Hiring an Astrologer, Part One: Avoiding the Quack

PRESENT

It's occurred to me while writing these blogs that some may wish to have advice about getting their own charts read. (Especially if you, yourself, are involved in a love triangle and could maybe use some of the advice I've been able to purchase and/or learn to read for myself.) 

I used to think astrology was bunk, and I would NEVER have paid two hundred dollars to have a so-called professional read my chart, but I have to tell you that after the past two and a half years, I am a true believer. I may have thought that the collected musings I have been able to locate were good food for thought and helped me learn a lot, next to all the psychology I also read; but after these three predictions I have made myself, with NO formal training, I will be consulting astrological charts for the rest of my life, NO bullshit.

I should note three things, here. 

ONE, think about whether you want to consult with a professional who does Western astrology or Vedic astrology. The two systems are different. Western astrology (and this, I can vouch for) is said to provide a psychological profile of the individual and hints as to how the person may grow and avoid some trouble on his psychological journey through life. It will provide you with a hint or two about why you decided to incarnate into this life and what you're here to experience and to learn, but its main focus is to tell you what kind of childhood you had and what kind of person you are. There is also a branch called medical astrology, which I have just started a course in. (Maybe I can tell you more about that in a few weeks.)

Vedic astrology originated in India and purports to tell the individual mainly about their soul: What your purpose was in coming here and what your soul expects to gain from this life. Vedic astrology is full of Indian names one can neither spell nor pronounce, and they even draw their charts differently! I can barely do Western astrology right now. If I want to know more about why my soul came here, I will definitely leave that to a pro. Some professionals do both forms. This boggles my mind.

This is because, TWO, I am N-O-T a professional. 

And THREE, the last thing I must point out in the beginning here is that no professional is likely to tell you all the things I have been able to suss out for myself on this blog. 

The reason for that is that only under limited conditions will ANY professional occultist--one who isn't a fraud, that is--look any further ahead into your future than three years at most. If I, or another writer friend, asks a psychic or a tarot reader, "How is this book going to do once I finish it?" a reputable reader will give you an answer about a question like that, about a specific project. Otherwise, a rune reader or tarot reader will generally give you a reading for three months into the future, six months tops. Some will do longer than that. A professional astrologer will look maybe three years ahead for you, and that's about it.

The reason commonly given is that "Things change." And, yes, they do. I saw this when I did online tarot readings and cast my own rune readings for this particular situation. As things changed between Chi and Rory, the changes showed up in my cards and runes. But only for what was going to happen for the next three months or so. I'd get depressed about what I saw, thinking it was forever, and go to astrology, where, as I said, a pro will show you a bit farther ahead.

That said, what can consulting a professional astrologer do for you, especially in matters of the heart?

For one thing, you should know that each professional has his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Before I began trying to learn on my own, I myself hired two: Anne Ortelee of New York City, and Alice Portman of Adelaide, South Australia.

Here's where I can give you some good advice based on personal experience. If you hire a professional, you will be spending a good bit of cash. Most pros who advertise on the net will charge you around $200 an hour, which is what you will need for a good thorough reading of your chart, or for a decent comparison of your chart with another person's. Some of these people are downright flaky and more than a little woo-woo. You don't need to drop $200-$250 on one of these folks.

For instance, and I don't mind calling this individual out by name: Anne Ortelee of New York City gave me several pieces of information that were just plain wrong. According to her, I am supposed to have met, become engaged, and be about to marry someone else right now! I haven't even met anyone else yet! This individual also informed me that I have SIX yods in my chart, and that things with Chi could never work out, because "he was in one of my yods."

As little as I knew about astrology then, I knew enough to be able to look up what a yod was, and even a cursory examination by my untrained eyes showed me I did NOT have six yods, only one! Not only that, but although Ms. Ortelee is friendly enough, my reading with her was full of a lot of astrology gobbeldygook and superstition. I heard a lot of stuff about things going in cycles of so many years, and how because I was born in this year, such and such was like the energy of this decade, and she would spend ten minutes talking about stuff that happened in the sixties, and completely mystified me. She also told me my chart has a Thor's Hammer. I do NOT have a Thor's Hammer.

Needless to say, a great deal I was told in that reading was WRONG, and a great deal I could have been told that was correct was MISSED. I thought since I found her on the American Federation of Astrologers website and she was obviously doing well enough to make it as a pro in New York City of all places, she must be good. As a general rule I would say that would be one of the safer ways to find a good astrologer, but in this case, nope! (Whatever you do, do not hire this person!) 

So how can you tell someone who can give you something useful from someone who will take your money and waste your time? The first principle is, if you're listening to a person who's going off on some tangent about another decade, or who seems to be talking endlessly about how everything goes in cycles of X years, you can find yourself a better astrologer, one who will give you a reading you can actually USE. 

Yes, the planets most certainly do revolve around the zodiac in a set number of years, and in the case of, say, Saturn, for example, that could be very important depending on your age right now, but your whole reading shouldn't sound like that! Actually, very little of it should, if you ask me.

Ideally, if your prospective astrologer is a little woo-woo, you want to find that out before you ever hire them. 

How do you do that? Do it the same way I found Alice, by surfing around and reading blogs and articles. After the Disaster of the Six Yods, I found myself wanting to know if Chi really was "in my yod" or not, and why that meant I'd never see him again. I started pulling up articles about yods in astrology. I found a very interesting one by Alice, and that's the one that convinced me she was the one who should look at my chart.

Surf around the net, if you have to hire an astrologer online, and look for those who have written articles. Read what various people write, especially as relates to your specific issue (you can google something like "the astrology of relationship triangles" or "heartbreak astrology" and see what comes up, and go from there, for example.) When you find a writer who seems to "get" your issue and whose style you like, there's a person you might consider hiring. Generally any article they write will point you to their website, which should tell you how to hire them, how payment arrangements are handled, and how much they charge. You should also evaluate their website while you are browsing around. I'm not saying a woo-woo website with a lot of stars and pentagrams and flying unicorns definitely means an astrologer can't really read and is just going to blow smoke up your ass; but I feel a lot safer with someone who's put up a businesslike website, myself. 

Also check out the person's bio and see who that person has trained under. Names like Liz Greene, Robert Hand, and Noel Tyl are famous names in astrology; anyone who's trained under these people is a good bet.

If your community is large enough, you may have a New Age bookstore. Go there and browse the astrology section. If the staff is worth its salt, they should be able to tell you which astrology books are considered classics in the field, and which are the best for beginners. Note down the names of those authors. Anybody who mentions training under these people is probably a good bet. Pick up some of the other books and leaf through them. If the writing style is accessible to you, they're writing about something you care about, and you find that the writing draws you in, explains something interesting to you, and makes you want to know more in just a few pages, jot down that person's name and look up their website. This may be someone you want to hire.

See if the person has a specialty. For instance, when I encountered Alice's website, I knew she knew something about yods, and was probably the person for me.

Look for a website with a psychological tone and feel. I have never hired this person, but Hiroki Niizato's lovely professional website echoes so much of what I already know from all my reading about psychology and relationships that I know this guy would be a terrific fit for me. He has an archive about a mile long, and no matter what I click in it, what he's saying about psychology, relationships, and the growth of the personality is spot-on, whether I know crap about the astrological planet or aspect he's relating it to or not. An astrologer with a website like this is always a good bet.

If your town is large enough to have a big New Age bookstore, chances are you have a few local astrologers who frequent there, offer readings there, or even teach there. This is a great opportunity to get an impression of someone in person before you plunk down any hard-earned Benjamins. If they offer astrology classes, attend one just to hear the person lecture. You can get quite a sense in a one hour class whether the person is someone you might want to pay to read your chart. Some of these people may write for local papers or magazines. Again, a way to check someone out prior to hiring them.

Once you've hired a person, what do you want to hear? Again, different astrologers have their own strengths and weaknesses. The longer people have been reading, the more charts they've seen, and the more intuitive and broad an understanding they have of what the planets, the houses, and the aspects mean. Being untrained, the only way I can really interpret things is to look up others' interpretations and let them do this part of the job for me! 

Looking up many different astrologers' interpretations of the same planet, aspect, or house online, I have found that nobody beats Liz Greene. But of course--she's also a psychotherapist. A background like that is especially handy and desirable for an astrologer. (But yet--Hiroki Niizato has a background in computer science, and can relate the planets to your issues almost as well as Liz Greene. So, give everybody you find a passing glance--you could be pleasantly surprised.) 

Robert Hand comes in second for me, and his Planets In Transit is a classic in the field. I have found that Alice isn't quite this astute or detailed in her interpretations, but she is a whiz at finding every single little thing of significance in your chart. If it has any relevance to your question, Alice Portman will find it and tell you about it. For instance, in addition to my ONE yod I found, she found me two more minor ones, showed them to me, and gave me a short and cursory explanation of what each meant.

If you're asking a general question, like, "How significant is this person in my life?" or "Will I ever see him or her again?" a Dogpile-type astrologer like Alice is a good bet for you; a person who knows how to do synastry, composites, and Davisons, and pick out every little thing of interest. The interpretations you get may not be all that in depth, but every connection you have with that person will be seen, so you get the most accurate opinion. Between Alice and Anne, I found a WORLD of difference--and Alice accurately predicted the recent contacts I've had with Chi.

If you're more concerned with what's affecting the outcome of a troubling situation, A Liz Greene-type astrologer, someone who will give you interpretations that are more in-depth and psychological in nature, is what you should look for. Or someone like my medical astrology instructor, Kay Cole. She's a little difficult to learn from, because I prefer a more structured class, but she knows tips and tricks to reading a chart that I've never heard before, and can give you a ton of insight.

Lastly, pay attention to the tone the person uses with you. You should be treated with dignity and respect. Kay tells a story about a client who went to another reader at the same center, and during the reading, a history of childhood sexual abuse came out. The client wanted to know why this had happened to her. And the reader said, "You have bad karma and you wanted this to happen to you," in a very punitive tone. 

The abuse survivor, who was a regular client of my instructor, went home and committed suicide that night. Kay never forgave the other reader, who she feels killed her client, and I don't blame her. There are sensitive ways to treat information in a chart, just as there are humane ways to talk to other people. If your reader does not demonstrate that they understand this, run!

Whatever you do, don't try to hire me--I'm just winging it!

In closing, I'm going to include this excerpt from an interview with Robert Hand from 2002:


But yes, constantly relating things to their astrological correlates is something one can do, and it's actually not a bad thing to do, because then you begin to understand that the energies of transits and other types of predictive indications can work themselves out in ways that are quite different from the psychological/behavioral/experiential dimension that most people expect to see.

I remember, for instance, I was here [in the U.K.] during a Mars transit several years ago. And as Mars was transiting my chart and crossing the Midheaven where I was, my host took me to see the remains of an old Roman military fort. And that kind of thing kept happening; it had nothing to do with my feelings of aggression or anything of the sort. The Moon was applying to an aspect of Saturn at the same time, so I also saw old ruins, old this and old that - it was working out in an entirely external, benign way.

The virtue of this is that you can reasonably attempt to alter the impact of a transit or indication - by consciously putting the symbolism into your life in a benign way. I used to call it astrological alchemy; where you give the symbolism all the room it needs but in some way that it is not harmful, difficult, or whatever. In fact, it might even be useful and expanding.

The classic example of this, which I've mentioned several times, is the client of mine who, in 1998, had a particularly horrible-looking year from the point of view of general mental health and drug usage. I gritted my teeth and asked her what she had done that year. She looked at me, smiled, and said, "Oh, I was very happy and I made over $1 million." I asked, "What were you doing?" She said, "I was in a musical, playing Judy Garland." The role she played bore the symbolism, because the transits were a perfect description of Judy Garland. And since my client created the space (inadvertently, I might add, but she nevertheless did it very well), the symbols were able to manifest creatively, and she had no harm from it. Indeed, she benefited from it.

This is not some sort of Pollyanna stuff; this is real. This really works. It's an aspect of astrology which has been grossly underestimated in the literature. It's much more effective than saying, "Oh, just grit your teeth and think pure thoughts, and you'll come through just fine." Because it's an acceptance, a nonresistance to the energy. And I think that the answer to coping with difficult indications lies in that direction. Sometimes you just can't figure out how to do it. It would work if you could just figure it out, but sometimes you can't.

Q: With the woman you're talking about, there wasn't anything in the chart …

I didn't see any "benevolent" energy at all! And I've seen other instances like that. What it does is to validate the statement made by Ficino - and by Plotinus, his major influence - that, in fact, none of the planets are inherently malefic. The "malefics" are just more likely to be experienced that way than other planets, if you don't handle them properly. And that's not their problem - that's our problem. 

And that is exactly what I'm trying to do with regard to my own affair situation. (Sometimes the entire outcome of your life really does depend on it!)

Next week...Hiring an astrologer to do a relationship reading for you and another person. (Your affair partner, perhaps?)