When people discuss or study Astrology, they often talk about one piece and the sign of it. While this can give some useful information, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you really want to understand how that piece works in a chart, you can’t look at any one piece in isolation.
Have you ever looked at a painting by Monet or one of the other French Impressionists? Up close, it can look like a hot mess. It’s can be hard to see the water lily in the water, or figure out what is being reflected. When you take a step back, you see the wholeness of the painting and can notice details that are hard to see up close.
Reading a chart is like this. You have to keep looking at the whole. If you focus too much on the sign, the house, the degree, the minutes, the element, the planet’s energy, an aspect … if you try to assign meaning to something really specific you lose the specific meaning in the chart. Two people can have their sun in Gemini, but at different degrees, in different houses, with different aspects and then there’s the fact that everything else in the chart is different. The Gemini sun with the Cancer moon is not the same as the Gemini sun with the Aries moon.
So how do you learn astrology? Learning astrology is like learning a foreign language. First you learn basic vocabulary and grammar. As your mastery of the language builds, you can appreciate humor and poetry in the language, speaking and absorbing it without first translating it in your head.
So it is with Astrology. Yes, you do need to learn what the signs mean, the houses, the planets, aspects, degrees, etc. Once you start to get these basics down you have to start integrating them. When people ask me very general questions, like “I’m a Leo, should I date a Scorpio” it’s hard for me to answer. It’s never as simple as that. I make a few general comments, that may or may not resonate with the person, because I’d have to look at both of their charts to tell them anything meaningful.
Whether or not you ever become an astrologer, studying astrology can be a fascinating hobby and over time give you great insight into yourself. The Astrologer I first studied with would tell me to keep digging into my chart, because it I had more knowledge about that person than anyone else.
Learning to see myself in the chart taught me so much about astrology. As I learned more astrology, I discovered more and more about myself.
