It’s commonly said, people who study psychology get into the field because they’re looking for insight into their own dysfunctional families. This may be true but I’m not sure it’s the dominant reason people study astrology.
For one thing, there are many branches of astrology. I’m interested in relationships, sex, psychology and philosophy (houses 7,8 and 9). But some in this field are not interested in these things at all.
I became interested in astrology when I was eight years old for two reasons. First, I was curious! But even more importantly, I did it to compete. My older sister was going to study astrology. There was no way I was going to have her know something I didn’t! I was going to eat her dust!
I have Mars (compete) conjunct Mercury (siblings) in the 9th house (higher education / expansion).
I wonder if it makes a difference what motivates a person to study astrology. For example, there are legions of people out there who want to know how to make a Scorpio do X or a Taurus do Y.
If this was a person’s motivation to learn, what kind of astrologer will they be?
If I dig deep, I’d have to say I learned astrology to survive. I needed something and astrology filled the void.
What got you interested in astrology?
This post is awesome! I became interested in astrology because I wanted to see how I could make people like me ?
Like what do they like and how do they communicate, to then act in such a way that they feel connected (Pisces sun and moon) and like I understand them (lots of planets in libra)!
But then as I grew up a bit, I started to use it to help me like myself better, instead! And to help connect to myself and to make me see that my internal conflicts are such for a reason, to evolve!
Now I want to help other people like themselves, even if we’re not perfect! And also realise that all the things we hate about ourselves, don’t have to be that bad!
We can all improve and I think astrology helps us work out how and where we need to grow.
Astrology is awesome.
I started reading astrology because I was looking for some sort of explanation of why I feel like such a misfit in my family. Not that I have a dysfunctional family. As a matter of fact, I have a beautiful family. But I never quite fit in. Always had the vague feeling that I was probably adopted. It took me some time to figure out that I have moon conjunct uranus conjunct neptune.
My Mother was interested in Astrology though she really never got past the surface of Sun Sign astrology but she had a few books which I read and peeked my interest. I was searching for direction for my life purpous the meaning of why I am here and some understanding of why I am the way I am. Learning astrology also helped me understand others and when people I know have astrological aspects it helps me understand them better as well and therefore I tend to be more accepting of people as they are for just who they are greatly improving my relationships which is of utmost importance to a Libra Sun Jupiter conj stellium in Libra gal like me.
I became interested at a very young age, too. It was when my mother said I was a Capricorn but my dad said I was Aquarius. They only knew astrology from the newspaper. My birthday is on the cusp so the newspaper had me one or the other depending on the year. I didn’t like not knowing which one I was. I brought home books from the library, read magazines, superficial things, until it really annoyed my mother. She told me I should stop trying to pigeonhole everyone. So I read in secret. It wasn’t until my 20’s that I had my first chart reading that I grasped that astrology was layered, nuanced, yet specific. And I learned I am absolutely an Aquarius.
I read more and with the internet it became easier to find information and since I have been coming here I have learned worlds of things and also learned how much I lack in knowledge and understanding. I love that it is a lifelong study.
I use it to understand people better. It helps to understand how we are born a certain way, but not chained to those ways.
It’s so funny that my mother lectured me on not stereotyping people with astrology because if used properly it’s anything but that. haha
I love this post. I started getting interested in Astrology as a child because we had a mug and it had “Gemini” written on it along with the dates and thought how cool it was that something could explain my personality. I thought Astrology was just about sun signs lol. I REALLY got into it when Saturn was in Libra because I was going through marital issues and saw that we all had moon signs and rising signs etc and really started to dig deeper into astrology. I’m still a newbie but I use it mostly to understand myself and other people better.
Active 12th… So to pay my karma.
At around age 16, I became interested in graphology (handwriting analysis), then palm reading, numerology and astrology. At age 17, I read my first astrology book (“Write Your Own Horoscope”) and I was pretty much hooked on astrology. I later studied professionally (in 1974) with Betty Lundsted in New York City. I think I was interested in all of these art forms because I wanted to know what made people tick. Ultimately, of course, I started to find out what made ME tick. Maybe it’s my 8th house Pluto. I find myself instinctively analyzing people from even small behaviors. Even if I haven’t heard them speak, I seem to know things about them. Other than that, I’m still not sure what it is astrologically that gave me my interest in metaphysics. Perhaps being a Pisces? A strong Mercury? I was always into stuff that other people thought of as weird.
I became interested in astrology in the when my husband came home with a chart (this was in the late 1960’s during the height of the hippie movement in San Francisco–he spent a lot of time there, as we lived close by). I had always been told by my family that astrology was nonsense, and at first I scoffed at it, but he convinced me to take a look deeper into it. I was curious! And soon learned its appeal One could learn amazing things about others. He learned how to do charts–this was before home computers, and it was an involved process to do them by hand!–and taught me how to do it, although not the exact degree of the Moon, which took more math than I knew or could learn at that time! He and I parted soon, but I kept on doing charts, using books that I bought in Berkeley. I was interested not only in myself (of course!) but other people. I was working with young children and it was fascinating to see how they panned out astrologically. However, I became discouraged because of the emphasis at that time on malefics, and I felt I learned too much negative information about people. Besides, my own chart, with its squares and oppositions, was really depressing when I’d read about them! I felt doomed! But my love of astrology and a great deal of natural curiosity brought me back to it in the late 1980s when I found books on a more spiritual approach, which appealed to me, since I was undergoing a spiritual revolution within myself. I have a challenging chart and I am continually finding new ways to cope. And of course I look up charts for friends and see where we blend together, where any challenges lie, and am interested in how the U.S. chart plays out with the transits coming up, what the presidential candidates’ charts look like, etc. I am always curious with my Gemini Asc.! What astrology has done for me is to give me a broad view of things. I am very much able to accept people as they are as a result of seeing their strengths and challenges. I have a deep respect for people that I never had before. We are all in this together, and we all resonate together in vibrational relationship, in intricate interplay that we most often are not conscious of. Thank you, Elsa, for your contribution!
Neptune(chart ruler) and Jupiter in the 8th make learning about mysterious or taboo subjects compelling. Astrology, healing, the paranormal and ancient knowledge. Fascinating.
I used to frequent a Tarot forum and they always had an astrology section. After reading Tarot for awhile, I wasn’t “learning” anymore, so I started looking for a new frontier. I tried reading the Crowley Thoth Tarot and while some people can read with it ignoring the astrological glyphs on the cards, it really BOTHERED me that I didn’t know what they meant. So I ended up learning astrology because I had to know!!
Because of depression/bipolar. I opened an astrology site and started studying. This was when I was 19, like around 2000 or 2001. The depression made me want to search for something deeper.
I became interested when I realized there was a system behind all the interpreting of signs. That human evolution was trying to manifest for a very long time and we the wise men among us have attempted over and over again to leave every variety of explication that could muster up in order to teach us the way into the light. Suddenly the concept of “god” was delineated into something more rational and applicable. I view astrology as a map. I was in a stage of my life where i was seeking the reason for being alive. I had an “experience,” for lack of a better word, and wasn’t sure how to explain it away. There was a deep compulsion to know what was behind the veil. My “experience” gave me a glimpse of something I couldn’t possibly have understood without having felt it first hand. Religions of various order felt cluttered with metaphor so I was seeking something more direct. Astrology answered that for me.
slight typo…not “and *we the wise men” (I’m not that arrogant. lol) but “and the wise men among us”
I believe bits and pieces of various religions were taken from the oldest source of all wisdom…astrology.
It just happened. A friend suggested it for me. He gifted me an astro calendar. I started learning the symbols for the planets and aspects. Then I got some books. It was a puzzle. I really had no pre-conceptions about it. I didn’t want anything from it. It was just there. Got something out of it. Kept going.
Studying astrology to have an edge on what’s going on and coming up. It’s great because most people dismiss it out of hand. Nothing like having a secret weapon in plain sight. I like the photo!!
At first, I used it to try to understand my own life, why it has been so painful. I call myself a triple Saturn (8th house Saturn, Saturn conjunct South Node, Capricorn on the 8th house cusp), and an honorary Scorpio (Moon, Venus, Neptune in Scorpio, 5th and 6th houses). I’ve been interested in astrology since my early teen years, but it took me a long time to grow into it. (Saturn/8th I think makes me a late-bloomer all around). I had a crisis of faith during my early teen years that stripped away my connection (which, honestly, had been rather tenuous to begin with) to “traditional religion.” Nonetheless, it felt like a soul-flaying, or “filleting.” (Ugh.) Astrology showed me that was probably about my Uranus/3rd opposite Jupiter+Chiron 9th conjunct Midheaven. Astrology fills and heals the void. Caroline Casey’s book about “making the gods of astrology work for you” is fantastic. Also, I have a Pisces MC, and Neptune entering Pisces in 2011 spelled the end of my life in the corporate world. I did work for two more years after that in an awful, horrible, stressful job. Now I’m studying astrology formally and preparing another at-home career as well. Multiple income streams, that’s how it goes nowadays. But astrology is my true passion. I love talking to people about the stories I find in their stars. <3
i like things that are “hidden” and metaphysical. like ghosts, and the universe’s black hole influences and supernovas, and just supernatural, out of this world studying. I loved astronomy and the symbolic nature of the lessons; i find astrology very similar, except they study ourselves and others while stars/universe we study what’s out there.
* Curiosity -> in my early twenties I was intrigued but never opened a book or went to see an astrologer. I simply noticed similarities in people who were Taurus and that intrigued me.
I also noticed similarities in Aquarius people. I thought ‘horoscopes’ might be onto something.
* Curiosity-> Someone guessed lots of things of my personality in a Christmas party in 2004 by simply having my date of birth (no time provided)
* Self-knowledge
I casually knew a girl in 6th grade to whom I had a strange impression that she was like me in a female form. She must have felt the same way because her being into Astrology had her ask me my birthday and it was the same as hers. That’s what got this Virgo Rising Gemini to study the art and since then, Sun signs have progressed to fractals in Astrology today (look that up). We never “hooked up” although the idea crossed my mind (Opposites attract…) and have long since gone separate ways. Hello Debbie.
I was about 18,Started to read psychology books , my parents were horrified. I became aware that there were people that could be put into groups that had certain personality traits. I wanted to know why and astrology explained this to me.{I had not yet been exposed to Carl Jung}.
With the transits in astrology I have really only taken an interest in the last few years. I have had time to reflect on how they affected me over the years and it helped me understand my journey more.
I have, and always have had, an insatiable need to KNOW. Know WHAT? Know everything. (This is spelled out in my chart many ways… I found out.)
For me, astrology is just one of many avenues to KNOWLEDGE, and UNDERSTANDING… of myself, others, the whole wide world around me.
Once I “got” astrology, really “got” how to use it as a learning tool, it revolutionized my life. I can’t imagine where I’d be today if I had not found and “mastered” it (mastered may be too generous a word; I still feel very much like an apprentice, or maybe a journeyman).
I know it took me down a notch or two (which I needed), made me more humble, and definitely more compassionate.
Here is how it started for me. The bible is filled with references to astrology. (Original interest) Then I did a book report on Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs in 5th grade. I read the I Ching for a project in 6th grade. Remember the musicals Godspell and Hair? It was a time in our society when we started talking about esoteric things.
When I saw newspaper astrology columns 55 years ago, when I was a teenager, I asked my mother what they were. She told me, some people said if you were born in a certain month, you were a certain type of person.
“What??” I yelped. “I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous in my life!”.
And I set out to prove to myself how silly the whole issue was.
Of course I started with the Sun signs. Strangely, even the rudimentary info that was open to me soon showed me that they applied more often than not. I was not to be so easily convinced, but I developed a party trick by guessing someone’s sign and I was right about 80% of the time (I didn’t know then that I was very slightly psychic, and that the 20% error rate was also due to the fact that other influences swamped the Sun sign – hadn’t even HEARD of the Asc).
Well, we all know of the proliferation of astrology during the hippie era – and that suddenly there were MYRIADS of magazine articles and even BOOKS about astrology (bliss! I love books). I devoured it all. I can’t quite recall when I became convinced that astrology actually worked.
My knowledge progressed in leaps and bounds when the Parkers published their Compleat Astrologer book. At the same time my boyfriend dumped me and I wondered whether astrology could shed some light on WHY. I calculated my first chart (my own) by hand and it took me all night! Also at the same time, I asked my mother when I was born and she LIED to me (controlling me, she had lots of Scorpio).
So for the next 20 years I puzzled over this chart that fit me in some places, but not at ALL in others. My knowledge became quite skewed.
Eventually someone (how can I ever thank you, SW?) persuaded me to use the time on my birth certificate! Then it was a matter of wresting that document from my pouting mater (gee, I thought I’d made peace with that chilly person – obviously not quite). I then had a splendid time recalculating (thank you fervently, astro.com) and rethinking the whole issue of this fascinating art-science.
I met up with someone who wanted to know what would happen tomorrow, and I’d never done any predictive work and had to learn in a big hurry. It took a while, then that fell into place for me. (And Elsa is the top of the very best at this and I learn from her every day.)
The last sticking point became: HOW does it work? And after that: WHY was it around at all? I had a lovely time imagining cavemen sitting around their fires at night and getting cricks in their necks looking at the beautiful sky (which is now almost invisible in cities and I could WEEP at the loss). I have a feeling though, that astrology as a sophisticated body of knowledge has a much more mysterious past than we know about yet…
My concept of “how” is this: we are all living in this soup that is the universe or even multiverse, and there are currents and eddies in it, attractions and repulsions. We feel these and so do the planets and stars and galaxies. Astrology is a clock that we’ve learned to read and it tells us via correspondences how we are going to react and feel next week.
And why?
“Someone” out there wants us to feel, to the marrow of our bones, that we are children of the universe…
Very intelligent Commandments which summarise how we got into believing in Astrology. Most of us relate to the various hows and whys already Stated, I even share the Neptune in Pisces job change drama. We believers in Astrology belong to that Carl Jungian AArchetype. Carl Jung was a believer too.
My first interaction with astrology was at age four or five. I learned to read and write and my neighbor and babysitter at the time was delighted to let me read the horoscope as it appeared on tv or on the newspaper. Then I just knew about the sun signs and believed I was a taurus and I was so disinterested in the whole affair because all the descriptions were – boring, stubborn, loves to eat. I got into astrology eight years ago but then I got into it like a gemini, trying it all- first into natal and synastry with composite, transits, solar returns but then horary, mundane, uranian astrology, transneptunians, cosmodynes, sabian & kozminsky symbols, arabic parts, midpoints, a whole new world. My favorite to explore still remains the natal chart. My next favorite thing is numerology.
The ‘why’ was to discover more about myself. I used to take many personality tests- motivation is related to having neptune in 1st house and the confusion that comes with it. I don’t delve as much into synastries,composites. I like the natal chart more. Progressed charts are interesting as well. When looking at other people’s natal chart it’s- why do they do the things they do? It’s not -how can I make this person do this for me.
Also- curiosity.
For me yes “the void” and understand myself better.
Interesting question!
In fact, I have no idea about what really got me interested.
All I know is that I bought a Leo Tshirt when I was a teenager. There was a weekly astrology column in a magazine my mother read, and astro Tshirts to order in a teenager magazine. How philosophical!
Later I met a guy who’d studied astrology. He was really a crazy shthead, but I bought books related to the subject. I guess that got me started. Then I read ther books etc.
But, that still doesn’t make me a knowledgeable astro person.
In other words, it just happened. No intellectual approach, just curiosity.
My first interests was psychology, coming from a very dysfunctional family. Then I needed an explanation why I could put peoples personalities in groups as they all had certain things in common. Astrology helped me understand that. I was able to see the fire dominance , or the water, or the earth and the air. More study allowed me to see how each sign was the same but different when taking the whole chart into account. I have been slow when it comes to acknowledging the transits and how they affect us. I only see it as I reflect back at them not as I am going through them. I imagine that is because I am Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune dominant.
Through my Mum in the 70s. She had Linda Goodman Sun Signs and later the Love Signs. And a love of Patrick Walker. We were hooked. Gave us something to talk about, have fun with, and figure out who we were. She introduced the topic of psychology, therapy and some of the various schools of thought. Have much to thank her for in this regard.
I was about 13.
I loved, Walker, as well.
? He was amazing.
To learn more about myself and family members. Also, to research pivotal dates which confirm the the fallacies of coincidences and random events.
Does anyone remember Santha Rama Rau ?? She had an astrology column in the early 60’s in the LHJ, I think, or Woman’s Day Magazine. I noticed that the descriptions of each sign “fit”. To a “T”. I was hooked.
My first not puppy love boyfriend was a Cancer too. I think it was “Write Your Own Horoscope” that was my first astrology book 10 years later. Astrology kept my sanity until my Saturn return that ended the marriage. Aries ex felt threatened that I’d learn something about him he didn’t want me to know. I was looking at myself. A few years later a friend when I mentioned astrology said his mother did astrology. She taught me how to calculate charts, by hand then, and was thrilled when I got early software that calculated charts. Her mother knew Isabel Hickey. We looked into returns, progressions, rectification and more. She had no birth time and never did settle on an ascendant. She passed away from brain cancer, I was heartbroken and didn’t look at anything astrology for 10 years. Online 10 years ago I jumped back in. My Uranus is 4th house. Could be feeling the outlier.
My mother (a proud Taurus) would read her horoscope when I was growing up, but I never really paid attention until my first professional job in advertising for a major fashion retailer. I was 22. Once a month everyone rushed to the conference room to pick up photocopies of the Patric Walker horoscope page of Town & Country magazine. He was amazing. I can tell you some top execs of that corporation carefully followed Walker’s guidance. I started to see the sense and patterns and understand a bit, and saw it as a free gift from the Universe, like a manual of “hints to better life understanding” if we stopped to pay attention, few years later, a friend studying astrology introduced me to the brilliant and amusing lectures of Buz Myers, an America astrological genius. I happened to read Michael Lutin too in Vanity Fair, and ten, books written by Patric Walker and Lutin. And Jonathan Cainer’s classic. My brother’s mother-in-law studied it for fun (she was a hotel exec in NYC who was fascinated by links between art and astrology) and gave me a few books. She explained topics like stelliums and sign progression to me, and was the one who made me stop and think about the odd fact that I dated three men in a row whose mothers were born on my Virgo month and day. All were Gemini or Cancer men; two born on the same month and day as my design partner. (I married yet another Cancer born on the same day as my design partner— and his mother is Virgo as well.) and that my five closest friends are all Capricorns; the other three are Aquarians,
The day Patric Walker suddenly died I was in real need of his astrological thoughts over a decision, and his Virgo reading oddly broke as a “to be continued” that never was. I made a goofy choice at that time which I feel certain Walker would’ve warned me away from! ? but I survived. But began trying to learn more on my own, and found Astrodienst. I am still very, very ignorant compard to everyone here, I lack the time to study it due to work demands, but Elsa, Satori and team explain things so well, I really have reached a point where I can at least understand and basically follow the finer points discussed.
Finally: While working in Europe I met a few decorated, serious scientists at a symposium in Italy through a friend; over the course of a week of dinners I learned that 6 out of the 8 scientists were interested in astrology two for various reasons.
Even these men, a few bottles of wine in, brought it up and felt there something there to understand.
Older sister showed me a chart where I was when I was born and said you’re a Capricorn and you like certain things perhaps because of the time of year you were born stars that were shining on you and my curiosity birthed
Having eight siblings and so many of them then virgos mom a Leo and dad a Scorpio two other siblings born a Pisces and Taurus gave me lots to read consider as I aged and how different things happened to me I guess I looked to see where I was vulnerable or where I might change it up today I guess anybody can do anything maybe maybe not ?damned if you do,damned if you don’t kinda feel
Honestly I’m still pretty lost I think I have control and I have none ,beyond trying to form my reactions,but there’s a lot of auto drive here?
I was ‘called’to learn Astrology as the only logical way to quell my 12th House Pluto’s raising of questions in me as to why and how the ancient gods of myth had exactly the same name as the planets. Since then it has been a long inner voyage that put me in direct contact with their frequency, and now i can ‘hear’ them – and not only read them – and notice how incredibly punctually they influence reality, both personally and in the collective. To say ‘they Live’ is an understatement.
I like to understand what makes me and those around me tick. I have natal mercury in Scorpio which explains the need to go beyond the superficial. I started to read more online. One consequence was to share some of these insights with friends.