I want to begin by thanking every brave veteran of our 306 master classes. I am looking forward to our next one which begins on Monday, January 13th. Without what I’ve learned from them, I would not be able to write this little essay. This one is about “something I knew, but didn’t know I knew” – at least until I’d spent many hours helping our most advanced students expand their astrological chops.

As many of you are aware, our format in the master classes involves everyone looking at the same new chart each week. The charts are all invented – they’re not famous people. The students receive them in advance along with fictional biographies for each character. One week we’ll look at a birthchart, another week we’ll look at current transits and progressions for that same invented person. Late in the program, there’s always a synastry as we imagine two of our fictional characters falling in love. For efficiency’s sake, with the t’s & p’s and the synastry,  we stick to birthcharts we’ve already studied, so we can skip that step.

The underlying idea in the master class is that each student needs to be ready for anything with that weekly chart – just like we need to be fully prepared to talk about anything and everything if a client is coming to sit with us.

We meet on Zoom for seven sessions. Students are required to attend at least four of the seven class sessions in order to pass. The FCEA is wonderfully international, but that does create some scheduling challenges. By alternating between an early-morning and a late-afternoon US West coast starting time, we make class times as accessible as possible for different time zones. Each time, either Catie or I propose a series of questions about the chart-of-the-week. The questions could be technical or they could be something we say in human terms. What about that Jupiter square Saturn? Or how would you counsel this person in terms of career direction?

I then reach into a hat, draw the name of a class member, and that (heavily perspiring) person takes it from there. Nobody knows when the fickle finger of fate is going to point in their direction. In a typical meeting, five or six people are called to stand in the spotlight. Most of the students take ten minutes or so to do their presentations, then I make some comments and usually ask some follow-up questions.

As a system, this format has worked really well. In designing it, what we were up against was our usual enemy: the clock. Ideally, each student would present a full, integrated analysis of a chart – something that would take at least an hour and probably longer. With a dozen or so people in the class, there just wasn’t enough time for that. The math didn’t lie: seven sessions times ninety minutes is only ten hours or so. On top of it, part of the teaching is me commenting on each student’s work – that’s where the “master class” dimension comes into play. And that takes time too.

That’s where our tricky method enters the picture: each student has to be ready to present a full chart analysis at any given moment – they just don’t know in advance which part of the chart they’ll be asked to discuss or even if “today is their day.”

We keep it friendly and supportive, of course – we’re the FCEA! But you can probably see why I referred to the brave veterans of our 306 classes at the beginning of this essay, not to mention their perspiration. No matter how nice we are to each other, it’s still a high pressure situation.

All in all, I’ve been delighted with the performances of our students. By the time they complete 306, they are well on their way to being graduates of our school and every one of them is worthy of that honor. They’ve mastered the technicalities. They are capable of representing the best of evolutionary astrology. They can carry the flame forward, and for that I can only thank them.

For those triumphant students, the only thing that lies ahead is practice, practice, practice. They’ve internalized the nuts and bolts of our system. Now they need to find their own  voices.

In listening to the presentations of these students, I realized that there was one consistent piece of advice that I could give most of them – something that would help their future clients to follow what they were talking about more easily. It was the “something I knew, but didn’t know I knew” that I referred to at the beginning of this little essay. More to the point, it was also something that was often missing in our students’ presentations.

That missing piece is my subject here. I am calling it planetary on-ramps.

GETTING ON THE HIGHWAY

We’ve all either been behind the wheel or riding shotgun when the time comes to join the hurtling traffic on a crowded freeway. We accelerate up the on-ramp hoping for a hole in the screaming mass of moving metal. Often it’s a nail-biter. When it comes to actual driving skills, merging with speeding traffic is a high-stakes test, something far more challenging than just cruising down the highway. That’s why we breathe a sigh of relief once we actually settle into the flow with the rest of the cars and trucks.

Cutting to the astrological counseling room . . .

There you are in the middle of a reading. You’ve done a good job of presenting an integrated view of the client’s Sun, Moon, and Sagittarian Ascendant. You’re about to scream up the on-ramp to their chart-ruling Jupiter. What are the first words out of your mouth? They better be good. You’re about to set the tone for a fresh, major chapter of your presentation.

You understand Jupiter. You’ve burned the midnight oil in your FCEA studies. Intellectually and conceptually you are prepared. Your client is intelligent and open-minded –  but pig-ignorant when it comes to what Jupiter signifies. How do you get that part of the conversation off on the right track? How do you make sure that the client’s mind is attuned to Jupiter’s wavelength? 

Where is the on-ramp? 

• Maybe you say, from the evolutionary perspective, the big questions with Jupiter are how have you been underestimating yourself? How have you sold yourself short? Where have you been settling for too little?

See what happens when you open with those familiar words? Instantly, the client’s mind is set on the right questions. Their mental radio is tuned to Jupiter’s channel. You’ve set the correct tone. With those leading sentences, you’ve established a context for everything that will follow.

For each planet, we can create similar “on-ramps.” In each case, there are many possibilities. In a moment, I’ll make a suggestion for each one of them – but, remember, these are just suggestions. You can certainly come up with others and I encourage you to do that.

Nothing that follows will sound new or surprising. It’s all stuff you’ve heard before, much of it back in the 100 courses when you were learning the astrological basics. The point is that these verbal “on-ramps,” even though they reflect astrological theory, are really about the art of astrological counseling – which is always about building and maintaining a linguistic bridge of rapport, connection, and mutual comprehension with our astrologically-naive clients. Think of these on-ramps as a way of holding your clients’ hands as you lead them into the deep dark forest of astrological symbolism.

Let me reiterate that memorizing and using the “on ramps” that follow is a good starting point, but there are many others waiting to be created – or already lurking in the various FCEA teaching materials that you’ve studied.

SAMPLE ON-RAMPS

With the Sun, you might open by saying, “Taking care of the Sun is the secret of sanity. Make a priority of the basic values we’re about to explore and you’ll feel centered, grounded, and confident that you are on the right track in life.”

With the Moon, you might open by saying, “Taking care of the Moon is the secret of happiness, well-being, and maintaining a generally good mood. Meet the needs that we are about to discuss and you’ll beat back the blues every time.”

With the Ascendant, you might open by saying, “Following the path of your Ascendant helps you align your outer life with the actual intentions of your soul. It helps you “get your act together,” in other words. It helps you become the person whom you were always actually meant to be. 

With Mercury, you might open by saying, “Mercury is the messenger of the gods. It’s about helping you find your true voice. More critically, it’s about a set of perceptions – things you need to focus on learning – in order to get there. And then there’s the Grand Prize: when you speak with your true voice, people will really listen to you.”

With Venus, you might open by saying, “For you, certain kinds of people are like triggers or catalysts for your evolution. Here’s how to recognize those people – and how to avoid the ones who’ll just waste your time, or worse.”

With Mars, you might open by saying, “Mars is the god of war – and there is one virtue that warriors esteem above all others. That’s courage – and where Mars lies, you’re going to need it! In this area of life, you’re getting a crash course in assertiveness. You can be the hunter or you can be the prey. The choice is yours.”

(We looked at Jupiter earlier in this essay.)

With Saturn, you might open by saying, “Saturn often gets a bad rap, but it’s not really  bad – it’s just hard. And there’s a big difference. We are going to look at a place where you were born with a blockage, but that doesn’t mean you have to die with it too. The Great Work of your life lies in making a big breakthrough here. You can succeed, but it will require relentless effort and self-discipline. And it’s worth it.

With Uranus, you might open by saying, “Who would you be if you had been born with a different mother or father? More generally, think of all of the external forces that have shaped you – and maybe misshaped you. Uranus is the guardian of your true individuality – and a place where you will have to fight your way to the kind of true self-knowledge that’s the only path to real freedom. It’s also a place where you’ve probably gotten a lot of well-meaning bad advice, and that’s a problem we’ll need to straighten out.”

With Neptune, you might open by saying, “Neptune is the god of the sea. What it really means is the sea of consciousness itself – the sea into which we dive when we meditate or dream. When it comes to spirituality, everyone’s path is different. Here’s yours – here’s your doorway into the mysteries.”

With Pluto, you might open by saying, “Pluto is the lord of the underworld” – also known as, “the god of hell.” It’s a place where you’ve been hurt, maybe in a past life, maybe in the present one, maybe in both. To heal the wound, there’s a hurt place that you need to see clearly in yourself. It’s also a place where, if you get it right, you can claim your true power.”

WHY ARE THESE ON-RAMPS SO MISSION-CRITICAL?

If we open our discussion of each planet with these kinds of simple “on-ramp” statements, our clients’ attention is instantly aimed in exactly the right direction. They know precisely what we are talking about and they mentally file everything that you are about to say under the correct headings. 

You’ve successfully set the right tone and they are now ready to absorb the details of their evolutionary strategy.