See? That
wasn't so bad--we managed to get about three zillion symbolic
combinations narrowed down to about five really important
ones.
Of course, you
need a grasp of the symbols. There's no shame in
cracking open a few of your most trusted texts--astrological
or otherwise--in search of fresh perspective on combinations
you have no personal knowledge of. After ten years,
I rarely do a reading without consulting Sue
Tompkins' Aspects in Astrologyor Mary
Shea's Planets in Solar Returns, for instance.
And usually I'll write a quick line or two about every combination
on my outline, just to get me thinking.
But now-- How
to make it all hang together, to cook it up into something
whole and united and tasty? Each astrologer will
do this differently, because this is where Art and Intuition
take over-- and nobody can tell you how to be an artist.
I can only give you an example of what I did.
Using the previous
outline as an example, we can assume that this woman is
engaged in some kind of grand developmental struggle (Sun)
of the nature of Saturn (responsibility) and Uranus (freedom).
Of course, this is not what she came to me to ask about--she
wants to know about relationships. So how to honor
the message of the chart within the context of her stated
concern?
Well, that's
not too hard really, is it? Because relationships
are, by their very nature, a process of balancing two integral
but conflicting needs: our need to be responsible to another
person, and our need for personal freedom. This is true
for everyone--but for her, with a strong Saturn and Uranus
conjunct the Sun, it's super important to find a way to work
this out. And the time to do it, with transiting Saturn
and Uranus attacking her, is now; unless she rises to the
challenge, her chances for being happy in a relationship are
not good.
But how do you
communicate this in an imaginative and helpful way?
You can't talk to her about Saturn and Uranus because these
symbols don't resonate for her in the same way they do for
you. Astrology is your language, and it's full of
baffling colloquialisms she doesn't understand.
But you also
speak her language, provided you share anything in common
culturally. This is where knowing something about
the client's biography can be helpful. It's not
about "cheating", getting details from the client so you can
appear to be all knowing. It's about finding something
you can use to communicate with them effectively.
In the case
of this client, because she wanted to get married, I decided
to introduce my ideas about relationship and her chart as
a "marriage myth"--an exploration of those cultural messages
we absorb about what marriage is and what roles men and women
play in a marriage.
Because she
had a strong Saturn, I didn't want to come on too strong
and attempt to control the direction of the reading or ask
questions that were too direct--I didn't want to awaken
Saturn's well-developed defenses. The "marriage myth"
allowed me a kind of smokescreen, behind which I could say,
"I'm not saying you necessarily think this way about marriage.
But all of us receive important messages about marriage, from
watching other marriages, from the media--and it's important
to be aware of what those messages are and where they came
from." And it freed me up to free-associate about
various symbols in her chart without feeling any pressure
to be "right" about specific details (although, as it turned
out, I was right about every single one!).
Stories,
movies, books, and other metaphors can provide a comparable
tool for exploring the difficult issues in your client's chart.
Dana Gerhardt has done a terrific series in The
Mountain Astrologer magazine using fairy tales to
describe the motivations of each zodiac sign. Some astrologers
enjoy using classical mythology. I'm a movie and pop
culture freak, so those are my references.
When you're
first starting out, you may actually want to write a few things
out, like little compositions. I have a folder in
my office full of examples I've used for various planetary
combinations. (I figure, what the hell, maybe it'll
be a book someday.) And because I'm terrified of repeating
myself, I note on each one of them every time I use it and
who I used it for.
So what treasures
do you have lying around in your vast creative cultural storeroom?
Break 'em out. It's time to dance.
