Horrorscopes and  Horror Stories

 

The first part of this piece was originally put on my blog page – but I may well be adding to this. Here, began by reminiscing about the second time round of a common enough progression in most people’s lives – the last time my progresed Moon made a square to its own place. The last time this happened, I was a student and one fine Summer day, visited my campus – and came across an astrological convention in full swing.

It could have been a dream come true, as I was fascinated by astrology, had been really hungry to meet other astrologers, get to meet the names behind the books....and names there were aplenty. Michel Gauquelin was there, gallically being anti-astrology, John Addey, looking very frail, Alexander Ruperti, who spoke about his book on transits the next day. He was very dignified in a dry and droll sort of a way and thankfully did not metamorphose during his speech into some kind of a eye-flashing Übermensch - I had already seen his book, but had not really appreciated the esoteric slant of it.

There was also a famous star-sign colummist present who was kind enough to show off his computerised programme to me along with my chart, at a time when computerised charts were still a relatively new thing, I suppose. I was then – to coin a phrase – over the moon, when he noticed me hovering and asked me if I would like him to take a look at my chart.

Unfortunately, somehow things did not click with the good gentleman - things got off on the wrong footing and I did not really get much out of the encounter - nor he, I suppose. Maybe it was that progressed moon. I had hoped, as a rather geeky undergraduate, that astrology could be a way to really understand others and certainly be truly understood in turn, but that was not to be. One or two questions were more personal than the situation warranted in a public setting, but others made me feel that my own perceptions had absolutely no validity at all and that my own understanding of my chart was being discarded in favour of how I was ’supposed’ be think and feel according to my star sign.

He and his wife were also totally dismissive about my creative interests, deciding apparently that this was not supposed to be my prescribed and ’true’ destiny. (All I can say to that, all of 25 years on, however, is that my artistic interests are still one of the most important things in my life, regardless now how much of these will fall on stony ground.) Compared to others I met later on, however, the individual concerned was relatively benign in outlook, though he seemed more nervous of my horrendous afflictions than I would have expected from what had seemed to be a wiser soul from his books). The intention had never been to be churlishly resistent at the offer of a freebie reading from someone whose books I had enjoyed, but the experience was very disappointing as I had hoped there might have been he chance to get beyond something more than the superficial (and often diminishing) sun-sign generalisations I tended more often to encounter. I kept tending to come across.

Also, I did get the rather disturbing sense that there was somehow some kind of a creed at work, something that felt more akin to a scientology happening rather than an astrological one! (This was a feeling expressed by a fellow undergraduate I spoke to. She did not say that this convention was about superstitious ’mumbo-jumbo’ and the like. She commented that the people there somehow made her feel uneasy, that there was something ’elitist’ about them.)

So that meeting crystallised something and perhaps now, maybe should have read the whole thing as a ’red flag’ regarding how important astrology should become to me in the future. Unfortunately, a few years later, I came to meet more than my fair share of creed converters and guru trippers at various happenings throughout the mid-late eighties, at various New Age camps (this may be the subject matter of another article).

I know that many people come to the psychic arts because they genuinely are concerned with finding some kind of spirituality, answers to perennial questions to Why We are Here and so on. Time and time again, however, it has seemed to me that there can be a great deal of arrogance on the part of people who believe that they have the keys to the hidden Grand Plan of the universe and of the spiritual evolution of souls – one that can be easily be misused. At the very least, I believe that it can result in a sort of arrogance, where the perceptions and way the individual understands themselves may be totally discarded. Easy enough to do if the practitioner professes not to be interested in what he or she decides is merely the client’s self-image, rather than what they have decided is their ’true’ way of being. This smacks to me of the traditional doctor/patient dynamic where the doctor, being in a position of power, cannot in any way be held accountable. This is not the same as a situation where, from a mutual position of trust and full consent, a doctor or therapist explores the dents in an individuals’s ego or way of thinking in order to help them develop a more inclusive way of understanding themselves.

It might be worth pointing out at this stage that I once had to deal with a young client whose esoteric astrological guru had told him that he would commit suicide by a certain date. However, I was not completely able to empathise fully with what had happened to him, until a nice palmist from the West Midlands, who also used a little astrology, tried a very similar number with me. There are many people who hope that astrology will somehow become more ’respectable’ but to my thinking, this is less likely to happen where there are individuals around who practise in this way.

I had steered clear of astrologers and the world of astrologers for reasons of this kind for some time, helped by the need to deal with issues related to immigration and having to adapt within a very different culture, language and way of thinking after leaving the UK in 1996. Also, there was the small issue that whilst I had begun to feel that my face somehow did not fit in astrological circles, within the non-astrological world, its academic, profesional and pastoral authorities had no lack of solidarity within its own ranks about its continued condemnation of astrology. There had been the unpleasant experience where my astrology classes were axed at the West Midlands university where I had been teaching, in the early 90’s.

Whilst still living in Coventry, I had been teaching an extra-mural course at the university a basic 10-week module on how to set up a natal chart. My students had been a mixture of undergradautes and mature part-timers who had signed up just for this course and maybe for one or two others. It seemed to be popular, as courses with less than 14 students enrolled for each term were not allowed to go ahead. Homework was set, a little test was given at the end of each module and in te case of the undergraduate students, it could ’count’ towards their degree.

Later on, however, someone higher up began questioning the rather liberal variety of courses that were being offered. My course in particular raised eyebrows, perhaps because the undergraduates who were studying astrology as an accredited course as part of their degree. I was asked, along with all the other part-time tutors, to attend a meeting in front of a panel of Universtiy employers to present my module a litle more fully.

The whole thing was called off after it was conveniently discovered that someone had gone home, so that the meeting was no longer chorate. I later found out that my course had been sent to one H J Eysenck.

I am aware that some of the reasons I have given here being a ’lapsed astrologer’ do sound rather negative – but then in all honesty, some of my own experiences and those of one or two others that have come to me, have been rather negative . My hope is that from within the continuing arguments about the validity of astrology, there is more likely to emerge an astrology that is more sensitive to where each client may be at – to say the least as far as any misappropriation of power of the kinds that I have described here goes, for example.

 

 

 

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