Our “Aspirational” Planets Course

Our "Aspirational" Planets Course

Dean’s Update, November 2022

 
Welcome to the holiday season, everyone! I must say I look with anticipation to the Sun’s ingress into Sagittarius. I can just hear the collective sigh, followed by a little excitement and release. It’s time to celebrate the closure of 2022, enjoy the company of old friends, mix and mingle and have some fun. Hopefully, we all have been doing our Saturn work, so let’s embrace Jupiter. The planet turns direct, November 23rd, right when we have a New Moon at one degree Sagittarius. Let’s be like the centaur and shoot an arrow of hope and joy to the stars!
As the year comes to an end, I mention two powerhouses, Jupiter and Saturn, what Steven and I call the “aspirational” planets. This is because we are fine-tuning our next 300-level course, focusing upon these very same planets. The advanced 300 series has been a mix of both Jupiter gumption, by rolling the dice in curricular experimentation, and Saturn hard work and discipline to take each challenge one step at a time. Steven is the master curriculum writer but we work together as a team, so I will share here some of my own work as co-writer in the FCEA journey. And we could not do this critical teaching without the blessing of feedback and support from our master 300-level tutors – Bryan Colter, Ryan Evans, and Marie O’Neill – who have been so patient with the ways I have experimented in course design. How best to create an upper-level curriculum that engages students in a deeper, more personal way, and still keep a handle on the size and scope of the course? 
In our 300-level classes, I took some Jupiter chances by implementing creative solutions to the learning process and expanded what I hope were community-building strategies into each course. And they seem to have worked. Meanwhile, Saturn still beckons me to reassess and give structure to the courses yet to come.
 
Throughout this past year, I relied on student and tutor feedback to make adjustments, corrections and tweak each course format. Most importantly, our weekly tutor-student Zoom meetings at this higher level have opened up a whole new student-centered approach that seems to work well with our advanced community of learners. At this advanced Craftsperson level, student presentations offer each person a chance to share their talent and skills, while also letting peers and tutors develop a bond of love and community. 
In other courses, I made sure to have discussions based upon students’ own charts or the charts of those they love, in addition to fictitious client charts, each a creative space for open dialog and loving support. At one point, I even went into FCEA 302 and added a discussion about “your Venus” by progression or solar arc, in light of popular demand! Who can study Venus without a chance for some Venusian heart-to-heart sharing? 

 

FCEA 303, Aspirational Planets Jupiter and Saturn, opens the end of January, just a few weeks shy of my own 1st house Jupiter return. I am excited to expand and develop this course with some of these innovative methods once again, but I also know challenges need to be met and stubborn determination of the “great taskmaster” is a “course requirement.” This December, I will experience the third and final hit of my Second Saturn Return. And Saturn by transit continues to move in the 10th house of the FCEA birth chart. As Steven would tell us, on top of listening to my “inner child,” where do I need to listen to my inner Saturnian “tough old bird?” 
I’ll end on a Jupiter note. With the jovial vibe of this celebratory season, I look forward to birthing the next step in our FCEA educational journey, FCEA 303, and I congratulate all of our hardworking students who clearly demonstrate the efforts needed of a Saturnian “great work” and a Jupiterian passion for learning. Our 2023 Course Catalog dates are now available on our website and I encourage you to take a look at what lies ahead in the coming year. I hope to see many of you on our Holiday Celebration and Community Q&A call, December 8th. Blessings for the start of a great festive season!

 

Catie Cadge, PhD
November 2022
 
 
 
 

Two Events—and One is Live

Two Events—and One is Live

Master’s Musings, November 2022

Steven Forrest
I want to talk about two upcoming events, one on December 8 and the other one during the first week of next August.
On December 8, at 8:00 a.m. PST, we’ll do one of our four-times-a-year Community Member calls. Penelope Love and I have been hard at work promoting FCEA Community Membership lately. It’s been working well too – we’ve welcomed about fifty new members since early August. As you know, these folks aren’t all actively enrolled as FCEA students, but they are fans of evolutionary astrology and we are happy to have them joining us in any capacity. We realize that there are lots of people out there who are drawn to this kind of inner work, but they’re just too busy with jobs or kids or school to make a full-time commitment to studying with us. Others just don’t have the money – something most of us can relate to!
Anyway, we really want to put out the welcome mat to as many people as possible – that’s what “community” is all about. We also hope that many of them can someday join us as students too. These seasonal “Community Member” Zoom sessions are really the heart of this dimension of the FCEA’s outreach. They’re a lot like the monthly Student Q&A sessions – I respond to questions in the same sort of way, and hopefully we all surf the good vibrations and feel connected and supported. On December 8th, we’ll begin with a different approach – for one thing, this will be our annual holiday celebration, so everyone is invited, both students and members. I’ll also start by presenting a short program about a happy astronomical “coincidence” that’s about to happen in a sky near you.

We’re heading toward the Solstice on December 21st – happy summer to our southern hemisphere members and students! For the rest of us, it’s the longest, darkest night of the year, marking the beginning of winter. In The Book of the Moon, I relate the Winter Solstice to the “dark of the Moon” – the New Moon phase. Both the Winter Solstice and the New Moon mark the subtle stirrings of new beginnings. Like seeds freshly germinated, these new beginnings are vulnerable and tentative, and need to be nurtured. On December 8th, I want to help us get ready to set some synchronistic wheels turning. Magic is afoot on the Solstice on December 21st and, as well, on the New Moon that follows close on its heels, just two days later. The close alignment of these two events is the unusual piece of the puzzle. It means that each one reinforces the other – and when it comes to magical wallop, that combination of “power-moments” is the toast of Hogwart’s Academy.

 

Saturnalia by Antoine Callet
During that talk, I also want to remind us all of something modern astrologers have often forgotten regarding Capricorn season – that the Romans celebrated it wildly with their zany feast of Saturnalia, and that actually modern humans have continued many of those same traditions with the feasting, gift-giving, and general excesses of the holiday season. Has the public remembered something fundamental about Capricorn which the astrologers have overlooked? Maybe it’s not “all business?”
“Yes” is the short answer – and you’ll hear a longer one on December 8. I want to weave Saturnalia, magic, the New Moon, and the Solstice together into one integrated tapestry. But I’ll need to do it pretty quickly, so we have time for questions and comments – and then we hope to have as close to a Solstice party as people can in Zoomworld.
 

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OMEGA INSTITUTE, JULY 31 – AUGUST 4, 2023   
 
Here at the FCEA, we’ve always had an ambition to eventually do some live conferences where we can actually meet each other. Most of us miss the warmth of those direct human connections. The combo platter of Zoom and Covid have of course changed the world – many of you are starting to feel like familiar friends to me, despite our never having been in physical proximity to each other. Compounding those realities, we also have the complicating factor that our FCEA tribe is international. If we were to meet in person, where could we do it? California? Shanghai? Berlin? Obviously there is no possible answer that works fairly for everybody.
The bottom line is that I will be doing a five-day astrological intensive in the US state of New York this (northern!) summer, and you’re all invited. I understand that for some of you, attending would simply not be feasible. I’m truly sorry about that. I do hope that at least a few of you can come. It’s something I am doing anyway, and smiled when I realized how nicely it might fit into one of my favorite dreams for the school – that at least some of us could meet in person.
Omega Institute (www.eomega.org) is a fabulous place, and I’m honored to be invited to speak there. The first time I did was way back in 1984, and I’ve taught there several times since. The Institute is both prestigious and unpretentious, which is a hard balancing act to sustain. “Everybody who’s anybody” in the world of cutting edge, body-mind-spirit thinking has spoken there – Gloria Steinem, Eckhart Tolle, Pema Chödrön, Deepak Chopra, Jane Fonda, Van Morrison, Bobby McFerrin, Paul Hawken, Maya Angelou, and Ram Dass to name a few. But I still feel right in characterizing Omega as “a hippie summer camp.” That’s what it feels like. The campus is spacious and way out among the forests and farmlands in the deep upstate New York countryside. There’s a lake. People can swim. Everyone dresses casually. We stay in simple cabins. Mostly-vegetarian food is served in a gigantic mess hall, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Best of all, the attendees are generally terrific – I’ve often felt, looking at the faces around me there, that if the entire world were full of exactly these kinds of humans, we’d be living in paradise.
My Omega class will officially go on sale in early January. It’s not yet listed on their website since it’s still many months away. I do want to emphasize that this is not an “official” FCEA event – I’m under contract to Omega, and the class is open to the public. The last time I taught there, I had around fifty students. Their faces reminded me of your faces, and vice versa. I’d anticipate a seamless social integration, in other words. In teaching, I’ll downplay any FCEA angle to make sure that everyone feels welcome. But I would love to see as many of you there as can make it happen!
The title of the class is Cutting Through to the Heart of the Birthchart. Here’s the course description:
 
Why do you have the astrological chart that you have? As soon as we ask that question, we leave the dreary world of merely cataloging “personality traits” and enter the dynamic world of evolutionary astrology. In this system, it is your fate to face certain questions and certain possibilities in this lifetime. Beyond that, we have no use for the word “fate” at all. Instead, the power of your magic, your choices, and your intentions takes over, and they are pitted against old karmic reflexes that might otherwise imprison you in looping, dead-end patterns of behavior rooted in unresolved hurts from prior lifetimes. Anyone who has internalized the basic language of astrology –  for example, by reading Steven’s book, The Inner Sky – will be able to benefit from this five-day workshop. Our aim will be to cut through the confusion that naturally arises as we contemplate the myriad of signs and planets and make a bee-line for the holy grail of any astrological counselor – the healing wizard-words that go straight to the client’s heart and ring of pure, liberating truth.
As you can see, it’s a fairly generic description of evolutionary astrology. There is always some spontaneous improvisation in classes such as this as I assess the skill-level of the students. I anticipate it will run deep, and that we will spend most of the time diving deeply into the analysis of specific charts – probably some famous people, and certainly some class members. Five days gives us a lot of breathing room. I’d also say that Omega’s schedule is gentle – long lunches and there’s one half-day in the middle.
My apologies to those of you who are too far away for attendance to be feasible. I certainly understand. There will be no “FCEA credits” given to attendees or anything like that – anything else would be unfair to students who cannot be there. But it will be deep and magical – and I hope I finally have a chance to hug a few of you!
ON ANOTHER NOTE ENTIRELY…
There’s a bit of controversy brewing in the world of traditional astrology. All of this is many miles from how we practice in FCEA, but it may be of some interest to a few of you. Over the past few decades, a lot of interest has arisen in “traditional astrology,” which is a catch-all term for everything practiced from about 200 B.C.E. up through the European Renaissance. Its earliest Greek expressions have been alleged to employ Whole Sign Houses — which means that if Gemini is your Ascendant, then anything in Gemini is in your 1st house, anything in Cancer is your 2nd house, and so on. The system has been popularized and has attracted many younger astrologers.
Along comes Deborah Houlding, a respected traditional astrologer in England. She was the editor of The Traditional Astrologer magazine and is the principal of the School of Traditional Horary Astrology. She’s delivered a talk that’s stirred up a hornet’s nest in the “trad astrology” camp. She alleges that no astrologers actually ever used Whole Sign Houses until these past few decades and that the whole thing is based on a mistranslation of an ancient text.
You can imagine the hoor-rah of a tempest that’s brewing in those teapots! None of this has any relevance to the timed-Ascendant system we employ in evolutionary astrology, but for those of you who are interested in the historical bigger picture, you are invited to read her article, “The Problems of House Division”:
http://www.skyscript.co.uk/houprob_print.html
And here’s a link to her actual talk, which runs about an hour (cost is £5.00):
https://www.astrologicalassociation.com/product/the-sign-the-whole-sign-and-nothing-but-the-sign/
As you’ll see, she is quite a scholar. I wrote to her to congratulate her for her courage. She wrote back that “I never felt so good as I did the moment after that talk was delivered.”
 
Steven Forrest
November 2022

 

Meet Our New Tutors

Meet Our New Tutors

Dean’s Update, October 2022

 
Greetings FCEA community! Mars is moving retrograde through Gemini soon. The passionate planet of action will be in reflective mode. We turn inward to consider how we might bring fresh perspectives to the ways we touch one another, through our voices and our words. Some FCEA students know that I love to think of Gemini like a Cubist painting; each side of the subject is shown simultaneously as we open our minds and hearts to our natural curiosity and learning! Late this month, when stationing retrograde, Mars sits on the FCEA 2nd house cusp and the journey backward into our 1st house makes me think we need to refresh our teaching pool, open up to some new 1st house Gemini leadership in the FCEA classroom. How timely! So, I am thrilled to announce that we have hired three new outstanding tutors to join our growing FCEA team.

 

Patty Morris-Stebbins, Aubrey Thorne Carey and Ricky Williams began serving as tutors at the end of August. This month, they officially come on board, so expect to see them in several classes in 2023. Let me take a moment to briefly introduce them to you.

 

Patty Morris-Stebbins

Patty Morris-StebbinsPatty and I have been blessed to share the love of deep family bonding through Steven’s AP program for many years, so I am thrilled to work closely with her in helping to bring about our educational mission. Patty shared the following brief biography with me. “Patty Morris-Stebbins is New England born and raised, with a deep love of teaching and learning. Having completed two Master’s Degrees, (one in Public Policy and one in Transpersonal Counseling,) twenty years of astrological study, (including almost ten years with Mr. Forrest himself), and 15 years counseling clients, she is excited to bring her knowledge and skills to the FCEA to support others’ connection with the deep material of evolutionary astrology, and is even more excited to learn from students’ own wisdom and knowledge. When not studying/tutoring/counseling astrology, she works full-time as a cancer research administrator and mama to two amazing children, and is perennially seeking ways to connect with spirit through meditation, music, and nature.” Welcome, Patty!

 

Aubrey Thorne Carey

Aubrey Thorne CareyAubrey and I have been friends and colleagues for many years as well, learning together and sharing our passion for evolutionary astrology at Steven’s AP over the years. I am so excited to have Aubrey join our team. Here is her brief introduction so you can get to know her. “Aubrey Thorne Carey fell in love with Evolutionary Astrology in 2011 and began Steven Forrest’s Apprentice Program in 2012, completing his Master Certification in 2016. She has a Master of Traditional Chinese Medicine and was an acupuncturist for over a decade before transitioning (with many small detours) to her astrological practice. In her parallel life, Aubrey was with the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles for eight years, wearing lots of wigs and doing improv weekly, and surprisingly, these improv and comedic skills come in handy regularly while doing astrology consultations! She also trained with Michael Neill in his Supercoach program in 2020, which was life-changing, getting certified as a Transformational Coach, working with a perspective known as “The Three Principles.” When not working with astrology and coaching, Aubrey is doing one of these activities: studying yoga, walking her adorable Potcake (look it up), WhatsApp-ing her 21-year old daughter, having tacos with her husband, needlepointing and listening to audiobooks, or planning one of a hundred possible creative projects.” So multi-talented, Aubrey!

 

Ricky Williams

Ricky WilliamsAnd last – but certainly not least! – is Ricky Williams. Ricky and I also met through Steven’s AP and I cherish the times I have gotten to know him better and his lovely wife, Linnea, who is also former AP family. I am super happy to see Ricky join our team of tutors because he seems to be a natural at sharing his love and skills of our most sacred craft. Ricky shared this brief biography so you can get to know him better, “Upon the completion of a successful professional football career, Ricky Williams turned his attention to spiritual exploration and development. A Gemini fueled by a passion for learning, he studies and practices yoga, meditation, astrology, craniosacral therapy, pranic healing and Ayurvedic medicine. During Ricky’s 16 years studying astrology and interpreting birthcharts for his clients, he discovered a teacher in world-renowned evolutionary astrologer Steven Forrest. In 2020, Ricky, Steven and Linnea founded LILA (Sanskrit for “divine play”), a relationship and self-discovery app powered by the spiritual insights offered by an empowering, choice-based form of astrology. Ricky’s greatest love is building transformative businesses with his wife and other like-minded people.” Yay Ricky!
Please join me in welcoming all three wonderful and talented tutors to our FCEA family. Let’s all work together to make this Mars retrograde period in our school’s 1st house unfold into fresh educational perspectives, new ideas and new energy and passion in teaching and learning. Thank you, Patty, Aubrey and Ricky. And thank you to all our tutors, teachers, students and staff for making our FCEA the best online school possible!

 

Catie Cadge, PhD
October 2022
 
 
 
 

An Astrologically Busy Autumn for the FCEA

An Astrologically Busy Autumn

Master’s Musings, October 2022

Steven Forrest
Here’s one you’ve heard before:
If only pigs could sing…
Here’s another one, cut from the same cloth…if only God would appear in a flash of light and say, “Here’s the plan…”  
Then we would know what to do. Then we would always know where to put our foot next. Then we would never make any more mistakes.
It’s a beautiful, unreachable dream. We’re human, so we’re left to just muddle through as best we can. Perhaps we can avoid the most grievous moral blunders and spare ourselves the problem of creating further karmic entanglement. But even doing that much is a lot to ask of a bunch of monkeys such as ourselves. 
Beyond those karmic pitfalls, what about people making simple, honest mistakes? Choosing the flight that’s going to turn out to be diverted to Peoria, minus all the luggage? Or buying the one car on the lot that’s a lemon? No one can foresee those kinds of errors.
Well, almost no one . . .
We astrologers, of course, have a superpower. It is not infallible. Astrology is hard to read sometimes. Plus our own fears and desires are constantly getting in the way. But still, via a knowledge of transits, progressions, and solar arcs, your chart does map out what you are trying to learn – and how you can learn it. It can even warn you that this is not the day to book that flight or to buy that car. All we have to do is to remember to pay attention to the personal messages – direct from God to us – that are written in the sky. 
All that is true of you and me – but it’s also true of anything that came into existence at a definable moment. Businesses have charts. So do marriages. One example of that principle is our school. We’ve looked at its chart before. For those of you who are new to our community, here it is again. This chart is set for the moment that Catie Cadge and I sat down with Jeff Parrett and began to seriously plan the FCEA. That’s the moment that the die was cast. What you see here also includes a progression, a solar arc, and a couple of transits which I’d like to put in the spotlight in this newsletter. I’ve arbitrarily set them all for the middle of October.
 
A lot is going on astrologically for the school this (northern!) Autumn. Let’s look at a few of the highlights. Let’s see, in other words, what the universe’s advice for us might look like. Maybe as a school we can walk our talk and let the planets light up the path that lies before us. I’ve picked out a few configurations to consider in this newsletter. I’m going to explore them one at a time and quickly sketch them out for us.
 
THE PROGRESSED MOON ENTERED TAURUS ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2022
 
The school was “born” with the Moon in Pisces and so via progression it stayed in that sign by progression until entering Aries a year or so later, on April 12, 2020. An important point to remember is that we didn’t “open our doors” until December 21, 2020, so the Moon has “always” been in Aries – at least since we really got launched publicly. 
As befits the sign of the Warrior, for all the excitement, it has been a stressful couple of years! Aries always tests our courage and our resolve. It invites us to face risk. It wants us to roll the dice. What a wild ride it has been! Jeff Parrett needing to leave back toward the end of 2021 was stressful – for the FCEA to remain afloat, we had to quickly hire three people just to fill his shoes. And our plans for the school depended on hiring (and training) tutors as well. Where would the money to pay everyone come from? Could we do it? There were times when we didn’t know the answer. All we could do was to keep banging away.
What about the sheer number of hours we’ve all needed to put in? That’s been stressful too. Our tutors are hardworking people – all our students can attest to that! Our tech wizard, Carlos Velazquez, and our financial lighthouse, Paula Wansley, have come through for us every time. If our Communications Coordinator, Penelope Love, were a voodoo goddess, she’d be called The Slayer of Deadlines. Thank you, Penelope! For myself, I’ve made about 250 videos, half of which no students have yet seen. That’s a lot of videos!
Let me offer a particular “hats off” to our Dean, Catie Cadge – her commitment to making the school actually work in a competent and loving way has required absolutely relentless effort on her part. We’ve all been working hard, but she gets the “above and beyond the call of duty” award, along with a “Purple Heart” or two.  
Does all of that sound a bit military? Hey, we’re talking about Aries the Warrior!
Last but not least, here’s a Progressed Aries Moon shout-out to you students. You know better than anyone how hard you’ve been working. On top of the rigors of the courses themselves, you’ve had to deal with the FCEA’s “shakedown cruise” and all its inevitable glitches. Thanks for hanging in there, and for keeping your criticisms kind and constructive. 
I am happy to say that now that we’re a month into our well-deserved Taurus season, we can confidently foresee that the emotional tone of the times is easing. The switch has flipped on all of that endless Arian challenge and intensity. That switch happened just three weeks or so ago, so we’re barely aware of it yet.  With the progressed Moon now in Taurus, we can anticipate calmer weather. It’s time to take a breath and let it out. There’s a groove waiting for us out there, and it’s time to find it and settle into it. 
As befits an Earth sign, we’ve also entered a period of solidification. Taurus turns our attention in practical directions – getting our finances in more predictable order, getting the new crop of tutors launched, and – we hope – taking some of the weight off poor Catie’s and poor Penelope’s shoulders. 
We’ve got time – the Moon will be progressing through Taurus until January 31, 2025. Now that we’re not constantly putting out fires, we can attend to some more long-term plans. We’ve been committed, for one example, to creating a scholarship program for the school. I can almost guarantee that will be happening during this lunar progression.

 

With the Moon in Aries, we “had to win the war.” Now, with the Moon in Taurus, it’s time to see if we can win the peace.

 
SOLAR ARC VENUS CONJUNCTS THE MIDHEAVEN ON JANUARY 16, 2023
 
Given that planets only move about one degree per year by solar arc, it’s fair to say that Venus is already conjuncting the FCEA Midheaven. Being nominated for the Favorite Astrology School in the awards ceremony at the big ISAR conference in Denver in late August certainly gave us a taste of it! Since our school hadn’t even been open for two years yet, Catie and I were surprised to see us in the running. We didn’t win, but it was still a victory – not to mention good publicity! If we were a movie, it was like being “nominated for Best Picture.” You don’t always need to win for it to be a feather in your cap.
 
As evolutionary astrologers, we do more than revel in “astrology working.” It always works, at least once we understand how to decipher its messages. You get used to it “working” and you begin to focus on higher concerns. Astrology’s real aim is to help guide people in making better choices – aligning their lives with their higher purposes. That kind of thinking applies to the school too. In this case, with solar arc Venus on the MC in the mix, might it mean that the FCEA will be cooperating with other schools or programs before long? While we certainly will not be “merging” with any other institutions, Venus in the MC suggests that allies will be appearing.
Here’s another part of that Venus/Midheaven event: we are working hard on expanding and publicizing “Community Membership,” welcoming a wider, more diverse world to our tribe.  Maybe some of you have seen the new video I made about it?
 
Community Membership is an outreach program aimed at providing an inexpensive way for people to become involved with the school without actually enrolling as students. That’s because some people just don’t have the time or the money. Others might just want a taste of the school before committing to being students. For US$99 per year, Community Members get four two-hour Q&A sessions each year, plus access to the video recordings of all the previous ones. It’s a good deal, and with solar arc Venus on our Midheaven, it’s a good time for us to bang the drums about it. What could be more “Venus-on-the-Midheaven” than putting out a welcome mat to the world?
 
JUPITER IS STILL BUSY
 
The FCEA is about as Piscean as Pisces can go, and Jupiter passing through that sign has been really good for us. It first entered Pisces on May 13, 2021, so those positive Jovial winds have been on our backs for a while now.
Jupiter crossed into Aries on May 10 of this year, but really soon – on October 27 – it retrogrades back into Pisces for one final seven-week stand. It’ll remain there until December 20th, giving us another evolutionary opportunity to “never underestimate ourselves” and generally to “keep the faith” – something we’ve been doing all along with good results!
I’m no fortune-teller, but I do suspect that keeping the faith will be easier now that the Moon has progressed into Taurus. This final pulse of Jupiter energy coincides with us expanding our team of tutors by 50% – and, Jupiter-fashion, the school has grown enough that we need them. A big welcome to Aubrey, Patty, and Ricky! I’d say more about them myself, except that Dean Cadge will introduce them in her report in this same newsletter. We’re so lucky to have all three of them on the team!
 
THE TRANSITING NORTH NODE CONJUNCTS MARS ON OCTOBER 27, 2022
 
Remember how Jupiter returns to Pisces on October 27? On exactly that same day, the transiting north node of the Moon makes a conjunction with Mars. The two events are linked in time – and that means that because of the laws of synchronicity, they are linked in meaning as well. “Keeping the faith,” Jupiter’s specialty, will be tied to a need to ally our evolutionary intentions with some spunky Mars energy.
The school’s natal Mars is a gentle one, being in Taurus and the 12th house. We’re not fundamentally a competitive entity. Our courage is directed more at inward challenges than at outward ones, as befits a Piscean creature. Still, with our natal north node in Cancer and the 3rd house, we’re on a healing-and-teaching mission in this world, and boldly exercising that commitment is what this nodal transit is all about. Since Mars and Aries are so intertwined, we can say that we’re done with the progressed Moon’s long passage through Aries, but during October and November, we seem to be faced with a bit of a “final exam.”
One challenging bottom line is that the school has a lot of mouths to feed now, especially with our three new tutors coming on board. We’ve got a big monthly “nut to crack,” and so far, so good. But we do need to grow a little bit more in order to have some Taurean breathing room. I think the financial stress was soul-food for us during the Aries time, but now that we’re in Taurus, our souls are better served with an easier situation – one where we can take a longer view of things. To that end, we’d love to have another ten or twenty students, and we’re really wanting to expand our Community Membership too.
So if you happen to know anyone … you know the rest.
Thanks for hanging in there with us, and for helping us make a bit of astrological history.
 
Steven Forrest
October 2022

 

 

Fall Into Expansion

Fall into Expansion

Dean’s Update, September 2022

 
Happy Autumnal Equinox everyone! Mabon is the Celtic holiday marking this time of year. Here on the West Coast of the United States, we have been experiencing quite a hot September. We welcome the arrival of fall, the turning of the leaves and the cooler nights under the stars. Mabon is a Welsh god, the son of the Earth Mother, but using it as the title for the Fall Equinox is a new development, the original name of the holiday having been lost. In The Book of the Moon, Steven calls the last quarter lunar phase, “Mabon,” where we experience a sense of longing and recognize the impermanence of our lives. The year seems to be slipping away, but we look back to see we have made steady progress in some positive new directions. We had a number of changes this summer, along with ongoing growth at the FCEA. Let me share some of our great news!
In late August, Steven and I were sitting at the banquet of the ISAR conference in Westminster, Colorado, when they projected onto the screen that the FCEA was nominated as “Most Favorite Astrology School” by ISAR members and attendees.
 
ISAR is the International Society for Astrological Research. What an honor for the FCEA! We were not expecting this recognition at all. What a nice surprise while transiting Uranus and the north node in Taurus formed a lovely trine to Saturn in Capricorn on the 9th house cusp in the school’s birthchart. We were thrilled to be acknowledged by colleagues and the professional astrological community. Congrats FCEA!
In September, we are excited to open FCEA 302, our next advanced course at the Craftsperson level. A deeper dive into the study of the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars in our evolutionary toolbox. We look at the progressed moving Sun, Mercury out of bounds, the Venus pentangle and much more. So many juicy topics! In FCEA 301, we piloted new weekly Zoom sessions at this advanced level of instruction, introducing student presentations as a learning tool. Everyone seems to love this new format. We will continue with live, engaging tutor-led Zoom meetups. Then student presentations will be re-introduced in FCEA 303 after the New Year. Lots to look forward to in 2023 in our expanding curriculum.
We are also piloting a new Zoom lab, 101Z, for students first entering the FCEA, who may need additional basic support in the fundamentals of astrology. We recognize some students come to the FCEA brand new to our complex archetypal language. We want to make sure they are supported. These small sessions will be led by one of our outstanding tutors and limited to five students per session maximum. 101Z is designed to be a place for total newbies of astrology to relax, take it slow and work through the A, B, Cs of how to look at and read a birthchart. Another exciting change!
Our staff at the FCEA is also growing. This summer I trained three new tutors: Ricky Williams, Patty Morris-Stebbins and Aubrey Thorne. I am so thankful for their hard work serving as tutors in our current 102B cohort. Such great work! Please welcome them if you see them on one of our many Zoom calls. This fall we will more formally introduce Ricky, Patty and Aubrey once we move into the hiring process. Look for them as tutors in our upcoming fall courses. I am sad to announce we had one of our beloved tutors, Sarrah Christensen, leave our team. Sarrah has been very helpful in expanding our 100-level course offerings and she will be sorely missed. We wish her all the best in her new creative endeavors. One last final shout out of thanks to ALL our hard working staff, tutors, teachers and, of course, to Steven, our beloved master teacher.
We are all so grateful. Equinox blessings!
 
Catie Cadge, PhD
September 2022
 
 

Why Such a Narrow Path?

Why Such a Narrow Path?

Master’s Musings, September 2022

Why Such a Narrow Path?
Steven Forrest
All over the world, people call our craft “astrology,” but beyond the core notion that the sky tells us something about ourselves, the system is almost impossible to define. That’s because it takes so many different forms – forms that are often actually quite contradictory.  We might be better off saying “astrologies,” plural. Perhaps the most obvious illustration is Vedic astrology – Jyotish. It is a venerable, effective system, but one in which I stop being a Capricorn and become a Sagittarius. Talk about “quite contradictory!” That happens because Jyotish is sidereal – it’s based on the stars and constellations rather than the equinoxes and solstices that are the foundation of most Western forms of astrology. Then there are western sideralists too, but their techniques are distinct from the ones the Indians use.
Hellenistic astrology – the astrology the Greeks seem to have developed over two millennia ago – was nearly lost, but now it’s back in force. It’s a “tropical” system – seasons, not stars –  just like we use in the FCEA, but looking at a Hellenistic chart will boggle your mind if you’re accustomed to modern Western astrology. If you’ve got late-Gemini rising, then in that system Gemini is your first house and that “early Gemini 12th house Mars” you thought you had is now “in the Ascendant.” They use “whole sign houses,” in other words – with Gemini rising, Cancer would be your 2nd house, Leo your 3rd, and so on. Hellenistic astrology has many other unique features – planetary periods, for example, and “zodiacal releasing.” Chris Brennan and Demetra George are two fine astrologers who represent that tradition, although there are now many others.
During the European Renaissance, astrology reinvented itself based on translations – and mistranslations – of the ancient Greek system. Here I think of Robert Hand, who started out as a modern western astrologer, but was fascinated by the Greek traditions, which led him eventually to embrace Renaissance astrology.
The three astrologers I just mentioned are all friends of mine. I have no argument with any of them. But when I hear them lecture, I have very little idea what they are talking about. That is not a criticism – I would feel the same way if I were listening to a brilliant lecture delivered in Pashto or Chinese.
There’s a modern western system of astrology called Cosmobiology. It was developed in Europe mostly by Alfred Witte and Reinhold Ebertin. Its techniques are centered on the midpoints of pairs of planets, and they rely heavily on 8th harmonic aspects. Then there’s Cosmobiology’s second cousin twice removed, called Uranian astrology. It uses eight hypothetical planets called Cupido, Hades, Zeus, Kronos,Apollon, Admetos, Vulcanos, and Poseidon. As I understand it, they are basically mathematical points, but I know near-zero about any of them. At least I’ve learned not to repeat the slander that Uranian astrologers are using “made up planets.” They don’t exist in a physical way, but then neither do the nodes of the Moon. As students in the FCEA, you know that we use the nodes, but none of the rest of that stuff!

 

Please don’t take that as a dismissal of any of these traditions. That’s not what this little essay is about. In the FCEA, we are just a little more picky in our approach – more about that in a minute.

 

At a technical astronomical level, the basic bones of the system we use in our school emerged gradually in recent centuries, mostly in Europe and the Americas. One very obvious practical point is that before our kind of astrology could develop, we needed clocks. There were crude ones as early as the 14th century, but the widespread knowledge of what time it was came much later. It would be hard to put a date on it; the widespread use of clocks and watches sort of drifted into the zeitgeist – and made our style of astrology, with its carefully-timed Ascendant, Midheaven, and house cusps, possible.
Still, even under the banner of “modern western astrology,” there are many techniques that we don’t use in the FCEA. We do use day-for-year progressions – technically called secondary progressions. There are “primary” ones too, but it’s an awkward technique and I’ve never used it in my practice. Slight errors in birth times make a mess of it. Then there are tertiary progressions and converse progressions . . . vertexes and antiscia . . . and on and on. You get the picture – “modern western astrology” is a grab-bag of techniques, most of which we ignore. 
Sometimes there is talk of “licensing” astrologers. Maybe it will happen someday. You need a license to practice medicine or law or to fly an airplane. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea. But I cringe when I think of it. Who’s going to decide who’s qualified to be an astrologer? Imagine me going to India and telling all the astrologers there that they flunked the test because they were using the wrong zodiac! I’ve had successful students in my old Apprenticeship Programs fail the test for the American Federation of Astrologers even though I am sure they could dance astrological circles around most of the people testing them. I’d fail most of the tests devised by astrologers in other schools myself. 
The last time I had a professional astrological reading myself was with a Vedic astrologer named Swami Ambikananda. I choose her rather a western evolutionary astrologer just so my own ego wouldn’t get in the way. With techniques closer to my own turf, I would be busy “correcting” anyone who tried to explain my chart to me. But nobody would give me “an astrology license” in Mumbai or Benares, so I was safe. I could put my ego aside and just listen. What I heard was real and helpful.
I’ve often quoted this line from Robert Hand because it’s just so laser-like about getting to the heart of the matter. When asked about which kind of astrology was the right one, he responded,  “Which is truer, French or German?” That’s really how I feel about all of this. These astrologies are all just different languages. You can tell the truth in any of them, or lie in any of them. I respect all of them, at least when they are offered to their communities by wise, loving, non-destructive humans.
So why then would a student in the FCEA who even mentioned whole sign houses immediately be subjected to electro-convulsive shock? 
Well, that’s because we teach a very specific system here – the Steven Forrest Method. I admit I felt a little funny hearing it called that for the first time, but it’s right – that is what we are doing. We’re a Trade School, not a University. We teach my system, not anybody else’s. Emphatically, I would never say that there is only one way to do astrology. All I would say is that the way I have chosen to practice has been very successful. It has helped a lot of people, at least ones who are on a psychological and spiritual wavelength. It’s given me a good living and a meaningful and interesting life. That’s the gift we are trying to pass on in the FCEA. To receive it, we encourage you to start out by following in my footsteps – and we want to make sure that there are no other footsteps in the way to confuse you. And that is really the essence of what I am saying here – if you set out to master all of the various astrological traditions, you could maybe do it, but you would have to live to be about 178 years old. The good news is that maybe fifty years before that, the fog of confusion would begin to clear, and you’d be the wisest, most effective astrologer who had ever lived. Go for it, if you think you’ve got that kind of longevity in you! 
When I was young, I read astrology widely – and of course I became totally bedazzled by the differing perspectives. But the mass of contradictory techniques I had accumulated soon passed through the fire – and by that I mean the realities of the counseling room. Groundless theory expressed authoritatively before an academic audience often has an appallingly long lifespan. But such empty theory quickly collapses in the intimate presence of one glassy-eyed client yawning or saying “no, that’s not me at all.” 
Gradually, over the years, I carved out a system that worked for me and the people I served.  Some of that process involved creativity and innovation on my part, mostly in my efforts to integrate archetypal psychology and metaphysics into the system. The “Steven Forrest Method” would not be what it is without Carl Jung, Ram Dass, and my own root teacher, Marian Starnes. None of them, with the possible exception of Jung, were active astrologers, although they all knew of it and respected it. They, along with some Buddhism, gave me the philosophical foundation I needed. At the technical end, much of what I did was just “editing” – getting rid of techniques that seemed less meaningful, and concentrating on the ones that really delivered. In that process, I had just one guiding question: out of the wealth of techniques we’ve inherited from our astrological ancestors, which ones spoke to me?

 

So here it is in a nutshell.

 

The FCEA is designed to take you from zero to mastery as quickly and as efficiently as is humanly possible, without cutting any corners. By “mastery” we mean the ability to sit down with a stranger, even a skeptical one, and have an undeniable, helpful impact on that person. That’s all. We’re not about making any other forms of astrology wrong, but we’re not about teaching you those forms either. What we are about is transmitting one highly effective system of astrological counsel to you without distraction or confusion.
Once you’ve learned the Steven Forrest Method, blessings on your journey wherever it takes you – even if it’s into Jyotish, Cosmobiology, Hellenistic astrology or whatever. Astrology is always evolving, just like you and me. You’ll be part of that journey. I’d love to see what a marriage of Hellenistic astrology and our system might look like. Maybe one of you will someday pull them together.
Whatever you do, just please keep freedom and personal responsibility in the center of it – and, in every word you say, please keep one eye on the higher ground that lies beyond this crazy, tempting, terrifying, and eminently distracting world.
 
Steven Forrest
September 2022

 

 

Summertime Goals

Summertime Goals

Dean’s Update, August 2022

August greetings everyone! One of my summertime goals this year was to sketch out an FCEA course calendar for 2023. The draft is now finished.
New student cohorts and more advanced-level classes await us in the months ahead! But we are about to begin Virgo season and how perfect as I fine-tune the FCEA course landscape. I can’t help but think, “It’s all in the details!” So, I am working with our staff to provide a schedule that will enable us to grow at a steady pace, and yet still provide the breathing room students, staff and tutors need.
This past year, we planned a tight, rigorous calendar of courses that I know at times caused a few people to voice concern for some rest, a chance to absorb and review. As I write, Uranus, Mars and the north node sit together in the sky in the sign of Taurus.

 

How can we spark change and fresh insights, so we can better take care of ourselves and find relaxation and peace, while studying and learning with commitment and passion?
 
One immediate fix that comes to mind is making sure to increase the number of weeks between each course offering. In 2023, the FCEA calendar includes a break of at least two weeks before students start the next course. We know many are enthusiastic to jump into the next stage of studies with Steven and the tutors. But we also know sometimes the workload seems heavy and the material is a lot to process in a short time. Extra time offers all of us a chance to pace ourselves. Nothing wrong with taking stock of where we are at! After all, we are evolutionary astrologers, right? The FCEA staff can use this additional time too. It allows for more efficient transitions between classes and time to complete course preparation and registration.

I also frequently hear from students wanting a summer and holiday recess. Of course! Many take holidays and breaks on their own from classes when needed. But official holiday time is also doable and it makes sense. Since the FCEA opened in 2021, we recognized a break in December and January is a must! This year, final assignments and exams in most fall classes end by late November. Our last course to finish in 2022 will be FCEA 202, ending on December 1st. We will have a Solstice gathering and the last Member Q and A call of the year in early December, so we can wind down the school year by December 9th. The first week of January is Steven’s birthday, so we extended the holiday season through to January 11th. There will be plenty of time for a family vacation, even after New Year’s Day. At the end of 2023, we have built into the calendar a similar break to enjoy the yuletide season and New Year celebrations.
In spring of 2023, we continue with a robust schedule to get everyone working hard for that well-earned summer break end of August! No classes will be in session after August 24th until mid-September. Three weeks of self-study, reflection and time away from the online classroom will give all of us at the FCEA a moment to stop, breathe, and reconnect with what our goals and desires are for our education and where we are going as astrologers and counselors. In order to accommodate these changes and to schedule our growing number of student cohorts, 300-level orientation calls will be scheduled on Fridays beginning in 2023.
I am so excited for these new adjustments to our busy school calendar. I wish everyone a richly rewarding Virgo “Back-to-School.” I look forward to seeing many of you in our five FCEA course openings in the weeks ahead. Yes, five! And please take the time to welcome (on one of our Zoom calls, perhaps in the chatroom!), our next new student cohort joining us at the 100-level in early September. Blessings!
 
Catie Cadge, PhD
August 2022
 

On Sacred Counsel

On Sacred Counsel

Master’s Musings, August 2022

Steven ForrestOn Sacred Counsel: The Blurry Zone Where Astrology Edges Toward Psychotherapy
Many years ago, I faced an ethical dilemma in my private practice. I would sometimes do an astrological reading and a day or two later I would get a phone call from the client. “I loved the reading, but it shook me up. Is there any way that we might schedule a follow-up session just to talk about everything?”
I know that even if we are the soul of gentleness and counseling skill, astrological information can go off like an emotional bomb in a person’s life. Truth is like that – no wonder that society always treats it as a “controlled substance.” Obviously, I needed to be responsive to that client – no way that I could just leave someone hanging. So the client would return and we would sit there in my office. The chart would be in front of us, but often it would be ignored or only referenced in vague ways. We’d be speaking plain English, working through whatever loose ends the reading had left hanging for that client personally. 
And it dawned on me what I was doing: I was practicing psychology without a license. Or perhaps more importantly, I was practicing psychology without any training. 
How could that possibly be ethical? But how could it possibly be ethical to leave a client shaken and unresolved, and me saying “sorry, I don’t have a license to speak with you?” Think about it: perhaps my words in the reading had raised questions about a person’s marriage, or his profession, or her religious faith. People deserved some follow-up – but perhaps they deserved it from someone other than myself?
That thought leads us quickly into a brief digression. That “someone other than myself” might obviously be a qualified mental health professional of some sort. As one’s astrological practice matures, it’s natural that we begin to establish a list of people to whom we might refer any  clients who are interested in ongoing psychotherapy. The two fields are complementary. I’m a fan of psychotherapy and I’ve been through it myself. I’ve learned not to be overly impressed by academic credentials though – I’ve met psychotherapists who were saints and I’ve met some who were educated fools. Putting a client’s soul in the hands of the wrong person smacks of heavy karma. 
Without much effort, a happy solution soon presented itself: as my practice developed, psychotherapists began to appear as clients. That gave me a chance to get to know them – and to know who among them to trust and who not to. I built social relationships with them, became good friends with a few. An added bonus was the fact that their presence in my office indicated an openness to astrology – and thus neatly avoided the blunder of me sending clients who were confused by their readings into the arms of someone who viewed them as deluded for believing in astrology in the first place. 
Referrals are good! They help significantly in solving the problem that I am writing about here. But there’s an obvious issue. It starts with the fact that, via conversation, a psychotherapist takes weeks to get to know a client. We astrologers start with the X-ray – the chart itself. It’s only a small exaggeration to say that we know the client pretty well “before she walks through the door.”
Think of that client who was left feeling unresolved as a result of my work. If she comes to sit with me again, we are already well into that conversation, so we start without preamble. We are already on page 127 of the novel. We are ready to take it further without any preliminary fuss. Sometimes all it takes is a half-hour chat to create liberating understanding and resolution. Put yourself in the client’s place, and compare that quick semi-astrological follow-up with the prospect of facing weeks of psychotherapy at often calamitous expense just to reach the starting line. 
There’s more – if astrology created the problem, perhaps it’s astrology that is going to solve it. I don’t mean for that line to sound too glib, but the basic idea is that the symbols always hold the answer – we just need to do a better job, or a different job, of translating them for the client. It wouldn’t be fair to expect a psychotherapist to be able to succeed at that anymore than we would expect an astrologer to understand the nuances of the famous (or infamous) DSM – The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, with its often hairsplitting nuances distinguishing this mental affliction from that one. We are talking about two different languages and two mostly very different forms of expertise. 
Personally, I felt better offering the follow-up, so that’s what I did. And some of those clients came back for further “talking cure” sessions. Soon enough, I was doing a kind of ongoing counseling work of a sort that was probably indistinguishable from psychotherapy in any meaningful way – other than the fact that, technically, there wasn’t actually a psychotherapist in the room, that is. By the time I left North Carolina, about one-third of my practice actually took that form. I loved the depth and humanness of it. In the process, I learned a lot, much of which fed back into my astrological understanding. People expressed gratitude. I saved a marriage or two, and I talked more than one person “off the ledge” –  and no one jumped off it as a result of my ministrations either, I am happy to say.

In other words, welcome back to Square One – the question remains, which is the more ethical path, to offer plain-English follow-up to the client who asks for it, or to withhold it, and perhaps send them onward into the arms of the conventional mental health system?

 

I read a lot of straight psychology during that period, trying to educate myself. Synchronistically, an opportunity arose for me to apprentice myself to a licensed psychotherapist. I’m sure we skirted many laws as I sat with her and a few of her clients, but I certainly learned a lot just by listening. Perhaps most importantly, I knew my limits – if someone’s problems seemed beyond my scope, verging into psychotic or borderline territory, I still had those referrals. I knew who to call and who to recommend. For example, I knew nothing about psychiatric medications – except an abiding belief that it is wrong to give them out like candy to anyone who reports the blues.
I no longer do much of that kind of one-on-one counseling work. The reason is simple: in 2008, I moved to the desert, miles away from any population centers, and so the logistics of any ongoing counseling became impossible. Astrology began to call me more loudly too and in a different way. My “legacy work” began. I realized that I needed to write several more books and, of course, to help establish the Forrest Center for Evolutionary Astrology, which, I pray, will keep this holy flame burning after my own physical flame has burned out.
For those of you actively enrolled in our classes, down the road we will come to FCEA 401 – Sacred Counsel. That’s where we will learn to thread the labyrinth that connects evolutionary astrology to the array of human counseling skills that allow us to make a difference in the lives of people who entrust their souls to us, whether it’s for two hours or for a longer time.
We’ll learn about how psychology and astrology can complement each other – and how they also present some seemingly irreconcilable differences. It’s one of my favorite topics, and I think it has a whole lot to do with the future of all the helping professions. That material will essentially be the culmination of our Master Level program, as it should be.
 
Steven Forrest
August 2022

 

The Collective Awakening: Playing Our Part

The Collective Awakening: Playing Our Part

Dean’s Update, July 2022

 
July greetings to my dear FCEA community! I hope those in the northern hemisphere are enjoying pleasant weather and some time for rest and relaxation. For our students and members “down under,” wishing you warm and comfortable winter days. I just returned from a few days “off grid,” at a beautiful, hot springs in the Pacific northwest. Healing waters, warm sunshine, a cool mountain river and nothing to do, but bathe in the forest and under a carpet of many, many stars at night. The Milky Way was in her full glory! 
Most memorable for me was meeting a woman, while we soaked in the mineral waters, and bonding with her through passionate conversation about evolutionary astrology and the FCEA. In the midst of her Uranian opposition and a big Jupiter time for her, “Annie” was just awakening to the potential power of astrology as a tool for life’s journey. Such a joy to see her eyes light up and to feel her enthusiasm and open heart. So often we have these encounters when we meet a soul who now “gets it,” who makes the cosmic connections and sees what a sacred gift understanding our natal chart can be.

 

 

To me, the main mission of our work at the FCEA is to bring these very kinds of awakenings to not only our clients, through our job as professional astrologers, but to those special souls we meet in our daily lives who are ready to learn, evolve and share. This is how we can contribute, as a school, to a world sorely in need of change and healing.
 

How can we best play a part in this collective awakening? This potential for astrology to reach a bigger audience, to touch the hearts of people like “Annie”?

 
Not all will choose a professional path. Some may integrate evolutionary astrology into other healing modalities or perhaps a counseling career. When Steven and I wrote the course curriculum together in 2020, we began with the very basics, anticipating some students would be “newbies,” just starting out with little knowledge, but a passionate drive to learn. We hoped to serve our “Annie”s. But running a school day in and day out, I have come to realize the FCEA is like a living, breathing entity, morphing in form and composition from one group of students entering the program to the next. 
Summertime here in California always provides me a time to take stock of the bigger picture of what I am working and striving for; a good time to reassess where our school is headed and what structural changes we may need to make in the months ahead. The FCEA is growing. I am in the process of training three new tutors this summer. We look forward to welcoming a brand-new cohort of 100-level students in the fall. What needs to change to best accommodate our growing student body, diverse in levels of knowledge and practical skills? 
First up for reevaluation is our study group calls. How can we work harder and make the road smoother for “Annie”? These are the questions I am wrestling with addressing this summer, as I work with our tutors and staff. In the 300-level advanced course, FCEA 301, we will have a trial run this month testing weekly Zoom meetups with tutors. I am excited to see this new development in course structure unfold! If successful, we will explore similar options in our courses in the months ahead. Meanwhile, gradual change and modification will occur with our study group format.
What an exciting time! I ask you all for patience as we fine-tune and work through the best possible avenues for comprehensive learning for everyone. In the meantime, please do share feedback through our course evaluations. We want to hear your suggestions! We are also planning more added features for members in the months ahead, along with our on-going expansion, visual makeover and improvement of our website. Expect more changes! I am so thankful for the hard work and effort of our FCEA staff for the care and love they have given to building a better website, a better school and a top-notch learning experience. And a huge thank you to our students and members for your constant love and commitment. Let’s open the heart of every “Annie” and make evolutionary astrology a household word! I don’t feel it is too bold to say this. I believe that the world needs us. Blessings, everyone!
 
Catie Cadge, PhD
July 2022
 

Bad Moments with Clients

Bad Moments with Clients

Master’s Musings, July 2022

Steven Forrest
As you’ve undoubtedly seen, the techniques of evolutionary astrology are robust. They work reliably well. They produce accurate insights. Trust them and they won’t fail you. But for a variety of different reasons, it’s unlikely that 100% of your clients will be satisfied. Some of that might be your own fault – none of us can rule out making mistakes. But certainly some of it will stem from issues that the clients themselves bring to the table. Inevitably you are going to encounter some bad moments, so it’s good to be prepared emotionally to weather them. Naturally they are miserable experiences. In becoming a professional astrologer, that’s just something you have to accept. It won’t happen often, but sooner or later, it will almost certainly happen.
Before I dive into all of that, here’s a little perspective: I’ve lost track of how many thousands upon thousands of readings I have done over the years. In all that time, I can honestly say that 99% of the feedback I’ve gotten has been positive and gratifying. That hard 1% can really sting though, and that’s my subject in this newsletter. 

 

One more point of perspective before we look the devil in the eye: practice makes perfect. You’ll get better at your craft as time goes by.

 
That’s at least one way that being an astrologer beats being a professional athlete or a teenage idol – age and experience are nothing but good news.  That means that there’s a pretty good chance that any negative scenarios are more likely to happen early in your astrological career – sadly, we might add the fact that that’s when you least need them because you are still trying to build confidence in yourself. 
Stick with it no matter what happens – that’s really the bottom line.
Once, probably around 1990, I did a recorded reading for a woman in New York City. I knew very little about her and I had never met her. A week later I got a scathing phone message from her telling me that I “should be ashamed of myself.” She sounded crazy with rage. She never mentioned the precise nature of my transgression, so I have no idea what her beef with me was.  I’d done the work using the same tried and true techniques that had produced helpful results with crowds of other people. I thought of calling her back. I never did. That was a judgment call, and I think it was the right one. My guts told me we’d just upset each other even more. Maybe I had already done enough harm. Maybe she had too. 
I guess that was the worst experience I’ve ever had with a client. Nothing like that has ever happened before or since.
Clients of mine once bought a reading for the local Chief of Police. They were friendly with him and thought he might like a session with me. He was quiet during the consultation, but we seemed to be getting along just fine. Later, through those clients, I learned that “he had no idea what I had been talking about.” That wasn’t actually a “bad moment” in terms of our interaction, which was pleasant enough, but it made me sad when I finally heard about it. 
Probably that kind of “disconnect” has happened more than once without me knowing it. I just wish the man had mentioned something – asked for clarification or said there was something he didn’t understand. If I had known, I might have been able to build a better word-bridge to him. But I didn’t know – my (mis)impression was that he was following me just fine.
 

The take-away: an astrological counseling session is a joint act of creativity. Both you and your client have to participate. It’s not your fault if clients don’t hold up their end of the deal. You cannot know what they do not tell you. All you can do is do your best.

 
Years ago, in my office in North Carolina, a woman came to sit with me for a birthchart analysis. She was from a very “blue blood” Southern family, held her nose high, and was probably the most argumentative person I’ve ever met in my life. I couldn’t say anything right. All her sentences – most of which were interruptions – started with the word “No.” I endured the misery  for maybe half an hour. Finally I told her that the process was obviously not working between us – that we were “on different wavelengths.” I invited her to leave and of course I mentioned that there would be no charge. It wasn’t like I was angrily “throwing her out of my office.” I was polite – just call me “Mister I’m OK, you’re OK.”
The result was a transformation. She became courteous and receptive. She urged me to continue. By the time our session was over, everything was fine between us. We hugged.
Two take-aways from that story.
 

To this day, I have no idea what was going on with that woman. Often that’s the case. People bring their invisible histories into the counseling room. Maybe they have some psychological need to put you in a no-win situation. That says more about them than it does about you or your level of skill.

You’re not a dancing monkey doing astrology tricks. If a relationship with a client isn’t feeling comfortable to you, you have as much right to terminate it as does the client. Maybe you’ll both be better off.

 
Another woman came to me. There were a lot of unresolved family dynamics in her chart. Unlike the Police Chief, she was wonderfully forthcoming about everything – her father had shamed her and tyrannized her. In following up on what she had told me, I casually mentioned that her father “thought that she was no good.” She immediately objected and said, “No! My father thought that I wasn’t good enough.” The distinction seemed like a nuance to me, but it was important to her. Naturally from that moment on, I used her wording – and I guarantee that had I stubbornly persisted in my original phrasing, my story with that client would have been another tale of a “bad moment.”
Words matter, but they often have different meanings to different people. Listen to your client and let their vocabulary guide you.
I also want to contrast this “not good enough” story with my session with the Chief of Police – the former is an example of a client actually holding up her end of the bargain, not leaving me in the dark playing guessing games.
You never know where the minefields are. I spoke with a client in her late twenties about her 11th house Neptune, emphasizing an ever-increasing need for some kind of inner practice and the benefits to her of some manner of sangha. As always, I mentioned that if we don’t get something right, we’ll surely get it wrong. I told her that her Neptune, if she didn’t take care of it, could trigger a pattern of escapism later in life, or perhaps even something “spacey” – something that might resemble dementia.
She immediately burst into tears. Turns out her father had just been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and she was terrified it might happen to her. Boom! There’s me, stepping on a psychological landmine. They are always there, but you never know exactly where. The client and I worked through it, and all in all, I think it was a good experience for her – but you’ve got to be ready for anything. People don’t have a list of their emotional triggers tattooed to their foreheads. As astrologers, we are always feeling our way through the darkness. We have to accept that. Your ace in the hole is that everything in astrology has a higher purpose and can be gotten right. With that client whose dad had dementia, I underscored that I didn’t “see dementia in her chart” – it was not that simple. What I saw was that dementia was one possibility if she didn’t aim that Neptune toward the higher ground. And she could! So I reinforced the higher meaning of the configuration, and her path to realizing it.

 

The take-away: empowerment in the face of truth – that’s our Holy Grail. We never shy away from the truth, but we never forget that everything has a purpose and that no one has a chart that they are inherently doomed to get wrong.

 
A very Piscean/Neptunian gentleman came to me. I immediately began speaking of spirituality, psychic phenomena, and so on. He cut me off, professing atheism and his belief that death was strictly “lights out.” That practically stopped me in my tracks. Then, to my dismay, I noticed an active 5th house in his chart – and I immediately wondered if he was wasting all that Neptunian energy on sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. In a last ditch effort to save the day, I brought up creativity. And he lit up. So did I – and I realized that, for him, creativity was his spiritual path. Neptune basically boils down to some kind of “trance work” in which we establish conscious contact with the larger self. Mystics do that, but so do artists – where does their inspiration come from? This Piscean fellow is the one who taught me that principle – he did, or maybe angels whispered it in my ear to save me from another “bad moment with a client.”
 

The take-away: don’t lock yourself in a cage of verbal concepts. Try to find the language that works for your client. Creativity can be a path of inner work. So can dream work. In the same vein, love doesn’t have to be sexual or romantic – never forget friendship when you are speaking to a client in the Venus tribe. Capricorn’s “Great Work” does not always need to take the form of a career.

 
Maybe at some point in the past you came to a painful realization about your family. Maybe you had a past-life recollection that left you shaking. These are common enough psychological experiences. Why do they happen when they do? Astrologically, we know that there will likely be some Plutonian correlation for them – but what does that mean in plain English? Here’s the answer: that you were ready. It was time. You were strong enough. There’s a corollary – a year before, you were not ready. Before today, your psyche was committed to defending you against that information, and that was for your own good. When a client reacts defensively or seems to grow numb or unreactive, you may very well have hit upon something he or she is just not ready to deal with.
 

The take-away: when you see those “boundaried” verbal or body-language signals, don’t press the point. Just move on. Always remember what Uncle Hippocrates suggested: first do no harm.

 
Once I was invited to speak over a weekend to the Fellows in Andrew Weil’s Integrative Medicine program at the University of Arizona, Tucson. There were maybe fifteen people in the group, all of them already MDs, all wide-open spiritually and every one of them brilliant. I was doing little mini-readings for them, going around the table, trying to give them each a quick personal taste of what evolutionary astrology could do. There were plenty of “oohs and ahhs” and I heard  “that’s amazing” a few times – except for one poor woman, who kept shaking her head and saying. “No, I’m sorry, that’s not really me at all.” She was wonderful – I could tell it was hurting her not to be more agreeable, but she wasn’t going to lie to us: what I was saying about her simply was not meaningful to her. Obviously it was awkward for me – a classic  “bad client moment,” for sure. All I could do was apologize and move on to the next person, and the next, and the next. All of those readings went well. At the end of Day One, I had batted 14 for 15 – not too shabby.
The next morning as we gathered again, the woman piped up right away. Her words were among the sweetest ones I’ve ever heard. She said, “I’m so sorry about this, but I just spoke with my mother last night. It turns out that she gave me the wrong time of birth. My chart was wrong.”Sitting with a group of scientists, this was the best conceivable news. What they all saw – and what is the truth of the matter – was that if you give me good data, evolutionary astrology triumphs. But if you give me bad data, it fails. Garbage in, garbage out. Quod erat demonstrandum. From a scientific perspective, this one failure was a gift from the gods.
 

The take-away: if you are having a bad moment with a client, always consider the possibility that you have been given erroneous birth data.

 
When I was seventeen and getting interested in astrology, I asked my mother what time I had been born. She told me “6:15 in the morning.” I was actually born at 3:22 AM – but I weighed six pounds fifteen ounces. If I had known more about our craft back then, I would have felt that astrology was bogus – that it was failing me utterly. Me? Sagittarius rising and a massive first house? Forget about it. Again I would have given up on it. Angels used my own ignorance to protect me. 
Never forget: inaccurate birth information is our Achilles’ Heel. It’ll give you a “bad moment” every time. And that will not be because you are a bad astrologer. This is sort of a delicate point, but it is an important one. If a session is not going well, there are many possible reasons for that. One of them is that you were given the wrong time of birth. But of course another is that you just aren’t doing a very good job. Then there is the possibility of defensive issues in the client – basically all the things we’ve been exploring in this newsletter.

 

The take-away: when you are having a bad moment with a client, don’t be too quick to blame yourself for it. There may be something else going on. Stay neutral and run through the check list. And above all, trust the symbols.

 
Steven Forrest
July 2022