I must be a very ‘fun’ and personable Astrologer because my clients call me all hours of the day and night, often to tell me of a dream they had, or about a big night out, dancing and drinking with a same-sex (girlfriend), or a more serious date with their boyfriend! Often they give me feedback on things I’ve told them. (I must remind you, 90% of my clients are females. This kind of continuing attention does not happen quite so often with a male, but with women, I expect these ‘call backs’!) It’s how I work, and rightly so! That’s the way I work my magic, by carrying the energy and insights of the Reading forward into the future, and causing people to think and ponder… leading to more questions, further Readings, more passionate consideration of the client’s life, past, loves, work, stability, and future potential.
I find that if I stay very professional, that is, distant…. aloof… I don’t have as good an effect on the situation (or the client!) as when I’m chummy & cheerful, joking and kiddin’ around. The client almost always gains if I stay “in the picture” and give ’em continued feedback and encouragement, and act as a sounding board. THAT’s what distinguishes me from the rest, what distinguishes astrology from the typically icier and more clinical field of psychiatry, and makes me & my Readings to get taken more “to heart”, and thus become permanently effective. A psychiatrist is a doctor, a qualified, certificated M.D. He or she can do “talk therapy” of whatever Freudian or Jungian or other system he or she practices, (there is lots of leeway in that field!), or prescribe drugs. I sure as heck can’t do the latter, nor would I want to. The drug can mask or alleviate the symptom, or quell the pain or the trauma, but the talk therapy which is astrology the way I practice is, may actually do some long-term good for the person. Not that I’m putting myself up on the same platform as a physician or psychiatrist/psychologist, no,, not by any means! But I know my results are good from conversations I’ve had with clients who are psychiatrists. They get the following basic results from ongoing psychiatric analysis of a period of years. 10% of clients get better. 10% of clients get worse. About 80% stay the same. But that’s just ONE KIND of “Talk therapy”. There ARE others… and their results depend on the system that’s behind it. Not all Talk Therapy is the same. More about that — in a bit!
Of course, with some people I can be personable, cheerful, and kid them around… but, with some others, no! And THAT, TOO, is almost wholly astrological! I can almost always tell how uptight and serious, or playful and open-minded, a person is, once I see their natal chart! It sure is a big help to know how best to proceed with someone!
Here is one of the most important of all effects that having an Astrological reading with me will bring about: Unburdening oneself of childhood issues & problems regarding siblings, parents & other relatives and their friends & associates, and anyone else in their childhood lives. This kind of unburdening is a tremendously noteworthy accomplishment. Not everyone can do it! I’m glad to be an ‘enabler’ who can help bring this unburdening about, since it almost always has profoundly good effects in the client’s life.
Some people, even very successful people, have become emotionally constipated and/or intentionally or unintentionally forgetful and/or repressive about their lifetime of adventures and sorrows. They could suffer in secret for decades, prisoners of bad relationships they build now which keep them dealing with the problems of their own childhoods… or they can spill their guts to a counselor or psychic… I feel an Astrologer like me is a good person to talk to and get some feedback from, in this kind of situation.
Saw Her Own Mother Stabbed To Death!
Sometimes the event we distinctly think of as traumatic, truly WAS awful and horrifying. One of my clients saw her own mother stabbed to death, when she herself was a child more than 10 years ago. She now lives with the terror of knowing that the killer will one day soon be paroled. She has every reason to suspect that obsessed killer can’t wait to get out of prison and come back to do the same thing to her, because, in the crazy way of the mentally defective killer, he blames the child for his murder of the child’s mother. Now, THAT is a legitimate concern about an event that is on-going, that never goes away, and which is causing an unacceptable level of fear and terror for the now grown-up child to have to live with!
Even in this situation, Astrology can be a helpful antidote to terror because I could plainly see the woman’s main problem is the city and state she is living in. If she, the woman in the predicament, could just bring herself to escape the place where all those terrible things happened, long years ago, she could literally, absolutely, start a “new life”. All she needs to do is disconnect from the hatred, pain, and anticipation of a “show-down”. If she can! It ain’t gonna be easy, because THAT VERY TOWN is the biggest thing standing in her way.
Unfortunately, many people are so stuck, embedded in their own town, so to speak, that they cannot possibly even consider moving somewhere else — even when I assure them that indications show putting distance between them and the scenes of their childhood traumas will be extremely helpful, in more ways than one. For one thing, the released killer would have a much harder time finding the girl if she was living three or four states distance from the scene of the childhood crime. For another, the “vibes” are different in different cities and states. If she was just 300 to 500 miles east or west of her present whereabouts, she could start a new life. Living where she is, she is just about guaranteeing herself an eventual “replay” of that primal scene from childhood which scarred her for life.
She claims to be “ready for him” with a loaded gun. But wouldn’t being able to start living and start forgetting be better than thinking about “kill or be killed?” and expecting, nay, living for, a “show-down?” What if her gum jams? What if she hesitates to fire, or fires a moment too soon? I am still trying to get her to move away from there. At some point I may be able to tell you more.
Some “Traumas” Are Maturation Moments
THAT story was a legitimate trauma, but sometimes some event or series of events which we’ve been thinking was traumatic, was actually a liberating experience that facilitated maturity. Sometimes sexualization, or the lack of it, can SEEM like a trauma — but that’s all it is, a perception, and at times, a false perception — a false or exaggerated memory. It is well known now that children who are asked repeatedly about “what happened? What did he or she do to you?” are traumatized by that very questioning and come up with outrageous and unbelievable answers like “they took us to a graveyard where they chopped-up babies.” We remember being slapped or spanked by our parents and forget the event that happened to cause it wasn’t really so bad at all, in fact, we might have enjoyed it. But the abuse at the hands of our parents enrages us and often we react by hating them, or by hating ourselves, or, since our parents are bigger than we are, finding our own victims, thus starting a series of traumatic events in other people’s lives, as well. There is a case of the Monster of the Andes, Pedro Alonzo Lopez, who was thrown out of the house at the age of eight because his prostitute mother caught him touching his sister’s breasts. Living on the street from that tender age, he was continually abused. If the story is to be believed, Lopez “got even” with females (and his mother), by killing upwards of 300 children, most all of the females, in 3 countries. That shows what awful things can happen when parents over-punish, over-control their children, and/or, toss them away, give them away, as unwanted trash.
But it is often our enjoyment of what adults did not approve of, that causes us to be slapped or spanked, but the repressive response by parents or other authority figures never really stopped us from enjoying what we were doing, did it? Let us say it is masturbation, or messing around with our brother or sister. Did a mere slap or a spanking stop us masturbating, in the long run, or wanting the thrill of being with that impossible, improbable, incestuous, illegitimate, lover?
It is different in different families, and this will also show in a good natal chart and progressions over the natal chart, but through years of being forced to go to church and school, and enduring our parents, we may have come to hate ourselves for seemingly being different or being “wicked” for wanting that which our ministers, our teachers, our parents, and others, didn’t want us to do or to have. They may well have taken away the cache of magazines we’d hidden under the bed, or taken & read our childhood diaries, and found them tainted with sin and corruption. These authority figures may have snatched away our childhood pleasures and replaced them with so many “Do’s” and “Dont’s” and behavior modifiers that the young person couldn’t see straight and ended up cold, hateful, prejudiced, withdrawn, or otherwise messed-up, and having little chance of being an “adult” until the past events can come out in the open and be dissolved like Alka Seltzer in a tall glass of water.
Totally in the Dark About Her Childhood!
Another client was born with Mercury opposite Saturn, and we both agreed this was an excellent symbol for the fact she could not remember a thing that happened to her prior to her high school years. An intelligent, successful, well-married woman, she was totally in-the-dark about her entire childhood! I made her ponder this fact more & more, until she took my advice and began talking to her siblings about their own memories of her childhood. What she learned made her hair stand on end! She had been used her father and two older brothers as the receptacle of their lust for years. The other siblings could not save her — they were lucky if they could save themselves! This vast expose’ of this traumatized childhood came back slowly over a period of months, but it gave my client a new focus in life, and a new understanding about the weird adult relationships she’d formed or fallen into. It was not a smooth process, but it was very effective. I ‘charted’ the principle parties and did comparison charts with her own chart, and the more we talked, the more she understood about her life that had been outlined “in the stars”, starting with the “clouding of the mind” which Mercury opposite Saturn often creates.
Time-Tested Methods of Disclosing One’s Secrets
There is an accepted theory that disclosing one’s secrets, especially those of one’s youth, will make a person breathe a sigh of relief. Talking is part of it; listening is the other. This is what I’ve learned to do — talk AND listen! This idea of therapy through talking about one’s life until various problems come to light can be easily seen in the following:
* Confessionals in Catholic churches, as priests listen obligingly to one’s secrets. The parishioner is talking; the priest is listening. The “Hail Marys” penitence is largely symbolic. The relief is in the telling to someone perceived as wise and authoritative. It would be even more of a satisfying experience if the priest could join-in and tell stories of his own; then the poor “sinner” wouldn’t feel so bad or so alone! No, wait! We’ll have to think about that… maybe that’s NOT such a good idea! After all, the priest is God’s. He is not even a man. His own life experiences are as nothing in relation to the role he performs, the symbol he is, in God’s community.
* Psychiatrist’s couches, where a patient tells whatever’s on his or her mind to the doctor, who sits and takes notes. What is amazing is that simply unburdening oneself would ever be thought of as a goal in itself. The professional analyst listens and takes notes but rarely says anything, and NEVER begins talking about himself! The success rate for this kind of “talk therapy” is about 10%, and another 10% actually get WORSE because of it, so the value of just talking without getting valuable feedback from the therapist seems nearly pointless. Can a person who only sits and takes notes and offers very little in the way of suggestions or sympathy can even be CALLED a “therapist?” In what way is he or she performing therapy?
* Intimate discussion groups focusing on the problems in the lives of each and everyone who attends the group, are often quite successful, and based at least partly on this unburdening, but there is also a strong component of empathy that potentially develops, as the participants each take turns listening to others who have had similar (or diverse) problems in their own lives. The participants sometimes take the role of therapists, and go even beyond what a therapist would ever do, by questioning, commenting, and judging. The comments and judgement are sometimes not the best therapy, however, and can embitter and/or confuse the person who opened their mind and heart to the group. I’m not sure group therapy like that really works, not nearly as well as my alternative practice does.
Those are all types of “TALK THERAPY”. This needed, healthy unburdening can be facilitated through any or all of these various methods, but one of the best is when these issues and people that have caused pain and confusion, come up during a personal, private Astrology consultation with an eloquent, intuitive, sensitive, experienced and compassionate Astrologer such as myself. (If I do say so, myself!)
Talk about childhood issues? Hey, I love to do that, myself!
Did you have problems with siblings? I sure did!
Were you traumatized? I was very much traumatized myself.
Were you haunted? I was victim of a stunning poltergeist phenomenon!
Were you lonely? I was stunningly, hauntingly, lonely. I got to see kids through a window for a couple of years, unable to leave the house to play.
Were you sexually traumatized or (as they say) “sexualized?” YES, and… yes!
I’ve discovered that injecting some stories from my own childhood very often makes my client feel much more at ease, and the sharing of the stories, back and forth with the client, (if the client is up for that!), helps bring about the results we are seeking… understanding, comprehension of “Hey, I’m NOT alone!” …followed by … healing! Discussing and mulling over the incidents of childhood and youth and their long-term effects on us is followed, usually within days or weeks, by opening a window to the sun and letting in the fresh air! Such is very, very possible with an in-depth series of Astrology consultations and semi-social follow-ups between client and Astrologer! Please see my “Astrology & Metaphysics For You” page (just click onto it — at the ‘tab’ on top of this page), for further details about how to have a session with me. Best, —-Ed Augusts
