Why do you study astrology?

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I have seen some people who claimed to have studied it for several decades and I think that's amazing. Is there a reason that makes you persist in your studies of astrology?

For myself, aside from interest in the occult, one of the main reasons is that it helps to alleviate my depression. I've got that prominent Saturn/Mercury combination and I believe it makes me prone to worry and anxiety. It is only through some sort of intellectual study that I can shrug off some of the daily anxieties that plague me.

What about you guys? What's your story? :)
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The appearance changes, but the essence remains.

2
Hi Larxene,

Incidentally, my God-father was a hobby astrologer. He was the first to draw a chart and make a delineation for me (based on a somewhat inaccurate time of birth) - but it didn't have a great impact on me at the time.

In my childhood I was almost completely inclined toward natural sciences only. :) "Almost" meaning that occult topics did catch my attention when they happened to cross my way. However, I remember expressing scepticism on astrology when meeting a friend of my sister's who was studying the subject.

It was not until later - after some other esoteric topics had caught my interest - that I looked into astrology again. A friend installed a share-ware program on my computer. I proceeded by reading books on astrology, but it took me some time to come across some that really helped me get going practically. When working with Bach Flower Therapy and other methods in the context of a psychiatric practice, I would usually delineate my clients' charts, additionally, so I could gather practical experiences.

At the same time, I developed an intense interest in many different aspects of this art, practical and theoretical. I was reading extensively, as well as attending some seminars. I would spend a lot of time thinking about astrology and linking it with other topics that I had previously explored. My wish was (and still is) to understand astrology in a broader context of natural philosophy.

Moreover, astrology is a mirror for me that helps me to understand and manage my own personality - which, lacking some kind of regular self-reflection, could easily go somewhat haywire, I feel, given my strong trans-Saturnian influences... :D It also helps me to see my environment more clearly.

Thus I resonate with your own perception of how astrology is assisting you.

Cheers,
Michael

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curiousity..

or - moon in scorpio on the ascendant trine uranus in the 9th sign.. moon in scorpio needs to have some type of detachment to help alleviate the strong emotions that typically come with the placement. that is my take on it for myself. i find it's a very useful tool for understanding myself and my actions or reactions better. it also comes in handy for understanding others when they are open or willing to share their birth data too, but alas some are afraid or unwilling to do that!

cheers james

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My earliest memories of my interest in astrology go back to me as a young child around the age of 10. I remember waiting eagerly each week for my dad to bring home the magazine for the following week ahead on TV,which had a sun sign column in the back. I used to read all of the family members 'forecast' for the coming week. I used to also make a point of knowing all my friends birthdays too & working out which sign they were born under. :brows
I progressed to getting bought various sun sign astrology books for Xmas/birthdays etc & reading them from cover to cover.
I seem to have carried on my interest through my life always making a point of asking people I came into contact with through college & then work,what their birthdays were & so on..
I never knew that it was a subject for study & that astrology was so vast in its application & approaches until I suffered a mild breakdown at the age of 40 & decided to enrol at night class in my local college where I was delighted to see astrology on the prospectus!
Through this I learnt 'modern' astrology & then became disillusioned with that after a few years,finally attending a conference where Deb Houlding was hosting a presentation on her book "Temples...",which absolutely fascinated me & enrolled on her practitioners course in 2006.
SG
Enjoy what you learn,as it keeps the mind youthful!!

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I got interested one morning in the fall of 1964 in my junior year in high school, when my teacher, the day after our psychology text's peremptory dismissal of "the pseudoscience of astrology," brought to class an astrology magazine to drive home the point of how silly it was. He would have been mortified to know that my interest in the subject dates from that morning. Unlike many astrologers, who claim to have been skeptical until further study and intellectual honesty forced them to acknowledge its validity, I accepted it immediately. It didn't occur to me to be skeptical. I followed astrology through magazines for several years but my interest waned as I married, started a family, and began a career as an actuarial trainee. Only when my marriage disintegrated during the fall and winter of 1971-72 did I return to it in a desperate search for answers, and this time I began pursuing it seriously as a student. Only then, in the wake of that crisis and of my attempts to predict the immediate future the way I had already retropredicted previous turning points in my life, did I begin to doubt and ask hard questions.

My pursuit of science, as a means to an end of understanding astrology, dates from that period. What began as a search for personal answers transmuted, during as I recall the transit of Uranus over my Sun during the late 1970s, into a more generalized pursuit of astrology as a form of knowledge, more specifically the pursuit of more reliable predicted effects and more credible causation. My attempts since then to make sense of astrology, to conceive a version of it not ridiculous on the face of it, to "see" effects that better fit the evidence than current and past notions, and more recently to articulate the results of those efforts, have occupied me to the present day.
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Larxene

Interesting question, for me it's because conceptually astrology should really make no sense - in regards a materialistic view of the world whereby there is no known material causal agent that might describe how or why astrology works.

In my late teens started to learn Tarot and noticed multiple comparisons or analogies made to astrology by various authors and, in a roundabout way which included examining the Kabbalah, I started to conceptually understand what the planets were meant to signify. I didn't believe in astrology then but it put it on my radar. Then, unlike Spock, I took a very skeptical view of it after I decided to examine several newspapers on a given day to see if they all related to the same overall message - they didn't. So I discounted astrology until I saw Linda Goodman's book on Sun Signs and out of curiosity read about my zodiac sign. I had to admit that it rang true with me - actually I didn't feel I really was as great as my sun sign sounded, but I knew I really wanted to be. So it appealed to my ego and that was good enough. I compared to other signs like Pisces and Aries and I didn't relate to that at all. So my curiosity was triggered again and I started to learn more about it.

When I was 20 I had some knowledge about what the planet signified, aspects, houses were a bit vague to me, but overall I had some idea of what was going on with astrology and was still a bit skeptical about it but was open minded enough to go see an astrologer. It was a pivotal moment for me because he was so disastrously wrong on multiple accounts but made some remarks and using past life techniques remarked that I would never find happiness or love in a relationship in this life - this after I had just broken up with someone. I came out of that momentarily devastated, then pulled myself together and had a drive to learn everything I could about astrology to see if this prediction was astrologically accurate or not. But in the meantime I had realised that actually I did believe that astrology worked - though I was and still remain skeptical on many parts of astrology and I still don't really believe in anything until I see it works for myself.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

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Astrology is not false but you can say that it is not completely true. We should experience at least once before reaching to any conclusion.In India we have various methods of predicting future.
Some astrologer predicts future by reading palm or face. Some prefer birth chart. The probability on right predictions depend also on the experience of astrologer.
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9
An interesting topic Larxene.

I became interested in astrology in 1979 and taught myself to chart horoscopes whilst convalescing from an operation.

Apart from dabbling in the Tarot, palmistry and the I Ching for some years prior to that I don't know want prompted me because there is no family history whatsoever. I come from a family of very down to earth business people. I also have a very practical side but there is a part of me my late father used to call "airy fairy" !! That side of me sets me apart from all my friends and family members. I never met another astrologer until I joined Skyscript.

In the early 1980s I wanted to study for an astrology qualification but the need to earn a living took precedence so it remained a hobby.

Something big happened to me in 2010 in what I have to call the "paranormal" area which would be too controversial and too personal to go into here but it was at that point I found out why I developed an interest in astrology in the first place. Since 2010 I have made a more serious study of astrology despite chronic illness. Like Larxene, working with astrology takes my mind off my illness, to some extent. In fact, being housebound and bedbound for much of the day I do some of my astrology from my bed (when I should be resting !). I am surrounded by book and papers but I can also memorise charts and delineate them in my head.

It is now a huge part of my life to the extent that it could be described as an "obsession". That's Pluto for you. I am Scorpio rising.

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Larxene, I began my study of astrology when I was in my early 40s, and experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul similar to what others have described. I knew nothing of astrology beyond the name of my sun-sign but dimly recalled that horoscopes treated people like individuals. I didn't think psychology, religion, or human potential movements held much promise, as they tend to treat individuals as subsets of a larger more homogeneous group.

Fortunately, in the days prior to so much astro-info on the Internet, I was living in a small city that had a really good New Age book store, so some of the first books I bought were the modern classics by Robert Hand. I doubt that I could have kept it up had my major early sources been of the pop-schlock variety.

I wanted to learn who I was beyond my externalities, and why I was on the planet. In this pursuit, I studied further and further. I have no idea now why I am on the planet, but I learned a lot of astrology in the process.

In late 2007 I started to read charts on-line for people. I learned a whole lot more that way, and try to be helpful to people.

In answer to your question of why I study (or do it) now, I dunno. I find it endlessly fascinating. I would study astrology even if it turned out to be completely false as a form of prediction and character analysis.

But let's look at that. Nobody argues that a Shakespeare play is factually true. We still attend Shakespeare plays today because of the beauty of the language, the engaging characters, and the deeper truths hidden inside the fictional lines.

I feel that way about astrology. It is one of the grander efforts to link human beings to the cosmos.

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Hi Larxene:

I came to astrology a couple years ago looking for some understanding, primarily using modern techniques, about a terrible thing that happened to me. I also, somewhat unconsciously, I think, was looking for some hope as I had experienced a bunch of losses, situations that were sudden and beyond my control.

I?ve since learned that astrology, particularly traditional astrology, is the last place you want to go to look for hope! So I think that what has kept me interested is sheer boredom (and possibly a large masochistic streak). :)

I find most of astrology extremely interesting in so many ways that I understand how people can study it for years but now after having my hopes and dreams thoroughly dashed, I think it?s probably a good idea for me to find another hobby.

Even the illusion of hope is better than no hope at all.
The Moon is opposing Jupiter. Don't get involved, it's their problem. Jim Critchfield

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moonbright, I am sorry for your destructive experience. But it is not you.

So many people, experiencing a rough spot in their lives, ask astrology to give them some hope. It is as though that request should naturally illicit a response that offers them a happier future. But the purpose of astrology isn't to tell people something like, "Well, yes. Your bad luck will disappear in 3 weeks time," although occasionally this happens. Astrology isn't like the Make A Wish Foundation. Ideally, astrology gives you the simple truth about you and your future.

It is far better to mentally prepare for tough times than it is to hope that they will never happen or recur.

I think astrology works best as a tool for self-awareness.