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Astrology And Prediction, Part One: Getting It (Mostly) Right

Some astrologers avoid making predictions, and others like to downplay that aspect of astrology. I don’t.

I can see why some astrologers shy away from making predictions. If you think interpreting a birth chart is complicated, then wait until you see how astrological predictions are done. And, as with any other complicated subject, even an experienced operator can make mistakes. The key to making accurate predictions is, in part, simply common sense.

Here is my blog entry about this year’s Oscars. I jokingly said I wasn’t making any predictions, because the chart for the award ceremony pointed out some very likely circumstances that night… but not particularly unusual circumstances. Mercury square Jupiter indicated a tendency to long-windedness, and some of the speeches ran over. There was also an audio issue during one acceptance speech, and Mercury square Jupiter to indicate that too. Moon trine Neptune indicated things could get political and they did (thanks to both Spike Lee and the reaction afterwards to Green Book winning Best Picture).

As I noted at the time though, these are all things that any regular Oscar watcher could have predicted without relying on astrology. Not all of these things happen every year, but at least two of them do.

Now, back to common sense. Moon trine Neptune could have indicated the theater would be flooded with knockout gas. Mercury square Jupiter could have caused a power outage. Uranus trine the Ascendant at the start of a ceremony indicates that something truly weird might happen.

This is something that every astrologer has to keep in mind when doing predictive work for a client. Imagine a patient goes to a doctor and asks why he should quit smoking. There are plenty of reasons other than simply “smoking causes heart attacks.” Smoking cause a lot of harm, but the doctor shouldn’t specifically emphasize heart attacks. That is, unless the patient already has heart difficulties, and has a family history of heart disease. This would make a smoking-related heart attack more likely than lung cancer or emphysema or any of the other things that can go medically wrong if you smoke.

Likewise, an astrologer shouldn’t look at a difficult Mars transit that’s going to last for a couple of weeks that might affect the client’s relationship and suddenly start going on and on about how the clients marriage is bound to failure next month. Unless of course that marriage is already on the ropes.

An astrologer should not automatically reach for the most dramatic outcome of any given transit, nor should an astrologer downplay any potential risks from a transit, especially when there are other indicators.

Next time, I will tell you about a Big Prediction I made that failed utterly when I lost sight of Common Sense. Well, okay… the prediction was only a partial failure. I’m not about to go beating myself up unnecessarily.