Astrology Index

Astrological Nattering

“Stump the Astrologer”

04-04-2010 Easter

There’s a game that people sometimes play with astrologers. A fellow astrologer named it for me, “Stump the Astrologer”. Thanks Mystic Virgo. It is when a person gives the birth data of mm/dd/yyyy, location and time and little else.

“Tell me about this chart.” They demand, mentally crossing their arms across their chest in defiance. I hear the voice of “Dr. McCoy” of the original “StarTrek”: “I’m an astrologer, Jim, not a psychic!”

A birth chart isn’t written in stone. It doesn’t spell out one particular fate, robbing us of free will. It’s more like the default settings if you did nothing in your life but let your life happen around you. It shows your knee jerk reactions, propensities in reaction, or action without thought. It can show strengths and weaknesses but it cannot show what action you will take at a given moment in time.

Remember the movie series “Back to the Future”? If something was changed in a particular time line another future time line would branch off and develop on its own. There are many futures available to us depending on a number of factors. We can react to life without consciousness and follow our baser instincts. Or we can stop and count to 10, reflect on what consequences a reaction may bring, and then decide whether it is prudent react on impulse.

I had a client come to me recently with the birth data and then said “After you analyze the chart I’ll tell you something about this person.” Oh jeese, it’s “Stump the Astrologer” time. I wrote up a page and a half of looking at the slower moving planets transits on that chart and then said, “It would save me time and you money if you gave me the background of this person.” The response was “W-O-W! I can’t believe what you figured all that out. I’ll have to get back to you after I share this with my friend.” I made a bet with the family that the person won’t want to go forward because of that Scorpio Moon, needing to be “secret” about stuff. I was right.

Dig it: There are 10 heavenly bodies, not including asteroids, 12 signs, 12 houses, the ascendant, many possible “aspects” (the distance in degrees one heavenly body is from another on a 360 degree wheel). One birth date, location and time will give us a birth chart. What a person does with the birth chart is up to them, influenced by a number of outside factors. Your birth chart does not repeat exactly for another 26,000 years. Does that amount of time sound familiar? It should. It is the length of the Mayan Calendar and the precession of the Earth's axis.   

Offhand I can think of 6 things that may influence what a person might do with the birth chart they are given: upbringing (culture, religion or lack of), environment (urban vs. rural, being an ethnic or political minority), education, career, health, and gender. Then let’s say that each heavenly body and the ascendant could be influenced by those 6 things, or not.

The same chart with a man would be manifested differently than with a woman. Or that a gay man or lesbian woman would manifest the chart differently than a heterosexual or someone who was “in the closet”. Move the person to another country, with a different culture and religion and the possible choices could change drastically.

I knew a girl when I was young who had the same birth date as I did. I don’t know her rising sign or house placements of the planets. All I knew was we did not like each other. I was a poor minority gal and she was from a white family with resources. My mother was a cocktail waitress and we grew up in “the night life”. Her mother was a stay at home mom who was the Brownie Troop Leader and her father “worked” some sort of job that allowed them to own their home. We rented an apartment. Those socio/economic differences gave us different opportunities and choices in our lives.

Someone with the potential of having good natural intelligence who is then denied the opportunity for a college prep education, lacked the funds to go to college, but lived in an environment where there was opportunity to rise in the ranks of the criminal elite, might make different choices than someone born in a different socio/economic bracket.

Then again, we know of cases where someone is born in a privileged socio/economic bracket and is as useless as wet toilet paper. Often too many “good luck” trines makes a person lazy.

What someone does with the astrology chart they were born with is influenced by outside forces that can affect the time line’s direction, but is not predetermined. It is not fated that one would go off to be a crack whore or a nun by the basis of their birth chart. Didn't Freud say "Young whores make great old nuns?" But I digress. Each one of us has free will and the ability to make choices in spite of outside influences.

What does this have to do with “Stump the Astrologer”? Just this: when dealing with any astrologer give them as much information as you can about the background of the person getting the chart. Hiding information wastes their time and your money. I could fill a sports stadium with the “possibilities” of one chart just changing one of a half dozen outside influences. Why would I want to?

By telling the astrologer as much as you can it narrows down the possibilities. No need for the astrologer to suggest higher education as being a good choice when the client is sitting there with a Masters degree in their back pocket. Tell the astrologer why you’re there for a reading. Are you there to learn more about yourself? Well tell them a bit about yourself and they’ll know what direction to go to fill in the gaps of possibilities and potentials. Are you there to find out about your love life? Well you got to “come out of the closet” and tell them about your love life up to this point if they are to look at barriers, blockages, and directions you might take to change your love life.

Astrology is about finding out about you: strengths, weaknesses, propensities, default settings. Astrology may be able to help you take advantage of your strengths and hidden talents and how to get out of your own way with your knee jerk responses that cause disturbance in your life. Above all, astrology gives you the freedom to choose what direction you’re going to take going forward. But you have to help us help you by giving us as much information about your life, hopes, dreams, fears, as possible so we can get an idea of what area you may be overlooking or looking into too much and need to turn away from.

Astrologers are in the business of helping people help themselves. You can start out by being as forthcoming as you can in order to be a partner in the reading. So no playing “Stump the Astrologer” please.