OPA E-News
OPA E-News
CRITIQUING ASTROLOGY
When approached with humility , our failures often teach us more than our successes .
When our astrology doesn ’ t describe the events we are studying then we need a new astrology . Astrology is vast , it is infinite . We simply need to keep growing and embracing an ever widening expression of our profession .
Two common forms of hubris amongst astrologers :
1 - Where the astrologer blames the astrology itself , saying that astrology can not describe or predict some circumstance or happening .
2 - Where the astrologer sees someone else do something that they can ’ t so they say that the other astrologer is psychic .
In the first instance , we have all heard from our colleagues when a client has asked them for information they were not prepared to give . We are all better when we just say that we can ’ t do what is being asked or we say that we don ’ t work this way . There is a divine order to the way information presents itself in our lives . I address the problem of sequencing of information in my book “ Between Astrologers and Clients ” when I share that it wouldn ’ t have helped me to know that I was going to be married three times when I was entering my first marriage . At the most practical level , I believe it was appropriate that no astrologer that I had seen up to this point had mentioned this to me .
Many times good practicing astrologers have shared with me that an incident happened in their life that the astrology did not explain or describe . Upon careful examination , the astrology always did describe the happening , when different systems or techniques were employed . This is one of the reasons that it behooves all of us to keep open and in discussion with our friends in astrology about our puzzlements over the day to day happenings in our job . As the British astrologer , Dennis Elwell once said , “ We are trying to do something more dangerous and more delicate than brain surgery .” This is true ; we need to always approach our craft with reverence .
To the second point , we all see astrologers , differently trained , doing something that looks magical to us . It is easy to attribute their results to something beyond astrology . The common explanation is that they are psychic .
On my first trip to India in 1976 I had the occasion to come across a few Indian astrologers . When I was at Pratapgad , the main fort of Shivaji near the town of Mahableshwar , I met an Indian astrologer . We talked through a translator . I asked him if he understood the major differences between Western astrology and Hindu astrology . He smiled at me and handed me a piece of paper and asked me to look at it as soon as my plane took off . I put this paper in my vest pocket and promptly forgot about it . Leaving India about a month later was very dramatic . Our plane was supposed to take off around midnight . I had a great difficulty with a custom ’ s officer and it required the entire luggage of the 747 to be unpacked so I could retrieve my tape player to show him …. it was a long and very disrupted night . We all finally got on board our plane ; just as the wheels of the plane lifted off of the ground I remembered the astrologer that I had spoken with way out in the country so many weeks ago . As life would have it , I was wearing the exact vest I had on when talking to him . I stuck my finger in my pocket and lifted this piece of paper he had given me . On the paper was scribbled “ 4:26 AM ” - I looked at my wrist watch . It was exactly 4:26 AM .
Klaus Witze was a professor in charge of the interdisciplinary study program at University of Illinois , Champaign / Urbana campus . We would occasionally meet in the middle of the night at Bubby and Sadie ’ s Deli . Many of my students would study there and the night manager was one of my advanced students . Klaus had been studying world religions for several years and had meetings at his apartment every Sunday to read and compare scriptures . Many people attended . Klaus was going to India with the intent of meeting holy men and trying to measure their spiritual stature as a scientist . His training had been as a mathematician . I gave him the address of B . V . Raman , the great astrologer , editor of The Astrological Magazine , and Head of the Department of Astrology at Bangalore University . About a year later I met Claus at the deli again …. he said “ oh , Bob , I have something to show you . I went to Raman ’ s home and when I rang the doorbell he answered and handed me this piece of paper . He said it is my birth chart and that he didn ’ t have time to read it for me . And then he closed the door .” Klaus handed me the chart . Raman had apparently calculated his exact birth chart before he arrived , even though he was coming without an introduction .
The world of astrology is full of the miraculous and we must be open to accepting things that are beyond our comprehension . For the most part , the greatest among us are barely “ scratching the surface ” of this vast discipline .
For A Better Astrology , Bob Mulligan
58 КАРЬЕРА АСТРОЛОГА | 3 2013