I want to continue to discuss how bias affects astrologers and other common mistakes people make when trying to read charts.
There is a general tendency to overemphasize astrology and deny a person’s free will. For example, a person might will see something in a chart and conclude that the person is a cheater.
This is ridiculous. Common sense should tell you that a person has a choice when they decide to strip down and have sex with someone. Pointing to an aspect in a chart to explain the behavior is as silly as saying the dog ate your homework.
Predicting behavior and making assumptions like this indicts the innocent. It may be a bias against a certain aspect. Let’s say the astrologer was cheated on by someone with that aspect; now they project the behavior on others who have that aspect. This is very common!
It may also be, the astrologer is simply incompetent. Or they may lack the life experience which will eventually teach them not to draw these type of conclusions. Whatever the reason for the error, it’s gravely wrong.
While I am at it, astrologers who tell people they will never marry or be happy fall into this group. How the hell would they know?
I’m an astrologer…a good one. I’ve been at this for four decades! There is no way I know what you are going to do for the next 30 or 40 years!
I don’t know what the people around you are going to do.
I don’t know if a hurricane is going to destroy your house in 12 years and how that might affect you.
I just don’t know and you have so many choices along the way. How can I possibly know how your life will turn out in 40 years?
Astrology is enormously helpful in delineating the challenges a person faces, both innately and during a certain time frame. It can accurately describe the current climate a person is dealing with and it offers truly amazing insight around how they’re put together psychologically.
A good astrologer can offer you exceptional advice, tailored to your psyche and your situation, but they surely can’t tell you if you’re going to step on a crack in the sidewalk ten years out because you have control.
It’s terrifically sad when an astrologer does this to someone – they wind up being robbed of opportunities in life.
It’s like a bad parent who says, “No one will ever marry you.”
Are you kidding me?
How the hell do they know?
But this happens all the time. I know it does, because I routinely work with people who’ve has this experience.
Here’s another post in this vein…
If you read charts, do you recognize your limitations as an astrologer? Have you ever gone beyond them?
I read astrology charts. I remember the first time I had my chart done 6 months before I got married. The astrologer told me that a long term relationship was a pipe dream for me. That information still sticks in my head, thirty years later. I got married and had a 23 year long relationship. I was a very committed and devoted partner until alcohol became my husbands preference to relationship.
When I see difficult relationship aspects in a chart, I do tell the person but I describe the potential patterns related. Sometimes I’ll recommend therapy if the person has an ongoing issue and really wants a relationship. I’ve seen so many successful relationships with so called ” challenging” aspects and I’ve seen positive aspects that lead to nothing. I am a person who grows rapidly and profoundly from the most difficult aspects. Things that would kill others enlightens me. My own chart has been a great blessing of understanding and knowing that I will never make definitive pronouncements about a chart. If your astrologer can’t offer you a glimpse of your soul potential that resonates deeply within you, don’t listen and move on.
Good morning Elsa, thanks for this post! I recently had someone tell me that because Jupiter was Retrograde in my 8th. house, with all hard aspect, that I should just move into a hut and enjoy my own company! For a minI thought “Oh that’s why I’m this and that” then I thought “Hogwash girl, do your thang!” So glad my mind frame is almost always positive, I could see how this type of interpretation could make a person “Doom and Gloom!”
One of the most challenging things for me is expectant mothers who come to me for help with choosing the date of their elective C-section. You decide the child’s chart and much of their life path when you do this, and while I do believe that you were intended by fate to do this for this child, it is still a humbling responsibility that makes you afraid, or at least very conscious of the import of what you do. When u have the mother’s chart in front of you, and you see the potential for challenges in child-raising no matter what happens, you are just trying to choose the very best date and time for that particular new life. Except when it isn’t that simple. In my experience, it is often an older mom using a donor egg who may or may not be using a surrogate to carry the child who is the most likely client. They trust you, and believe in astrology, but don’t know enough to decide the date themselves. The number one thing these moms want is a strong bond with a child that is not theirs, and Jyotish is very useful for picking a Vedic moon sign that will promote strong mom bonding. So that is your first criteria, and then you cross-check against everything else happening on that day. If you can give the baby a strong fixed star on a personal planet and a good Vedic Moon, you can usually feel you have “done right” by the little one. It gets harder, however, when the culture the mom is coming from is not your own, and the ethics around the astrological use of picking a birth date are not shared, and the mom’s culturally influenced ethics are quit frankly horrendous. I am talking about Asian cultures in general and Chinese culture in particular. This has caused me to bow out gracefully, to give general advice online for which I do not accept payment, and to tell them they must make up their own mind and choose the date themselves.
omg Elsa, spot on. People who abuse this just piss me off. How dare someone tell another that this place placement means you’ll get divorced or die at 30 or whatever. I have had people expect those kinds of answers when I say I like astrology and ask them about themselves. No. That’s not how it works. I always stress free will. Thank you, Elsa, for emphasizing this. It’s so true.
Glad you’ve brought this up Elsa. Whilst the better astrologers recognise that every aspect of the chart has both positive and negative potential, free will also has a major role to play. And maturity. A person can, in time, overcome challenging aspects and learn to turn the the energy to advantage rather than become overwhelmed by it. Natal chart jujitsu. Another issue that’s related to this is letting fear of certain transits bring daily life to a halt. For example, some of my amateur astrologer friends will do NOTHING during a mercury retrograde period. Personally, I welcome this time, finding it excellent for research and review, or returning to projects I’ve set aside in the past. As for those really crunchy transits, it can be immensely satisfying to identify and mine the potential of these, reaping the rewards when everyone else has run away screaming or is hiding in their bunker.
This has definitely happened to me, but there was a very valuable lesson for me to learn in it in that I should never give the power of my own decisions to anyone else. To always remember that no matter how well the Astrologer understands Astrology that person is still only able to interpret from their own perspective. This is part of what has driven me to better understand Astrology for myself. My most unfortunate experience came through a Sun sign Leo Astrologer whom was very skilled at understanding Astrology but she is a Leo Sun and I am a Libra Sun (with Jupiter conj Sun and Libra stellium) She was very “me” focused where I am very “us” focused. In other words she was telling me what to do based on what she would do as a Leo not advising me as a Libra. It changed my perspective on how to take in someone else’s interpretation of the astrological aspects. I love hearing someone else’s take on things and enjoy the broader perspective others bring to the table but when it comes to what is right for me only I can decided and if it feels wrong it probably is wrong for me.
No disrespect to Leos of course just making clear distinction of the very different Leo perspective to a Libra perspective. I have the same experience with a Cancer Sun friend whom has a deeper understanding of astrology than I do but her interpretation is usually very different than mine most notably with Saturn she most frequently sees Saturn influence as restricting by withholding whereas in my experience it is much more about strong foundation and hard work without shortcuts and if its worth having its worth working for. Neither is wrong just different life experiences for each of us with regard to the impacts of our own lives. That why I love this blog I enjoy the input people have of the different aspects and gives broader view for me to make my own determination about my own experience. I love Elsa’s concise language when explaining astrology it has expanded my understanding considerably.
Exactly …I learned that lesson too, in my instance I felt the astrologer had had a bad relationship with someone I reminded him off…he basically tore me to shreds and I was so shocked and upset (I ended up crying) that I couldn’t say anything. He was a very good writer so I was attracted to his style and I kind of like straight talkers but he was an arrogant prick
One of the most helpful things with astrology is recognizing transits and realizing that those icky gooey morbid feelings will ease up. Instead of freaking out about it. Crunchy transits, I like that.
It was about 20 years ago, and I was in a Solar Return workshop with a well-known astrologer (from Arizona) who had come to New York City to give the workshop. Instead of teaching us about solar returns — which is what I thought the workshop was about — she ended up doing individual solar return readings for each person in the class. When she got to my solar return chart for my upcoming birthday, she was very upset when she saw the Sun, Mars and Saturn in the solar return 6th house. She suggested — no, I’m sorry, she INSISTED — that I HAD to spend my birthday in another location, in order to change the solar return. I kept telling her that this was impossible, for a variety of reasons. She proceeded to tell me, in vivid and gruesome detail, about other people she had read for, with similar solar returns to mine, and how they were in horrible — almost tragic — accidents and almost died. She continued to feed me this fear and insisted that I had to relocate on my birthday, that it was imperative that I not live out this solar return that I had coming up. I was so upset and angry, that during the first break that we had, I went home. So, what happened to me that year? Did I have a horrible accident? Did I have a near-death experience? Uh, no, not even close. That heavy 6th house had me (a) hating my job and quitting it, and (b) having lots of dental problems (since Saturn was in the 6th). I even wrote a letter to her to let her know that I found her negativity to be extremely hurtful to me and that she needed to rethink how controlling she was with her astrological knowledge. Of course, I never heard from her but I felt the need to let her know how insensitive and irresponsible she had been.
I see nothing wrong with someone being biased, I do see it wrong when it hurts me or something like that. That’s when the line is crossed. And if it hurts someone I love/like. I guess one of the differences is competency. If someone’s biased but has good intentions for me, and is competent, all systems go!
Everyone has some bias. It’s just that some people are crazy. 🙂
🙂
Few days ago I had a similar experience but not with an astrologer. He was a prophet. I went in with a prayer request for strength and focus for the coming year. He said, ” But things like that are not really problems.” He then proceeded to give me patriarchal advices about how I should leave my boyfriend as he was not the one or else a pregnancy or something would happen. I should take care of my mum in terms of cleaning and cooking. He said there was a negative energy around me following me
After it all I was very upset. I didn’t get what I came for. I got a series of negative feedback and instructions from someone who doesn’t know me. Even right now I’m still getting over the experience I feel cursed. My sister who was there through it all hasn’t been much help and has in the past few days bombarded me with criticisms of how I should go about my life.
I hope I’m not out of topic here. I just want to relate how upsetting it is to have someone force their speculative advice on you especially if it’s not what you asked for