How did you learn astrology?

[Sweet Freedom]

Did you teach yourself or did someone else teach you?

Do you have a favorite book or website that you would recommend to beginners?

[NJCher]

1. I took a course in it at an adult school

I was immediately impressed because the instructor, while walking around the room, happened to glance at my chart and she made a couple of remarks that were amazingly prescient.

As a result of what I learned in that course, I quit my job and went into another type of work situation. I've been so happy ever since that time. My astrologer pointed out why I can't work for other people.

Because of that course, I went on to take a course in tarot. Interestingly enough, on the last night the instructor did my cards. They duplicated my astrological chart.


Cher

[Delphinus]

2. How lucky!! n/t

[Pallas180]

3. I started when there were no computers, and astrology was considered so

weird and smacking of witchcraft that it was taught in people's living rooms and kept very "sotto voce" - you really had to learn from scractch, how to mathematically draw a chart, time of movement of
planets, progress charts by hand - and in many ways it was better than being able to have a program draw the chart.There are things I learned that our astrology programs can't do - such as ACD or Adjusted Calculation Date - and I'm always suspect of the progressions the computer gives because it can't give me an ACD.

[Eurobabe]

4. yeah I remember those days, I was pretty wicked with

and ephemeris and a calculator! I picked Astrology up in the early 80s and basically taught myself. Read a gazillion books over the years. Spent a ton of money at what was ACS in San Diego.

[Pallas180]

5. LOL, also by the late 80's and certainly in the 90's, the proliferation

of books and info on astrology exploded.

But in the 70's all you had was the original classics....then Robert Hand came out with Planets in Transit - and it pretty much updated astrology to the 20th century.

If there was one book everyone should get, that's it. Although it's for transits, you can use it for natal, progressions, everything, with a little adjustment.

[Eloriel]

8. In reality, there was a lot going on beyond just Robert Hand

I started studying astrology in the early 80s -- 1982, to be exact, as Uranus crossed my Ascendant, squaring my 4th house ("home") cusp, and we moved to a gloriously Aquarian (ruled by Uranus) place: Portland, Oregon (both Aquarian, both utterly fabulous).

I initially started with a correspondence course which didn't do it for me. I hated the way they organized and presented info and it seemed very archaic. But I found a metaphysical bookstore/astrology center in Portland, and took classes there. It was great fun. Met some other neat people. And spent endless hours at Powell's Bookstore (for any of you Oregonians) -- and never even let myself go INTO any other section of the store beyond the astrology section since I'm a bookaholic.

Anyway, it was Stephen Arroyo's books primarily (but definitely not exclusively), that brought astrology into the 20th Century for me. He and many other people who were either clinical psychologists or otherwise very clear-eyed, well-educated esp. re psychology who made astrology really contemporary and IMO brought it out of the closet and nearly into the mainstream. I don't want to make it sound like Arroyo was the prime mover -- I don't think he was. I think he was just one of a good handful of contemporaries who were contemporaries who were all involved in revolutionizing the discipline.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. Thru osmosis....

My Mom taught me growing up, Tarot too.

[Matariki]

7. had the great good fortune to take classes from Jeff Green

- the guy who wrote the book on Pluto. Back when he was living around Seattle. He was an interesting fellow.

[Eloriel]

9. Another one of the group of astrologers I was referring to

in my previous post. My teachers in Portland were friends and big fans of Jeff Green's, and several other NW astrologers -- Dmetra George, others.

[Matariki]

11. cool!

i still have all the notes and handouts from his classes. He taught a really great class on studying relationships in a chart that was just awesome. and a very detailed class on all the minor aspects that was incredibly valuable.

a while ago, i went for a consultation with the vedic astrologer Dennis Flaherty and was impressed. when i get some time i hope to take classes with him. i feel lucky to have such great astrologers in my neighborhood!

i *love* Powell's bookstore, btw. we try to go down there once a year or so.

[loudsue]

10. I started with Astrocartography - Influence of the planets "on the ground"

so to speak.

Christmas of 1989, a friend of mine who was also studying with the Lakota elders I was studying with, gave me an astrocartography reading as a Christmas gift.

Since I had traveled extensively with my work, and had lived in many different areas of the country, I was able to see that the planetary influences in my own natal chart were exceptionally prominent in my daily life when I was living/working in an area under a given planetary line of influence.

The booklet that came with the reading described "events" and "experiences" that someone would have under the influence of a certain planet. At the time this happened, I was living in Longmont, Colorado....directly under my Uranus line. (Uranus rules Astrology!) And it helped me to understand the nature of the planets; the planetary "energies", and what they felt like.

Because I found it so interesting, another friend gave me, as a gift, an astrology reading by Vivian Carol, which was mind-blowingly accurate, and helpful.

http://www.vivianweaver.com/

At the end of that reading, I asked Vivian if she would teach me astrology.... and that it would have to be done over the phone, because of all the traveling I did with my work. She agreed to do that.

In April of 1990, just as transiting Uranus hit my 4th house cusp, I started my weekly lessons over the phone .... from some hotel in Ohio!

7 months later, my progressed Sun went into Scorpio, and from that time on, I bought every astrology book I could find, anywhere in the country, and I'd read them in my hotel room at night when work was done. To study charts other than my own, for comparison, I ordered charts from ACS - AstroCartography Services (mentioned in a post above). I would read the books, and look at the charts, and figure out how things all came together, and how different influences worked through different people's lives.

There were some books that I ended up taking with me, no matter where I went. One of them was Stephen Arroyo's book, Astrology, Karma, and Transformation. Even though it's looking pretty worn out, I still get something new out of it, every time I read it.

About 6 years later, after practicing doing readings on my friends for so long, my friends started sending me other friends of theirs, who I didn't know, to do readings for. For about 3 years I did that -- while I was in career transition, starting my own company in another field, but before I started making a living with my new company.

After that, I got so busy with my company that I had to quit doing readings: I was always on airplanes, and in different cities... way too hectic.

I had never done mundane astrology at all, until I started reading in the Meeting Room at DU. It gets rusty if you don't use it, but once you get it, it becomes part of the way you view the world.

Once you learn the energies of the planets (their influence), and the nature of the signs of the zodiac where the planets are located in a chart, and once you know what part of life each of the 12 houses represent....you put all those pieces together and you're on your way!

:kick::kick::kick:

[Chovexani]

12. I am still learning

I'm sort of an "advanced beginner" myself. I am pretty much teaching myself, and I have to say that lurking in the old Meeting Room (and now this group) was very educational for me. There are so many great minds in here and the sharing of info that goes on is incredible. Plus folks seem to not mind too many dumb newbie questions. :)

[Matilda]

13. I am also learning.

I was taught how to draw up a chart (the long way) by a friend about
20 years ago, and from there I tried to teach myself from books.
A couple of years ago I decided it was time to put myself to the
test and find out if I could really do it, so I'm now studying with
Canopus, an online group based in Australia. I'm a bit more than
half-way through and loving it although it gets harder the further
I go.

Two of the main things I've learned are (1) how much I don't know;
and (2) the more I learn, the more sense it makes.

[sunnystarr]

14. I had a blind date with an astrologer's son when I was 16 ...

It was 1959 and I thought I was so conservative at the time and believed that astrology was weird and so not true. I talked to Steve on the phone and he asked for my birth data. I rolled my eyes and gave it to him. When he picked me up he had all this information on me and I discarded it .. until he said that my father had little or no influence on my life. No one knew that I didn't find out about my father until I was 12 and that my stepfather adopted me. It was a well-kept family secret. So I was impressed and curious.

I actually started with reading Edgar Cayce since I was also searching for answers to religion and found spirituality. Steve's father lent me the book There is a River. Lionel Day was a professional astrologer who did a great deal of stock market astrology for rich and famous people. I became very close to him and a 3 years later, as astrology once again bloomed around the world, he started classes. Lionel had done a great deal of research over the years and had some unique insights that I've never read in printed form that have proved very accurate over the years and thousands of charts later.

I married and left Long Island for Syracuse to find a total void astrologically. So I just continued doing chart after chart continuously, made a few connections (too long to go into) and after studying and doing charts for 9 years, I started teaching astrology at Unity Church and at home, then at the Community College and in adult ed classes at the high schools. I also started doing charts professionally at that time. I was 29 and it was 1972. By 1977 I opened an astrological book and supply store called the Zodiac Barn, had a phone in horoscope service, and did appearances on radio and some TV spots and lectured for local organizations. I started the Astrological Association of CNY which then became a chapter of the NCGR. My partner in the book store handled that end of it while I was doing charts full time in the office. We organized the first Psychic Fair in Syracuse, paving the way for the pro's to come in with much bigger ones. It was the best time in my life.

Astrology became part of the fabric of my life and soul and ultimately the only constant in my life. I think it was my intense curiosity of human nature (4 planets in Gemini) that drove me on my lifetime quest for knowledge. That's the beauty of it. Even a beginner gains useful knowledge that can be immediately applied and yet no matter how much you learn, there's always more. I don't believe you can ever learn it all - so it's always a challenge that piques one's curiosity and carries you further on. It's never boring.

edited for typo

I hope everyone at any stage on their road to discovery gains as much joy in their travel as I have.

[Pallas180]

15. Sunnystar. Wow. You really started

early.

My dream was to have an astrology bookstore-teahouse-reading and class place - (however in Southern Florida it's very frowned upon).


"We organized the first Psychic Fair in Syracuse, paving the way for the pro's to come in with much bigger ones."

I was one of those who came to Syracuse in the 80's and did astrology readings and psychic readings at the malls in Utica and Syracuse and outside of Rochester - the malls would hire the company I worked for
to bring people into the malls(and as a matter of fact, that's how I came to Florida). Working and traveling with 300 other psychics and astrologers across the country was a furthering of education in itself.

(I remember the quartz mine - was it Herkimer?) nearby and you could buy quartz crystals for about a quarter to a dollar < I used to give them away to people I thought needed them> - now those same crystals
are about $30.00 - lol )

We would be flooded with people wanting readings - each person doing 30 /32 15 minute readings a day. People were hungry for this in geopgraphical areas you would least expect it....but as time went on,
and the religious wacked out fundies became stronger, they began to picket and disrupt - pressure the malls that this was witchcraft etc... walk up to the seated readers who were working with clients and
do the "Do you know Jesus - you need to be saved - quote from the bible" garbage.

In thinking about it - I guess we could mark the attempt to bury truth and knowledge by the fundamentalists as beginning openly in the
early 80's.

[sunnystarr]

16. I worked Psychic Fairs off and on in the late 70's and

early '80s. I don't remember picketers but by the '80s I only participated in the larger fairs and you know it gets so busy I wouldn't have noticed if there was a major demonstration going on outside lol.

We probably met. It's really a small world after all. :)

[Pallas180]

17. Sunnystar - yes, small world, it used to be among the astrologers

and psychics...we numbered in the hundreds - but there has been an
explosion of teaching and learning and there are so many many many new- (I hate to say younger) :)

I worked with Dorothy Oja, and George, Shirley Tabatchnik, Mimi Levine, just some of the names I can remember...

Yup - betcha we know each other or of each other.

[OKthatsIT]

18. I was taught by Nancy Hastings, Rob Hand

I started out with tarot as a teenager.

Read about astrology...was very good at guessing sun signs, etc..In the early 80's started taking classes with my mentor, Nancy Hastings...did that for several yrs and met many many other astrologers. Workshops with Rob Hand and Demetre George..among others.

I think the most important teaching/learning method is knowing other astrologers, speak astrology, think astrology...you just pick up a lot of metaphors to mull over and use when you get those intuitive clicks.

[yellowdawgdem]

19. astrol

I met an astrologer in the Boston area, in the '70's, and found her to be fascinating, very unlike anyone I had met. She was an accountant with those weird glasses, and she would sit there with a calculator and figure stuff out. I had the impression at that time, that one needed to be an accountant, or at least good with numbers, to go into this line of work. So I ruled that out completely, as I am not mathematical. But I was - I would say, almost hypnotized by all the stuff she talked about, grand trines, t-squares, transits, etc. - and that an exact aspect to the north node meant a karmic tie. I just thought that discussing stuff with this new angle was the most fun you could have. I mean, maybe with the exception of a really good chiro adjustment.
But this woman was taking classes with a male astrologer that I think was Bob Pelletier, and invited me to go to the classes. She was good friends with him, and did some accounting for his business I think. I went with her and some other people,to these classes for a little over a year, and all of us had scorpio rising, and that kept being mentioned. But, I mean, it was a totally fun experience for me, and as a result I still have fond memories of it. It was one of the few environments where I felt accepted as my true self, and that there was a minimum of superficiality. I can't think of any books that I'd particularly recommend, as I like books that simplify. I have never been all that keen on reading astrological books, would rather read a good novel!