as a psychic consultant off and on for the entirety of my adult life.
I have given and received my fair share of consultations, each time hoping the words crossing my lips and the threshold of another’s consciousness might be of value to them. As you have mentioned in your posting: “In either case, you’re going to take what works for you and toss what does not.”
I know that Cosmic Confidential will be busting at the seams with sensitivity, a nod to where we’ve travelled and the landscape we find ourselves in, and eyes open wide for the inevitable future each of us engineers for ourselves and others.
Thanks for bringing something meaningful to the conversation we’re all having about being alive in the age of a_uarius…*still need to fix that _werty key*
oe
I call ’em cookbook astrology. Very spare, very clinical, very non personal… I’ve had a couple off an astrologer that more often than not manages to hit the button with his daily stars – very, very,very accurate at times. But strangely his *instant* forecasts are so as you describe above, I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone… (from the last one I have – he didn’t calculate houses and didn’t really mention the fact I’m having / coming out of hopefully of a major pluto transit…)
One ‘full’ reading which, hmm, was okay at the time but I don’t know, didn’t leave a lasting impression. Part of my problem is that most of the astrologers that I know and respect are over the other side of a large ocean which make personal readings a) epensive and b) a logistical nightmare to organise…
I wanted to throw some Natalie Merchant, Gulf of Araby your way. It’s a beautiful tune, with a gorgeous woman.