A few good astrologers

"You can't handle the truth!!!", explodes Jack Nicholson in the movie "A Few Good Men". This was voted as one of the top 100 movie lines of all time.

Astrologers love applying this maxim. It helps them to pussyfoot around awkward configs in a client's chart. Instead of telling it like it is, they spin the bad news into something aspirational and not quite so bad.

This is understandable. People want good news. If they are consistently getting bad news from the astrologer, they will find a new astrologer who will paint the picture in rosier terms. Whereupon the first astrologer is left without his $ consultation fee.

So, the temptation for the astrologer is always to spin the story to the client in such a way as to minimise the downside. To soften the blow, they have invented a whole new lyrical jargon. For example, quoting from Robert Hand's "Planets in Transit":

"No matter how unpleasant a Saturn transit seems at the time, it represents what you truly want in life and is helping you to get it. Oh yes? Most people are out of touch with what they truly want. Not me. If you thoroughly understand your needs and wants, you will find that Saturn simply brings about their manifestations. Prove it. The "losses" that Saturn brings are of things that you do not want or need. Crap. I loved my SLK200 which was stolen last week under a Saturn-Mercury opposition. No matter how much you think you want them, let them go, especially relationships that Saturn may end." Yes, when my husband/boyfriend/lover died under my Saturn-Sun square, it was simply Saturn helping me attain what I truly wanted in life.

This type of approach is tailored to the needs of people who are in pain and in need of a comforting message which infers meaning from their suffering. It is NOT the truth of the matter, as most of us know from bitter experience. The purple commentary is far more applicable than Hand's soft treatment of the subject.

Similarly, with natal astrology, hard aspects involving Saturn, for example, are interpreted as "opportunities to learn important lessons" or some such panacea. Alan Oken is probably the best exponent of Saturnine mystical-speak ...

"Saturn can only bring privation to those areas in one's life which are based on falsehoods and which must change. Saturn forces the individual to give up illusions and misconceptions which hold him back from the liberation and freedom which come from the depersonalization of the Self. Saturn requires the death of the personality so that the individuality (the Spirit) can emerge from the destiny of one's being."

In reality, a very simple aphorism applies ... "when shit happens, no matter how you package it, it stinks".

So, now, here is the plain and simple truth. Saturn in hard, tight aspect to a personal planet or light is disastrous. A Saturn-Venus |90| contact within a 1 degree orb in the natus means that the bearer of this config will NEVER have a successful, fulfilling relationship. A hard Saturn-Mars contact creates victims/perps of cruelty, abuse and violence. A hard Saturn-Moon aspect is found in the charts of those permanently on the 10th floor window ledge. And so on. That's it. No quarter given.

Another problem with many astrologers is they use the "you can't handle the truth" principle to mask poor quality astrology. When the astrologer sees a tight Saturn-Venus complex, for instance, he is not too sure what to say about it. In the past, he has observed people who have good relationships with this pattern. Just as he has observed the same configuration in bad relationships. He doesn't understand quite why it manifests in one case but not in the other. As a result, he is reluctant to deliver the bad news because the news might not actually be too bad at all.

The real issue is that Astrology 101 does not teach the difference between active and dormant configurations. For example, a Saturn-Venus square can be active or dormant in the natus. The active variant creates problems. The dormant pattern seldom manifests. All Saturn-Venus squares are NOT equal. The first guy will have a succession of disastrous relationships. The second guy sails through this area of life with barely a hiccup.

So what does the astrologer do when he spots a tight Saturn-Venus contact? He follows the double-speak option. Instead of laying it on the line, he dodges the issue with esoteric misdirection and subjunctives, covering all the bases ranging from total relationship failure to startling success once the native has "worked through some stuff".

It is this kind of generality and banality that gives astrology a bad name. People from the Randi foundation, et al, seize upon readings like this to get on their soap boxes about what a bunch of frauds astrologers are. And, if the truth be told, they are mostly right.

The science of astrology in practiced hands does not lie. A tight, hard, ACTIVE Saturn-Venus contact in the natal horoscope IS a formula for a life of failed or non-existent partnering.

Which is more cruel? Telling someone they will never succeed in relationships? Or giving them hope that they may succeed one day if they undertake some kind of karmic journey of self-transcendence, thereby condemning them to a lifetime of trying, failing, and misery, when they could be doing more useful things?

One understands the reluctance to create negative expectation in people lest you program them for self-fulfilling failure. But an accurate picture must be communicated to the client if the astrologer is doing his job properly. Why should clients be paying us to obfuscate the truth and package it in jargon?

This has got nothing to do with whether they can handle the truth or not. This is about growing the profession into respectability. That will come only with accurate insight and prognosis. Not bluster and generalities.

What constitutes an ACTIVE configuration? One that is personalised through interaction with angles and angular derivatives such as planet/angle midpoints. This is simple to determine but inevitably ignored. Yet, in my experience, it is the ONLY way to distinguish between chart structures that count and those that mean little. It is the only way to know whether a tight Saturn-Venus contact will haunt the native from alpha to omega, or barely cause a moment's discomfort.

A few good men were told "you can't handle the truth!". The truth that astrologers can't handle is how few astrologers can actually see the truth when looking at a chart. The rest have no choice but to take refuge in the pseudo-ethical principle that their clients can't handle the truth and must therefore accept cold reading, bluster, uncertainty and spin that covers all the bases, as the standard in astrological practice.