AN INTERVIEW WITH OPA MEMBER
BY BOB MULLIGAN
When I was 14 , Jung ’ s autobiography , Memories , Dreams , Reflections , fell / was pushed out of a library shelf onto my foot . I read it and realized that I had found my vocation : I wanted to understand people , their motivations and the meanings of our lives . Following that revelation I focused on getting into medical school with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist but fortunately after two years of studying there ‘ life ’ [ transiting Saturn sq MC ruler , Pluto conj Mercury , Saturn sextile Jupiter , Neptune sq Saturn ] intervened and got me out of what would have been for me a blind alley as it didn ’ t include astrology . I am now doing the essence of what my 14- year old self recognized she wanted .
By 1982 I was a pharmacist but felt unsatisfied , so I started to train as a medical herbalist . During the training I met someone who did a short interpretation of my chart . I was hooked and started to read up on astrology voraciously . I was living in Germany at the time in a one-room apartment with a husband and two young children so used to get up in the middle of the night to read in the lavatory . Within six months I was practising all I could and people were even insisting on giving me money for it !
With my medical and herbal background and my interest in health it was a natural combination to work with .
I ’ m not sure . Scotland is a much smaller country than England .
I was asked by an agent friend to submit a proposal for a book on health for a series which never got off the ground . My proposal included a curriculum vitae where I mentioned my work in astrology and in medicine and when the same publisher decided to produce a series of astrology books they invited me to write a volume of medical astrology . This later morphed into the Penguin / Arkana series edited by Howard Sasportas and included books by Liz Greene , Melanie Reinhart , Erin Sullivan etc .
Yes , indeed ! I ’ ve got several ideas bubbling away . Watch this space ... But as a historian I ’ d also like to do something on the astrological cycles of history .
Astrologically , Liz Greene without a doubt , and Rob Hand . Otherwise , Jung . Assagioli , Joseph Campbell and the transpersonal and process work psychotherapy movements .
I earn my living doing a wide variety of things - mainly involving astrology . Client sessions do provide a substantial part of my income , now that I ’ ve given up working as a locum pharmacist . I also write a column for a Sunday newspaper . My books bring in a small amount too - but every little helps ! About 70 % of my client work until recently has been psychological astrology . I was only doing a limited amount of medical astrology while I was working on my History PhD , as there is a lot of extra preparatory work involved in medical charts but , now that the PhD is done , I ’ m able to take on much more of that kind of work , which is challenging and deeply satisfying , and I ’ m also starting to teach classes again .
Not so many , but Scotland is a small country - population about 5 million - and I ’ d say the practitioner numbers reflect that .
Meeting astrologers - mainly at conferences - who use astrology in a wide variety of ways has been exciting , as has reading their books . Seeing basic chart factors from a different angle is often so stimulating - for instance I remember a wonderful lecture by Donna van Toen on the MC-IC axis that just threw a whole
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O P A ❥ The O rganization for Professional Astrology 4 T H E C A R E E R A S T R O L O G E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 3