This week's #DignityBabes second scheduled conversation turns our gaze towards the philosophical questions that inevitably come from studying and practicing Astrology. For this piece, I humbly point my writing intention towards my peers - Astrologers who have chosen the path of providing the service of astrological consultation. Those who have the honour and responsibility to engage with clients. Those who discuss people's birth charts and their year ahead. Those who answer questions and elect auspicious times. And perhaps even those who construct magical material. Those who hold someone's trust to articulate their life - what has been and what is to come.
My small goal for this week's sharing is to touch on some of the ethical and philosophical dilemmas consulting astrologers face and how someone's worldview frames the way they deliver the hardest of messages. The question that often plagues me as a consulting astrologer is:
How much information do you share that empowers a person enough but does not take away their own process of experiencing their life?
“For God, in his desire that man should foreknow the future, brought this science into the world, a science through which anyone can know his fate in order to bear the good with great contentment and the bad with great steadfastness. […] Accordingly then, the initiates of this art, those wishing to have knowledge of the future, will be helped because they will not be burdened with vain hopes, will not expend grievous midnight toil, will not vainly love the impossible, nor in a like manner will they be carried away by their eagerness to attain that they may expect because of some momentary good fortune. A suddenly appearing good often grieves men as if it were an evil; a suddenly appearing evil causes the greatest misery to those who have not trained their minds in advance.”
Valens, Anthology, 5, 2: 11-14, trans. Riley, p.96
Practicing professionals have different relationships to the predictive power of Astrology. Personally, I am pro-prediction. In so much as I use predictive Astrology techniques to help me answer questions and ascertain the texture, mood, shape, landscape and flavour of the year ahead. It feels natural for me to glance at what's possible. The moment you engage with this process is the moment you encounter your own relationship to fate. Ancient Astrologers like Valens in the Hellenistic period contemplated fate probably as much as we do in the 21st century. When I started studying Horary Astrology last year - the practice of divining answers from the oracle of the moment - I am faced with a more visceral interrogation of Fate. People are out here really asking hard questions like if and when their loved ones are going to die.
The thing is, to know ALL is impossible. Unless you're a god. And even then, gods have their realms of duty. You read this in myths and stories. Even they have to delegate certain roles. Planets were regarded as divine forces. Even planets have specific agendas. If you engage with an oracle of your choice, you also encounter that even the oracle does not always provide clear answers. Once you graduate from the super-solar focused kind of popular self-obsessed astrology, you realize that there is so much more to a chart than just the glorious beaming Sun.
Ever since I started seeing clients, the most common reaction I get during a forecasting session is: "Is that a good thing?" or "That's good right?". Or some kind of query that begs for affirmation of a life that is not doomed with struggle and conflict. It makes sense that our species are quite averse to suffering.
I believe to engage with Astrology is to engage with our humanity. To struggle is to be human. To be human is to suffer. Similarly, to experience joy and purpose hang on a similar thread of thought. You get what I mean I hope. Life is fragile as embodied and ensouled beings.
Redirecting back to my question, "How much information do you share that empowers a person enough but does not take away their own process of experiencing their life?" - there is no one answer. Because the answers lie on a few considerations:
Why is the client seeking consultation? People come with their questions and it is best to be guided by their intention. You want to provide the appropriate information that the client is looking for.
When a client only wants to hear "good" and "positive" things, this is important to note. If there is an openness to ask questions, this is a ripe field to explore.
How you frame difficulty and misfortune can be helpful or harmful. And sometimes the spectrum between help and harm can be muddied with our subjective biases. This brings up the point of language as a powerful tool and why people have difficulty with some of the more fatalistic terminologies that Ancient Traditional Astrology offers. In a way, #DignityBabes aims to explore this.
People have different relationships with suffering. Including you, the Astrologer tasked with the capacity to provide insight into their pain. How do you tell someone that you see death as a possibility when they ask if their sick loved one is going to pass away?
The ability to know how much to share comes with a certain degree of time and practice. This part cannot be rushed. Time and experience are what turns knowledge into wisdom.
My own relationship with my query is that it is an active practice of tempering and serious study. Astrology for me is a devotional practice.
My main goal in a consultation session is to be helpful. And to be helpful is to actively engage in redirecting people to their own power and to compile evidence of the fact. To be helpful is to have the ability to witness someone's suffering. To be helpful is to answer people's questions. To be helpful is to also have a degree of honesty and to carefully traverse the possibility of harm. That is to say, I am not one to only share the "good news" but that it's important to provide nuance. However, someone at some point may not be able or be ready to receive this. And frankly, some astrologers are probably harmful in their delivery (and this most definitely can include me). Nobody is perfect. Nor is perfection the point. As well, how people receive information sometimes is not within our control. The point is consulting Astrologers must always and ongoingly confront the position they occupy - that is what and how they deliver information can heavily influence someone's life.
So Consulting Astrologers - how do you interrogate this reality in your professional practice? What kinds of exercises do you partake in to ensure your competency and ability to counsel people? How do you judge ethical situations? How do your philosophy and beliefs help your clients? How do you leverage your language so that is it is helpful and not harmful?
“At birth our death is sealed and our end is consequent upon our beginning. Fate is the source of riches and kingdoms and the more frequent poverty; by fate are men at birth given their skills and characters, their merits and defects, their losses and gains. None can renounce what is bestowed or possess what is denied; no man by prayer may seize fortune if it demur, or escape if it draw nigh: each one must bear his appointed lot.”
Manilius, Astronomica, 4: 12-22., trans. Goold, pp. 223-5
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