When interperating Charts...

[AussiePagan]

How much does your own intuition come into things.

Does chart interperation involve scientifically looking at the characteristics of the chart and drawing conclusions from it ? Or is it more for show to allow your own magical/psyic/whatever abilities to kick in ?

[Fluffmeister]

How much does your own intuition come into things.

Does chart interperation involve scientifically looking at the characteristics of the chart and drawing conclusions from it ? Or is it more for show to allow your own magical/psyic/whatever abilities to kick in ?

It's a bit of both, really. For example, I've got Pluto opposite my Venus in the 7th house. Venus is about love, values, relationships, passion. Pluto is about control, secrecy, power, lust, obsession, manipulation, transformation. The 7th house is about relationships, marriage, business partnerships and the need to interact with others.

So I can build lots of potential "sentences" out of these key words. However, there's an awful lot of things I *can't* make from these key words - so if someone claimed to be an "intuitive" astrologer who by meditating on my chart felt that this combination meant that I had career difficulties due to communication problems, I'd be highly sceptical; that placement doesn't talk of career or communication. There are other planets and houses that do that.

So the analysis bit involves decided what key concepts can be used. However, now I have free rein because I can come up with lots of sentences that *do* use these key words. Here's just a few:

"You engage in powerful business partnerships"
"You are passionate in your desire to transform the world by working with others"
"You are manipulative in your marriage"
"You would make a great counsellor by having the ability to transform the way people relate"
"You're a control freak and your partners are scared of you"
"You're a sexual compulsive with some dark secret fantasies"

Now, you can probably see the themes in all of these statements - the power/transformation of Pluto, the partnership/marriage/other people link of the 7th house, and the passion/partners element of Venus. However, not all of the above statements are true (and no, I'm not telling you which ones are!).

This is where the intuition can come into play - if you have a client with this combination, how do you know how it will play out? Partially this will be down to other parts of the chart - if he has lots of planets that are strong in career areas, it may play out as transforming business partnerships, whereas a lot of planets in other parts of the chart may suggest the sexual obsessive instead. Sometimes a particular "transit" (what the planets in the sky are doing right now in relation to your chart) will trigger something - so someone who is a powerful businessperson generally may go through a phase of being sexually obsessed - and this is the same configuration playing out but in a different way.

It's why it's so difficult to look at a chart and distinguish between the "good" and the "bad". The aspects in a chart set out the ground rules, but it's up to us how we play the game. For instance, Adolf Hitler, feminist reformer Annie Besant and musician Kurt Cobain all had a Uranus/Mercury opposition on the Ascendant/Descendant axis - "getting your radical message out to the people" would be a good key phrase for this. However, all three played this Uranus/Mercury out in very different ways - Hitler by initiating hatred and violence, Besant by radical campaigning and Cobain with his "primal scream" music.

[KEishin]

Fluff as usual said it very well. :)

For me personally, I start my focus on the "scientific" stuff, as you call it and look for patterns and common themes. But I use those patterns as a framework for interpretation. Not everyone expresses the same aspect or planet placement the same way so I do a lot of feeling out of the chart to see how I would feel if I had that chart instead of my own.

[business voodoo]

i definitely agree with fluff & keishin ... i also look for clues in the charts to help me understand 'why me' ... why am i to help someone interpret their chart, because in doing any chart, i am working on a part of myself as well (most often completely unrelated to the person who's chart i'm looking at); so i look to why the universe has brought us together. i also look for numerical references and geometric patterns that resonate with myself and/or recent areas of study.

i also look for 'shifts' of patterns, especially if the chart comes with a question or even a comment that gets some intuitive 'bells' to start chiming, and then i get out of the way and let the 'knowledge' write itself out.

for detailed reports of depth, i like to let the knowledge breath and revisit it often at different times of the day/night for the moving energy of the sun/moon to hit the chart and make adjustments and amplifications. with long term discussions, looking at chart move to inter- or multi-dimensional discussions and become as transit and energy detailed as if looking at my own with the new moon being a very busy time for questions and clarifications.