Management of Measurement Constructs
Measurements for the Modern Astrologer
I’ve known astrology buffs who can ‘talk astrology’ faster than water can flow over the cliffs of Niagara! I’ve known astrologers who can talk astrology more intricately than they can they’re own native language! And I’ve known many, many hundreds and hundreds of people who have been confounded, dumbfounded, bewildered, and disappointed in their consultations with such jargon-obsessed measurers. Nothing was accomplished except the astrologer’s show-off facility with inscrutable verbiage.
Excessive measurement and jargon explosion have long been the supposed “badge of belonging” for astrologers who, with the espousal of measurements as the sine qua non of their professional identity, can not face up to appreciation of and interaction with the human condition. The rationalization has been that “sounding scientific” established authority. Pursuing science was the way to avoid the challenge of art. The astrologer’s dry and brittle social anxieties were hidden behind numbers. Feelings were not recognized; they were not allowed.
There are countries that teach astrology this way, I assure you. In this modern time, in the Psychological Age, it is shocking. –I have had some advanced students stop dead in the progress of my Course (say, at the Third Lesson), refusing to follow overwhelmingly insightful measurement complexes into human discussion. Their reason was that this complex or that one was too powerful, too intimate … when it was really the very core structure of the client’s life development! The training the astrologer had previously absorbed simply wouldn’t allow such human discussion.
The over-measuring came into being to proveastrology …after-the-fact. This or that would happen, and it would, of course, have to be explained. All semisextiles, bi-quintiles, noviles, and second periphrastic nodal liaisons in the Universe were brought to bear on the situation, to depict the situation within the control of hindsight arcanity. Astrologers felt good about that; they ‘sounded’ good, but the astrologers themselves never developed in the understanding of the human condition and in value helping others.
Soon the insights and richness of the psychological century seized some awarenesses, and the symbolism of astrology and the practice of astrology gave fresh attention to the development of the human being ahead of time within development. Astrology slowly started to become a support for human beings trying to reach the Sun.
Now our measurements are ever so much more cleanly constructed and their essences humanized. We no longer relate the person to the horoscope –and thereby confine the human being to what we know about astrology and life (“Well, we’ll just look you up in the book here!”). We change that process around: we relate the horoscope to the life being lived by the human being!! In this way, the horoscope comes individualistically, literally and figuratively, TO life, to the client’s life. We understand.
Measurements should serve the following functions:
1. They should act as guidelines for individualistic deduction. As significators, the planets flag into prominence the many considerations within the sociometric growth process we all share in any particular society.
2. Measurements should focus on the process of becoming rather than upon description of the status quo. They define needs, attracting different energies to work for their fulfillment, routing them into behavior patterns that interact with the external environment in terms of reward, frustration/modification, or change.
3. Measurements should demarcate time in development, bringing past to present, present to future, with individual reality as clearly respected, understood, and evaluated as possible.
Further considerations
Because measurements exist within the horoscope map does not, by definition, demand that all measurements be significant or be put to work. –When one studies a roadmap of a busy metropolitan area, the maze of lines can be bewildering. Even though many of the road lines will lead us through the city to our destination, we will choose only one, It may lead us to a dead end, whereupon we must re-choose; the road might be bumpy and hard to travel. Or the road we choose may be smooth and as direct as we can arrange for it to be.
The point is that, for the map to be meaningful, it must be observed in terms of the one road that was chosen, with all of its turns, stops and starts, but our key path nonetheless. This is the manageable measure of the journey.
There are important measurements that grasp the keystone considerations of human development; and there are ancillary measurements that come along for the ride, so to speak. –When I tell you that your living room in this house is 27 feet x 18 feet, you know the living space. Does the fact that there are joists in the walls every 24-26 inches the length of the room on both sides help you understand the space you will live in? Or … HERE COMES AN ELEPHANT! That SAYS something! Nothing is added by observing that four parasitic wrens are perched on its rump.
Measurements suggest psychodynamic potentials. Planets don’t make things happen; people do. The planets are our guidelines to understanding that, anticipating that. Needs make things happen, and there is no humanistic appreciation discipline on earth that can define this as accurately as astrology does. We grow in certain ways to fulfill our life-need under the leadership of our mind; we relate to others to help in the process and to keep life going; we deploy energies hoping for reward and recognition in accordance with the disciplines and lessons we internalize for efficiency; and we define who we are as securely as we can, then to project our dreams as far as we can to empower our being. –In that one sentence, we captur every one of the planets in our life as we use them.
Measurements are profession-significant only. They are our “shorthand” for enormous amounts of learning, observation, and projection. They are our language. We should never confuse our client or the public by speaking a language other than theirs. No jargon belongs in any consultation. Take the jargon out of any astrological conversation and observe how much time and space are opened up in which to say something important.
How do you measure up to this modern standard?