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