Thinking Like an Astrologer

by Rod Suskin

One summer evening, I found myself as a guest speaker talking to a rather unlikely audience: the national sea bird rescue organisation. Many of them probably wondered why on earth the event organiser engaged an astrologer to give this month’s talk. I wondered the same, but I have found that explaining astrology to a completely lay audience is one of the most exciting lecture experiences I have.

Sure, apart from the befuddled birders you have to contend with the yawning partners, and there are also a few questions that need a lot of patience and a straight face to deal with, but nothing beats the pleasure of gifting them with a bit of enlightenment, the odd realisation, maybe a bit of mind blowing, and perhaps a new life-long fascination.

They took to my lecture well and seemingly drank up every word about the things we may take for granted, like how astrology can be useful when dealing with the overwhelming and confusing nature of life, and for making the most of the best of times. (I did search for things to say about saving sea birds too, but everything sounded cheesy and forced.)

I didn’t delve too far into discussing fate and free will; it’s not something you can easily talk about to a spread of people who may have few common interests or shared knowledge, other than that of oily penguins. Rather, I concentrated on the practical details of facing obstacles and either accepting things or trying to change them, as the case may be.

Then, a man in his late 30s raised his hand and stood to ask a question, “I just want to ask, on what basis do you give this advice? I mean, you’re not a psychologist, you’re not a priest. What is the source of the advice you give?”

It was one of those questions that made everyone else realise that they too had the same question. With clients, it’s one thing to mirror the personality, even the karma, in the chart and to talk about predictions and all the well-known tools of our trade … but to give advice? Where exactly does that fall in astrology — when it isn’t in the context of some other discipline like psychology or religion?

What I told him is that astrology alone offers little in the way of advice in the sense of why you should do something, and rather, simply, that you should — you can tell someone to “adjust to the change” without a reason that might come from a personal belief or an assumption. Astrology itself is not a philosophy of life necessarily, but is compatible with many ways of understanding why things happen the way they do here on Earth.

For some astrologers though, those assumptions are so ingrained, and they sometimes forget these are assumptions — something like, “astrology shows you your potential.” That word, potential, is, of course, a belief about astrology and is an assumption dissimilar to the belief that astrology shows your karma or fate. On the subject of potential, it’s a good example of how amateur psychology can easily creep into our practice, giving homespun advice or, more scarily, raising issues like buried abuse or hidden traumas, when we should be referring our clients to an appropriate counselling professional, rather than taking on that role ourselves.

Any advice we have to give about what position or aspect we are accusing of causing something to happen must be somewhat bound by who and where we are.Just like the medieval prognosticator who completely assumed that we come from a rather orthodox Judeo-Christian view of the world, we must unconsciously incorporate lots of the assumptions of our times.

Sometimes all of this is compounded by the problem that we are not likely to have the expertise in these other disciplines that astrology so easily aligns itself with, and of course the unspoken likelihood that anybody you are explaining the chart to does not automatically have the same beliefs about life that you do.

The honest truth is that this frequently results in a personalized blend composed of our own beliefs and vague ideas absorbed from contemporary culture. Today, this includes “new age” ideas as well as quasi-scientific ones that vaguely identify astrology with things like quantum theory (usually with little actual knowledge, but any number of beliefs and assumptions may be incorporated, even those that a medieval Bible-thumper would probably recognise).

So, between us, what is the complete answer to the thorny question of “on what basis do we give advice?”

As astrologers, we need to speak in a way that is consistent with a coherent philosophy of astrology. More fundamentally, we need to be able to speak in a way that is in accord with the astrology we practice, and we need to make it explicit to our clients that this is where we are coming from.

Clearly, there is no one philosophy behind astrology, which is natural and great, but we need to be a lot louder about what we do think, or at the very least, we need to thoroughly think it through for ourselves: Just what do I believe? What is my philosophy of life that is consistent with the fact that I am an astrologer, and that I use astrology to give advice?

For two reasons, I find the ancient philosophy of Stoicism to be most compatible with how I view the world and what I think about astrology. First, a key idea of Stoicism is universal causality: everything has a cause, and everything that happens is the cause of something else. Thus, everything is a natural process unfolding.

There’s lots of room for fate in all of that, and many Stoics are comfortable with at least one of the underlying ideas of fate: that you are not in control of most of what happens.

As for events being somehow pre-ordained and predictable, as astrology essentially has it, that isn’t quite the same as saying that events are out of our control. But it does make room for astrology and Stoicism to find some common ground, and for astrology to have some meaning behind the way it explains the world.

Second, another basic Stoic idea is related to giving advice: since we’re not in control of most of what happens, it makes sense to concentrate on what we are in control of. To a very large extent, that entails only us and some things in our immediate environment. In reality, it’s very little, and this makes the most sense to me in our world and in our astrology.

It seems to me that, at its heart, astrology says the same thing. It may be possible to develop our potential, to express things in particular ways by choice, and to seek and even find all sorts of reasons and meanings behind things — and astrology does that with aplomb. But when it comes to doing something about it all, in the end there’s not much we can do. Even if it were possible, it would be miraculous to change more than just a few things at any particular time, because there is way too much happening simultaneously, affecting all things.

Whatever our take on astrology, we have to engage with the fate question every so often, and the Stoic approach allows me a context for all the stuff we don’t control no matter what the truth behind it is. I don’t have to wonder about whether something was caused by fate or poor parenting, I just have to know when it can be changed, or how much it can be improved. This allows me to establish a comfortable position in the mix between fate and free will, how these may affect the meaning of everything and how they may affect the meaning of what I do as an astrologer.

For me, Stoicism becomes a practical, realistic and honest wayof giving advice that is entirely consistent with how I practice astrology, and I can give this advice based on sound principles argued by philosophers rather than on some passing or untested opinion of mine which might not be the most authoritative source of good advice for someone face to face with fate.

The advice we have to give is about knowing when — when things that are not in our control may happen, and when it is possible to do something about them.

The most fundamental purpose of astrology is to master ourselves and our worlds, to whatever extent is possible. By knowing what we need to change and what we need to accept, we can achieve this mastery. The chart is the mirror that shows what can be changed, and what can’t. It is the mirror of the world in how it says what happens; and it is the mirror of the self in how it says where the control lies, and just how much of it there is.

If I can provide my clients with a glimpse into this mirror, which allows them to know when to act and when to accept, I believe I have also given them the opportunity to reach towards the happiness that the philosophers promise when we know the nature of ourselves and the world.

Published in: The Mountain Astrologer, AriesNox 2023.

Author:
Rod Suskin is well-known as an astrologer and sangoma (African traditional healer) in Cape Town, South Africa, and has been in practice in both fields for more than 30 years. He holds a BA (Psych) (Wits) and an MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology (UWTSD). He is the author of several books, including Cycles of Life and Synastry, and has his own show, “Rod Suskin’s World,” on Cape Town TV and YouTube. Rod teaches an internationally recognized three-year Diploma at his online school and continues to work full time as a consulting astrologer. Website: www.rodsuskin.com; email: rod@rodsuskin.com.

© 2023 - Rod Suskin

Taken from this issue:
This article was published in The Mountain Astrologer, Aries Nox 2023 and can be purchased here.

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