Creative Connections & Client Communications

An Excerpt from Noel Tyl’s Guide to Astrological Consultation, 

Greater Expectations

From the outset, the time of making the appointment, the client will be accumulating impressions of the astrologer that should accumulatively reflect a strong professionalism. Personal presentation upon first meeting will augment this image. And within the first few sentences of discussion, the client will be startled and impressed with the depth at which the consultation is pitched.

As the consultation develops, the client will start to see patterns of behavior from earliest developmental times that more than likely will be coloring what is being brought to the table in the present, the issues of pressure, choice, threat that are of strategic concern. Adjustments are made through this recognition, through objectification, and through behavioral modification. Patterns can be changed.

Perhaps the coloring of the present in development has been met very well. The projection into the near future commands highly focused attention at the closing of the consultation, and discussion eases into projection of the now-familiar horoscope symbology for the months ahead.

This is a moment of high analytical tension. The astrologer is fitting measurement guidelines into reality plans and hopes in the future. Does the sheer fact of talking about these projections with accumulated insight guarantee reality occurrence? The client would certainly like that to be so. Even with a transitory dismal projection, the client will feel forewarned, and therefore well armed. In retrospect, often, that kind of weathering-the-storm period will be viewed as an essential turning point, a clearing of the air, a new start forced into being.

The phrasing of things must be carefully chosen: talking about probabilities is highly recommended over projecting facts to come. Talking about what is reasonable is the sense that must prevail: it is reasonable that one’s father, battling lung cancer for six months already, may die in three months with the Pluto and Saturn measurements tied into the Midheaven of the client’s horoscope. The strategic questions become what will that death mean? How does one prepare for it in many different avenues of concern?

It is reasonable that a long-distance relocation (or even a shorter one outside the present school district) will challenge the family, with their three children, corresponding to the strong Uranus contacts with the husband’s Ascendant, involving the ruler of the Midheaven as well. His corporation has already broached the subject, and we see that reality suggested vividly in the horoscope portrait. It is a high-probability projection. What becomes extremely important is keeping peace within family progress, acknowledging the children’s school peer-group disruptions and shifts to a new location, timing the move for the summer months, finding rewards for the children at the new location, involving them with the reward potentials of the decision, etc.

It is reasonable that a woman’s affair will die out with the Saturn transit to her Sun/Moon midpoint, also involving the rulers of her 5th and 7th. But is she seeing the hidden message about the threat to her marriage as well? Of what is the affair a symptom in terms of the marriage? How can the marriage be strengthened as the affair dissolves? Is this being seen as well? The client may not be expecting these layers of significances tied to probable event development. The astrologer is broadening the spectrum of expectations within the astrological consultation.

But, uncannily often, after business strategy for an improved job situation or relocation plans or extended family reorganization or management of a problematic brother or sister situation, or a court case or an affair, etc. is illuminated and agreed to by the client and the astrologer –really big considerations—even greater expectations can raise their heads! This is natural: so much trust has been built up between client and astrologer that wishful thinking is now free to be heard, and, to one degree or another, what the astrologer has to say may just “make it so”!

The question most often heard in the midst of professional, geographic, or status change is, “Will I ever meet someone?” or “When will I meet someone?” This is a query from someone unmarried, having just broken up within a relationship (part of the larger change, clearly) or about to be divorced, afraid of transient insecurity, aloneness, or an extension of heretofore-protracted aloneness, seeking rescue. Rarely is resolution of change-strategies accompanied simultaneously with realization of romance, unless, of course, romance is at the core of the change.

The astrologer’s very good answer, judging from near unanimous agreement of clients when they think it out, is “I’d like to suggest, first things first. You are going to go through quite a change here, as we’ve seen. It’s possible. It’s probable; and we see that the change will probably stretch out over 8 months to be settled.

“What will probably be happening at the same time is that you will become quite a different person! Your values will probably change; your confidence level will change; your appreciation of yourself and your work in life will be greatly enhanced. You will be a different person and you will probably attract a different kind of relationship! You will probably leave behind those old ‘vibes’ and no longer attract the same kind of unproductive relationships that we’ve seen so often over the last twenty years. Maybe it’s best to wait for the changes now to take place and then see what the ‘new You’ starts to attract!”

This is stick-to-the-business-at-hand reasoning. It is supportive reasoning. It is an idea with which it is very comfortable to live. It tempers the (overly) extended expectations within the consultation.