Reruns – Time Machine

Inbound mail:
(time machine from 7/23/06)

On Jul 21, 2006, at 12:16 PM, ya’ll wrote:
>Hey…
>I’ve always been curious – how ever did you get into
>the profession of astrology?  How long have you been
>doing this?  How many readings do you do a week
>(outside of shows)?  What did you do before you became
>this fishing guide to the stars?
>
>Just curious…

Dear Curious:

I stumbled in astrology, like many events in my life, sort of sideways. When I was associated with the retail sale of spirits (bar tender, manager, owner, &c.) I noted a correlation between the full moon and liquor sales. Add to that the chance of calling in the police to break up a disturbance, approximately two or three days after a full moon? That correlation between heavenly bodies and human behavior is part art, part science, and part (unknown) – these days, I refer to it as astrology.

In English Literature, the Middle English undergraduate class, I kept encountering references to Chaucer’s astrology. At that author’s time, astrology and astronomy were the same academic discipline. Oh for the good old days.

I wrote my first set of horoscopes in 1987, or thereabouts. Some folks in AZ still have paper copies of such, buried, no doubt, in archives.

I took a couple of classes, and in one case, I found out that what the liberal arts education I had, wherein I was taught to “synthesize,” was appropriate for astrology. I’d been reading cards for a while, and astrology was a natural fit. Astrology helped with timing.

I also found that there was little “new” astrology, something I could relate to. It was always, “Love, money, travel, family.” The same daily stuff shoveled out by computers these days.

By the summer of 1993, I started writing a monthly column, which then got posted on a website by 1994, and that cascaded to a weekly column by 1995.

Committing prediction to print is a way of trying to see if it will work. I’ve turned the weekly column into a test-bed for theories, when the feedback is “you’re way off this week,” then I can assume that the astrological hypothesis doesn’t work.

Astrology is nothing more than a language like French or Physics. It’s a matter of learning what the symbols mean and then, what I try to do, is translate what those symbols mean into a language that real people can understand.

When I talk planets and signs, it’s a form a verbal shorthand to express energies.

As far as the number of readings in a week? That varies. I watched as a number of health care professionals (typically therapists of one ilk or another) would have a pretty high burn rate. They were tending to last two years in a position then changing – burnt out. Happens with a number of readers, too.

To prevent that from happening to me, since this is part of the job that I like, I limit myself to no more than three full readings in a day, The first time, I have to spend a little extra time sorting out the natal chart in addition to making predictions based on future trends. After that, it just gets easier.

Some weeks, I’m lucky to do one or two readings, but that allows more time for walking, fishing, and writing. Other weeks? I’m all booked up. Been a slow July, but that’s expected.

Fishing Guide to the Stars was a tag line I’d posited on a mentor. It was not welcomed. I started using it myself, a couple of brain storms later, the original “cosmic bass boat” was part of the original design.

The rest is history and in the archives, along with a fanciful (slightly dated) bio.