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The application of any science becomes an art. This is true of mathematics, and the mathematician can make mistakes. The mathematical machine or "brain." may not be regarded as practicing an art, but the machine is a product of Man, and it can do only what Man has provided for it to do. It has no originality, and it is in no sense a brain. It can do nothing its inventor could not do if he wanted to make the effort and had enough time, but inventors are often lazy, and that is why they invent. There is an important difference between the electronic calculator and Man. The machine has no intuition. It is fairly common for modern teachers of science to praise the discoveries of such men as Pythagoras, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton and simultaneously condemn the methods by which those discoveries were made. Man can reach out and explore abstract realms, while the machine can do this only to the extent that Man has provided. For the machine, there is a god, and that god is Man. The machine is limited to the pattern that its creator provided.
Theological writers have often pictured Man as half god and half animal. From an astrological viewpoint, that part of Man that is represented by the Water and Earth signs is the animal, while that part represented by the Fire and Air signs is the god. The machine operates automatically. That part of Man that operates automatically is the animal. That part that does not operate automatically is the god. It would appear that the ancients saw more god in the Air signs than in the Fire signs, for you will note that in no instance is an Air sign represented by an animal. Man always represents God as similar to Man. He always creates God in his own image.
Before leaving Lessons Ten to Twelve, the student should make certain that he knows the technical factors of erecting charts of the heavens. Practice and checking is going to bring perfection. If you have other students around you, you should check each other. Whenever you have doubts, you should write to us and let us do the checking.
There is one simple rule that will help you. If you have a chart drawn for 6:00 A.M., the Sun must be on the east side of that chart. If you have a chart drawn for noon, the Sun must be in the upper part of that chart. If you have a chart drawn for 6:00 P.M., the Sun must be on the west side of the chart. If you have a chart drawn for midnight, the Sun must be in the lower part of the chart.
The most common error is to draw a chart that is exactly twelve hours out of the way. Students often get A.M. and P.M. mixed up, or they use the Sidereal Time for noon as the Sidereal Time at midnight, or vice versa. When you look at such a chart, this error is immediately apparent, because the Sun will be in the opposite place from where it should be.
If you draw a chart for noon, do not expect the Sun to be exactly at the cusp of the 10th House, because in the kind of a chart we are employing, you are not looking at the chart from your birth place, but from a point at right angles to the earth's orbit. You are looking south from a celestial point of view, and not from an earthly point of view. You may be looking more to the southeast in the morning, more to the southwest in the afternoon, or vice versa, depending on the seasons from an earthly viewpoint.
As we go into the second half of this Course, we are going to deal with interpretation, which, although it is an art, can be based on certain well defined and systematic principles. We receive a good many letters from students who tell us that they can erect charts, and they ask whether they can begin the second half of the Course and skip the first half. We turn down all of these request. Some of you who have been through the first twelve lessons will know why. These students have usually learned too many things that are not so, and for us to grant their request would mean a continuation of errors and the mental confusion that would have to result.
There are some students to whom interpretation comes easily, others for whom there are obstacles, but the student who overcomes his obstacles may be the best astrologer in the end.
We do not like to interfere with a student's natural abilities of interpretation. When you reach correct conclusions by your own original methods, we are not going to interfere. If this seems logical and apparent, one should note that astronomical and mathematical writers constantly condemn such men as Pythagoras, Kepler and Newton because they made their discoveries by certain methods that proved successful, and the writers advocate methods that are often unsuccessful. If you develop original methods that prove successful, we will never quarrel with you about them. Instead we will try to learn from you.
It may be that these words should be directed more to the female of the species, because it is a fact of our own experience, that many women develop the art of interpretation more rapidly than do men. This becomes troublesome only when they cannot tell us by what method they reached their correct conclusions. Actually, this sort of thing is often due to the fact that women observe many things that men do not, a strange motion of the hand, an odd habit, etc. In our thirty years of experience with astrology, we have learned a great deal from women who were untrained observers, but who habitually and automatically observed many things that trained observers never see. The existence of this unorthodox power of observation often comes to the surface only after much in the way of painful questioning. A woman detects something the rest of us have missed. She can't explain how she detected it, because she never thought about the matter. To her, it seemed natural. Although it can be called intuitional, it is unconsciously as systematic as any other kind of thinking. The world of science just hasn't taken the trouble to examine the System. An example may help to clarify the point.
Sitting in a restaurant and watching a stranger at another table, a lady suggested that he must be born on May 19th. Startled by this assertion, the science editor of a New York paper rose, walked to the stranger, apologized for the intrusion and asked the man for his birth date. The man replied that it was May 19th.
The lady could not explain why she thought the stranger was born on May 19th but this was unsatisfactory to a science editor and others present. She was questioned at great length. Finally she named off a number of other people born on May 19th and pointed out that they all had a certain odd habit. She had noted that this stranger had the same odd habit. All this careful observation and the resultant conclusion appeared to have been something that went on in the girls unconscious realm, and until pressed by painful questioning she appeared unconscious of her own methods.
We do not condemn such methods. We do strongly suggest determining what the methods are and how they work, and this can be accomplished. After discovering that he had an ability to solve mathematical problems in his sleep and awaken with the answers, the writer could not rest until he discovered how this was done. He would try to remember further and further back into dreams that preceded the solution, and he soon realized that in his sleep he had been looking at an abstract design. Everything in mathematics is design, cosmic design, and these designs can be seen in a waking state as well as in sleep. The difficulty lies in our inability to eliminate the objective from the subjective during the waking state. The three mentioned mathematicians were so interested in the abstract world that they could blot out the objective world and see clearly into the abstract.
The schoolchild is told that Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravitation when he saw an apple fall from a tree. This is one of the tales of fairytale textbooks. Newton never claimed that gravitation was a property of matter. He described it as mathematical expression, and when other scientists of the day began describing it as an inherent characteristic of matter, he wrote to Bentley, "You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me; for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take some time to consider of it."
There are hints that Newton discovered gravitation, not as a property of matter but as a property of an abstract ellipse. The apple may have demonstrated what he already knew. Newton did not perform experiments to get the answers He first calculated the answers and then performed the experiments to verify his conclusions.
This discussion is brought forth because we want the student to be a free thinker and to learn how to use the best that his own mind has to offer. When the student begins thinking in terms of authorities, he blocks his own best mental abilities. We will teach you our own methods of interpretation, but we expect you to improve upon them wherever you can. Just as a single symbol may tell a mathematician a story that might require pages of the figures, so a single planetary configuration can tell an astrologer a story which might fill a book. No student will live long enough to digest everything that his own individual horoscope can tell him. There will always be more, for it is one of those things that goes on to infinity. You will, then, realize that no other astrologer could have the time to interpret everything that your own birth chart can tell you. You can be unfolding that for the rest of your life. It goes on and on, but the more charts of other people you study the more you will learn about yourself. This is the most important reason why we would prefer to teach you astrology instead of merely writing pages about what your own individual horoscope means. It is not our desire to make you dependent on us, but to make you independent and able to do your own thinking and your own interpreting.
Whatever natural abilities of interpretation you may have, use them to the full, but do not be content to use them without understanding them. Find out what you are doing and how you are doing it. If the work is being done down (or up) in the unconscious, find out how. Then you can call forth the ability at will without being dependent on its working on one day and not on another, although you will always have some days that are better than others.
Any planet in any sign of the zodiac has a specific meaning. Every person with a specified planet in a particular sign of the zodiac will have a certain basic characteristic. A hundred people born with that planet in that sign of the zodiac will have the same characteristic, but it will be altered, adjusted and sometimes disguised by other factors in the horoscope. The same will apply for a specific aspect between two planets, and it will apply for planets in the astrological houses. In introducing the art of interpretation, we will begin with three specific categories of information.
1--Planets in the signs of the zodiac
2--Aspects between the planets
3--Planets in the astrological houses
There are many other factors to be interpreted. This is the starting point. There are many other divisions and mathematical points to be considered. Let us simplify things by not trying to take in too much territory at one time. You can broaden your frame of reference as you go along.
It will be a great help if you become systematic, if you organize your knowledge as you go along, and in that connection we suggest some notebooks. Suppose you take one notebook and have a page for every planet in every zodiacal sign. For Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and perhaps Uranus. You will need twelve pages for each planet. Depending on your age, you may not have known people born with Uranus in all of the zodiacal signs, but you will ultimately. This will mean that you will need 96 pages to cover the above planets. The writer has known people born with Neptune in all the zodiacal signs from Aquarius around counterclockwise to Scorpio. That is ten signs. He never knew anyone born with Neptune in Sagittarius or Capricorn. We can meet such people when we study history, however, and it would be well to have a page for Neptune in all twelve signs, and the same with Pluto.
Characteristics of these slow moving planets in a particular sign have to do with all of the people born during a certain period of years. One generation thinks differently from the next generation, and consequently these qualities are not as apparent because we see nothing unusual in a generation of people all of whom have certain characteristics that exactly match our own. This seems natural until you have given the matter a great deal of study. The empire builders born during the time when Neptune was in Aries saw nothing odd about themselves but they considered their children mighty peculiar. We never understand why our children think differently than we do. We are always wondering what is wrong with the new generation instead of wondering what is wrong with ourselves. You will probably reach a time when you will see it in a new light. It will become a hundred times more interesting to you.
As this is written, Neptune is just beginning its transit of Scorpio, and if we want to know what Neptune in Scorpio means, we may want to go back and study what was going on the last time it was there --165 years ago. Scorpio represents the Family Survival Dynamic. It is the sign of sex, while Neptune represents the Social Survival Dynamic. The Social Survival Dynamic comes under the domination of the Family Survival Dynamic or sex. What happened the last time it was there? Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were born. They gave birth to Mormonism and a plurality of wives. The Mormon Church was organized on April 6th, 1830, with Mars (ruler of Scorpio) conjunct Neptune (ruler of Pisces) in the sign of Capricorn (the legal sign). On June 27th, 1844, with Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto in the pioneering sign of Aries, the Mormons were driven from Illinois by mob violence. In 1847 they established themselves in Utah. Polygamous Mormonism is still practiced in some parts of the west where official sources close their eyes to it, and it will be interesting to observe what the re-entry of Neptune in Scorpio will bring about for Mormonism. What will it do for matters pertaining to desegre- gation, where the old white South fears that desegregation will lead to greater mixing of the sexes between the two races?
This is merely an example of the kind of things that will ultimately interest you about history. Very often, you will better understand history and the people of a particular era when you see the pattern as described by the planetary conditions of the time. When you have a page entitled Venus in Aquarius, each time you come upon a birth date showing Venus in Aquarius, you will write the persons name on that page. After a while, you will have quite a number. This will enable you to see what characteristics these people have in common which are not common to other persons. You can test both theory and experience simultaneously. You will need another notebook dealing with all the possible planetary aspects, such as Mars square Uranus, Mars Opposite Neptune, etc.
When you encounter a new person with Mars square Uranus, you can immediately compare that person with all the other persons you have met having Mars square Uranus. It would be well to have all Mars-Uranus aspects on a group of pages together, because you will find certain qualities in Mars-Uranus aspects whether they are so-called favorable or unfavorable aspects. For example, you will find that all such aspects appear to be accompanied by mechanical ability but the so-called unfavorable aspects are more accident prone.
You will need another notebook dealing with the planets in the various houses. A word or caution in this connection, however, for you will want to be very careful about placing information in this notebook unless you are positive that the birth time is correct. Otherwise you are apt to have a notebook containing much in the way of faulty information, and this would mislead you. It is better not to know than to think you know something that is wrong.
First, you should get to understand what the planets in the various signs of the zodiac mean, because in most cases this information will be definite and not dependent on an exact moment of birth except in those few cases where a planet is changing from one sign to another during the actual date of birth.
Finally, you will want to know what the transits mean. In astrology, the word transit has a different meaning than in astronomy. In astrology, the word transit means the relationship of the planets on a particular date after birth to the planetary pattern on the date of birth. In astronomy, a transit merely means the passage of a celestial object across the disk of another object, over the meridian of a place, or across the field of a telescope. Thus, in astrology, the word transit has a much broader meaning.
From the moment of birth, all the planets as well as Sun and Moon are changing their relative positions, and as this happens, different parts of what is represented by the horoscope have an opportunity of manifesting in different ways. A powerful Family Survival Dynamic can manifest in many different ways during a lifetime. What is assumed to be love under one planetary setup at one time may be hatred or indifference under another planetary setup. That explains with one swoop why people do not stay in love. The planets change their positions, and the love that lasts longest is often one that is a subconscious expression of insecurity. The child may love the parents to the extent that the parents represent security. There are other binding factors, but most of them do not require monogamy. These include loyalty and platonic relationships. Platonic relationships do not involve insecurity, and therefore, for some persons are non-existent. On the other hand, not all insecurity is in- volved with monogamy Neither is insecurity always binding. An insecure woman may leave her husband because she believes she can find greater security in another man.
Almost at a glance, to the experienced observer, the planets and their constantly changing relationships explain why our thoughts, feelings and emotions are constantly in a state of flux.
In basic principle, the notations of the astrologer are akin to those of the mathematician. When the astrologer writes (the glyphs), he means Venus-in-Pisces, but he also means a long group of characteristics and possibilities as well as a certain potential. He means that the Family Reform Dynamic Guide is under the domination of the Social Survival Dynamic.
A person born at such a time will have strange social urges. He is attracted to unusual types of people due to a deep sympathetic urge that carries him in a certain direction. The injustices of society are more apparent to him. He is likely to be attracted to those who are ostracized from orthodox society, those for whom orthodox society has prepared no place, those who have been overlooked. He is compassionate. He does not take the rules of society seriously, for he sees injustice in them. He doesn't really care whether something is proper or not, because proper doesn't make it right. He may have a special interest in the criminal, the sick person, anyone who is operating out side the correct ions of organized society, the "crackpot," the pauper or the beggar. He may show more respect for the prostitute than for the ladies who live on Snob Hill. There is something about her that interests him. What made her what she is? (A limited number of birth dates of prostitutes on hand shows them also having Venus in Pisces more often than in any other sign). He feels both sorry for her and sentimental about her. We may find him having many secret friends. In the presence of these "unfortunate" people, he relaxes. He can say what he thinks with no fear of criticism. He knows he will be understood. There is no need for being a hypocrite. He is quite apt to regard drinking as a form of relaxation, and we are apt to find him in the association of people who drink a good deal. It is all an escape from the artificiality of organized society which is always a strain. He has a broader conception of things, because he is not limited in his thinking by any accepted frame of reference, for a frame of reference itself is a mental limitation, sometimes useful but often a means of justifying faulty conclusions.Because Venus represents the Family Reform Dynamic Guide, all of this is designed to inject a new strain into the hereditary factors of the future. The thinking and the reasoning is on the unconscious level, but it comes to the surface in the form of sentiment, and it is the sentiment that is acted upon, although it is the unconscious purpose that is being served. The family must not survive in its old form. The form must be changed. There is the urge to marry a person from some other realm. This might mean a foreigner, one of another race, or one from some entirely different level of society. Nature is at work to produce the mongrel. The mongrel will be frowned upon by the old family strain, but experience has taught us that mongrels often have superior intellectuality, are more brilliant. Most Americans are mongrels. As in mathematics, when you put strange combinations together, it may be difficult to predict the result. We are dealing with the chemistry of characteristics.
This is merely an example of what one little symbol like can mean. Each planet in each sign of the zodiac has such a meaning of its own. You are going to learn them, and the more you learn them by yourself by experience, the better it will be. This is the type of knowledge you shouldn't memorize. Let the pieces fit together and crystallize in your mind as you go along. In explaining the principles represented by the planets and signs of the zodiac in earlier lessons, we have supplied you with the tools.
Always remember one thing. THAT REPRESENTED BY THE PLANET IS DOMINATED BY THAT REPRESENTED BY THE ZODIACAL SIGN THAT IT OCCUPIES.
When you work with astrological symbols, you are approximating what the mathematician does when he works with algebraic symbols. The mathematician may say that x equals y, while the astrologer practically says that Venus in Pisces equals Neptune in the 11th House. Here are two different astrological expressions that have the same meaning.
Then people having Venus in Pisces will not all be alike. One may have Mars in Taurus while the other has Mars in Scorpio. This brings in a variation. Yet, certain basic characteristics are present in each case. The person having Mars in Scorpio will express them with less caution than the person having Mars in Taurus.
We have shown you what it means when Venus is in Pisces. What does it mean when Venus is in Capricorn? We could write out an interpretation and ask you to memorize it. That would not make you a good astrologer. Instead, we are going to ask you what it means when Venus is in Capricorn. We want you to write out an interpretation of a person having Venus in Capricorn, and we want you to mail it to us. Understand one thing. We do not care how wrong you may be. If you prove to be close to 100% correct, well and good, but it is the error of your interpretation that will tell us what we have failed to make clear to you. Start out by realizing that when Venus is in Capricorn, the Family Reform Guide is under the domination of the Individual Survival Dynamic Reactor. Search the birth dates of your friends. You will not have to erect any charts to determine whether they have Venus in Capricorn. The ephemeris will tell you that, except in cases where the ephemeris shows Venus to be in the first or last degree of a sign. In those cases, you would have to check the time of day the person was born to be certain.
Find as many persons having Venus in Capricorn as you can among people you know well. Check yourself, and see whether your interpretation fits these people. Take as many liberties as you wish in this respect. In other words, you will be writing up a theoretical interpretation but you are privileged to check it against people you know to see whether it fits. This is a procedure you are going to be following from now on, so long as you deal with astrology. You are going to be working from a theoretical base that has not been previously supplied by any other teacher of astrology, but it must always check with experience. You will be combining theory and experience. For a time, we would like you to forget everything else in the horoscope and confine yourself to learning to interpret what each planet in each sign means.
This can keep you quite busy, because you can start some more notebooks. You can write out your own theoretical interpretation of every planet in every sign. This will be a starting point. From this point on, you will constantly be adjusting your orginal interpretations. Your purpose will be perfection of these interpretations. It is doubtful whether you will ever reach any absolute perfection, but you will always be getting closer and closer.
It will be much as if you were adding a series of fractions such as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, etc. You will note that 1 always appears above the line in these fractions, while the numeral below the line is always double that below the line in the previous fsahion The more such fractions you add, the closer the sum will be to I, but it will never actually reach 1, except at infinity. We say that the sum of such fractions approaches 1 as a limit. No matter how long you create and add more fractions, you can never reach or exceed 1.
In the same manner, although your goal is perfection, and although you constantly grow closer and closer to that perfection, it is never actually reached. We do not ask absolute perfection.
Again, let us quote Paul G. Clancy when he said that astrology is the algebra of life. All the symbols in a horoscope are employed in a similar manner to that in which we employ algebra. That doesn't mean that you need to know anything about algebra, but if you have studied algebra it will help you to understand why we do not have to set up any causal hypothesis to explain astrology. Any causal hypothesis involves that man-made conception we call time. When we express the Pythagorean Theorem algebraically and say that (a2 + b2) - c2, we do not mean that a and b,, in any way, cause c, for all exist simultaneously. One does not come before or after the other.
When we consider a symbol such as (glyph for mars in Aquarius), we recognize a group of characteristics which in hemselves may be considered as causing certain results, but the results are dependent upon how well the individual understands his own characteristics and what he does to channel them to gain the results that he desires. Thus, the results can be quite different in the case of the individual who has studied and understands astrology than in the case of the person who blindly follows sentiment with no conception of what the origin of that sentiment may be nor where it may lead. You can see that where we deal with horoscopes that contain factors of violence, the difference between the person who understands his inner nature and the individual who does not is stupendous.
In many instances, the individual with no understanding of the nature the horoscope reveals actually does face what we might call fate. The machinist in a machine shop may lose a hand before he discovers that his periodic accidents are to be associated with his Mars-Uranus opposition but also with his own irritability. His accidents are preceded by irritability, and once he learns this he will think about it when he feels irritable, and it will remind him to be more careful. In his case, caution is required. In other cases, caution becomes an obstacle in the way of success. Thus, we ultimately begin to draw a close parallel between the words fate and ignorance. They go together. Where you have ignorance you have what has been meant by fate. The greater your true knowledge of abstract principles, the greater your freedom and the less your fate. The Christian church has tried to reverse this. It has been assumed that knowledge is dangerous. This concept was prevalent among the members of the Pythagorean school, although it does not appear to have been characteristic of Pythagoras himself insofar as we can determine. Yet, it was this very conception that led to the destruction of the Pythagorean school. There are some who suspect that Sir Isaac Newton may have detected the whole secret of the atom mathematically and that he detected his solution from the work of Hermes, after which he was afraid to reveal the information to the world of science for fear of what scientists might do with it. At any rate, he did not explode an atom bomb in order to confirm some of his view on alchemy. The man whom some scientists describe as the greatest scientist of all believed in alchemy.
Mastery of astrology, like mastery of other subjects, helps you to overcome that man-made conception we call time.
The writer lives on a ranch 19 miles from the heart of Tucson. Years back, the ranch was a stagecoach stop for traffic coming out of the mountains and headed west. It was an all day trip over rocky desert roads from the ranch to Tucson. One late afternoon, the writer was relaxing while awaiting the arrival of a relative on a plane from New York. The passenger was making the trip from New York to Tucson, 2500 miles, in as little time as it formerly took the stagecoach to travel from the ranch to Tucson. Basically, what has made the difference is knowledge of mathematics and its working principles. We are left with the possibility that what can be accomplished in a millennium can be accomplished instantaneously when we know more about mathematics and nature.
The student of astrology begins to learn of natural abilities that he did not know existed. When he knows about them he can use them. The possibilities that can be opened are practically unlimited.
When you started in school, you were given a table of 26 symbols to memorize. They were the letters of the alphabet. Consider the number of words you can now form out of those 26 symbols. We furnished you with the letters of the astrological alphabet back in Lesson Three. Now, you have reached a point where you can join two of these letters like ßý abbreviate the statement: THE FAMILY REFORM DYNAMIC IS DOMINATED BY THE SOCIAL SURVIVAL DYNAMIC.
Utimately, you have the whole natal horoscope to consider. It is filled with symbols. You will interpret them one by one, but you will be able to make an overall mathematical statement and say: THIS CHART IS JOHN. The accomplished and trained astrologer will often take one look at a horoscope, more or less take in everything at one glance, and give a mathematical expression to the whole which might be uttered in one word as WOW!
In time, you will meet some stranger, and in talking with him, you will recognize certain traits and characteristics that you will be able to place and define astrologically. You will note a specific characteristic that belongs to Pisces or Neptune, and before you ever ask for a birth date, you will have pegged and classified that characteristic. You will know that a certain dynamic is over-expressed. You may know that something has to be in Pisces or that Neptune is strongly placed, but you will have more difficulty in determining what planet may be in Pisces or in what way Neptune may be emphasized. However, the moment you look at the chart, you will see what you are looking for with one glance, and when you do so, you will possess far more information than could possibly be obtained by observation. If you are a psychiatrist or a psychologist, you may, at one stroke, have more information than you could obtain by days of probing and analysis.
Observation of these characteristics is where the female of the species so often rates at the top. But we beg of her to learn and understand more about her own intuitional powers of observation. We often call such unconscious powers of observation being psychic. It is our view that these powers merely involve a process of unconscious calculation. The more you learn about these unconscious functions, the more able you will become to control those functions at will.
You should be able to detect what we are attempting to do. We are trying to teach you our own established methods of interpretation without allowing them to block the functioning of your own natural powers of interpretation. We are trying to teach you an organized system of interpretation, but we do not want to risk allowing that factor of organization to become a mental block. We want you to think for yourself.
We want to supply you with the tools, but we want you to realize that you may ultimately develop better tools of your own. It is not our purpose to make you as good as we are. We want you to be better. We have often stated that mathematics is simple but Man has made it complicated. That is the case when people are afraid of mathematics. The complicated nature of the Man-made side of mathematics drives the layman away. We are more concerned in seeing you get the right answers than in seeing you get them in the right way. To us, the right way is the way that gets the right answers, just so long as you know how you are doing it. The psychic often gets the right answers without knowing how he does it. That is quite unsatisfactory. On his off days, he gets wrong answers. Although it is our aim to develop interpretation as a science, we do not want to lose sight of the fact that it is also an art. The good actress may have been trained, but she had to have natural ability that could be molded. The art of astrological interpretation can be developed even when you may have had very little in the way of natural ability to start with. Today, we are able to teach all children to read and write, despite the fact that some may have found it easier than others. If you are hungry to interpret, you will learn to interpret more rapidly, because you will allow no obstacles to stay in your way for long.
How quickly you learn to interpret will he partly dependent upon the mount of time you devote to it. Even if you find yourself being quite consistently wrong, this should not discourage you. Even then, you will learn by the process of elimination. Every time you learn that something is not right, you are that much closer to what is right. If we want to know the temperature, we look at a thermometer. When we receive your written interpretation of Venus in Capricorn, we will observe it in the same manner that we would observe the thermometer. It will show us what you are doing. It will enable us to detect whatever you might be doing wrong. By observing one person having Venus in Capricorn, it is possible that you may pick up characteristics that do not belong to Venus in Capricorn but to some other feature of the individual's chart. That is something that we can immediately detect and call to your attention. So, just go ahead and write your own conception of what you think Venus in Capricorn means. Have no regard for how terrible you might think it to be. Send it right along. If it is really terrible, it will contain more clues. If it happens to be practically perfect insofar as we can see, there will be less that we can teach you. It is not the star scholar who needs our help. It is the one who has hit a snag.
There is one common error made by students of astrology. If the student dislikes some person who happens to have the Sun in Scorpio, he Is too apt to attribute all of the bad characteristics of this person to all Scorpio people. It must be remembered that any planetary configuration can have a negative and a positive side. Because you may have known a man who was killed by being hit over the head by a hammer, you are apt to develop a prejudice against hammers. Yet, thousands of carpenters are making good use of hammers every day. They are building homes for millions of people. Let's not throw away the hammer. Instead, let us teach people the proper way to use a hammer. The same for astrology. Let us not assume that a person is bad because of his horoscope. Instead, let us teach people how to use their own horoscopes, or what abilities the horoscope signifies for some good purpose. We are dealing with principles of cosmic design. Those principles are perfection themselves. All evil must come from our failure to understand the cosmic design, from our failure to interpret it correctly.
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