Introductory Post

This is my first posting to the blog site Astrology Forwards and will hopefully give a preview to my concerns about astrology, how it stands today, and where it is headed.


I first began studying astrology at the age of 17 and a few years later went on to complete basic and diploma studies.  It is easy to assume that having read a few books and even attaining a diploma that one knows all there is to know.   Not so.


Astrology is a subject that to me can only be learned through observation.  You can be instructed in calculation, theory and application but the real knowledge comes from within despite how many classes you attend, books read or courses taken.  It was my experience that I learned far more about astrology when I departed from my traditional education and started to look closely at what was happening in my life and how this correlated to specific "measurements".  My bibles are and continue to remain  Ebertin Reinhold's Combination of Stellar Influences and Horoscope Symbols by Robert Hand.  These still assume an important presence on my bookshelf.


It was in my late 20s, post formal training, that I discovered just how limiting in scope traditional Western astrology is.  This view was further reinforced when I came across the writings of Eleanora Kimmel in Cosmobiology for the 21st Century which to my mind is not only an excellent work on midpoint theory and application, but also sets out in its first chapter the extent to which the conventionally accepted methods which underpin astrology are based upon unproven theories - namely the tropical zodiac, rulerships, house division etc.


Despite this I am not one to completely throw the baby out with the bath water.  For one I concede that there is a basis for having a tropical zodiac and a system of 12 houses.  On the latter subject I am concerned that astrologers have not reached a consensus over the house division question and that perhaps the influence of houses, as they are popularly understood, has been overstated.  I hope to write more about this in future postings.