The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 161, titled:

Is Prediction Killing Astrology? ISAR Panel at UAC 2018

With David Bailey, Chris Brennan, Steven Forrest, Rick Levine, Chris McCrae, Sam Reynolds & Christeen Skinner

Episode originally released on June 25, 2018

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2018/06/25/is-prediction-killing-astrology-isar-panel-at-uac-2018/

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson

Transcription released June 10th, 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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DAVID BAILEY: So, are all of you ready? Are you ready over here? Good. Are you ready over here? You’re ready?

STEVEN FORREST: All set.

RICK LEVINE: I’m ready if Steven’s ready.

DB: Are there extra seats back there? Okay. Get some seats back there. Here comes Monica. There’s a seat over here, Monica.

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Your seat is still here, Monica.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Monica’s seat’s right here.

[audience and panelists chatter]

DB: All right, I think it’s time for us to start. Everyone please take your seats. There you go.

[audience and panelists chatter]

DB: Get your photos. Please have a seat. Please have a seat. Thank you. All right. So I have to introduce today’s debate in the beginning, in both English and Chinese. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Dàjiā hǎo.

[applause]

DB: Is everyone ready?

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Absolutely.

DB: Zhǔnbèi hǎo le ma?

[laughter]

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Zhǔnbèi hǎo le ma?

DB: Zhǔnbèi hǎo le ma? Okay, great. All right, let’s begin. Kāishǐ ba. All right. Okay. All right. All right. I know that there were some who objected to the title of this debate, Is Prediction Killing Astrology? But, quite frankly, we wanted a title that would excite some objections and maybe stimulate debate because that’s what this is about. I wanna welcome our distinguished panel that’s here. And I’m gonna start over here with Sam Reynolds, right here. Christeen Skinner. Steven Forrest. Chris McRae. Rick Levine.

RL: Steven Forrest.

[laughter]

DB: Rick Levine. I’ve got some words for you, Rick. It’s coming up. Don’t worry. And Chris Brennan. All right. Like most of us—in fact, why don’t we give them a big hand?

[applause]

DB: I wanna remind you, who are ISAR members, that you elected this panel. All right.

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: We did?

DB: Yes, you did. You chose them. And so, ISAR likes to reach out and find out what it is that you want. All right. Now like most of us who’ve come to UAC, this panel shares a passion for astrology, which we all have. And like us, they also believe in responsible forecasting. The question sometimes is, what constitutes a responsible forecast? And that’s what is at the heart of this debate. All right. Now we’ve got some rules. And before I go into these rules, I wanna make a special thanks to Chris Brennan who took the initiative to set up a camera and the recording equipment for this debate. Thank you very much, Chris.

CHRIS BRENNAN: Thanks.

[applause]

DB: And one more thing, and this goes to Rick. Back in 2012, at UAC, I quoted Jeff Jawer as saying that, “When it comes to forecasting, I’d rather be meaningful than accurate.” And then, at the end of when I said this, Rick came over to me and he said, “That was me who said that, not Jeff. Jeff stole that from me.”

[laughter]

DB: So I wanted to set the record straight and let you know that was from Rick Levine, okay. So I’m acknowledging you, Rick.

RL: Actually, Jeff and I used to argue about who said what. We would attribute each other, and the other person would go, “No, I got that from you.” We don’t know.

DB: So you would go back and forth on who had the good advice and the bad advice. Okay. All right. All right. The panelists have their rules in front of them and I’m gonna go over those rules. Okay. You ready? First, each of you will be allowed to make an opening statement of between 5 and 10 minutes. And I’ll set my phone here with a little alarm for nine minutes to let you know when you’re almost at your limit. Then when all of you have finished with your opening statements, I’m gonna ask you three questions. Each of you will have two minutes to reply to each question. Then after the third question, you can direct a question to one of your fellow panelists, if you would like. In other words, if you feel compelled to ask a question, or you’re curious about something with each other, you can question each other. Then when that’s done, everyone here gets to ask them questions. You wanna keep your questions as concise as possible. And the answers will be two minutes each. All right. Everybody got the rules memorized? All right. So I’m gonna start from left-to-right, and I’m gonna start with Sam, over here, to make the opening statement. And we’re just gonna move in this direction.

SF: We don’t have a microphone.

DB: What’s that?

SF: No microphone.

DB: Well, we have this, right here.

SF: Oh, yeah.

DB: But that’s all we’ve got.

SF: We’d look silly carrying that.

DB: We would, yes.

[laughter]

DB: Definitely, yes. All right. So I’m gonna start—I’ll start my timer. And here we go.

SAM REYNOLDS: So let’s start with the admission that I don’t think anything can kill astrology. If, in thousands of years, we haven’t killed it, I don’t think we can. But I don’t think prediction is failing astrology, I think astrologers are failing astrology. Many folks who correctly called the 2012 election didn’t do so in 2018, and vice versa. This is common with prediction. We often do not notice the people who did things wrong, once they get something right, and vice versa. Prediction isn’t easy, whether you’re predicting or receiving the prediction. What’s important is figuring out the spirit in which we should give and receive predictions. What’s killing that spirit is the arrogance of the astrologer to think how we see a chart is definitively how the world must appear. We succumb to a certain kind of fundamentalism. As a former fundamentalist Christian preacher—you probably hear it—I know literalism when I see it. And it’s interesting how fundamentalists can have a warped sense of time. We can perceive some of the worst things happening imminently all the time. We might often think that one possibility, out of many, has the highest probability of happening. We’ve come to place a higher premium on the event and our prediction than the experience of the event or the person having the experience. We might miss how folks need more of our love and compassion than our self-congratulation for getting a prediction right. And I can’t help but feel that this fundamentalism always leads to a certain failing. This failing happens in some important ways. So just to give you an overview, it’s a question of technique, misperceiving our biases, not thinking about how things appear in a broader context. So let me briefly review how each of these pathways to how we fail astrology, or how we fail in terms of prediction.

A question of technique. Many astrologers, and probably many in this room, have the belief that we found the perfect technique, right? That thing that will set us off and be able to predict and know for certain. Whether it’s from profections, or whether it’s from looking at some particular solar arcs, however we do it, we can arrive at the perfect prediction consistently. And I think there’s a certain hubris in that. Cuz we love our techniques, but not all techniques, or any one technique that we use can solve all our problems, or even predict consistently and accurately every time. I think the best we can hope for is an internally-consistent method with our particular vision of astrology. So whether you’re Hellenistic, whether you’re Medieval, whether you’re a hybrid, however you come to put it together, as long as you have some measure of internal consistency, in terms of how you conceive of that, I think that’s how we can best go forward in terms of thinking about prediction. We also misperceive our biases. Our political biases can slant how we want something to happen more than how it might actually happen. So I must confess something. I came to astrology as a skeptic. Perhaps many of you have as well. But I’m also a skeptic of mundane astrology. Meaning, you know, mundane astrologers who like to predict. And one of the reasons why I am—especially during election years—is that I often can tell the bias of the astrologer. “No, no, no. Trump is definitely going to win.” Or, “It’s going to be Obama,” as it was in 2012. So we have these political investitures without acknowledging that we have these biases. It’s rare to see an astrologer go against his or her own political biases and not try to change their astrology to fit their political bent. So that is one other issue. We, as astrologers, the natural question would be, well, why don’t we have that same issue—and sometimes we do—with our clients? We have to sharpen our practice of non-attachment. We’re often better able to do this in personal consultations with clients because we might not have as much personally at stake, with how each person lives his or her life. Perhaps we find the myth of free will useful here in that sense. Well, this person has their free will and can go on their own way.

The last point I’d like to address with this is not thinking about how things appear in a broader context. So I am on the ISAR board. I was also part and parcel in helping to develop the prediction panel that we had in 2016—if you were at our conference—that storied panel. And one thing I would like to say about that is that perhaps we might have selected a diverse range of astrologers in orientation and prediction. Because one thing people lose in context, in 2012, we had about five astrologers, including one who’s one the panel, predict accurately that Obama would win. But in 2016, we have some of the same five astrologers who predicted that Hillary would win, and she didn’t. And I think what people loss sight of the fact of, in terms of ISAR itself, was perhaps we could have had a diverse range of people. Because a lot of people took that panel as proof-positive that astrologers can’t predict, where many astrologers did predict that Trump would win, and that’s important to know. So maybe we could have diversified or had someone who represented that point of view. So that’s another thing to consider. We didn’t think about the optics—how these things appear and how that affects astrology. So that’s something we need to think about as we talk about prediction and the public pursuit of prediction. So this is an encouragement towards broadening the voices that we hear in astrology. Because I do know at least two astrologers, again, who predicted in a panel that Trump would win, and those voices were not heard. I believe that the spirit for which we should strive is between entertaining possibility and probability. That means allowing for the possibility that not all of the techniques or freedom in the world releases from the idea that we’re looking at a spectrum of probability. Those are not likely infinite, but they’re not usually as finite as an absolute answer, and we can release ourselves from absolutes. Thank you.

[applause]

DB: Christeen, are you ready?

CHRISTEEN SKINNER: Golly. I’m not ready after that.

[laughter]

CS: I did say before I started, I think all my thoughts are still going around the baggage carousel at O’Hare from last night. I’m on the six-hour timeline. I haven’t, honestly, given this enough thought, but the thought I’ve had is this, first of all, to straight answer the question, is prediction killing astrology, I totally agree with Sam. It wouldn’t matter how bad we were, we’re not gonna kill astrology, right? It hasn’t happened yet. It’s not gonna happen. I don’t like the word ‘killing’, right? Are we pushing it underground? I think sometimes we do that, right, without really realizing that we’re doing it. But I really got into the thing about thinking about prediction, and I want to go back to the morning of the 4th of May.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: We’re having a hard time hearing you in the back.

CB: Oh, I’m so sorry.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: We wanna hear.

SF: Perhaps we should stand at the podium. It’s impossible for people to hear.

DB: Yeah, come on over to the podium here.

CS: Oh, my God. Can I take the time off ?

[laughter]

SF: You could face the wall.

CS: I’ll face the wall just for you.

DB: Just project, you know.

CS: Okay. Is that better?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

CS: I want to go back to the morning of the 4th of May. I had a neighbor who was unwell, and she had been the driver. Her husband didn’t drive. And so, I said that I would take them to the hospital to see a specialist. And to cut a long story short, when she came out, he helped her into the car. He then had to take a wheelchair back, and she turned to me and it was clear that the news was not good. And she said, “He’s predicted I’ve got two months.” Now they hadn’t been in the hospital for more than half-an-hour, so that allowed the time to get from the car and back to it. So in the space of a few minutes, she had been given this huge prediction. But that was the beginning, then, of a fortnight where I have done nothing but meet with people who predict. It’s their job, right? I had occasion to have to speak to my accountant about something, who said, “I predict, Christeen, if you don’t do this, ‘X’ is gonna happen,” right? That’s their job. I also work in the world with musicians who will predict how good a performance is gonna be by a student—cuz we’re just coming up to diploma time—on the grounds of how much rehearsal they’ve had, how much practice, whatever. And it seems to me that there are an awful lot of professions out there who do prediction. That’s their job, right? We do more navel-gazing about predictions than I think anybody else does because I think we are aware of the consequences of getting it wrong, right? Now frankly, I’m not bothered about getting it wrong. I know I’ve got a Sag Moon, and I love it if I do get it right. But actually, sometimes it’s necessary to make the forecast—if I can use that word—and learn that maybe you didn’t quite read it correctly. And frankly, I would love to have been in a room where we did an inquest about how we arrived at the conclusions that we did. Cuz that’s how we learn, right? I actually don’t want the client who doesn’t want to come back. Because I want to have had the experience of chatting with the client, and I want to hear afterwards, you know, how has it worked out. That’s really meaningful.

Now you probably know I work with finance and business, right? So I need to know what the expectation is of the person, but the probability is that they’re there because they’re in a crisis, right? And in a sense, all I am is a master or mistress of time, right? Because I can look—we can all. You look at an ephemeris, you can see when Saturn’s gonna, thank God, move off, right? And you can also see when other energies are gonna come into play. So I think, really, for me, it’s all about—well, first of all, prediction, for me, is an educated assessment, right, which is not the same as guaranteeing that you’re gonna get it right. I think we have a danger of being over-Jupiter, right, because we kind of think we’ve got some special insight, right? And I’ve been guilty of—I’m sure we all have, right, when you’re so crowing, “Oh, I knew that was gonna happen to her.” That’s so wrong, right? And I’m really glad that the cosmos does eventually, you know, throw the custard pie at you, and you’re going, “You really don’t know it all.” I think we need to get out of this habit of needing to be right, and I think we have to learn how to cope with failure. After we had the Brexit vote in London, I called it wrong. I knew it was gonna be a shock result, I called it wrong. I was really, really upset. I went out with a lawyer that I do a lot of work for. I was sure I was gonna be fired. I mean, I would have fired me. There’s no question, I called it wrong. And he looked at me, and he said, “You know, in a court case, somebody always has to lose,” which is true, you know. “Get over it, get up, try again. Work out why did you get it wrong, right. Deal with it.” And I think, really, kind of for me, is prediction killing astrology? No, I don’t think it is. I hope I’m not killing astrology. And I would like to see us, collectively, endlessly, upping our game.

DB: Great.

[applause]

DB: I’m gonna take your chair while you talk.

SF: Yeah, take a load off. Well, hi everybody. Thanks for being here. Well, you know, I agree. Astrology, if we haven’t killed it yet, it’s not going anywhere. So I think we’re safe as far as that goes. But for astrology to have a right to continue existing, I think the bottom line is that we’re helping people and not harming them. That’s a philosophical point, it’s a value, but it feels like solid ground to me. When it comes to philosophies or interpretations of human existence that seem conducive to virtue and well-being, the heart of the matter for me is the idea that we are responsible for our own lives. The choices we make matter, effort matters, self-discipline matters, love matters, kindness matters—and these are things we can choose to employ in life, or we can get up on the wrong side of the bed. And so, I come down very, very strongly on the philosophical side of free will. Fate versus free will is, of course, the underlying paradigm question with prediction. If we can see the future, there is no realm for free will. When I say, “If we can see the future,” I mean rigidly. “You will get divorce in 2019,” you know, for example, that kind of prediction. Issues in your marriage in 2019, that’s a whole different beast, you know, once we’ve defined the nature of the issues. “But you will get a divorce,” that kind of rigidity is absolutely, logically inconsistent with free will. And so, for that philosophical reason, I reject prediction, when we define it in that narrow sense. Now, of course, basing an interpretation upon the universe, upon a philosophical premise, is kind of dangerous. It’s the basis of all sorts of fundamentalism. So I’m guilty of that fundamentalism. I’m a free will fundamentalist. Guilty as charged, if anybody wants to charge me, but I will make an even more fundamentally-logical argument against rigid prediction. Take, for starters, the astrological houses, the 12 houses. We take everything that could possibly exist in the universe, everything that has ever possibly existed, and everything that might possibly exist in the future, the whole enchilada, and we divide it into 12 boxes. Those are the 12 houses. Those are big boxes. Ditto with the planets. Ditto with the signs. I don’t wanna turn this into an astrology lesson. Nobody needs that. But the point is that any possible combination of astrological symbolism represents an almost incomprehensibly-vast range of things that might happen. There is no way in a given lifetime, given four-score-and-ten-years in the world that any one person could possibly manifest all of those possibilities that are inherent in the birth chart. Immediately, as we think about this, the whole idea of prediction begins to rest on very shaky ground. How could I possibly take any configuration—a transit, a progression, a natal structure? ‘Infinite’ is a dangerous word. From a very large spectrum of possibilities, how could I conceivably guess which one was gonna be right. There are just not enough words in the astrological vocabulary to completely narrowly define all of the possibilities in the universe. Now that’s a logical argument against rigid prediction.

I feel like what we can predict accurately is questions. It is your fate. That’s not my favorite word, but I use it sometimes, you know. It is your fate to interact with certain highly-definable archetypal fields, certain fields of probability and possibility. You give me a chart of a baby, you know, one-week-old, and 75 years in the future, I can say what archetypal fields or possibility that kid’s gonna be wrestling with. I can predict that, you know, based on transits, progressions, solar arcs, and so on. And all of that is gonna boil down to a set of questions. So that kid is gonna face these questions, you know, in that moment of time. Answers—I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s in the realm of free will. So fate versus free will—I like to put them both in the blender and mix them up and call it astrology. It is your fate to face these questions. I can predict them. And then within the realm of my wisdom or the limits of my wisdom, I can possibly suggest that certain answers to these questions are gonna be smarter than other answers, and are gonna serve you better in the long-run. I can warn you about dumb answers. I can warn you about the slippery slope of self-serving answers that hurt you in the long-run. That’s human wisdom, without which astrology is pretty much worthless, you know, for starters. So I can use the symbols to understand the questions, and then I can counsel within that context. But predictions, here’s what’s gonna happen, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s reliable at all. And the more consciously a person is engaged with his or her life, the more true what I’m saying becomes. The lazier a person is, the safer prediction is. A Leo eating potato chips and drinking beer in front of the television bears a distinct resemblance to a Cancer eating potato chips and drinking beer in front of the television. You know, if we’re lazy and inert, then our life’s prediction becomes a simpler task.

Now we’re left with one angle of attack, I think, at what I’m saying. It’s the long history of successful predictions in astrology. You know, rigid, accurate predictions have been made. Stupid, wrong predictions have been made and people don’t like to talk about those so much, but accurate predictions are made. You know, I’m thinking we can make sense of that. With astrology and some degree of reason and common sense, we can guess about probabilities. Like if we know, for example, that here are two people who married before their 20th birthdays had a baby right away, and Uranus is heading for the Venus of one of them, there’s gonna be, you know, some issues in the relationship in that time. And for us to speculate that this might mean the end of this relationship, that was on a shaky basis, is not unreasonable when it comes to guessing what will happen. I think we’re probably gonna be right with that prediction. The question I would leave us with, though, is are we being helpful with that prediction, you know? “Your marriage is doomed. Hey, I was right.”

[laughter]

SF: It’s an educated guess, and it’s not unreasonable. In this situation, though, I would much rather discuss the ways that this relationship could maybe mature and evolve and survive. In the back of my head, I’m guessing it probably won’t happen. I have no business saying that. I have no business making that prediction. Now I do personal astrology. Personal growth, individual client work. You know, that’s my orientation. When it comes to predicting what the economy will do, it’s educated guesses interacting with astrology. We are able to speculate probabilistically, and we’ll be right perhaps more often than we’re wrong. But the bottom line, I think we really have to defend the moral and philosophical bases of our craft, and in doing that, we really need to turn our back on the whole idea that we can see the future. It’s false advertising. We’re wrong so often. Whenever we’re wrong—as in, you know, the last presidential election, where the dominant predictions, you know, were for Hillary among astrologers—we forgive all that. But it didn’t do us any good from a public relations angle. You know, whenever an astrologer makes a loud prediction that turns out wrong, it gets in the newspapers, you know. And we’re not gonna kill the field, but we’re not gonna help it with those kinds of errors. So let’s advertise what we really can do and do well. Predicting the questions and leaving the answers up to the individual.

[applause]

DB: Chris McRae. Cancel this. Okay, great.

CHRIS MCRAE: Thank you very much. All right, can you hear me?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

CM: You know, I would like to look at this from three different perspectives. Number one, I do a lot of mundane, not-predictions, but assessing global hot spots. How will I know if an earthquake is gonna happen there? But I can suggest that there is an energy force that is strong enough—that if the energy is ready to give, it will give—but it needs a certain amount of influence in order to be able to do so. So I’d like to talk a bit more about mundane astrology in predictions and whether or not that’s killing astrology. I would like to also take it from a personal point of view, the work we do with clients in our consulting room. And I think there’s been a vast change going on in that area, and I would like to address that a little bit as I proceed along my merry little path. And then there is the situation of trying to predict who is going to win an election. You have a 50/50 chance of being right and a 50/50 chance of wrong. I think it is a great exercise for astrology to do that for astrologers, but to do it in a public situation. Or a situation where we invite the press to come in and watch the process and we get half of the people wrong and half of the people right. How many of these people are going to say, “Astrology doesn’t know what it’s doing because half of them say one thing, and the other half say the other?” So I think that that is kind of a folly kind of a position to be in. So I would like to go back to at least a couple of those issues, and hopefully, the gong won’t be given to me.

[laughter]

DB: You’re doing fine. You’ve got seven more minutes.

CM: I have seven more minutes.

[laughter]

CM: I need 15. I need 25. We could all talk about these things for many more minutes. Anyway, down to business. In my astrology work, I’d like to trace the process that I kind of went through. Some of you know that I’ve been doing this for many, many, many, many years. You know, I’m getting a little gray on the edges. And having been doing it for so long, I have seen a change in astrology. When I first got into astrology, the books that I was reading leaned one more towards predictive work with a client—this is going to happen, that’s going to happen—or answering questions that a client would come in. Those were the kinds of literature or books or learning that we were doing back then. But as we have been bugging along our perspective, we have discovered something. And particularly, in ISAR, we have discovered that there is a way to approach a chart without being specifically explicit to a client that, “This is what’s gonna happen, and next week you’re gonna have your appendix operation,” and all of these kinds of things. But what kind of service can we provide to a client—rather than trying to say what is going to happen to them next week, next month, or next year, instead of what is going to happen to them? In ISAR, we have a program of consulting skills that has helped us to work with a client, with the issues of a client and what a client is going through at any particular time, and to help the astrologer and the client to meet together at one specific moment in time, so that the astrologer understands the issue of the client and the client knows that the astrologer is in tune with them. And in that kind of a situation, we could help the client come to the realization of many of the issues that are coming forward in their life. So I have been changing my astrology appropriately, as I have seen astrology changing, and as I have seen the expectations of our clients changing. And part of that is due to the approach that we make in the work that we are doing.

All right, that was one area that I wanted to talk about. The other one has to do with mundane astrology. I enjoy immensely looking at what’s going on around the world. But rather than—as I said at the very beginning of my talk—trying to predict that a particular event was gonna happen at a particular time, I like to look at what’s going on across the world. I like to look at what’s going on above me and bring that down onto planet Earth, and then I would like to say that there are certain global hot spots. What is a global hot spot? If I saw a particular energy coming into a particular zone on planet Earth, and it was in the middle of Saskatchewan—I’m a Canadian. The middle of Saskatchewan, where there isn’t a mountain, I wouldn’t predict a volcanic eruption. There’s no tectonic plate there, and I would not predict an earthquake, or I would not even call that a hot spot from that perspective. So if we are going to try to assess what is happening in a particular area, we look at the amount of influences coming down and what area of the globe it is gonna happen at, and then we say, what is the likely possibility of a particular kind of event, in a particular area? If it’s on a tectonic plate line, there could be an earthquake. Volcanic eruption—well, of course, that’s obvious, too, isn’t it? But it might be a political development that might be ready to erupt. We look at what the range of possibility is in a certain area and then we can make a forecast. I have developed a complete aversion to that word ‘prediction’. For anybody that believes in that today, I’m sorry, I apologize. But it bothers me. It bothers me tremendously because I don’t like to be wrong.

[laughter]

CM: I do know that occasionally I am, but I would much prefer to be correct. Okay, so I’ve addressed the point about the ‘global hot spot’ idea, and that’s an area that I enjoy very much working with. Now the other idea—I perhaps have covered it, but I want to zero in on it a little bit more—and this when we make these political predictions. And as I said earlier, a 50/50 chance of being right, a 50/50 chance of being wrong. And also, why don’t we do this as exercises for ourselves? It’s a wonderful exercise trying to figure out who is going to win an election. What is the best method? What’s an approach? What works and what doesn’t work? We could do this in the confines of our own discipline, but we don’t have to invite the press to come in. We don’t have to invite other people to come in and observe until we get it right. Until we learn how to do it more appropriately. So anyway, those are the things that I wanted to say. I like the idea that astrology can enormously benefit so many different areas of our lives and our being and our functioning, as long as we do it with some degree of caution and care and discretion. So them are my words.

[applause]

DB: All right, Rick.

RL: All right, Steven Forrest.

[laughter]

SF: I loved The Inner Sky.

[laughter]

RL: Just as a matter of interest—and Steven will attest to this, cuz I’ve begun sending him copies—my attorney will be speaking to you or yours, and I’ve already contacted Facebook about it. But every time I post a picture—this is true. Every time I post a picture of me, and I put it on Facebook, it comes up, “Would you like to tag Steven Forrest?”

[laughter]

SF: I’m so much taller and better-looking.

[laughter]

RL: But not smarter.

[laughter]

RL: How’s the air up there, or lack of oxygen? Okay, getting serious here for a minute. I was thinking about the panel earlier and thinking where people might fall on it. And I had myself actually—I wanted to say left-of-center, but it’s not political right/left, with Steven maybe being more extreme. But after hearing him, I think I’m the more extreme, and I would agree with what Chris said to some extent. And it’s not that I take offense. It’s not that I don’t like the word ‘prediction’, it’s that I think it has more to do with questions and answers. And here’s the short version of it, and I think it comes back to the question of, why the hell do we do this? Why do we do astrology? I think if you got into the Wayback Machine and asked a group of astrologers why they did astrology, they would say they did it to predict the future. I do not do astrology to predict the future. This is me, personally. I remember reading that Bucky Fuller, for 50 years of his life, would reconsider every day his version of the Lord’s Prayer, and he rewrote it constantly. And I constantly think about why do I see clients. And in my top 10 reasons of why I see clients, predicting their future is not one of them. So what is it that I do? There’s a wonderful quote. It’s a very short poem that I think I can get to here, if my iPad is gonna be happy with me. Sometimes it is and sometimes I get messed up. But it’s a short poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and it goes like this. And I have this over my desk, so it’s amazing I can never remember it quite. But it’s over my desk, and the poem goes like this: “What if you slept? And what if in your sleep you dreamed? And what if in your dream you went to heaven, and there, plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if when you awoke, you held that flower in your hand? What then?” Every client I see, my goal is singular. It’s to send them out of my office, or off the phone, or off Skype, with a flower that’s impossible, because it’s their working and interaction with that flower after they leave my presence. I’m not a counseling psychologist. I don’t wanna sit with you through all your crap. You’ve got a counselor to do that. It’s not that I don’t have a good ear if I need it, you know, but my job is catalytic. At least that’s how I see my work.

Now let’s see if I can find my notes again somewhere here. There we go, or not. Okay, I’m using up my valuable time.

SF: Ours, too.

[laughter]

RL: So when I see someone and they go, “Oh, you’re an astrologer, you can’t really see the future, can you?” my answer is very simple. “Do you use a calendar?”

[laughter]

RL: Period. If you use a calendar, you’re predicting the future, you know. I mean, it’s a prediction to say that Christmas will occur on the 25th of December. No, I’m being very—this is important stuff to consider because we use language and then we forget it. Predict simply means ‘to say before’. And quite frankly, I think prediction in astrology is important, but it’s what we say, and I think several people hit it on the nail. If I predict that you’re gonna have a flat tire on your front-left tire in three weeks, who the fuck cares. What good does it do? You go out and buy new tires, you’re gonna still get the flat tire, you know. My goal is working with a client so they can impact their own future. And so, here we’ve come to a couple of very important things. First of all, I think in astrology, as important as prediction is—and I have a Cancer Moon—I think post-diction is just as important. Because when I’m working with a new client, I will probably spend half the session. I’m not someone who—you can’t pay me money to look at your chart for one year ahead. I think that’s a bunch of crap. I think it’s largely useless. It adds no value. Because a year ahead is not separate from the year behind and the year behind that and the year behind, and the decade behind that, and the lifetime behind that. We live in a continuum. So as an astrologer, my job is not to just predict the future. It’s to position the client in the world, in that magical garden where they can have a flower that they take out. Okay.

So prediction. I like the word ‘expectation’—someone used that—because largely the number one downfall of any relationship is incorrect expectations, which really means that one or the other person predicted the future wrong, based upon their assumptions of what someone else was or was not going to do. I look at astrology not as a system of prediction but as a mapping system. Just like you would use your GPS to drive from here to Phoenix, Arizona, you would use a TPS, a temporal positioning system, in order not to figure out where you’re going, but to figure out when you’re going. See, I don’t know what’s gonna happen to you when Saturn conjuncts your Moon, but I know when Saturn is gonna conjunct your Moon by transit. And as your astrologer, my job is to help you understand, by post-diction, what that cycle of Saturn and the Moon is in your chart, so that you can work toward making something happen. Here is what happens—so here’s a part of the problem. And it’s this illusion that we come from, that we live in an objective world, and that a client who comes to see you is unchanged. When a client comes to see an astrologer, you have altered their trajectory. You’re making a prediction about their future, you’re actually imposing your crap onto them. And this can be very empowering, but not if you’re coming from a place of fear. We don’t need that. You know, this whole idea of coming from fear rather than from love, that’s a whole other topic here, right? I wanna stay on track, cuz I got a few other points that I need to make in the next three minutes.

I would have said I would rather be meaningful than right. What I actually said many times is I would rather be useful than right, and maybe meaningful is part of that. I think that astrology shares something very basic with classical physics, modern, Western medicine, and fundamental religions, and what we share with them is we think we know more than we do. This is heresy for an astrologer to say. I would have no problem with predictions if we were always right, but we’re not, and then we do more damage than we do good. All right. So in a quantum universe, there is no such thing as a separate observer. If you go to see the Delphic Oracle, your life has changed. When someone makes a prediction, an astrologer, they are delivering a very, very, very high potency—can you turn that off? I have 45 seconds.

[laughter]

RL: They are delivering a very high potency, homeopathic remedy. And the remedy is this, if I say something that is symbolically-correct, “You have Saturn coming to conjunct your Moon, you’re gonna get divorced,” it doesn’t matter what you say or think consciously, the image goes into the subconscious and starts doing its work. And then for the next year or two or three, the events that happen get framed in a certain context that then manifests as my prediction, “I was right. No, I wasn’t right. I actually co-created the event.” A good astrologer will not predict a divorce. A good astrologer will help a client create meaning in their relationship and then get to choose whether divorce may or may not be a valuable outcome. I have much more to say, but I’m done.

[applause]

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Are you guys calibrated?

DB: Yeah, we’re synchronized. Chris and I are synchronized. Thank you, Rick.

CHRIS BRENNAN: So nine minutes?

DB: I’ll restart it at nine. Sorry. There we go.

CB: All right. All right, so I wanted to start by saying something that’s half-controversial and half-not, which is that the title of this panel, I think, is stupid.

RL: Yeah, we all agree.

CB: I think most astrologers that I’ve mentioned the title of this panel to have said, “Why is the title bad?” or “What’s with the inflammatory title?” And part of the reason that astrologers had that immediate, gut-level reaction, I think, personally, is because one of the fundamental problems is that astrology is inherently predictive. So that’s true whether you’re a predictive astrologer, or a psychological astrologer, or a horary astrologer. Whatever type of astrology you’re doing, the astrology is fundamentally predictive. And part of the reason for that is even if you’re just doing natal astrology, or you’re just doing psychological astrology, the fundamental premise of what you’re doing is that the alignment of the planets at the moment that a person was born has something to say about their future. Whether it’s their psychological characteristics, their appearance, their relationships, or what have you, you’re making the assumption that the alignment of the planets at the moment a person was born will have something to say about 5 or 10 or 20 or 30 years in their future, or however long. That means astrology is inherently predictive. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that the title of this panel is stupid because you can rephrase it and say, is astrology killing astrology? And it becomes a sort of pointless question. So the question then is if astrology’s inherently predictive, then the other question that has been raised is, is astrology morally or philosophically wrong?

So some astrologers—I mean, one of the points I feel like you were going towards, Steven, was that there’s something wrong about prediction or wrong about the concept of fate in and of itself, and that free will is always positive and fate is always bad, and it’s always set up as this dichotomy between the two. But I don’t necessarily agree with that dichotomy that prediction is bad and fate is always bad and to attempt to do that is somehow morally wrong. I think there’s actually something valuable and noble about the process of making the attempt. Even if you fail, sometimes spectacularly—like I did and the other panelists did in 2016—that was a humbling experience for me, and one that I didn’t necessarily appreciate at the time, but on some level, you know, I needed to have and the community needed to have. One of the reasons we needed to have it is because the point of that panel was not astrological research. Even though the title of ISAR is the International Society for Astrological Research, there was little-to-nothing to do with research on that panel. It was almost entirely about creating a spectacle and courting the media. And the media were invited in order to witness this panel and witness the predictive power of the astrologers, rather than come and look at the astrologers and their many different takes. Cuz there were astrologers of all different backgrounds on those panels who were using different techniques and different approaches in order to attempt to infer what the outcome of the election would be, but the panel was actually so poorly organized that we got very little time to actually talk about any of that. In the two weeks, in the run up to the panel, ISAR announced to us that they found the birth time for Hillary Clinton, but they weren’t gonna release it to the public or to the panel until the day of the panel, which left all of us panelists, initially, kind of screwed. Because ISAR was telling us they had the birth time, but they weren’t gonna give it to us until it was too late to figure out what to do with it. Eventually, we sort of protested, and there was gonna be a walkout of the panelists, and eventually, they relented and gave us the birth time. And after a two-week ordeal, it turned out that the birth time was fake.

[laughter]

CB: So the biggest publicity, actually, that the ISAR panel got was not that all of the astrologers were wrong, it was a Washington Post article that said there was an ISAR panelist who came up with the birth time for Hillary Clinton, or claimed to, and then it turned out that he lied, and he retracted the birth time. That was the most publicity that the ISAR panel got. So one of the reasons I’m bringing this up is because I’m almost kind of offended that we’re talking about—that we’re doing another spectacle. So we’re using another inflammatory title to say, is prediction killing astrology, that’s being hosted by ISAR, when ISAR was the one that originally hosted the panel to do these types of predictions, and I kind of suspect will do so again in 2020. So one of the questions—if we all agree that maybe we should analyze the approaches and the different traditions that are being used more—rather than focus on the spectacle, according to the media, maybe we need to change the way that we do astrology publicly. I think that’s one of the things that people have come back to a few times here, which is, what is the purpose of doing that? Are we doing that in order to compare different approaches to astrology, and in order to demonstrate different techniques that show probabilistic outcomes? Or are we just trying to impress the public, to convince them of some sort of astrological powers that we have?

So most astrologers know that astrology is probabilistic or that you infer outcomes based on your techniques, but the public may not know that. And that’s one of the things, I think, that you were saying Steven that harmful, or that you feel is harmful when people make those predictions. So it’s true that astrology is archetypally predictive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should only make non-falsifiable statements. So that’s one of the points that I would like to make. It’s true that, you know, there’s a specific placement in the birth chart, there’s many different possible outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t attempt to make any statement about that placement. And to the extent that you make any statement—even an archetypal one—that’s still a type of prediction based on the person’s birth chart or based on those placements. You’re still involving predictions, you’re just doing qualified predictions. And that brings me to one of my final points, which is the idea of forecasting. A forecast is just a qualified prediction. It’s a prediction where you qualify it by saying based on this data, such-and-such seems the most likely outcome. So even using forecasts is a sort of euphemism. And that was actually the title of the ISAR conference, something like The Power of Forecasting, I believe, right? So one of the things I think we need to do as a community is be more honest. Stop using euphemisms. Or if you’re gonna use a euphemism like ‘forecasting’ and try to set that up as being somehow the opposite of prediction, be honest that you’re still actually basically engaging in prediction. You’re just doing it in a more careful and realistic and honest way by saying that you don’t have a crystal ball that shows you exactly what’s gonna happen in the future. You have a set of data that you’re trying to infer information from, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And if you do that, then there’s something valuable about prediction.

So let’s see. The last point that I wanted to make is just that aside from not focusing as much on—yeah, I don’t think it’s morally or philosophically wrong. One of the things I wanted to say is, Rick, you mentioned ‘the flower that’s impossible’, and that’s the thing that you wanna pull out of a consultation for many people. But for most astrologers, and I believe for most clients, the flower that is impossible, that, as you said, you pick in the dream, and then you wake up and it’s still there, that is prediction. I mean, the thing that is impressive to most clients—and that is moving and compelling about astrology—is that it could have any predictive power at all, because it shouldn’t. Astrology shouldn’t work. And I think if we stay in this community long enough, we forget that. But if you step outside the community for just five minutes, you remember that astrology is an incredibly weird, incredibly strange thing that shouldn’t work, but for some reason it does. And one of the only reasons that we know that it does is because it has that predictive capability, where a chart cast for me, 33 years ago in my life, could tell me something about what’s happening today. That means astrology has predictive power and there’s something incredibly valuable and powerful about that. Instead of rejecting that I think we need to embrace it. We should do so carefully and honestly, and we should merge it with the modern counseling insights and other things like that, but we should make like client considerations about how consultations should take place and let the overrule the actual philosophical concerns and the underlying truth that astrology’s inherently predictive. That’s it.

[applause]

DB: Before we get to the three questions, I’m gonna say that even a topic with a dumb name can still get very inspirational and intelligent commentary from astrologers. So let’s give them a hand.

[applause]

DB: And I wanna say one more thing, and this is just my quick little input on this. I agree with Chris that it would be wonderful to see, when we do these prediction panels, to see a more intelligent discussion about the situation. In other words, to analyze the potential behavior of this candidate or this candidate—what that might mean, for example—so we’re actually revealing the intelligence of astrology in that sense, and to be able to show, as Chris was talking about, the different techniques and how they’ve arrived at these techniques as well. I think for us, as astrologers, that’s interesting. And for the media, it shows the media something different than just win/lose-win/lose. It gets the media involved in an intelligent discussion, and they can say, “Look, these astrologers are making points there that are just as good, if not better, than all these political pundits who are out here chatting, chatting, chatting.” So, to me, you know, that becomes a very interesting thing for us to consider. So I just wanted to throw that in as well, all right? Thank you. All right, now we have three questions for the panelists. I’m gonna start over here.

SR: How about that end?

DB: You wanna go with this end?

SR: Yeah.

DB: All right.

[laughter]

DB: All right, here we go.

RL: He actually predicted earlier that the second round would start at this end.

[laughter]

DB: All right, so here’s question number one. And you’ll each have two minutes to respond to this question. Here we go. When discussing trends with your client, do you seek input from your client regarding their own plans, goals, and intentions regarding the future? Or do you believe that the forecast you offer is irrespective of a client’s plans, goals, and intentions? Question one.

CB: Are we sitting down, or are we standing up for this?

DB: You could stand, if you like.

CB: I don’t care.

DB: Okay. Stand up so they can hear you.

CB: Okay. Yeah, so, I mean, I don’t wanna be harsh, but again, I think that’s a dumb question because I don’t know any astrologers who would answer that in the negative. Are there any astrologers that wouldn’t take their client’s background or context or life into account?

RL: Yes. There are several, many. And I would always say this out loud because I’ve heard this person say this in front of a room this large. Alphee Lavoie. But he’s an astrologer. And his point is that, “I don’t wanna be distracted by their input. I have a chart, and I’m reading it.” Now I’m not taking that point.

CB: Alphee would, though, stand out as being extraordinarily unique in that regard.

RL: He would.

CB: I think most consulting astrologers do take the background of their client and the context of their life because each astrologer knows that the chart cast for one person could be a chart cast for like a dog who was born at the same moment. And the context of that dog’s life and its chart, spectacular as it may be, is gonna be different, and it’s gonna be limited in much different ways than the chart for a human, or the chart for your client. So you’ve always gotta look at the context with the chart and understand it. Does that answer the question?

DB: I think that’s a great answer.

CB: Okay.

DB: All right.

RL: Same question, yes?

DB: Yes.

RL: Yes and yes. No. I don’t know.

[laughter]

RL: When I’m sitting with a client, what I do say is something like this, “We only have an hour together, you and I. There are many things that I will say that could inspire you to talk for hours. That’s what your psychologist or your therapist is for. I wanna know. But you need to know that for me to do my job, I want that feedback from you. But at some point in time, I’m gonna say, ‘I got it. Let’s go on.’” I’m an Aries. I can do shit like that.

[laughter]

RL: It doesn’t mean that I’m not interested. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care. It also doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly valuable. It’s just there’s a trade-off here because there are therapeutic relationships that a client would have, where they spend an hour a week for years talking about their stuff. That’s not my job. And so, as much as I do want that feedback, I also want the control in the session to limit it so that I can also share what it is that they’re expecting me to share.

DB: All right. Is that your final answer?

[laughter]

CM: Hmm.

DB: Is that your final answer?

[laughter]

CM: Yes, that’s it. I’m a one-word woman. Not really.

[laughter]

CM: We have two approaches. We can sit there and be an information-orientated astrologer who sits there and looks at the chart and think that we know everything that the client is going to want or is, and we don’t. We are looking at a piece of paper, and the person in front of us is a real live person. So I think that it’s important to understand and to be on the same—I mentioned this before. ISAR has a consulting skills program that allows us to integrate with the client, so we’re both at the same place, at the same instance, in the same situation. So I think that it’s enormously important to be there with the client and not sit there with a piece of paper and spiel off a whole bunch of information. Thank you.

DB: Thank you. All right. Steven?

SF: The first part of the question, you know, pretty obvious. I do invite input from my clients, obviously. A single mother working as a waitress, with four children, is gonna face a different opportunity space than, you know, somebody single and born wealthy and all of this. So that kind of input really helps me ground my predictions of questions in concrete terms and I think it’s more helpful for the client. To me, that seems fairly self-evident and obvious. Here’s where I’ll throw a little bit more complication into it. I do not presume that my client should trust me. That is up to the client. And so, if a client wants to come in and sit with me, and go like this, “Tell me what you’ve got,” that’s not my happiest situation, but I honor their right to not trust me. And then I will say, “I will speak to you purely from the symbols. It will be more abstract. Of course, it’ll be more developmental. But I honor the fact that in this intimate counseling situation, it is my task to win your trust rather than to presumptuously assume that, of course, you’re gonna tell me all your secrets before I start.” So that’s the one little wildcard I would throw into the mix. Thank you.

CB: How do you win their trust, Steven?

SF: I’m sorry?

CB: How do you win their trust? Or what is it in that process that eventually causes them to open up?

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: What’s the question?

DB: Can you hold that question? You’ll have a chance. Write it down, cuz you’ll have a chance to ask that.

SF: Oh, I’ll remember it.

DB: You’ll get a chance to answer it. That’s a good question.

SF: Really good question.

CS: Okay?

DB: Okay. Please, Christeen.

CS: Absolutely. I mean, can I just agree completely with Rick. We’re gonna have a very short time with the client. Most of the time there’s an exchange of money involved in this as well. So they’re investing time and money. They want to hear what I’ve got to say, but I can’t say anything intelligent if we don’t achieve an agenda beforehand of what can reasonably be covered in an hour or 90 minutes. Frankly, I prefer to have quite a bit of discussion before they’re even there, so that we know exactly what we’re gonna achieve in that time. I also know—perhaps this is me—I tend to go to sleep afterwards and then think of something I wish I’d said. Equally, I now say that to them, “I know this is gonna happen. Equally, I know that you’re gonna go tonight and think, “I wished I’d ask her about ‘X’.” So can we agree that this is gonna be followed up within seven days, so that we both clear this up, so that both of us are content with what we’ve done?” But absolutely, I’m listening to where they’re coming from. I need to know, particularly, in the kind of work that I do. I need to know where they’re actually at. And I also need to explore. This is kind of a shade of your ‘flower’ thing, is sharing their vision with them, because I love the idea that people leave feeling better than when they came in. You know, again, that’s an expression of my chart as well. But I think even if somebody’s in the middle of some horrible turmoil, we are the masters and mistresses of time. We know when this stuff is gonna ‘move on and take its shit somewhere else.’ Can I borrow that line?

RL: Sure.

SR: I guess this might get to those in the back. Now you can see me.

[laughter]

SR: You just heard me before. You know, I’m the other kind of Scorpio, on the other end with the black jacket. I’ll just say this, I actually disagree with Chris. I don’t think this is a dumb question because I think it reflects a change in how astrology has developed. Because when I first got into astrology, when you got a reading, someone might send you a recording. So you just gotta, you know, send in your information and you just got a recording. Now we don’t do that as much anymore, but that’s some way in which some people actually do readings or consultations. So I think the key question is, are we co-facilitating a process with our clients? And I think, like you said, Steven, it depends on your client and how open they are, and I think that’s something to take into consideration. I always go in with the aspiration that we’re gonna have a conversation. That’s part of the consultation. But sometimes you might have a client who comes in who wants to talk about your dog. I just got a puppy, right? They got a puppy and they have a Moon-Pluto transit right now. So it’s like do you really wanna spend the money and the time to talk to me about your puppy? And the conversation really isn’t about the puppy, so that’s something to consider. Or, yeah, maybe it’s a pit bull.

[laughter]

SR: So, I mean, that’s kind of the conversation we can have, how it goes into a deeper moment. But I think sometimes you may have to go in knowing that the client may not know what he or she wants, and we have to kind of guide some aspect of the conversation until we get to a proper place.

DB: All right. Thank you. All right. Now we’re gonna go to question two. And maybe we’ll go from this side.

SR: Okay.

DB: Okay? Question two: Mundane astrology is concerned with forecasting about events in the world. Are you comfortable in making public predictions? If so, why? If not, why?

SR: So I am most skeptical about mundane astrology. And so, I’m gonna go into some of my gripes about why. I mentioned earlier sometimes it’s the biases of the astrologer blown into public release. And other times I find that mundane astrologers often talk about things that if you didn’t really sit down, or if you did sit down and think about it, you could come up on your own. Like, “Yeah, well, you know, for instance, you know, Trump is gonna make gaffe next week.”

[laughter]

SR: Oh, okay.

[laughter]

SR: “He’s gonna have some problems in his administration.” Okay. Problems in his administration, I get that. I understand. So I actually would love to see mundane astrologers held to a higher standard. Do better. Do more. Take more risks, if you’re gonna take the risks. But stop being mealy-mouthed about talking about things as if you’re fastening something that’s deep and profound, that couldn’t be reasoned by sense or probability or logic. And I’m saying that as a skeptic, someone who knows astrology because I often will see astrologers do that. And often, another thing that astrologers will do is not take responsibility when they’re wrong. You know, there’s an astrologer who’s been predicting an economic downturn for 10 years. And those who know me on Facebook, you see me engage this particular person. But I don’t think we do that enough, hold each other responsible. Like you’re saying such-and-such. Well, is that true? So I think in terms of whether I do mundane or public predictions, I will do it if, for instance, there’s something I think we can glean from astrology that’s unusual or insightful. But otherwise, I question the purpose.

DB: Christeen?

CS: Oh, dear. I think I’m gonna sit over there.

[laughter]

CS: Okay. Am I comfortable doing it? No, I’m not. But am I gonna continue it? Yes. It’s the nature. I work with a lot of business people. They trade across the world. They want my opinion on where I think particular countries are headed and whether or not it’s a good idea trading in certain ways. Yes, I’ve got a reasonable record. They wouldn’t come back. I mean, that’s the fact. They wouldn’t come back if what I was saying wasn’t helpful to them and that’s the bottom line. But am I comfortable doing it? No, I’m not. And part of that is that, you know, really, we should worship the ground that Nick Campion walks on, you know, because he is, you know, a wonderful data collector. But we all have to do that more and we should be sharing more data, because a number of times my problem is I haven’t got the up-to-date thing. I want to know who said what, when, right? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but, you know, from the moment that I came in today, and as I’ve been greeting people, I’ve actually been taking the time that I met them, cuz I want to hear the meaning of it. But we need to do better, you know. Sorry, I’m preaching—I know this—to the converted. But actually, data collection is not good enough. And I would be more comfortable in my job if I had better access to that material.

DB: Thank you.

SF: Mundane astrologer isn’t my main area. But like most of us, I’m pulled into it quite a lot and not comfortable making public predictions in a rigid sense. I’m fine predicting questions. Once, in 1975 or so, in the pages of a magazine called The Sun, I predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union, and everybody said, “Oh, that’s not gonna happen,” you know. I wish I weren’t so proud of that.

[laughter]

SF: Cuz in a way I think I got lucky and demonstrated bad astrology by assuming that there was a future out there that already existed, and I had the crystal ball and I could foresee it. I’ve got two minutes and that’s a big lecture here. America’s midheaven progressed into Gemini right around Inauguration Day. America faced a question. Okay, so we elected—you know, or something like that—Trump with his Geminian qualities. The question, as I would put it, America’s dharma on the planet, our mission on the planet, if we get it right, we become a beacon of openmindedness, of education, of tolerance, of research, of curiosity—all the high Geminian things. But if you get Gemini wrong, we’re flaky. We’re distracted. We’re running around in 17 directions at once, and nobody on the planet knows what the heck we’re doing. Okay, we know what happened. But my role as an astrologer, I think, is to cast a light on what should’ve happened and what can still happen. That’s the spirit I like to bring to this work.

DB: Thank you. Chris.

CM: Well, as I’ve already said, you know that I do do mundane astrology. In the early days that I was talking about before, the kind of astrology that we were learning had more to do with predicting. I would go on television every New Year’s because I was in the broadcast industry, and all my friends in the broadcast industry knew that I was studying astrology. So they would phone me up and say, “Can we do a New Year’s presentation on what’s gonna happen in the upcoming year?” and so on, and political predictions in my own area and so on, and it was kind of good fun. But that was in those days. And you know that I’ve changed my attitude, and I’ve changed my way of doing this. And right now what I would prefer to do—some of you may know—I work with a geodetic world map, and I look at global hot spots, as I’ve said earlier. But what I would rather do is look at these events, study these events, write articles, write the book on how to look at the world from a mundane point of view, and discuss it among astrologers, among ourselves, to see if we can find better ways and more predictable, perhaps, methods of determining where things are going. So I like it as an academic study, but I prefer now not to go on television anymore to make wild predictions. And so, I don’t do that anymore, but I do enjoy it as an academic study and a discussion among ourselves or a lecture I might give on what I’ve been learning and working with.

DB: Thank you. Rick.

RL: I think mundane astrology is incredibly important, but I also don’t necessarily believe it’s important in a specifically predictive manner. I believe it’s important in a multivalent, archetypal manner. Now many of you may know that for about eight years Jeff Jawer and I co-authored a book for Barnes & Noble called Your Astrology Guide, and in every one of those, we had a section. I mean, it was a Sun sign-oriented book, but there was a fairly substantial section on what’s happening, you know, next year. And some of our predictions were very right on and others were very stupidly not-right-on. That’s not for me, though, the highest use of mundane astrology. One of my lectures here at UAC is on what I call Waltz Time for Civilization: Three Times a Century. One-two-three, Saturn and Pluto align. And by looking, again, not just prediction, I just wanna touch back on something Chris said—cuz I agreed with him—but he only said half the equation, and that is how important prediction is. Although, I talk a hard act against it, I totally agree. It’s an odd thing. But I don’t think that prediction is any more important than post-diction when working with time. Now I’ll just make these points real quickly. So for years, I’ve been talking to my clients, to my audience, to my readers, to anyone who’ll listen that come 2010-2020, we’re gonna see a replay and a twist of what happened in the ‘60s. Duh. Why? This is mundane astrology. Because Uranus and Pluto aligned in the ‘60s, then Uranus and Pluto are squaring now. We look at the cycles of these planets. This is different than Nick Campion’s awesome work in doing actual predictions, you know, based upon the birth time of a city or a nation. I think this is important stuff. I think it’s more complicated than being reduced often to a single chart. But I think that it’s important that we do mundane astrology. But what about ‘Tues-dane’ and ‘Wednes-dane’ and ‘Thurs-dane’?

[laughter]

RL: Oh, one other thing, very quickly. Seriously. One of the most important books that I read, as I was studying psychology and learning astrology was a book by Norman O’Brown called Love’s Body, which was a look at historical development in respect to Freudian psychoanalysis. And that, in a way, was mundane astrology for us. That was taking the individual to humanity. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The history of the individual recapitulates the species. The history of the culture is also tied into that. It’s part of the holographic thing. Sorry for going over.

DB: Thanks, Rick.

CB: So the question is mundane astrology is concerned with forecasting about events in the world, are you comfortable making public predictions? So part of my answer is vague. I’m not a mundane astrologer. And I think only half of the panelists here do mundane astrology. I think me and Steven and Sam are primarily natal astrologers, so that’s our primary specialty. And in fact, most astrologers around the world are primarily natal astrologers. So there’s a bit of a contradiction. It asks, are you comfortable making public predictions? You don’t have to be a mundane astrologer to make public predictions or to make any predictions because there’s different branches of astrology. There’s at least four major branches and all of them do predictions from different standpoints. So you have natal astrology making predictions based on birth charts, you have electional astrology making predictions based on inception charts, and you have horary astrology making predictions based on the charts of questions. So even though I’m not a mundane astrologer, I am comfortable making public predictions, but I only do so very carefully and with great trepidation. And I think most people should approach it with that in mind because of the issue that Steven raised, which is the potential harm that can come when you make an incorrect prediction. So one of the things that is a legitimate community issue is that astrologers too often fall into the trap of almost being too comfortable issuing public statements and making public predictions, without having sufficient data—as in the case of the last election, where a lot of us were using different birth times for Hillary Clinton—or sometimes without actually researching the subject too extensively. You know, with the advent of blogs and websites, everybody can issue a prediction and every other astrologer is writing articles and statements, you know, every other day at this point. So maybe to take this back to the actual point of this panel, maybe there is a community issue in terms of how relaxed astrologers are, in some instances, about making public predictions, and perhaps we should only make them with greater trepidation or be more careful in the process. And that’s one of the things I think I learned from that panel, what, one or two years ago. But I don’t think that we should not make predictions, if that’s part of the implied question. Because there may still be something there of value in terms of the almost scientific process of trial and error and refining our craft by continually putting ourselves out there. And if you never put yourself out there to make the prediction, then it doesn’t quite matter as much if you just whisper to yourself, “Yeah, I got it right.”

[laughter]

DB: Great. Thank you very much. I think the question was also about the comfort zone that you have about making public predictions, and that was a good response to that. All right, we have question three. I’ll read the question, and we’ll start with Sam. All right? Okay. Some astrologers define astrology as primarily divination. Some even go so far as to say they are reading the mind of God, or reading the cosmic mind. What is your opinion about astrology as divination? And do you use astrology in this way, such as, with horary charts, for example?

SR: I gave up trying to speak for God when I left the ministry.

[laughter]

SR: I don’t have that aspiration. But I definitely can relate to the question because in one of my debates with a mundane astrologer via my blog, he actually wrote on my blog. He said, “Well, you know, maybe you just don’t know how to do mundane astrology. Because when you do it, you do it right, you can read the mind of God.” And that stuck with me, you know, both as a sense of like, “Oh, this man is crazy,” but on another level it made me think, “I wonder if there are other astrologers who believe this?” And I think there are. You know, Chris used the word ‘trepidation’. That gives me immense trepidation. Not because of my former occupation, but more so because of the idea—we just talked about this—of how we have this lack of clarity about probability and possibility, fate versus free will. So how dare we? How can we know that for certain? But I do think what we can do is step into the mystery, acknowledge it as mystery, and come out with some signs and some sense of what it might mean, whether that’s by probability or by some means of feeling along a certain spectrum. But no, I don’t believe that we can. I mean, the roots of astrology is definitely divination, but I don’t think we can know the divine mind.

DB: All right. Thank you very much. Christeen.

CS: I almost want to say that the question’s too hard, I can’t answer it. I think it’s really difficult, this. I’m trying to work out what happens when I actually look at a chart. I come from a musical background, and I’ve always felt that I hear the chart before anything else. There’s a certain rhythm to it and sound to it. And usually, within the first couple of minutes, you can tell. Let me give you an example. This gentleman came for a reading, and he happened to be very tall. And when he sat down in the chair, he was a bit like this. And he came from that Uranus-Pluto mob, you know, the middle-‘60s. And I started to talk about how rare this group was and how that particular alignment, you know, you’d have to go back several thousand years to find an exact one or whatever, and I started to talk about them as though they were like gods from another time or whatever. And as I was speaking, the guy—his back went straight. It was the most amazing moment, and I felt at that moment that something really special was happening. Now I don’t think it was anything to do with me whatsoever. I think it was the magic in the moment, which I think both Rick and Steve, you both—I think something does happen, and it happens through us, but it isn’t actually us. And I think, really, the two things that are key—I want to pick up on a word you used earlier—is that we have to be kind first and the other thing is that there’s a consequence for everything that we say, right? And I don’t know about you, but I’m acutely aware of that. And it started to become more acute at the point where we started to record the consultations because you realize somebody might be listening to this in 5 or 10 years’ time, you know. So there’s more pressure now. I’m not actually going off-topic here. I just think something magical happens. I don’t know if it’s divine. I don’t know what it is. But something special does happen within this.

DB: Christeen, thank you very much. Steven.

SF: I wanna thank the brilliant author of these questions, but I’m changing my business card, “I Can Read God’s Mind.”

[laughter]

SF: Somehow I think this would be a bad idea, right? The language is so pretentious. Obviously, if we claim to know God’s mind, we’re arrogant, you know, to the nth degree. But I think that’s what we’re trying to do. I think that’s, bottom line, the essence of astrology, and it’s guiding us. This is the will of God for us. It reveals dharma. It reveals the unfolding of your spiritual journey or psychological journey. The chart in astrology does reveal God’s will or the divine will for each one of us. Language will vary, but, you know, this transcendent idea. I bow to that. And it’s our task to try to do this impossible thing and to do it as well as we can. Do I have 40 seconds?

DB: Yeah, you’ve got one-minute-and-four-seconds.

SF: All right. Horary—I do a little bit of horary. Mostly, I’m too busy with my clients and booked too far ahead to do horary questions. But one time, my cat, who used to go outside, lost its collar, and I was like, “Where’s the collar?” cuz we kept having to replace this thing. So I set up a horary chart of it. “Oh, it’s in the west. It’s outside the house. It’s down low, and it’s wet.” It’s like, oh, we have a drainage ditch that runs, you know, north-south, that side of the property. I walk out there confidently, you know, reached out, it’s not there.

[laughter]

SF: I was totally wrong. But then a few days later I found it, west side of the house, on the deck. The cat had tried to drink out of a glass and somehow got the head stuck. And the collar was sitting in a glass on the western side of the house, down in some water, it was wet. The horary was right, but I was wrong. Welcome to the world of being human.

[laughter]

DB: Thank you.

CM: I’m looking at this word ‘divination’, and I’m wondering, divination, does that mean it’s divine? Is astrology divine? Is it divinely-inspired? Or when we are working with a client, are we getting some kind of special inspiration in knowing the right thing to say from this piece of paper that we’re looking at, and this client that we’re dealing with? It makes me wonder, or it made me wonder as I read this. And I think that there is something to that in a way that I don’t think that I am just looking at a chart and deciphering symbols on the chart, as much as I think over time, I develop some kind of a perception on what is an appropriate thing to say at the right time. So would that be a divine perception? Would that be a form of divination? It’s a question that I put to myself as I read this. Now the other part of the question is I do horary astrology, and I do electional astrology. And I’ve often said that horary astrology is the divination form of astrology. Because there is something rather special about horary, isn’t there? How on earth does it work? A client gives you a question, you look at a chart, and you can see so much in there pertinent to that particular moment and that question, and that seems really quite mysterious to me. But this other part, reading the mind of God, I have enough trouble reading my own mind.

[applause]

DB: Rick.

RL: All right. So I absolutely believe that we can use astrology to read the mind of God, except it’s in Klingon.

[laughter]

RL: Albert Einstein said, “I wanna know the mind of God. The rest are details.” Up until the time of Johannes Kepler, the divine proportion was everything above the Earth. The heavens were considered to be the divine proportion. Kepler’s great heresy was that he was able to formulate using human intellect that which was in the divine, and this was an astounding development in human consciousness. Astrology is about reading the divine proportion. It’s about reading the mind of God. It doesn’t mean that God has an answer. God may be just as confused as we are. He doesn’t know. He/she/it/they don’t know whether Schrodinger’s cat is dead or alive.

[laughter]

RL: No, this is important stuff. So yes, we can read the mind of God. And what Christeen said, I mean, to me, astrology is music of the spheres. The Pythagorean and Keplerian concept of the music of the spheres was not an extrapolation. It’s not a metaphor. I think of this wonderful book, I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like, but that’s something else.

[laughter]

RL: By Mardy Grothe. It’s a great book. But the planets are ultra, ultra, low-frequency harmonies. Instead of beating at 440 cycles a second, A below middle C, instead of that, planets are beating at 3 cycles a century, Saturn, 4 cycles a millennium, Pluto, 13 cycles a year. This is music. We just can’t hear it. We dance to it, we live it, we breathe it, but it doesn’t come through the ears. And so, I absolutely agree with you. When I look at a chart, it’s a hum. I’m less interested in looking at all of the points. How much time do I have?

DB: 15 seconds.

RL: I won’t go over. Fate and free will are like particle and wave. Quantum physics says that the universe is both particle and wave, that light travels as a wave. We measure it, it’s a particle. There is fate, and fate is the particularization of the wave form of the quantum indeterminacy. When we pop the quantum wave function, boom, that is fate. I’ve never said there isn’t fate. Fate and free will are like particle and wave. They are like any pair of opposites.

DB: Thank you.

[applause]

DB: Chris.

CB: So first, I need to ask, which of you two wrote the questions?

[laughter]

DB: This was really a collaborative effort.

CB: I just wanted to understand. Cuz you’re asking how we define astrology, if we define it as divination, or if we use horary, and I just wanted to understand what the underlying emphasis was. Cuz I’m not sure if it was quite clear what you’re getting at in terms of how it relates to prediction killing astrology.

DB: Well, we were looking at the different kinds of prediction that there are, you know, and different beliefs or concepts or philosophies behind that.

CB: Okay.

DB: So that’s where this came from.

CB: Okay. Then, if that’s the case, then part of the contrast then, I think, is I would fall more on the side, compared to Rick. We’ve had conversations about this before where he views astrology more causally, as the planets causing things to happen. And one of the ways you conceptualized that is through those low-frequency waves, right?

RL: That’s a tricky question. I’ll say yes, but there needs to be other explanations. But yes, I would agree with that.

CB: So part of the reason that the idea of astrology as divination has become popular in the past two decades—especially through the work of Geoffrey Cornelius, and secondarily, through the work of people like Carl Jung—is astrologers have been reviving a conceptualization of astrology where the planets are seen as giving signs or indications of events in the future rather than causing them to happen, and I guess that’s the way that this question is relevant. Because I don’t necessarily personally believe that the planets are causing things to happen here on Earth, but instead, they’re merely reflecting or indicating things that are happening. The common analogy is that like a clock on the wall indicates that it’s nine o’clock in the morning, without being the cause or the reason that it’s nine in the morning, that’s, in some way, what the planets are doing, and I think that was the dominant conceptualization of astrology at that point in time. So to the extent that that’s the case, I think that we can make predictions, if prediction is relevant and can be made, because the planets are reflecting what’s happening here on Earth. And if that’s the case, then it’s not necessarily wrong to do so because we’re just describing what is, or what will be, in a way that’s, you know, the same as describing a calendar or a clock on the wall.

DB: Thank you, Chris. All right. Now you have an opportunity to ask each other questions. And I know you had a question you wanted to ask Steven.

CB: Sure. So what was the context? Do you remember it, Steven?

SF: It was winning the trust of the client. And you were asking how I knew when that had happened.

CB: Oh, right, okay. So one of my questions was you were recalling an incident or a common theme that astrologers experience, where you have like a closed-lip client, who is like crossing their arms and they just want you to tell them about their life, or to kind of impress them. And that’s not your preferred approach, you prefer a dialogue. All astrologers do. And usually, astrology is more effective that way. But you then have to just do the reading and you then read their chart. And presumably, one of the things you try to do is break through that or pierce through that sort of wall that they have.

SF: Yes.

CB: And usually, you feel like you’re successful in doing that, right?

SF: Generally.

CB: But how? How are you successful? Or what are the implications, if you are successful in doing that? Like how did you become successful in doing that?

SF: It’s a delicate area, the idea that most astrologers are more comfortable with a dialogue. My work with clients actually tends towards presentation. Like half the work I do is actually recorded and sent to people. I always invite information, I take it in. But in the context of my work, I’m probably talking 90% of the time. I realize that’s a bit of an outlier. I’m comfortable with it. I’m most comfortable if I do have some information. But if I don’t, again, the idea that I don’t feel that I can presume that the client should trust me, but I should win that trust. And when we’re sitting together, much of it just comes through a human way. You know, their eyes get wide, they’re nodding their head, they’re expressing gratitude. The person that had been like this, you know, relaxes, opens up. It’s just human information, when you’re feeling trust and rapport. When I’m teaching astrology with my students, I emphasize a more technical insight. It’s a rather simple one, when the client reveals the Moon. You know, the Moon is that most vulnerable part of what we are. When you’re loose with somebody, your Moon will tend to show more. So if I’m sitting with a client with an Aries Moon, who’s like this, when they start arguing with me, I know they trust me.

[laughter]

SF: The person with a Cancer Moon, you know, when they ask me if I’m tired or if I need a glass of water. I mean, I’m cartooning this a bit. I can say it in more sophisticated ways. But humanly, the astrological analysis of the presentation of trust is the revelation of the Moon. When I see that, then typically a dialogue arises spontaneously. I don’t have to ask for it. It arises. One of the—

[laughter]

SF: Nothing else to say.

DB: All right. Do any of you have questions for any of the panelists?

CS: Can I respond to that one as well?

DB: Yes, absolutely.

CS: Somebody asked me to do a reading for a friend of theirs, and I said, “No, I can’t do that. They have to ask for it themselves. But, you know, how you organize the payment between you, that’s fine. But I need to know that this person really wants it.” So this young man arrived. It’s early November, and it happened to be a very cold November, but he arrived. Do you remember the Sandeman Port? Did you have that here? Yeah? And the guy is dressed up? They used to do a bottle where the guy was wearing a black, sort of sombrero hat, and he’s got a black cape around him. So he arrived at the door wearing shady glasses and covered in black—and he had a stellium in Scorpio, which included the Moon—and he came in. And I had a list. I always have a list of things that I want to talk about, and I usually say, “Look, I’ve got a list, I probably won’t get through it,” but sometimes I’ll say how many items are on the list. And I was about halfway through this thing, and he said, “Could we talk about secrets?” And just at that moment, you know, I knew that actually I was okay, it was going to be fine. But I was very, very nervous about it. So yes, you’re absolutely right. It’s the Moon involvement.

[applause]

SR: I’d like to first appreciate something that Chris McRae said, which is even though it was my organization that sponsored the prediction panel, or sponsored the 2016 presidential prediction panel, whether we should do it again. So I have a question for Chris Brennan and Christeen Skinner, who were on it. Would you do it again? And if so, what would that panel look like? How would it be different?

CB: I guess I can stand up. I mean, you know, I don’t wanna be highly critical of ISAR because ISAR does so many great things. But I think the way that that panel was organized was so slapdash, it had such broad community implications. And that was one of Steven Forrest’s arguments in his followup article—which I actually agreed with—which is if this is gonna be the thing that gets out and represents the entirety of the community of astrologers, if it’s gonna happen at all, it should be done very well and very deliberately and very carefully. And I didn’t feel like the panel was done very well or carefully, and it was more focused on sensationalism. And so, I don’t think I would participate again because I suspect—even to the extent that this is still somewhat sensationalistic with the ‘is prediction killing astrology’—that that will probably be a continuing theme if it was done again in 2020.

SR: Got it. Thank you.

CS: Exactly for the reasons you said, I wouldn’t do it again because I found it a very unpleasant experience. It was unpleasant in the fact that the row beforehand about the time of birth. You know, that was really appalling. You know, we really shot ourselves in the foot with that. And certainly, I don’t wanna do anything ever again where the whole premise is about the media, right? I’m very happy to take part in it so that we all forecast, all of us, you know, and then let’s all of us, you know, share ideas. And it doesn’t matter if 50% get it right and 50% get it wrong, but actually we’ve shared the thing. Absolutely, no. Not in front of the media like that. And that was absolutely shameful, really. We don’t need to shoot ourselves. At the time, it was shocking.

SR: Thank you.

DB: All right.

RL: Just a very short story. A number of years ago, I was invited to be on a radio show with James Kelleher who’s an amazingly excellent Vedic astrologer. I think he lives in San Francisco these days. He’d been on this show often before. We arrived just a few minutes before the show. It was a live AM. radio show, drive-time, in Seattle, in the studio. The person whose show it was came out, said, “Hey, James, blah, blah, blah,” introduced himself to me and said, “Okay, so here’s what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna start off, we’re gonna introduce.” It was a presidential election year. He said, “I’m gonna just talk about the election coming up, then I’m gonna have each of you write your prediction for who’s gonna win the election and put it in a sealed envelope. Then we’re gonna have a talk, we’ll go to a commercial, we’ll come back, and we’ll open up the envelopes and kind of make a big deal out of it.” And I said, “I don’t think so.” And he said, “Well, what do you mean?” And I said, “Well, to me, astrology is not a game show. I’d be happy to talk about the candidates, and I’d be happy to discuss the issues that are at play in the universe right now. But if you want me to do that, I won’t be on the show. It’s just not what I do.” And the guy was furious. And he said to James, “Well, what about you?” And he goes, “I’m kind of with Rick.”

[laughter]

RL: And he said, “Well, we go on in a minute. Okay.” He was pissed. We sat down, and he introduced us. He pulls a sheet of paper out of his desk, and he goes, “Live with us, great astrologer blah, blah, blah. And I have a sheet of paper in front of me that says on October 23, the world will end. What does astrology say about that, Rick Levine, great astrologer?” And I said to him, “As your temporarily court-appointed astrologer, I’d like to give you the following advice. Don’t cancel appointments for November.”

[laughter]

RL: And at that moment, it was that trust thing, and I won him over. We had a great conversation. But I was at the event. I was at those events as an audience member, and it was horrific.

CS: Yeah, it was appalling.

RL: Yeah. Some good astrology, but it was horrific.

DB: Okay. Let’s get a response.

CB: I have a 15-second followup statement. So one of the things I should mention, that’s actually relevant from a technical and philosophical standpoint, is just one of the issues with the panel for me, and one of the things that I learned was the primary technique that I was using—the very simplistic interpretation was indicating that Hillary was hitting the highest point in her career, and Donald Trump would have a career transition that would start about a year after the election. And I didn’t understand why Trump would have a major career transition that would last for two years, starting a year after the election. And I assumed that meant that he would lose the election and then go on to do something else. And now, here we are a year later, and there’s all of these indictments coming out, and his future and career is looking a little bit more uncertain in terms of having the White House. And it turned out in retrospect that Hillary did, indeed, probably hit the highest point of her career at that time, but that didn’t mean that she would win. So there was something very important there that I had to learn. Even though you can sometimes see things with astrology, you may not interpret it correctly. There may be other variables or other data that you can’t take into account, or you may simply miscall what you’re looking at based on whatever, your biases, your background, and whatever else. And there’s always gonna be that invariability in any prediction. And so, actually, to answer your question, Sam, that’s one of the things that I learned—that would give me pause about doing another panel—is the sort of hubris involved in thinking that you can always know and get it down that much. And maybe there is something to, you know, being more humble about it as a result of that.

SR: Thank you.

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Don’t forget she did win the popular vote.

SR: Can I say something about that?

DB: Chris got her hand up.

SR: Oh, I’m sorry.

DB: And so, Chris, go ahead.

CM: That is exactly why I say that I think that it makes—thank you, Chris. Because that’s exactly why I say that it makes a very good exercise for astrologers to astrologers, or at an astrology convention as a lecture or a learning process, but not to expose ourselves, excuse the way I put that, to the public.

DB: Great.

CB: Let’s have a conversation about that. I mean, because that’s the question. Should things like this be restricted to classes and analyses of techniques? Or should we ever put ourselves out like that in order to check ourselves and test ourselves? I mean, as a community, we really need to make a decision about that, instead of just having it done in more of a slapdash manner. But perhaps the community should be involved in deciding whether events like that should happen or whether they should be done more as classes.

DB: In fact, I just wanna throw something in. I was gonna ask Chris and Christeen if they would consider participating in a future panel if they were involved in the design and process of how that panel was going to occur.

CB: I don’t know. Because one of the things that was funny about that panel is I actually decided I was getting out of political astrology after the 2012 election, because I realized that politics was getting so nasty that I thought that astrologers could become targets if they made the wrong prediction. Or not the wrong prediction. If they made a prediction that a certain political party didn’t like, that they could be on the receiving end of harassment. And I thought that ultimately, if you go back historically, astrologers do tend to get in trouble when they get on the wrong side of the government and people in power. So me being on that panel, the only reason I ended up doing it—and I was gonna drop out at the last minute—was just because I just felt like I wanted to be there to make sure it was done well, even though that was gonna be my last time doing it. And then, hilariously, of course, I got it wrong. But I would be involved in helping you guys. If you’re gonna do it, then I’d at least be involved in helping you to plan it and do it well, even if I didn’t participate myself.

DB: Terrific. All right. Great. Christeen.

CS: Yeah, I think I would like to do it again with you, Chris. I enjoyed being part of—I enjoyed the people, right? I enjoyed listening to how everybody had come up with their ideas. I was really sorry that the audience didn’t have the same—there wasn’t the interaction, and I think that would have been really good. There needed to be almost like a much bigger panel, right? And certainly, I would want absolute reassurance that this was a stunt show, right? We don’t need the press there for that.

DB: All right. And Sam.

SR: No, I was just gonna say, I mean, I heard what you said, Alan, which is that, you know, she won the popular vote. And, you know, I know that there was a statement issued that said that she won the popular vote. And I disagree with that in the sense that, you know, if you’re gonna call something, just stand by it. Have the, you know, testicular or ovarian fortitude and just stick by it. You know, like she lost, the end.

RL: That mind of God is tricky.

[laughter]

DB: All right. Steven.

SF: Okay. After that disaster, I wrote a piece for my newsletter, and the essence of it was pretty simple. What if instead of who’s gonna win the election, the panel had been, ‘The US Election’, and here’s the US chart and what is the dharma of our country? Now what’s going on with our country? Look at the individual clients. How well do they align with the larger evolutionary context of our country? How does their journey and the archetypes behind them resonate with all of this? And what synchronistic stuff is likely to happen? You know, predicting events and developments in the world or in their lives because astrology is so tuned into synchronicity. Like what can astrology say about all this? And then finally, oh, by the way, who do you guess might win, you know? Making that the least important part of the presentation, who do you guess might win, given all of these things? So it’s astrology putting its best foot forward and its best face forward. Juicy, quotable quotes would have come out of that. We could have gotten healthy press out of that. Instead, we made asses out of ourselves.

CB: Well, what, though, is different about that? Because we kind of did that on the panel. Were you at the panel?

SF: No. No, I was in China.

CB: Okay. I mean, cuz I read that in your article. Cuz you were really the main critic of the panel after the fact, and so, your article was very important. What do you see is different in your model versus what you think happened at the panel that took place, that would be better or an improvement? Or how could it specifically be improved?

SF: It’s quite possible I’m coming out of ignorance here. That’s a pretty good rule of thumb in general of course. But the reason I say it is that my assumption about what happened on the panel was based on what I heard on Facebook on what the media did around the panel, ‘astrologers get it wrong again’. So I wasn’t there, and the impression I got—which probably reflects the impression that the larger world got of the thing—was astrologers set out to predict who would win the election and they got it wrong. Perhaps something entirely different than that happened. So I was not a witness of it.

CB: I mean, the problem is just that even if we did your model, ultimately, that’s still gonna be the main thing the press reports. Even if it’s a footnote at the end of it, it’s still gonna be ‘astrologers predict’—

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: You’re talking about the framing of it. And you’ve got a point. The press will grab something else.

SR: Yeah, I tend to side with Chris McRae. I don’t think we need to make it public.

DB: Okay. We’re reached a point where I wanna ask the audience a question. Because the next part of this presentation is you having a chance to ask the panelists questions. But how many of you would like a three-minute break before we go on? I see hands. All right. Let’s take a three-or-four minute break and then come back.

SF: You’re gonna continue with questions for each of us?

DB: What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna allow—now the audience gets a chance to ask their questions of the panelists, and the panelists must respond in two minutes or less.

RL: And is there a part where the panelist gets to ask questions of the audience?

[laughter]

DB: Maybe your answer could be a question. All right. So raise your hand if you have a question. Yes, please. Stand. Woman, right there. Right there. You had your hand up first.

RL: And could you say your name and where you’re from, where you’ve arrived from?

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, Mary Ellen from Connecticut, from the East Coast. So leaving aside all of these tricky issues and questions around prediction, I’ve just been curious what each of you think. What is the most valuable kind of prediction to make? Because for some things, for example, predicting the outcome of a horse race, you could win money. Like if everybody knows that this is the one horse that’s so great, then the odds are bad, so you’re not gonna make much money. So, you know, sometimes you could be right, and it doesn’t really matter because you’re not gonna make any money off the bet. Now that’s one example. So being right, in other words, it doesn’t always matter. So in what areas do you think prediction is valuable, for whatever reason? Not monetary or otherwise. Like, for example, one that comes to mind, that I think would be a really valuable form of prediction is being able to predict, say, you know, natural disasters, like a tornado or something like that. We just had a couple of tornadoes in Connecticut that were pretty scary last week.

DB: Okay.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I’m just curious what your thoughts are on, not from a monetary standpoint, but from a standpoint of actual value, when is prediction important?

DB: Okay, great.

CB: I have an answer.

RL: I do, too.

DB: Go ahead.

CB: I think the most valuable prediction is any prediction that can make an individual feel that there’s an underlying sense of meaning and purpose in their life, and there’s many different ways that you can do that. I think the most common or the easiest way to do that is through natal astrology. But I’ve seen that happen with horary astrologers or electional astrologers or relationship analysis astrologers, you know, whatever technique you’re using, whether it’s like a Saturn cycle, and being able to show how the transits of Saturn have mapped out important turning points in a person’s life, and being able to predict where another important turning point is coming up in the future. However archetypal or general that is, the extent that you end up making an accurate prediction, I think, one of the real tangible pieces of value to that is it actually gives people a sense that there’s an order to the cosmos and that there’s something purposeful and meaningful about it and to their life, rather than it just being this random, chaotic, purposeless, meaningless sort of thing. That’s one of the greatest values of astrology, and prediction is an access point or a gateway to that, however you do it.

RL: If I had four minutes to talk, instead of two, that would have been my first few minutes—

[laughter]

RL: —what Chris said. However, I would take it another step further, as he might in two more minutes, too. But I think that the most important prediction that I can make as an astrologer is not astrological. If I tell a client that the last five times in your life, Saturn squaring or conjuncting or opposing your Sun or your Moon had some sort of, you know, bad-something attached to it, the most important prediction I could tell a client is if you don’t do something about your life today, it ain’t gonna get any better. It’s a non-astrological prediction. The prediction is if you want something to happen in your life, and you don’t start it today, what’s the Chinese proverb? The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. And if you didn’t, the second-best time is now. That is the prediction. It’s not astrological, but it’s useful. It’s not useful to just put some date out in the future, without having something wrapped around it, that becomes a yoga or a practice or a way in which a client can harness the energy. I mean, it’s exactly what Chris said. The only useful prediction is one that allows a client to make his or her life better. And often, that is a feeling of, “Oh, my God, I am part of the cosmos. I am not separate from it. I have found my place in the cosmos because the cosmos is in me.” That is profound. So I agree.

DB: Thank you, Rick.

SR: And what I would say, going on what these two have said, I think it depends on the intimacy—intimacy related to how we create the circle of influence between the astrologer and another person. And the more you broaden that circle of influence, the weaker astrology gets. Because once you go towards the point of like there’s a tornado coming, and this is where astrologers go towards delusion, no one’s gonna listen to the astrologer. They don’t even listen to the weather person, right? So I think the key thing is realizing that you have the most impact in terms of a certain circle of influence.

DB: Chris.

CM: Thank you. Is interesting you should ask that question because I’m going to be doing a talk at this conference about utilizing a geodetic concept that allows us to look at what’s going on on planet Earth, in terms of cataclysmic events/action, weather patterns, and as I spoke earlier about global hot spots. So it is a framework that can be used in order to look at the prognosis of what could be happening or is a strong possibility of something that could be happening on this planet physically or geophysically, even politically. So at any rate, you know, it’s an idea to have a process that we could attempt to determine those events across this planet, isn’t it? Okay, thank you.

DB: Thank you, Chris. All right, next question. Oh, you’ve got a response?

SF: She asked everybody.

DB: Okay. The point is she did ask everybody, but not everybody has to respond.

SF: You don’t have to respond.

CS: Okay.

[laughter]

SF: I can’t speak for Christeen.

DB: So don’t.

SF: I won’t, thank you. So very simply, all prediction. If we’re predicting questions and wisely suggesting right answers, all prediction is practical and useful. There’s no prediction that wouldn’t be in the framework in which I make predictions, which is really not prediction at all. But instead, questions in archetypal fields. But the tone of your question is very practical, which horse is gonna win the race, you know, stuff like that. And astrology can address questions like that. It’s not the flower of our craft, but we can do it. I had a funny experience like this. I used to have a pretty big association with the music business in America when there was a music business, you know, the big record companies and so on. And a guy, one of the suits, you know, he’s got two artists, and he’s gotta figure out which one he’s gonna back. And his career is kind of resting on getting it right, and so, he asked me. He had their birth information. And I still have very mixed feelings about this. The artist I liked better—his transits and progressions for the next year or so didn’t look too good. The other guy, who I didn’t like so much, but he’s all ‘Jupiter city’ coming up. So, you know, I loved the suit, he was my pal, so I said, “You know, back the second guy,” and he got country music artist of the year the next year. It was a very practical thing about which horse to back, you know, which company looks like it’s gonna make money this year. Astrology, you know, can definitely do that. It’s just it’s not the kind I’m most interested in. It’s not the highest expression of the craft. But it sure works.

DB: Thank you.

CS: I’ll only make the comment that because I work with business and finance, yes, I do do the prediction. I’m saying, “Yes, you know, this company looks better than that one, or for this particular period,” and then I would do that. And that, I think, is a practical use of it. And it’s usually because the person in front of me is saying, “Look, I’ve got 20 choices here, just help me out,” right? So it’s narrowing it down.

DB: All right. Next question. Right here.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my name’s Emily, fledgling astrologer. So I’m still getting my astrology confidence. What do you say to people—and maybe this is something from your past, cuz you maybe not experience this anymore—that come to you with this idea, “Can you predict this?” Like what is your answer? Oh, my God. How do you deal with people who think astrology’s—? Like the people that Rick Levine was dealing with, how do you deal with those people in a personal—?

RL: Very short answer. I’ve been using this answer for years. You call me up on the phone with that kind of question, I go, “I think you’ve misdialed. I think you’re looking for the ‘answer’ astrologer and you’ve accidentally reached the ‘question’ astrologer.”

[laughter]

RL: “I’m happy to listen to your issue, to look at the astrology, to talk about what might be going on, and to help you develop better questions, but I’ll tell you something as a potential client. I would never answer a question for you because I wouldn’t even do that for someone I love. I’m good at giving answers, but you’re gonna get my answer, not your answer. My job is to help you get your answer. Because if you get a good answer from me, it’s gonna stop your process, and I ain’t gonna do that.” That’s my standard answer.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: That’s kind of what I do, too. I just say, like, “I don’t do that type of astrology. This is what I do.”

RL: And tell people there are plenty of people who do, and I’m happy to give you their phone numbers. I know really good astrologers who will answer questions like the many-headed Hydra. As fast as you ask them, they will answer them, and that’s okay. That’s not my astrology, that’s all.

DB: Great.

SR: Oh, I was gonna say, I mean, my job is not to unveil you as if I’m an artist and you are unfinished. I say fate has two arms, one of them is your own.

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well said.

SR: Astrology is learning to work that other arm.

DB: Okay. Chris.

CB: I mean, part of the answer to the question is just there’s different astrologers that specialize in different things. And when a client contacts you, you should quickly ascertain if they have the type of questions that you feel comfortable answering. They may, based on your specialty and whatever you specialize in, or they may not, in which case you refer it to another astrologer. But different astrologers—obviously, just by the responses here—have different levels of comfort in terms of the types of questions they’re willing to answer, whether they answer them at all.

DB: The answer that we give, when that question is asked from students in China—because it’s a common question everywhere—it’s about managing the expectations of your client. And you help to manage the expectations of your client by the information you’ve provided about yourself and your work, so that the client knows initially, you know, from your platform, this is the kind of work I do, this is what you can expect from me. So that starts the process of managing the expectations of your client. So that’s another answer to that. All right, next question. All right, go.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m Makayla from Phoenix. I’m wondering what you all think is the role of prediction in synastry for relationships?

DB: Synastry?

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. Synastry and those types of charts.

DB: All right. Who would like to take that question?

CM: Would you like to repeat that?

DB: The question is, what do you think about synastry and relationship charts.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, just their role in prediction.

DB: Oh, the role of prediction in synastry and relationship charts.

CM: Okay.

DB: Okay? All right, Steven, go first.

SF: I love doing that.

[laughter]

SF: I think relationships are good for people. I think we grow faster and evolve faster if we’re loving somebody. There’s lot of ways to love people. Friendships are good for us. But synastry is mostly about couples. So, you know, if I’m working with a couple, and they love each other, they’re stable, they’ve been together a while, and one of them is going through, let’s say, a big Uranian time, and they’re gonna need a little more freedom—I love to sit with them and, you know, explain that to both of them. You know, don’t overreact to your partner’s need to spread his or her wings a little bit. You know, if you love this person, set them free, so to speak. And don’t be afraid of this. And you who are going through the Uranian event, you know, be mindful that the blockages to your freedom are mostly in your own head, and you’re right for getting past them. Don’t blame your partner. Be careful of projecting your issues onto your partner. Obviously, it’s a big subject. That’s the spirit of it, briefly. So I feel like I’m using astrology to support love in a time that misunderstandings could arise and unnecessary and inappropriate separation or endings could arise. So in support of love, you know, we can apply these predictions and questions to synastry. Thank you.

DB: Other panelists with a response to that?

CB: I mean, part of it is just that one of the tricky things—one of the things I meant to mention in my opening is that it’s only in the past few decades that more predictive-oriented forms of astrology have arisen in the astrological community. The movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s was away from predictive astrology and towards psychological astrology for most of the past century. And it’s only in the past couple of decades that suddenly you have these older forms of astrology coming back, that can make more precise predictions. And astrologers are actually still struggling to determine the scope of that and what’s appropriate in modern times. When is it appropriate to make a prediction about a relationship or a marriage, or if a person will be married, or how many marriages a person will have, or what have you? There’s a lot of very good questions surrounding that that astrologers each find their own answers to. But one of the things that I think some of the traditional astrologers are realizing is not everything needs to be predicted. Or just because you can make a prediction, or you feel pretty strongly about something in a person’s chart, doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. So this is where some of the modern sensibilities from people’s work—like Steven’s work and other psychological or psycho-spiritual astrologers—are bringing modern counseling dynamics and sensibilities into astrology. That’s very useful and valid, still, in a traditional context. And that’s something, I think, a lot of traditional predictive astrologers are still wrestling with because the lines aren’t always clear about what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate. But do no harm, I think, is the thing that everyone agrees on. Keep your client’s best interests in mind. But even then, there’s still sometimes a question about what is the client’s best interests because each case may differ when it comes to relationships, let’s say.

RL: The very short answer here—or adding to the discussion—is that we, as astrologers, need to be painfully, obsessively aware of our own biases, individually, culturally, racially, genderly, etc., etc. etc. Because we can—not we can. We do, what’s the word, confer them onto our clients without even knowing it, even if we’re conscious. And so, we look at a synastry chart, and we immediately, you know, take our stuff and put it on it. You know, I had three bad marriages and each of my former wives had the Moon in Capricorn. This is not me.

[laughter]

RL: Therefore, a client comes in, and her husband has the Moon in Capricorn, it’s like, “Oh, he’s an asshole,” you know. I mean, we do this without even thinking about it. We bring our issues about all kinds of issues, whether they’re gender issues, you know, even, you know, the whole issue of trans/binary sexuality, etc., monogamy. I mean, it’s wide. And so, we have to be careful about how we infringe our judgments, that are not astrological, using the astrological metaphor and making it sound like we’re doing astrology.

DB: All right. Okay, let’s get a question from this man right here.

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, my name is Spencer, and I’m from Michigan. I just wanted to piggyback to what you were saying here. How do we, as astrologers, become clear channels for giving the predictions and the feedback to the clients that we’re working with? What are some of the techniques that all of you have used as a personal purification, so that you’re becoming and bringing more objectivity to your work?

SF: Good question.

DB: Who would like to take that question first?

RL: Steven would.

[laughter]

SF: Yeah.

RL: I predict.

SF: He’s so psychic, he’s scary. Well, you know, it’d be easy to sound preachy here, but the wisdom of the astrologer is the most important feature in the whole system. So there are fine, fine, wise astrologers in the Hellenistic tradition, Jyotish tradition, evolutionary, psychological. So how do we cultivate that wisdom? And that seems inseparable from having some kind of spiritual life. You know, I’d be the last one to pass out Hare Krishna literature at this point, you know. Everybody has their own way. That silence. That surrendering to the divine, as a regular, daily practice, is fundamental to keeping us clear. Follow your own path. But that’s the essence of it. And then one more layer. The practice of astrology itself is very helpful in addressing this exact question because if you do not tolerate diversity, you have no business being an astrologer, because astrology is nothing but the celebration, an exploration of human diversity. That’s what it’s all about. Any astrologer who’s got built-in prejudices against other systems of astrology, against a race, against a gender has no business in the field as far as I’m concerned. Such an astrologer, if they practice, with some diligence is gonna have people very different from them in their face, you know, in the form of clients. And so, gradually, the rock of your rigid judgment does get worn away by the practice of astrology. You put yourself in the shoes of so many different kinds of people, that over a lifetime of this practice your heart opens to human diversity in a skillful way, you know, based on real experience. So astrology helps solve this problem.

SR: I would add to that, I mean, I begin every session with a prayer that doesn’t evoke, particularly, a god, right? I mean, I’ll say, “Let there be a blessing upon the reading of your chart.” I don’t know who’s blessing it, but that’s the idea. And then I think the other thing that we’ve talked about a number of times is the question—cuz William Lilly, an astrologer from the 17th century talked about this as well. The intention of your heart and living a moral life, whatever that might mean for you, you know, and kind of whether that’s in alignment with God, as you see God. But as Steve was talking about in terms of diversity, but also, do you practice what you preach? Do you live according to what you feel is right? And I think that becomes a way, a channel. That you open up as a channel towards your astrology. And I think that a lot of astrologers perceive it as this ‘scientific, objective thing’, that they just can approach it without realizing it’s still a very spiritual endeavor.

DB: Anyone else have a response to that? No? Okay. Yeah, one of the key phrases that was in your question is part of the answer. Which is in that moment, when the session starts, there is a moment of surrender, and that’s key. You may have spent hours preparing, if you’re a new astrologer, whatever your methods, whatever your techniques. You may have been walking around thinking about what you’re gonna say or what questions you’re gonna ask. In that moment, forget it. Just surrender to that moment. Okay? All right.

RL: Quick quote.

DB: Yes.

RL: Chogyam Rinpoche at Naropa said, “Enlightenment is the ego’s greatest disappointment.”

[laughter]

RL: That’s what Steven was talking about.

SF: Yes, yes.

DB: There it is. That’s it. Question back there. Yes.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Lynn. Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was thinking, while you were talking, one time I looked at a relative’s chart. I was not asked to, and I did not say anything to this person. I was, you know, bumbling around, and I looked at it and I go, “Huh. Hot damn. In this year, it looks like he’s gonna meet a hard-hearted woman, and it’s gonna be good for him.” I didn’t say a word because I wasn’t asked. And sure enough, it happened. But it raises the question, are there times when you need to be silent about predictions?

DB: Who would like to take that question?

CM: I didn’t even hear it.

DB: Are there times when you should keep silent? Are there times when you should keep silent about a prediction that is, in your mind, that you are thinking about?

CB: Yeah. I mean, that’s what I said earlier. Just because an astrologer can say something, doesn’t necessarily mean that they should, or that it’s appropriate to, especially in a modern consulting setting. I mean, that’s one of the first—that’s one of the main rules that most astrologers learn pretty quickly, and especially most predictive astrologers learn. And it’s something that astrologers even in the past 10 or 20 years are still navigating with, for example, ISAR putting a code of ethics in place only, I think, in the 2000s, right?

DB: Yeah.

CB: Like circa 2000. So astrological organizations even over the past couple of decades are still struggling with—especially now with the diversity in astrology—how to create an ethical code of what’s appropriate for a consulting setting, that’s true for all astrologers. And sometimes different traditions have different standards for different things that are appropriate, depending on how you’re approaching things. But I think one thing that’s true among all of them is just because you can say something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. But then there’s just a difference between conversations about what we should and can say to clients versus what is possible with astrology in general. And I do think it’s important that astrologers within the community are allowed to have those conversations where we see just what we can do and how far we can go with astrology outside of a client setting.

DB: Thanks.

CS: Can I pick up on something?

DB: Yes, Christeen.

CS: Some years ago, my husband was working at night—and he’s a musician—and I took to calling my astrological friend about nine o’clock at night, and we would talk about the different clients we had and the cases we were on. And he was some miles away, in another town, which makes this even more bizarre what happened. But over about a fortnight, we would be on the phone for about 20 minutes each time, about nine o’clock at night, six nights a week. And I was dealing with what seemed to me to be a very complicated case, he had one that was very interesting, so we were talking about all of this. And at some point, we both realized that we were advising the opposite sides on a takeover. I mean, this is really important, this, because we suddenly realized that Uranus was on the midheaven at the moment that we realized, right, and we didn’t know what we were gonna do. And I said, “What do we do now?” And he said, “I think we hang up,” which we did, right? And then we had to start to think about it because neither of us had signed anything with our respective clients to say that we wouldn’t be talking to anybody else, right? Now it’s an ethical dilemma. I mean, it’s one that lawyers are with all the time. But it’s not something that I would think would be a regularity with astrologers. Sorry, I’ve gone slightly off from what the question was. But this whole thing about ethics is, I think, something that is, as we become better at what we do. And frankly, I think the quality of astrology is moving up all the time. I really do. From the advent of the computer, the fact that we can do so much more research than we did. The fact that we are careful about what we say, in a way that maybe we weren’t so much before, we’re gonna have to cross all these professional hurdles, I think is the right word. And I think we actually need more and more gatherings now like this to discuss how we’re gonna do that.

SR: Amen.

CS: Sorry. I preached again.

SR: You did. Amen.

[applause]

DB: All right. Another question. In the far back, I think. Louder please.

RL: And introduce yourself.

DB: Do we believe that astrology can be used as evidence that God exists? That’s the question.

SR: Nope.

SF: Yep.

RL: Yep.

CS: I’ll vote for yes.

CM: Me, too.

DB: All right.

RL: I think that astrology has a spiritual component to it. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who uses astrology has a spiritual component to the astrology they practice. So I think that it really is an individual question. I think that one can be an astrologer and an atheist, and, that is, have no theology. But I think that it’s much more likely that as one delves into astrology—which is about meaning in the cosmos—that one develops a theology. Whether one believes that astrology has anything to do with God or not, there still is a connection to the magic, to the spirituality of the universe.

SR: Can I qualify with that, too? Just to say after I left the ministry, I went into—and some of you probably can relate. I went into the wilderness of atheism, and it took me a while to come out. What brought me out, to some degree, was astrology. That didn’t prove for me that God existed, but there was something else, right. There was a mystery. Now what that is, you could become a hardcore atheist and say there’s nothing, but that’s just, I think, delusional in its own right. But I think that there is something, but I wouldn’t say that you can prove God existed, as you were saying.

DB: I agree. Go for it.

SF: Start with a very specific piece of astrology. Imagine a happy, stable relationship. Two people who treasure each other. And you will find a description of each person’s partner in the chart of the first person. You know, I have Saturn in the 7th house, and I married a Capricorn, you know, things of that nature. So where to take this? Let’s circle right back to the heart of the question. So let’s say a little boy is born. He’s destined to be a heterosexual little boy. And I look at his chart. The kid is a minute old, and I’ve got his chart, and I describe his partner. You know, I can come up with a fairly accurate description of the partner who hasn’t even been born yet. Isn’t that amazing? I’m describing, in a sense, the chart of somebody who doesn’t even yet exist. That much intelligence is built into the birth chart of this kid who was just born. If that’s not the mind of God, well, I guess I’m an atheist.

[laughter]

SF: That feels like divinity, magic, evidence of something transcendent giving an order to the universe that we can only perceive through astrology or what we call faith. But astrology is the concretization of this experience that there is some higher order of things. And some higher order of things is a pretty good definition of God as far as I’m concerned. So that’s my response.

DB: Thank you very much. All right, next question, please. All right.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Alexis, and I’m from Dallas. And I would say that the diversity within astrology is quite beautiful. But then with that diversity, there’s a struggle in unification. And in terms of a prediction—at least with elections—like people can look at the same data and come up with completely different interpretations. Now predictions, they can at least, you know, affect the client, and eventually, it can affect the whole community, if we bring it to the community. So how can we handle the beauty of diversity to create a prediction or a solution and help the community in general? Because we’re all coming from different perspectives? How can we kind of unite and use prediction as a way to help the community in general?

DB: Do you understand the question?

SR: You’d probably wanna repeat the question. David?

DB: Go ahead. If you can concisely say that louder, that’s great.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: So astrology is very diverse. It highlights that diversity. But at the same time, with that diversity, there’s no unification. And when it comes to prediction people make a lot of different predictions based on, you know, different mindsets. And with those differences, how can we all come together and kind of use astrology in a way that is useful and is meaningful when it comes to prediction, when it comes to the community?

DB: Okay. When it comes to the community, okay. That’s interesting. Who would like to take that?

CB: Sure. So this is something we went through at Kepler, Kepler College, 10 years ago when they were still teaching college courses on astrology, cuz they would have you take a bunch of different courses on different traditions in order to get your degree. And all of the students would go through this process where, on the one hand, they’d be simultaneously incredibly overwhelmed by the number and the diversity of the different astrological traditions and all of the sometimes varying or conflicting techniques and approaches they would use. But then at other times, they would be fascinated how sometimes you could have a wildly different tradition like modern psychological astrology or Medieval astrology or Vedic astrology who sometimes can come to the same conclusion from radically different perspectives. And sometimes seeing that overlap—where you can have completely different tool sets or completely different traditions—come to similar conclusions is interesting and informative in and of itself. But in terms of how the community deals with this, it’s not anything that’s gonna be resolved anytime in the near future. Because the revival of all these different forms of astrology is so recent that it’s gonna be the great crisis of most of probably the next century before astrologers fully work out how to reconcile and maybe merge in some sense all of these different systems. In the meantime, we just have to be able to have dialogues like this one, where you have a diverse group of different astrologers trying to present their differing and sometimes opposing views. And through that dialogue, hopefully, eventually, something will shake out of it that looks like a consensus, or at least as close to a consensus as we can get.

DB: Anyone else on that? No? Okay, great. Thank you for that question. All right, over here. Charlie. State your name and where you’re from.

MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, I’m Charlie, from China. And my question is I know Steven, you proposed a focused framework in your Chinese guide. The reason I mention this is for everyone to focus on. The first is the event. The second one is psychology. And the third one is the meaning or the purpose, yes. So does it also work in prediction? It seems that the prediction is always linked to events, but not psychology or meaning or purpose. So that’s my question.

DB: Good question.

SF: Great. You know my work very well, thank you. It’s a, you know, a simple idea that astrology is—can you hear me okay in the back, if I’m still sitting down? You’re doing okay? I’m half-deaf, so I have sympathy for some of you older folks near the back. Any astrological transit or progression or any natal feature will have three different levels of meaning. The level that is most central as far as I’m concerned is the one that refers to the evolutionary purpose, what your spirit is trying to learn in this lifetime, what it might look like if you get it right. A lot of astrologers don’t even wrestle with a question like that. To me, it’s the heart of the matter that there’s something you’re needing to learn here, and that’s like the evolutionary level or the level of purpose. And you can get that right or you can get that wrong. And then because of your interaction with that field of energy and possibility, there will be emotional and interior responses to it. And you will experience happier states, more satisfied inner states if you’re in harmony with that larger dharma. You will feel upset if you’re out of touch with that. Like Mars is hitting a sensitive point, time to be bold, time to take your own part, time to be courageous. Have a little fire in your belly. You know, that’s the nature of a Mars time. That’s the evolutionary meaning of it. If you get that right, you know. You have a certain fire. You have enthusiasm, engagement. You know you’re alive, you’re passionate, and you’re kind of fierce. You know, make my day, or some of that energy. But if you make a negative response to it, psychological reality will be—you’ll feel resentful or frustrated anger. You slam the door. You kick the dog. These are negative responses. And so, psychologically, we can recognize a range of responses to a transit. And then at the level of events, you know, what are you gonna do with this Mars thing? You’re going to act and evolve. There’s territory you need to claim or something you need to stand up for and defend, and will have that kind of bold action on your part, if you get it right. If you get it wrong, you’ll chicken out, so to speak. You know, you’ll let fear make the decision for you. You’ll have an event in the category of cowardice or inappropriate surrender. Or slamming doors and kicking dogs, which are of course concrete. So everything will operate at the level of purpose and then a set of psychological responses that range over the high and the low, and then a set of events that are really the caboose of the train, the last layer. I’m much more interested in predicting the questions, which is to say the evolutionary meaning of the event. And then because of synchronicity, we’ll have some concrete or material event going on as well, but that will be the result of your response to the deeper questions. So it’s kind of a whole philosophy of astrology in 1-minute-58, I hope, right?

DB: You went past that. Does that make good sense to you, Charlie? Great. Okay, great. We have a question right here.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. Yeah, so Steven, this means that, in your opinion, astrology can be used retrospectively as well as prospectively to measure, validate, and encourage a person’s evolutionary trajectory.

SF: Absolutely. Rick made a beautiful point about post-diction.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Right.

SF: I’ve had useless fantasy. When I was younger, I was thinking, “I won’t even talk about the future anymore. Have people come in and let’s talk about what the last year of your life meant.”

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Or the last 25 years or what’s in the past.

SF: Exactly. Exactly.

RL: When you’re reborn with a Cancer Moon, you’ll do that.

[laughter]

SF: I have a 4th house Moon, so I kind of relate to that. But yes, when we already have the facts—because history is behind us—astrology can help you know what that meant. You know, what you learned—and you generate mindfulness and integrate it more—or what you failed to learn. And so, the next time you’re presented with those questions, maybe you’re inspired to get them right.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. And so, taking it to the next level of astrological prediction for the next lifetime.

RL: That’s exactly what I was getting at. When I went like this, that was exactly what I was gonna address before you asked the question. Just a very quick observation here. We spend time with prediction and not post-diction, and we spend time with past-life regression, not post-life progression. Because all of the traditions, all the traditions agree. When I say ‘traditions’, the various mystical traditions. Whether it’s mystic Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism, they all agree that if you take the jump and believe based upon evidence, your experience, whatever—I’m not saying reincarnation. That’s the next step. But if you believe that consciousness doesn’t require meat, okay, if you believe that consciousness exists just fine without a body attached to it—all the traditions agree that in that state where consciousness exists without matter, what we think of as past and future do not exist. That something happens in the reptile brain that creates the illusion of cause and effect to linearity, which then gets back to that whole cause-and-effect delusion thing that I said I agreed with, but I’m saying that that may be illusion, too. But the point is that past lives and future lives are no different than the past and the present. Everything that’s ever happened and everything that ever will happen is happening right now, we just get it discontinuously. And so, now having interrupted with that. I’m really interested in hearing what Steve has to say.

[laughter]

SF: I think, first of all, here’s Sam.

SR: The one thing I wanted to introduce is that it’s important for people to be clear on their own belief systems, you know, in terms of how you frame these particular things. I can’t really speak for Chris, but I think I have an idea. I mean, we both subscribe more to Stoic thought. So the idea of thinking more along the line of evolution, the evolution of the soul, your next life, these don’t mean anything to us in that sense. So you have to kind of know in terms of contextualizing the way that you look at the cosmos and how you look at your life and the life trajectory, cuz that’s important. Because we start framing things related to astrology based on—I’m gonna say it this way—your dogma. And I do look at it in terms of how you talk about it as your dogma. So that’s one thing to keep in mind.

DB: Yes. And another thing to keep in mind is that we are at the end of this presentation. So what I would like to do is to thank the panelists. Let’s give them a big hand.

[applause]

DB: And I think we’re gonna have an amazing UAC.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

[applause]

RL: Great way to start.

[audience chatter]