I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve been reading charts for almost four decades, and every time I sit down with a new one—every time without fail—it looks absolutely incomprehensible to me. The symbols swim before my eyes and refuse to hang together into anything cohesive. It’s only by taking it slowly and methodically, by finding an interesting thread or two and pulling at them, that I’m eventually drawn into the chart.
And I’ll tell you another secret. When I finally speak to someone about his or her chart, the person who shows up is always completely different (at least initially) from what I had imagined. There’s an old saying: “the map is not the territory.” No matter how good the map, it can’t convey the reality of the landscape and what it really feels like to be there.
Keep an open mind. Remember that symbols can be interpreted in a number of ways, so use the astrology chart as your road map. It will help you get where you need to go, but remember, a real, live person has been doing heavy construction on these roads over the course of a lifetime. There may be potholes and roadblocks that don’t showup on the map at all; some roads may have been washed away. So always approach the chart, and the person, with respect, and let them be your guide to understanding the terrain.
© 2011 April Elliott Kent.
Excerpted from my book The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology (Alpha/Penguin 2011). It’s currently out of print, but used copies are available through Amazon’s Marketplace.
