Do astrologers actually believe what they preach?

Great Debates
241

[QUOTE=elucidator]
You mean, is it a sincere practice, or just the scam of a cold and callous crook? Is that what your insinuation is about? Mighty dumb question, if that’s it. 'Cause if I’m a liar, I would be telling you I’m sincere. If I’m sincere, I’m going to tell you I’m sincere.

Oh, wait, I’m getting a reading! That twitch in your eyelid…yeah, that one!.. that tells me that you can’t answer the question because you don’t know, and you don’t want to admit it. So you’re covering it up by changing the subject.

How’d I do? Probably not very good at it, never tried it before.
[/QUOTE]

  1. It was an honest question directly pertaining to the OP
  2. I’ve already said that you can declare yourself the “winner” of whatever game you’re playing. This thread isn’t about you, and neither was my last post.
242

Great! Now that you got plenty of time, feel lke anwering the question? You know, that all those vague phrases which illustrate the point, he got those from “horoscopes”?

Now, in the spirit of generosity, I’ll answer yours.

What I know about the “cold read” is that it is a specialized and highly trained skill, it requires the intentional misuse of empathy. People skilled at it generally are not very nice people, “conscience” is not part of their vocabulary. But with a skill like that, why waste time doing horoscopes, when you could sell software, used cars, or deities?

The reading is dependent on the chart.

I’ll tell you a little story, to illustrate. Woman came to see me, her chart was a gift from a friend. She wasn’t cold to the idea, but it wasn’t really her idea, she had no investment. So I start in talking about what the chart says about her, and its all complete miss, nothing, zilch, nada. Perplexing, embarassing and really a drag. So finally I asked if this was her real birthdate. She was in the habit of telling people that she was three years younger than she was!

“Is that important”? she asked. Yeah. It is. Oh, boy. After that, I made a point of getting people to confirm their birth data, after assuring them of its importance and my ah, discretion. Because that was the longest twenty minutes I ever spent outside of a dentist’s chair.

243

Also pertaining to the OP(I think)-Of the studies shown in this thread and other websites that involved self-described astrologers, most of them describe the astrologers as being very sure that they will be successful, and very surprised when the end result was that they were not. Are there any followup studies on said astrologers, to see if they continued as the tests never happened, changed their methods, or quit astrology altogether?

244

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
That is the specific reason I asked for a proper astrological reading-to see for myself if it resembled what Professor Forer showed his students. I would like to see how an astrological reading differs from cold reading.
[/QUOTE]
A “proper reading” will run to many pages. That’s why copying and pasting here isn’t really useful.

There are always going to be contradictions in any chart, because that’s the kind of critters we are. The symbols stand for contradictory things and have contradictory expressions. Everybody’s got Neptune and everybody’s got Saturn, and Neptune will always stand for the vague, the watery, the unstable, and Saturn will stand for the structured, the bounded, the committed. It’s up to you to work out how and where you express or experience those qualities. But no reading should consist solely of one Forer-type statement after another. If there is a contradiction, it should be indicated by something in the chart, not be a hedge against “misses.”

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Does astrology add something to a reading that is not there if the astrologer merely uses their own intellect and knowledge of human behavior to read the subject? Does it contribute additional knowledge, or is it a focus or tool used to filter already acquired knowledge?
[/QUOTE]
I would say that astrology adds structure which, yes, helps to focus thinking. I’m not sure what you mean by “already acquired knowledge.” By whom? The querent or the reader? Sometimes, we know things we don’t know we know. It’s looking at them from a different angle or in a different context that makes us realize the truth. What do you mean by “additional knowledge”? If it’s something like “Your spouse is cheating on you!” or “You appear to be a mild-mannered reporter, but you’re really Superman!” I’d say no. I agree with elucidator that prediction is Right Out (unless you go for vague generalities based on developmental cycles). I hasten to remind you that this is a dabbler’s take on things and I am not the Last Word in Astrology by any means.

245

[QUOTE=SparrowHawk]
A “proper reading” will run to many pages. That’s why copying and pasting here isn’t really useful.
[/QUOTE]

Could you possibly link to a site that has an example?

246

You know, Czar, if you really want to know you could pretty much do it yourself, at least get a rough outline. There are sites that calculate charts, there probably one that has the standard syllabus for Mars in Aries, Venus in Cancer, that sort of thing. I don’t know that to be true, since I dont need it, but its likely. Would be real rough, but it ought to give you a good enough notion.

Or you could pony up the $10,000 fee for a good professional reading. Not that it costs that much, but anyone who takes on a client as hostile and contemptuous as you’re likely to be deserves it.

247

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Could you possibly link to a site that has an example?
[/QUOTE]
Nope, sorry. A “proper reading” costs. Either your time or your money. Unless you find a generous benefactor willing to do one for free.

248

[QUOTE=SparrowHawk]
Nope, sorry. A “proper reading” costs money. Unless you find a generous benefactor willing to do one for free.
[/QUOTE]
There’s not one proper reading online we can examine as an example?

249

On the one hand, my wife can write your chart in her head, using her knowledge of Astral Events (yes, some people have the Motion of the Spheres memorized and some very smart people can move it forwards and back 50+ years). On the other hand, she thinks Astology is bullshit. While I am solidly a Gemini, with I forget what rising, and can describe me, a person she’s known for 30+ years, to such an extent that I think she’s known me for 30+ years. Proof of one or the other?

ETA: She is an ORION, with it in the Sun only a few minute in 1953.

250

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
There’s not one proper reading online we can examine as an example?
[/QUOTE]
How is that useful if you don’t know the person it’s been done for?

251

[QUOTE=SparrowHawk]
How is that useful if you don’t know the person it’s been done for?
[/QUOTE]

To check the wording. To see how specific it is. To see how general it is. To see how much of what it contains could pertain to the public at large.
To actually see one instead of just hearing about one in general terms.

All of the above.

252

I guess I’m not the person to ask for that, then, since I conceive of it as a dialog or, if self-inflicted, you would have to do a lot of study to know what you were looking at. Sorry.

253

[QUOTE=dropzone]
…She is an ORION, with it in the Sun only a few minute in 1953.
[/QUOTE]

When she meets a Taurus, does she have an overpowering urge to hit them with a stick?

254

Can anyone else give a link to what they consider to be a proper astrological reading, so that we may examine it for the purposes outlined in post #251? It would help to see firsthand what the differences are between a good example and a bad one.

255

You have three hairs on the big toe of your left foot, and a morbid fear of tadpoles. You are prone to change the subject to evade questons you can’t answer. Neptune in Gemini in the 11th house: both of your friends are drug addicts. You find these readings to be very vague, general and non-specific…

256

You see, it very hard to accept that the sun-sign type of astrology isn’t the real thing and that other types are, if you’ve got nothing to compare the sun-sign astrology to. It may very well be that other types of astrology are more valid, but without a proper example all we’ve got are the unsubstantiated testimonies of the practitioners.

257

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Can anyone else give a link to what they consider to be a proper astrological reading, so that we may examine it for the purposes outlined in post #251? It would help to see firsthand what the differences are between a good example and a bad one.
[/QUOTE]
I did yet more googling and found this website which purports to give accurate astrology natal/birth charts (free, no registration required). I don’t know how accurate elucidator et al would find this website to be, but I figured I might as well try it out so that we have a sample chart to look at and see how it’s phrased.

I plugged my name, gender, exact date of birth (to the minute) and city of birth into the website. I copied the record into a Google Doc and published it here (after deleting my name/DOB/etc… from the report).

I found the some of the statements are accurate, some are completely inaccurate, and many are vague. I found many parts to be very Forer-esque, with statements that could be interpreted to fit almost anyone.

Some examples of vague/contradictory statements included (my notes in italics):

I found it particularly amusing that it predicts that I’m a deeply spiritual person who’s into metaphysics and “presumes everyone must be spiritually inclined”:

258

Are you kidding me? You don’t even know* that* much about it?

Sun sign astrology is not a different form of astrology, its the term used for the sort of drivel you see in the daily paper, and in the godforsaken paperback crap you buy in an airport gift shop. It is the lowest of low. It is frequently titled as a form of “horoscope”, it is nothing of the sort. It is the sign that the sun occupies, hence, one is a Taurus, a Gemini, a Cancer, and so forth. (Other astrologers start with Aries, but they are too belligerant, so I’ve decided to ignore them.)

An actual “horoscope” is a “snapshot” of the configuration of the major planets (with Sun and moon defined as “planets”). It considers their placement relative to a given sign (Mercury in Taurus, the mind is solid and practical, in Gemini, quick and verbal…etc.) It also compares angular relationships, a square (90 degrees) relationship is vexing and unstable, a trine (120 degrees) is easy and stable. So, in a previous example: a Mercury in Gemini square to Mars would be quck, verbal, but prone to ill-temper, sharp-tongued, acerbic. If this Mercury placement is in the 6th house, the house of employment, you’ve got someone who makes their living in a mental occupation, involving a lot of talking, who is likely to have difficulty on the job due to bad temper. Prone to accidents due to haste, spends more time in a hospital for injury than illness. Needs to chill, seriously, dude.

And this is just for starters. It gets pretty complicated.

Quick and dirty, that’s what a horoscope is. A “horoscope” that only considers the sun sign is too stupid to be mentioned in polite company. Of course, what Dr Forer thought a horoscope was, we know not, but await with bated breath.

259

Well, the sun sign stuff is just standard boilerplate Aries. But I’m wondering about the Neptune-Sun thing. What relationship do they describe? Did you just pick that out of a bunch, or did they just give you that one?

Makes me speculate. Clearly, they want to draw you in to spend some money, right? So they are probably not going to give you the whole ball of wax, there’s no sex in the champagne room.

They could run that one of two obvious ways: they can just answer with whatever crap suits their fancy, and depend on the Forer principle to snare a few suckers at random, which is what I’m guessing here. OR! They could use actual placements and delineations, which would increase the likelihood of scoring a hit, and it wouldn’t be any more complicated than cutting and pasting some “horoscope” from the good doctor.

Hmmm. Did they actually tell you what that relationship (Sun-Neptune) was? See, thing is, Neptune isn’t really one of the “biggies”, the relationship of the Sun to Mars, or Moon, etc. would be much more significant, and if they were angling for a hit, they would most likely use one of those. That is, if they are actually using a rudimentary astrological knowledge to construct thier sales pitch.

260

I didn’t see that you posted their interpretations. Just glancing, it seems clear that they have applied the most generous assessment for such things as a Moon opposed to Mars, and Mars conjunct Mercury. They have given the most positive spin on those, carefully eliding negative connotations. After all, you did shoot a man in Reno, just to watch him die, didn’t you?

You wanted a free horoscope, yeah, you got what you paid for, maybe a bit more. If you’re really curious, why dont you check back upthread, to that poster who was offering?