The Advice Business

So someone using a program to cast charts may not be qualified to help space agencies or space companies figure out how to use astrological charts as gravity maps to improve space navigation. That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't worth paying for life advice, which is what most people want out of it.

I have a lot of criticisms of popular or sun sign astrology, such as:


I LIKE astrology. I found it useful to help me figure out me. I would like to see it return to being a respected source of good advice like it once was.

Some areas I wish we would work on:

1. Update Rulerships and base it on something more substantive than whatever it's currently based on.

2. Rename or rebrand it because it never was the study of the stars. It was the study of the wandering stars -- planets visible to the naked eye without use of a telescope -- and other important gravity sources (the Sun, Moon, Earth) within our solar system and their impacts on life here on earth, so it's actually reasonable and logical that astronomy parted company with it. It's misnamed and what it does is fundamentally different from astronomy. 

3. Because of that history, Earth got implicitly LEFT OUT. We don't clearly indicate that the Rising sign and house system are the EARTH and its orientation within a geocentric map of the solar system and we don't assign Earth any Rulerships etc.

4. We also left out the asteroid belt because it wasn't clearly visible before telescopes AND we kind of shoe horned in new planets to an existing field of knowledge without really studying how they fit in. We need data on where that fits in. Lack of such is part of why its reputation went to hell after telescopes were invented. 

5. Astrology also went to hell because we decided to try to sell to the masses when kings largely stopped paying astrologers as professional advice givers. We need to figure out ways to fix that.

Sun Sign astrology as a means to try to water down a complex topic and make it popular is broken. 
Start publishing and popularizing charts showing the degree of the sign in question for the Sun for the date in question.
That's from my piece called Canned Astrology. I also talk about the fact that the Sun travels roughly one degree per day because we have 365 days in a year and there's 360 degrees in a circle in other pieces, including Quick and Dirty Romantic Compatibility.

If you want the public to have a spoonful of astrology without convincing them it's complete garbage, start developing a form of popular or Sun based astrology that gives information based on something like the exact degree of the Sun or the sign, the decanate and dwad.

Decanate is a ten degree subset of the 30 degree sign. My recollection is all fire signs have a subrulership of each 10 degree section and it's based on all three fire signs and similar pattern for the other elements. 

Dwad is short for duod...something which means one twelfth. So I think every 2.5 degrees of each sign has a subruler of one of the twelve signs.

So you can legitimately write up information on the 30 types of Aries, the 30 types of Taurus. Etc.

And it would be ACCURATE information for ONE piece of the chart that almost everyone can readily identify for themselves because most people know their birthday. That wasn't always true.

And it serves as a teaser. If THIS one little piece is actually not garbage, then people are more likely to be willing to pay for a full chart because their first impression isn't "Astrology is BULLSHIT."

Focus on the pieces we know are mathematically accurate. Get more data to support development of bits and pieces currently on shaky ground, like house systems. 

We can know what the Rising Sign is because it's one of two horizon points. As far as I know, all house systems agree on that detail. 

They argue about other details and this means probably some people get bad advice because we haven't pinned down certain things, so some people get told "You're Moon is in x house and that means blah blah blah." and it doesn't really fit.

Giving good advice is an art in its own right and astrology has no governing board for credentials. That's not all bad. Lots of advice giving professions have a rather poor track record in spite of being credentialed.

Astrology historically had a good reputation because it was learned commoners who gave advice kings wanted to hear. If you give good advice and call it astrology, you're in business. 

Notice how credentialing or lack thereof isn't one of my criticisms. I don't care about that part.

But I would like to see some effort made to toss the dirty bath water and keep the baby.