2008 March : Big Sky AstroBlog

Mar

23

Relationship astrologer Elizabeth Hathway recently interviewed me about wedding astrology for her blog. She’s running the interview in installments over the next few days in Dutch, and with her permission I’m offering it here for English language readers. You can read the first installment here.

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Elizabeth: Could you tell us a little bit about the work you do with couples. How involved do you get with the wedding procedure and what sort of customers come to you for this service? Are they just regular people or are they also astrologers?

April: Almost all my wedding electional clients have some knowledge of astrology, probably because those are the only people who realize that choosing a wedding date with astrology is even an option! I would say most of my clients fall in the beginning-to-intermediate range in terms of their astrological knowledge, though a number of advanced and professional clients come to me to get an objective recommendation. Both kinds of clients present unique challenges. It can be tricky to explain to people who are not terribly advanced in astrology why, for instance, a Thursday afternoon in April might be so much better astrologically than the Saturday evening in June that they had their hearts set on. But advanced clients tend to have their own astrological preferences and find it difficult to surrender to another astrologer’s way of doing things!

I ask all my clients to fill out a questionnaire that helps them tell me about the relationship, what they see as their trouble spots and what they’d like to accentuate in the marriage. If they want lots of kids, I’m not going to place a lot of hard planets in the fifth house of the wedding chart! I also ask them to define the range of dates I can choose from, days of the week when they will consider holding their ceremony, and times of day they will consider. I look at every single date that qualifies and choose the best three dates available. Then I write up a full report that describes the energy of those dates and what they accentuate/reflect in the natal/composite charts.

Elizabeth: Finally, do you have any future plans for more books? If so… what will your next topic be?

April: I’ve spent the past ten years cranking out 1,000 word essays, so writing a book was a bit like running a marathon when I’d only trained as a sprinter! I have enjoyed the process of writing and promoting the book, but it’s also incredibly time-consuming and like most working astrologers, I’m always trying to find a way to squeeze a few more minutes out of each day as it is. That said, there are a couple of books I’d love to write. One would be a book about eclipses, which are my other astrological passion. Another would be a collection of personal essays about astrology and the seasons. That’s the kind of writing that I think I do best so that’s a book I’d love to write!

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March 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Mar

21

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Elizabeth: Do you also use the traditional relating techniques, i.e. the composite chart and chart synastry? If so, how do you incorporate the information obtained from them with the marriage chart?

April: In working with wedding dates, I rely primarily on electional astrology techniques but also refer to the natal and especially the composite (derived houses) charts. My objective is to choose a date for the wedding that is astrologically sound and can stand alone, apart from the natal charts. It’s like building a house; there are certain structural requirements, rules that need to be followed, before you start taking individual needs and tastes into account. I work from a long list of “structural requirements” based on astrological tradition and personal research. I make sure the Moon is approaching a harmonious aspect to the Sun and that its last aspect in its sign is a nice one; that Venus is direct in motion and as strong as possible by sign and aspect. That kind of thing.

Now, finding a date that stands alone as a strong and harmonious chart dramatically narrows the field of available dates. If it happens that a few dates are about equally strong, I then turn to the natal and composite charts as a “tie-breaker.” Let’s say a date is generally very good, but the Sun is approaching a conjunction with Uranus. Scary… but it might actually work really well for a couple who have strong Sun/Uranus aspects in the natal or composite charts. I also take the natal and composite charts into consideration in the timing of the chart where to place certain high-tension planets, for instance. But I don’t do a point by point synastry comparison between the birth charts and wedding dates - it simply isn’t practical to find a date that is astrologically sound AND matches up with the birth charts point by point.

Elizabeth: If you had to make a comparison between the traditional techniques and the marriage chart, how well would the latter fare? In other words how important do you view the marriage chart within the whole scale of available tools?

April: Well, it’s worth pointing out that synastry and composite charts appear to be relatively modern astrological techniques, and that no astrological concept is more traditional than the idea that the chart for the beginning of a marriage - or any other event - describes the nature of that event. As the saying goes, “Anything born of a moment in time has the qualities of that moment in time.” So it seems obvious that the chart for the wedding moment would have a lot to tell us about the resulting marriage.

What distinguishes marriage from any other kind of romantic union is that it’s a pact not just between two people, but between those two people and the society in which they live. I believe the marriage chart describes this larger dimension of the relationship in a way synastry or a composite chart simply can’t. You might have great synastry with George Clooney, but until you (1) meet one another and (2) conform with your society’s requirements for legal marriage, that pact between the two of you and society simply doesn’t exist.

Putting all that aside, I’m going to offer an answer that may sound awfully convenient… but the truth is, the marriage chart always seems to reveal pretty much the same fundamental truths about the relationship that are revealed through synastry or the composite chart. I don’t know why this is the case. I suppose it’s because there’s usually only a brief window of time in which people are willing to marry, usually within a year or so; and naturally enough, the major planetary themes of that period, reflected in the marriage chart, also resonate as transits to the birth charts. And you expect to see strong transits to the birth chart when a person is going to do something as important as getting married!

I don’t think anyone needs to choose their wedding date with astrology. But I do believe it’s a good idea to do so, because it can help you align your purpose as a couple with the zeitgeist, the tone of the times. Plus, I truly believe that a marriage is a sort of entity with a personality all its own, similar to the way we read the composite chart as describing the relationship “entity” created by two people. So why not choose a marriage with a nice personality - and hopefully one that brings out the best of who you are as a couple, and not the worst? Choosing your wedding date with astrology won’t make your problems go away, but it ideally provides a harmonious environment in which to work through them.

Continued here.

March 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Mar

14

Venus (goddess of property) is getting ready to oppose Saturn (god of getting way in over one’s head) tomorrow, and I’ve fallen dangerously in love with a house - a surprisingly affordable 1929 bungalow in a great part of town. It’s a bit of a mess (because that’s what I love in a house… Venus in the 8th?) but has original built-ins (swoon) and the street is beautiful. Best of all, Jonny could bike to the shuttle stop, saving me an hour of commuting each day.

Selling our place in this market, though, would be a complete pain - and there’s no garage, which is a huge downer. So I need an intervention here, folks - talk me out of it!

How’s Venus/Saturn playing out for you? Contemplating financial quandaries? Brutally rebuffed by the objects of your affection? Spill it!

March 14, 2008 | 6 Comments

Mar

7

goldfish New Moon greetings to you all (9:14 am PST) - here’s a little something from my archives to mark the occasion. And don’t forget to set your clocks forward before you go to bed Saturday night. Daylight Savings Time… the “springing forward,” she is so very cruel.

I’ve launched a site just for book stuff, so anyone who is interested in that can bookmark it. I’ll be posting reviews, events, and astrowedding-related articles over there.

I’m also stealthily developing a wedding astrology website that’s not just about pimping the book - so look for that by June at weddingastrology.com. For now, that URL just redirects to Big Sky.

March 7, 2008 | 5 Comments

keep looking »

Sign of Leo

Moon sextiles Mercury at
4:20 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon opposes Neptune at
5:22 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon trines Pluto at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon goes void of course at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon enters Virgo at
4:04 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon conjuncts Mars at
9:19 am on Jul.6, 2008