astrology podcast today has our hero, the neotrad rationalist astrologer of Actionable Astral Insights, in dialogue with some betelgeuse brain new age astrotherapist of the “everything is a dream, dream a dream… nothing is negative or positive… the reason people hit me as a child is because I didn’t love myself … let’s learn to dream dream quantum consciousness dream” deeply wounded fantasist type.
it’s difficult to listen to. new age man is doing most of the talking and justification. neotrad is interjecting with some criticisms that astrology is a rational business and it’s not actually compassionate to blame people for their own problems even if you taboo the word “blame” but new age man believes since he lives in a new age (defined or at least outlined by him as “an age in which people know about the transsaturnine planets and lesbians have babies via ivf, so life has been transformed beyond recognition) his, and therefore the world consciousness, has advanced beyond the basic mojo of neotrad, which he calls “classical/prequantum” “saturnine consciousness”
neotrad tried to stick out a conciliatory hand and say that there is some space for trans-saturnine spheres in trad stuff in the form of the sphere of the fixed stars and the firmum mobile. new age man is sure that this has nothing to do with what he’s talking about because, fundamentally, his core vibes are the New Age of Democracy and Psychology
He is bringing up an example of a great artist, how they have a placement which would make them an artist and one which would make them a computer janitor. he doesn’t like to call a placement “negative” because this would be “poison”, “sabotage” and would “destroy their free will” and so lead them into the (only implicitly) positive first choice, so (implicitly) an astrologer should not do that. neotrad says “actually the right answer can be rationally worked out in this framework if you brrrrr” which new age man rejects because it’s Not Seeing The Person – “consciousness does not appear in the chart”.
it’s fascinating because new age man is right for the wrong reason. he’s entirely wrong about the world having been transformed on every level, that quantum mechanics has any relevance, but it’s not like neotrad is any more right, and just has more moving parts he consults and selects or ignores (but with a rationale!) before doing some interpersonal relating vibe emission – he also believes the universe is a spiritual learning and development mechanism that can be shown by astrologers!
how do you really make a preference between on the one hand, some saturnine (and he rly is) fellow who is acting the Stoic and saying that the mechanism of the universe keeps throwing out hundreds of Signs (from a cosmic mechanism we do not talk about) which provide reasons for events in your life and also direct you to give him money and attention and on the other hand, some flummy Uranian (to be determined) who is up front that he is all about the vibes and morally justifying events without admitting that’s what he’s doing, and the chart is just a means to keeping you coming to therapy.
They are clearly never going to agree about the appropriate professional presentation, but they are dividing two major parts of the market between them.