How Do You Deal With Allegedly ‘Bad’ Aspects in Your Horoscope?
And why you'll want to avoid psychics in Ojai, California
“Predictions are a mug’s game.” —Nigel Farage
IN MY LATE TEENS AND EARLY TWENTIES, I lived and worked in Hollywood. My job was such that I found myself unwittingly hobnobbing with movie people and pop music stars. (Ask me about the time I snuck into a recording studio storage room and read Stevie Nicks’ diaries.)
Mid-70s Los Angeles, especially Hollywood, was swirling in the fallout from the various pagan and occult arts that comprised the first intimations of the 60s counter-culture movement. The metaphysical bookstore, The Bodhi Tree, was a popular hang-out for all kinds of celebrity types. Big stars, middling stars, wannabes, and the various peons that catered to them.
From the moment the first palm tree was planted, Hollywood has been filled with seekers and hopefuls lured by mysticism—both pseudo and ‘real.’ Consulting with Reiki masters, Bahjai ministers, psychics, and astrologers is a normal part of day-to-day SoCal life for show business types.
As my friend Michael reminded me recently,
“Actors and pop stars are incredibly superstitious. Their unique form of narcissism, catered to by the culture, lends itself to horoscopes, crystal healings, Tarot readings, and especially consulting with psychics.”
A place many of us LA ‘star’ people ventured to, some on annual pilgrimages, was Ojai, California.
Ojai took its name from the Ventureño Chumash word 'Awha'y, meaning “moon,” which tells you something objective about the place. At the same time, the city’s self-styled nickname is “Shangri-La,” which tells you everything you’d want to know about the general vibes of the denizens there.
The place was ‘put on the map’ by the spiritual teacher Krishnamurti who’d moved out there at some point in the 70s. It also became a sort of popping mushroom field for psychics and healers—lots of ‘fringe’ people offering different services and promises of guidance and otherworldly intervention.
One summer afternoon, a group of my friends decided to visit a psychic that was popular with people in the LA music business. I tagged along, not wanting to spend money on something like that, but because everyone was doing it, I said: fuck it.
My experience with the psychic was one of the low points in my life. Not so much in the moment, but afterward (which is the point of this post, so hang in there, I’m getting to it).
The ‘reading’ the woman gave me was sort of garden-variety psychic shit. I can’t remember the peripheral stuff, but what stayed with me and haunted me for the next 30 years were different ‘predictions’ she made about my health and finances.
I’m not going to detail any of that here, it doesn’t matter. But what was so awful about the experience is that suddenly for the next several decades, I had this anxiety about my health and finances always hovering over my head like a sword of Damocles.
Any time my health wavered, I was certain that the psychic’s prediction was ready to unfurl in full fury. Same with the slightest changes in my finances. What started as a garden variety ‘reading’ evolved into a slow-burn curse.
The lesson I took with me, as I began to work with my own astrological clients, was to never, ever lay in someone’s mind a notion that, objectively, I had no way of confirming or supporting, regardless of this or that in their birth chart.
People who do this to the vulnerable are what I call ‘power-trippers,’ and you’re wise to avoid them. Consider the word ‘prediction.’ It’s laden with problems in and of itself. Predict…predicament. Who needs the added angst?
Predictions devolve into unnecessary chaos in the psyche. They linger around like cheap perfume. They pass through time undaunted and often become part and parcel of bad decisions or tangents that people end up committing to. Again: they are awful.
So, in this post for my paid subscribers, let’s talk about the negative aspects in the natal chart. The squares, the oppositions primarily. I mention those because these are the aspects people glom onto and then perhaps obsessive over.
And it doesn’t help that the traditional school of astrology does nothing to counter the negative associations with hard aspects. In fact, some traditional astrologers—as ‘power-trippers’—make the negative aspects part of their schtick, as in announcing: “I’m skilled enough to tell you the bad shit.”
In short, this is bullshit.
What has your experience been with the so-called ‘hard’ natal aspects? How did you work with them, and did you ever feel the need to try and escape them, overcome them? Or did you discover that that square between your Sun and Mars generates the kind of fuel that’s required to keep you moving forward in life, albeit stubbing your toe occasionally against a chair while en route to your next big thing? (BTW: that’s not a prediction.)
Discuss below, and I’ll step in with my ideas, suggestions, and perhaps some unique ways to reframe things.
Love,
Opening photograph Wiki Commons, public domain.
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I lay claim to shitty chart.
My ruling planet is in the 12th square to Pluto. So I can be a pedantic preaching asshole. And have been. Plus, they are in fixed signs, so there's that hardheaded crap. Then there is the issue of my sun in a T-square to Jupiter and Saturn. Let's discuss bi-polarity! Been that, done there. Moving on... Try a Moon conjunct Neptune and S. Node Square Uranus In the 5th. Pity my children! Two sons, both alcoholics. Functioning, but still drunk every evening.
A tale of woe, I know. But not really because it turns out that I love a challenge, I am strong like an ox, though allergic to most everything. In spite of the stresses and challenges, or because of them, I have led an interesting life. The Chinese curse "May you be born into interesting times" is actually not a curse at all, if one can learn how to count the blessings. This is not Pollyanna talking. This a pragmatic dogmatist leaping from one pedestal to the next.
Jupiter trine Uranus. I always seem to fall out of the shit and on to a flatbed truck full of roses traveling away from the shit. Sun trine the moon. Well, that's just fine by me. And back to the Moon Neptune S. Node. I can't seem to remember much of my past, which is a huge bonus with that insane track record.
Attitude matters. Instead of calling squares and oppositions "bad", I call them workouts and reflections. Squares require a narrow focus with applied stress. Squares are Pilates exercises. Oppositions are psychological reflections because they are like funhouse mirrors. If you spot it you got it. Rather than characterize these troubled aspects as bad, I prefer to view them as stove tops. When they are on, don't touch, cook dinner. When they are off, one can put the cutting board on top of the stove and use it as another work surface.
In closing, It seems to me that knowing where the shit lies is a good thing. Knowing where not to step is a good thing. My biggest problem seems to be remembering where the shit is located since I have an extreme case of CRS (can't remember shit) disease, indicative of Moon/Neptune conjunction.
SDAM stands for Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory and is often characterized by a lifelong inability to vividly recollect or re-experience personal past events. I recently learned about this phenomenon. What a relief to stop trying do a thing that I am incapable of doing. Life continues to offer up morsels that delight and encourage.
Blessings Fredrick, and thank you for your intriguing intellectual offerings.
I think of my traditionally "bad" stuff as being part of "being human". I sometimes feel good, sometimes not so much. Sometimes I seem to be smart and then I don't have the right stuff. I have been rather "lucky" as thing go. It could have been (still might be) much worse.
I think of the story attributed to Buddhist teaching about the man whose horse ran off. So bad the neighbors say. Then the horse returns with another and the neighbors say, "so good". But the man's son breaks his leg ridding the new horse and they say that is misfortune. However, when the army comes through to take young men to war, the son is not fit to go. And so on.
I notice the supposed bad stuff and also the traditionally good aspects. I find it all interesting. I don't "believe", But I do contemplate.
A man I met who was interested in astrology and also an electrical engineer( who worked on the moon lander so some such). He opined that squares are transformative, not negative in themselves.
This is only a few immediate thought. It would take me a lot longer to specifically speak to my actual aspects.