Creative Connections & Client Communications
Development of Individual Style

For the last few decades, there has been an apparent separation between what is called the practice of event-centered astrology and what is called the practice of humanistic astrology. [The latter area was inspired (and named) by Dane Rudhyar and led quickly into what is now called Psychological Astrology.]

It is important to note that humanistic or psychological astrology does not overlook or downgrade events, which trigger values, reflect behavioral patterns and mold character. It is important to note that event-centered astrology should not be without appreciation of value judgments and developmental growth significances.

In this discussion, what we are seeing is really the emergence of ‘personal style’ on the part of the astrologer, and also the expectations of the client.

Just as each practicing astrologer through his or her style attracts a certain clientele eventually, so each astrologer’s style is eventually honed for particular personal efficiency in service to others. That service is accomplished in different ways according to client inquiry and the learning and personality of the astrologer.

But personal style cannot emerge securely until all the mechanics that support style have become instinctive. The best baseball batter knows thoroughly how to hit: the sacrifice fly, the bunt, specific placements to the outfield, the home run, etc. in order to meet what is needed in the game situation. The batter knows how to hit; it’s second nature; the batter adapts his technique to the exigency of the moment.

In astrology with our skill finely developed, we eventually are summing up patterns of behavior in a few blinks of the eye, not endlessly explaining measurement codifications. We are expecting and facing curve balls, knuckle balls, sliders and we’re putting them all together knowingly into a game plan.

Another part of the discussion is from client’s viewpoint: what does the client suppose the astrological consultation is about, what will it contain? What are the presuppositions? [I have had clients tell me what they want to hear, what not to discuss; where not to tread. In most cases, this appears to be how these clients react to most people in their life experience, especially people with some authority.] From first contact with clients, we must make clear what we offer to the public; we must practice our best style in order to do our best work.

In the event-astrology ‘game plan’, clients often demand to be told what is impossible to see, divine, or say! The insurance salesman unhappy with his job doesn’t show vocationally that he can become a concert violinist or television news commentator, and something like that is what his heart is set on! –We must work to discern the values being pursued in the hopes and find ways to realize them practically.

Or in the humanistic astrology ‘game plan’, clients will dwell endlessly on intricate emotional experience sets, using the astrological consultation to excess as a sounding board opportunity, a source of sympathetic listening … after all, the astrologer is talking about them and is an indulgent listener. –We must work for objectification and fresh thought.

Efficiency is handmaiden to objectivity. When talking about events [and we must not forget that events test the Angles and the Sun and Moon, i.e., the birth time], objective evaluation shows the growth of value judgments and character. When a client tells us that they have had five years of psychotherapy on the focal point of a major event or two in their life development, we have to trust the productivity of the therapy. And we must check the values of the learning … humanistically: “What did you learn from that self-study? How happy are you with the understanding you gained?” –When a client finally sees that rebellion against authority figures is because the authority never came from the father, from where it is supposed to come in loving leadership; he or she doesn’t want others to usurp the father’s role; we have to see that understanding productively at work in humanistic development.

So, the skilled astrologer has every technique instinctively at the ready, and, to continue the baseball metaphor, she or he can hit the change-up pitch.

I believe there should be no schism between event-centered astrology and psychological astrology. If the astrologer makes the separative difference, she or he has an incomplete arsen
al of skills.

Within our personal style as it evolves, we must know what we do not know. This is wisdom. Certainly there are some areas in which we can not traffic as well as in others. Gradually this spreads out from us through our clientele. We attract less that which we do not know and much more that which we do know.

For me personally, I would strike out every time with financial focal points in astrological analysis. I don’t attract those cases; so I still have never looked at a copy of The Wall Street Journal!! in my life!!!

But for the most part, my instincts and all the astrology now built into them qualify me to expect a home run every time I step up to the plate –humanistically or event-centeredly! That’s my style.