A st r o l o g y f o r A qu a r i u s

S ha r i n g o u r K n o w l ed g e

Optimizing birth chart literacy

HERMETIC ASTROLOGY
T h e s ci e n c e o f t he s o u l a n d s t a r s

First things first

Must read information

before you log into your
birth chart

DW Sutton
First things first

Must read information

before you log into your
birth chart
DW Sutton

About the author

Dennis Sutton has been a student, teacher and researcher of Hermetic
astrology for 40 years. He launched Astrology for Aquarius in 2014 to share
his knowledge and to ensure that Elbert Benjamine’s Hermetic system of
astrology had an online presence in the internet age and maintains its
integrity in the age of misinformation.

My thanks to volunteer beta reader David S. Braumann for his assistance in

the preparation of this eBook

Copyright © D W Sutton. All rights reserved. Published October 2021

This complimentary eBook contains educational material that is protected by
copyright laws and under the Copyright Act 1968 no part may be reproduced
or reused for any commercial purposes whatsoever.
It has been downloaded for private study purposes.
 Table of Contents
First things first

First experiences
You, the occasional thinker
Your physical body and brain
Your mind
Your unconscious mind
Your soul
Your life
You’re a bundle of desires
Your life is a routine habit
You feel pleasure and pain
Your conditioning by environment
Your local environment
Astrology is the science of the soul and stars
Hermetic astrology is a self-science
Your birth chart is a me-map
Fact check: You
Your birth chart’s astrodyne report
Chart data collection and verification
Harmony and/or discord
Deal with discord sensibly
What’s wrong with my birth chart?
Low level self-understanding
Subjective bias
Intrapersonal intelligence
Chart data analysis and application
Make your self-searching a grand adventure
 First things first

So you’ve thought about and accepted the invitation to assess your own
birth chart. It’s an awesome venture: An opportunity to learn about yourself
and answer big questions like: What am I doing here? And it’s not difficult.

The first thing you need to do is to get your chart and its astrodynes calculated.
The chart that’s calculated for your time, date and place of birth is a map of the
planets and zodiac signs which gives you a connection to the universe. And by
applying the easy to understand science of astrology to your chart you can
learn about yourself.

Your birth chart is a map of astrological energies and Hermetic astrology

employs astrodynes to measure their strength and functionality. The astro-
dynes permit scientific data assessment. Your chart’s astrodyne report allows
you to get a much better understanding of its astro-data.

Your birth chart profiles your character and tells your life story and it’s very
important to understand and believe this for yourself through personal exper-
ience – not because someone else has told you. Your objective is to use your
birth chart and Hermetic astrology to enlighten yourself about who you are
and land yourself on the rock of personal truth.

A qualified astrology teacher could teach you astrology, but using your birth
chart to learn about yourself personalizes the subject. You’re not learning
astrology; rather you’re learning your birth chart by applying the science of
astrology to its interpretation and assessment.

Your academic learning at school or college involved the study of specialized

subjects – math, economics, history, science etc – in carefully crafted learn-
ing programs. Information was communicated by qualified instructors in
classrooms and you devoted private study time to its comprehension.
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But now your classroom is a study room at home where you’re the only stu-
dent and your learning tools include eBooks and a website.

The assessment of your birth chart involves a communication between me – the

writer of the eBooks – and you – the reader. The success of our communication
depends upon the clarity of the astrological knowledge I am sending and how
well you comprehend and apply it.

My job is to clearly explain the information so that you feel comfortable with
the unusual concepts and soul deep information and to guide you through the
assessment process. Your job is to clearly understand the astrological inform-
ation and apply it to your chart in a sensible, logical way.

Astrological information has an intended meaning so it’s very important that

you clearly understand this meaning. Things can go horribly wrong if you mis-
interpret the astrological message. And at the start you may find the extra-
ordinary nature of the information a little overwhelming.

Between me and Hermetic astrology, and you and your birth chart you can
enlighten yourself about who you are, why you exist and how you can reach
your full potential as human soul.

The eBooks you’ll use to assess your birth chart are not an authority on you.
They can’t describe your character and life story, but they do provide astro-
data that you can apply to your chart in order to create a very accurate explan-
ation of who you are and your developmental journey.

But before you log into your birth chart and commence to gather and assess its
priceless data there’s information you need to know about; and this eBook
explains the must know preparatory information that ensures a rewarding and
successful astrological quest for self-understanding.
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 First experiences

Your life is a series of first experiences. They vary in their importance

and memorability, can be pleasant and wondrous or unpleasant and disturbing
and are often charged with uncertainty and uneasy anticipation. You learn
about yourself from personal experience.

First experiences produce perceptions and feelings that color the way you view
the experience; and misleading perceptions can see you make errors, waste
effort and have misgivings for a very long time.

If you’re assessing your birth chart for the first time or giving it a go with
Hermetic astrology you’ve made a wise decision.

You’re the only person with your birth chart so your firsthand knowledge of
yourself makes you the only person who can know and understand its astro-
data; but you begin with a beginner’s mind so you won’t know what the
assessment of your chart involves.

It’s a pretty safe bet that your interest in astrology was aroused when you
heard about the zodiac signs; and the 12 zodiac signs do play a crucial role in
astrology. Later you learned about the birth chart or horoscope but there’s a
good chance that your perceptions of astrology and the birth chart are unin-
formed, vague or just plain wrong.

The assessment of your birth chart involves Hermetic astrology so it’s in your
best interest to enhance your understanding of the science of the soul and stars
and the fact-map that explains you and your life.

Your birth chart makes your search to find yourself easy.

The format of the planets and zodiac signs in the chart defines your character
and life story – think about that.
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Hermetic astrology provides scientific data that ensures a reliable assessment
of your chart.

The chart depicts an image that’s encrypted in astro-text so you will have to
learn your special dialect of the language of the stars. And when you integrate
the person pictured in your birth chart with your conditioning by experience
and current circumstance you will have a detailed and very reliable account of
you and your life story.

But you may have preconceived ideas about the type of information you’re
expecting your birth chart to provide and when chart data doesn’t fit with your
expectations doubt and confusion can easily develop. And your chart may pro-
vide data that you find worrisome or disturbing so you need to clearly under-
stand what this data means and respond to it sensibly.

The assessment of your birth chart is primarily an intellectual, academic

exercise so save the emotional excitement till after you can see your life as an
educational experience where your progress is measured by your learning and
the mistakes you make are pivotal contributors to the development of your
special kind of intelligence and ability.

Like all first experiences the assessment of your birth chart involves the un-
known but as you go along you learn; and when you learn about things you
don’t know they become knowledge through experience. And that’s been the
story of your life.

By assessing your own birth chart there’s no expense involved so it’s cost effec-
tive, but it will cost you time and effort. Your objective should be to enlighten
you about yourself in the most time-efficient way.

So there’s a right-orderly and a wrong-disorderly way to assess your birth

chart and you should make sure you get it right.

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 You, the occasional thinker

You wonder: Who am I? and there are plenty of answers to that all
important question.

The orthodox biologist has one but s/he’s grounded in genetic data and high
on DNA. And the academics and scholars are suffering information overloaded.

The orthodox religious authorities have one too, but theirs is grounded in tra-
ditional religious teachings. Their congregations are bewildered by the scien-
tific knowledge that defines the Age of Aquarius.

But in the age of fake news and misinformation you can’t trust what any of the
so called experts are saying. You have to know when what you’re reading or
hearing is dubious.

When it comes to you you’re the designated expert and you’re the only person
you can trust to discover and explain who you are.

As the occasional thinker you’re on your own. You gather and analyze data,
assess circumstance and solve problems. Your thinking can be right or wrong;
you can think about the thoughts you think; and only you know if you have
deep-level self-understanding.

When you’re jumping to conclusions you’re not thinking; and vivid feelings
and emotions can cloud your thinking. When your emotions control your
thoughts you’re engaging in emotional thinking. You’re making feeling based
judgments and wishful decisions. You can only know information that you’ve
transformed into knowledge, so you don’t know much.

So you can think but most of the time your feelings initiate action and do the
trick. You’re not needed; but you can inject the element of reasoned objectivity
that can result in a better solution to the problem and event outcome.

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Your spontaneous fantasy thinking is not constrained by logic and reality. It’s
triggered by sensory inputs about what’s happening right now. So, on a nor-
mal routine day you don’t have to think much – if at all.

Maybe you try to fathom out what’s right and wrong. Maybe you reason about
moral issues. It’s a real dilemma – morality in terms of what’s right and wrong
isn’t a thought, it’s a feeling.

Maybe you see yourself as the ship’s captain, but once the ship set sail you had
very little input into the course your life took. You may have helped by apply-
ing reasoned thought to satisfying desires, keeping things on track and dealing
with difficult and not so difficult problems but that’s about it.

Maybe you see yourself as the fact-checker who navigates misleading claims
and false information.

Or maybe you see yourself as a caretaker whose designated job is to monitor

your feelings, manage your destructive impulses, plant worthwhile thoughts,
tend to their growth and build your life thought by thought.

You, the occasional thinker can’t deny you exist so who do you think you are?
Who is this witness to your life story? Who is the reflective story teller who gives
your story a first-person perspective? Who is this person who can form opinions
and develop ideas?

Your genetic ancestry doesn’t explain who you are and your name and date of
birth give you a personal identification tag but don’t explain why you exist.
Your life experience doesn’t really explain anything. It just is.

Your search to acquire self-knowledge hasn’t produced much reliable data.

You’re personal fact-file is probably thin on facts so the honest answer to the
question ‘who do you think you are?’ is: ‘I really don’t know’; but you do know
you have a body and mind and can believe you have a soul.
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 Your physical body and brain

Your physical body is an extraordinary biological creation. It has a gen-

etic profile which is different to the gene profile of a palm tree, orchid, flea,
whale or eagle. The human gene profile makes a human body.

Your physical body is composed of cells that are organized into glands, organs
and body parts. It started out as single cell and through cell division grew and
developed. Every part is made of microscopic cells or their products.

When you look in the mirror you see your physical self – your head, eyes, hair,
nose, ears, mouth, arms, fingers, chest, legs, feet, toes and the outer covering
of skin that keeps your insides in.

Beneath your skin are bones, ligaments, veins, organs and an endocrine system.
There’s a heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, gall bladder, stomach and eight endocrine
glands that produce and secrete chemical messengers called hormones into
the blood.

These endocrine glands are scattered throughout your body and discharge
information that controls the rate at which glands and other organs work. They
control the regular running of your body, hour by hour, day by day.

Your brain is one of your body’s largest organs. It’s divided into three regions
– the brain stem, cerebellum and forebrain – and orthodox science claims it
regulates many unconscious body processes, such as heart rate, and is the site
of consciousness.

It’s where you reside, think, learn and create. It’s a biological marvel and a map
of your brain locates various specialized areas like the cerebrum, thalamus
and frontal lobe.

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Thinking is what you do and your brain is where the action takes place.

Consciousness takes place in your brain and orthodox science claims that your
consciousness – your thoughts, feelings, intelligence and ability – is what your
brain does, but do you really think that a three-pound mass of grey matter can
give rise to the felt experience of sensations and thoughts? That’s the mind-
brain problem that orthodoxy grapples with. It need not bother you.

Orthodoxy proposes that your brain and nervous system, by translating

changes in your body and environment into the language of neural impulses,
is an information processing system.

And it’s commonly believed that your mind is what your brain does but that’s
fake news. So, if you’re inclined to believe that your brain is doing your think-
ing it’s time to think again.

Your brain – that very smart electrical device – is a hosting center for sensory
perceptions and thoughts, feelings and impulses that originate in your uncon-
scious mind.

It’s a powerhouse of electrical activity and the electromagnetic energy it pro-

duces facilitates the streaming of unconscious thoughts to the screen of con-
sciousness where they come to your attention and influence what you think,
say and do.

So your information processing is an unconscious mental process and your

response to circumstance is streamed to you via electromagnetic energy.

Your body and brain aren’t perfect. They have faults, defects and weak spots
and if you would like to learn more about your physical self a good book or
website on the human body will do the trick.

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 Your mind

Your mind is commonly defined as a set of cognitive faculties that

enable you to be aware of the world and your experiences. It’s where your
thoughts and feelings hang out.

Your conscious mental life takes place in your mind.

You have self-consciousness – conscious awareness – and you’re likely to call

your thinking-feeling world your mind; and you know from personal exper-
ience that there’s a lot going on in your mind.

From the moment you wake habitual thoughts, feelings and intuitions start
streaming into your mind. You experience your life as a flow of thoughts,
feelings and mental images.

Your daily life is a routine habit. Your mind is focused on what you do; and
when you’re not paying attention it hosts fantasy thoughts, spontaneous obser-
vations and vague impressions.

You give your mind work to do and when a difficult problems arises you put
your thinking cap on. But most of the time you’re running on habit.

Your mind hosts mental phenomena that may or may not receive your atten-
tion; and you do a lot of things that don’t require thinking.

Memories – the footprints of previous experience – drift through your mind;

and you go for walks down memory lane and fantasize about you and your life
in your mind.

Your mind can be focused or just idling along. It can be in turmoil or calm
and tranquil. It mostly engages in spontaneous fantasy thinking – your habit-
ual responses to what’s happening right now.
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You can be in two minds and you can change your mind. What you really
mean is that your thinking is in conflict and you can change your thinking.
And there are times when you can’t get unpleasant thoughts associated with
an unfortunate experience out of your mind.

Your thoughts can be irrational or rational. They can be clear or confused;

confident or fearful; calm or tumultuous. Events occur and situations arise
and your mind starts thinking. In a crisis situation thoughts and feelings
cascade through your mind. Your thoughts are racing and flying off in a
million different directions at the same time. You can’t keep up.

Your mind is a vivid personal reality where your life story is produced as
mental phenomena and it’s not your brain.

Thoughts and feelings come and go and some keep recurring so where are
they when they’re not in your conscious field of mental activity?

And the answer is: They’re saved in your unconscious mind.

So you’re asking: How do some of my unconscious thoughts, feelings and

impulses become conscious and influence what I think, say and do? And the
answer is: They stream in on electromagnetic energy.

It’s produced by the cells of your brain and nervous system and electro-
magnetic energy facilitates the streaming of unconscious thoughts to your
brain – the screen of consciousness. All the states of consciousness you
experience are mental downloads from your unconscious mind.

So, there are two parts to your mind.

You’ve got a conscious field of thoughts and feelings that you’re aware of and a
not-conscious field that’s hidden from you.

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 Your unconscious mind

The idea of an unconscious mind has been around for ages. You’ve no
doubt heard of it but knowing you’ve got one can be a little disconcerting.

The popular conception of the unconscious is based on the work of Sigmund

Freud. It refers to a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that
are outside or below your conscious awareness.

Orthodox psychology explains that your unconscious mind is a mental realm

where states of consciousness and intelligence exist below the threshold of
your everyday consciousness.

It claims that 90% of your thinking takes place in your unconscious mind so
only 10% of your thoughts and feelings come to your conscious attention. The
analogy of an iceberg is often used. The tip that’s above the water is your
conscious field of mental activity and the bulk that’s submerged beneath the
water is your unconscious mind.

It’s generally accepted that your unconscious mind has a powerful occult
influence on your behavior and that it contains mental data that is outside
your conscious awareness. It’s believed to be the repository of automatic
skills and intuition and the engine room of information processing. So your
unconscious mind explains how your behavior can be influenced by forces that
you’re not consciously aware of.

And your unconscious mind isn’t unconscious! It isn’t asleep or comatose and
it hasn’t been knocked out by a neat left hook! It’s unconscious in the sense
that you’re unconscious or not aware of its existence.

But the evidence to support its existence is solid so it’s all rather mysterious
and there’s little data explaining its function and purpose.
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 Your soul

Soul is an arcane, but popular, religious concept that’s been around for
ages too. It’s all about a vital life essence: A part of your consciousness that
survives the death of your physical body to continue your existence in a non-
physical afterlife realm.

Soul is described as the incorporeal essence of a living being. It is immaterial,

having no material properties, and apparently comprises your mental self: Your
character, reason, feeling, consciousness, perception, thinking and memory;
and it may or may not be immortal.

If you Google – What is my soul? – you’ll enter the world of mysticism and get
a lot of very vague and strange answers. There are websites that ask do souls
exist and those that will tell you what your soul is, where it’s located, what
color it is, and what its mission is.

Explanations are linked with the mind and pineal gland and www.shareware
has you contemplating comments like ‘your soul, or true self, is not inside you,
nor is it outside you. Like gravity or truth or time, your soul is everywhere.’

It’s a fact that many cultures, including prehistoric people, recognized a soul
principle of life which resides in the physical form but is distinct from it. So
concepts of the soul have a long history and the belief in its existence has
spawned a variety of theories as to its nature, relationship to the body, and its
origin and mortality. The ancient Egyptians, Plato, Socrates, Christianity and
Hinduism have contributed to the debate.

But in the very smart Aquarian Age materialistic science has deleted the con-
cept a vital soul essence from the life science agenda claiming it isn’t neces-
sary. Your soul has been replaced by a genetically created brain.
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 Your life

Scientists and philosophers have proposed hundreds of definitions of

life and they’re all wrong. It’s a fact that the greatest minds on the planet
haven’t been able to define what life is.

So you can ask – What is life? Does it have meaning? What is its purpose? Is
there a divine purpose? And how can I find out about my life? – and the orth-
odox information providers, with their scientific hunches and religious beliefs,
can’t answer any of your questions.

What you know is that you were born and your life commenced in a home and
family-life setting. As an impressionable child you were role-modeled by your
parents or caregivers. They tamed your unruly impulses and socialized your
behavior. As your first teachers they started your life education.

After their initial instruction you got down to living your life. You received an
education and learned what you wanted to do and be. You have a job or career,
a home and family, and social relations. You’re aspirational and striving to be
the best you can be. You have freewill and can work and learn at your own pace.

It’s a fact that your life is uniquely yours. It’s just you doing your thing in an
environmental setting that provides experiences through which you accumu-
late financial, intellectual and emotional rewards. You can discover your
nature, be who you are, develop ability, make as many mistakes as you like,
and learn from your mistakes.

So your strive to succeed, triumph, fail, deal with conflict, struggle with strife
and adversity, take risks, play, socialize and experience good luck, bad luck,
joy, excitement, disappointment, regret, health and sickness and have no idea
who you are, why your life is distinctly yours and what all the learning, love
and laughter is all about. It really is the strangest mystery.
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 You’re a bundle of desires

Desire means to long for, crave or need. It’s energy in a state of tension
that lacks satisfaction. The feeling of desire indicates that something is lacking
and this lack of satisfaction becomes the push, or driving force, that powers
your behavior. Your life it just you striving to satisfy your unsatisfied desires.

All your thoughts, feelings and actions are responses to unsatisfied desires.
Whatever you’re doing – eating, working, talking, mowing the lawn, baking a
cake, playing sport, assessing your birth chart or lazing around doing nothing
– satisfies a desire.

You’re a bundle of desires. You work, earn money, raise a family, keep house,
socialize, have fun, compete, fight opponents, travel and worship to satisfy
your desire for security, domesticity, companionship, survival, excitement and
devotion.

The framework of your life is built around your dominant desires. They define
who you are. They’re incessant. They’re constantly on your mind. Other
desires come and go; and the amount of time, effort and energy you’ll invest in
satisfying a desire is measured by its strength.

You might think – I’ll do this, that or the other – but you won’t unless the
thought is embedded with strong desire. So, it’s a safe bet that the road you’ve
traveled is strewn with thoughts that failed to mobilize into action.

You use up energy satisfying your desires. You can temporarily satisfy a desire
but as its tension rebuilds it again demands satisfaction; and if you fail to sat-
isfy a desire you’ll feel dissatisfied, frustrated and annoyed.

Your personal circumstances give your desires a target or central focus; so you
satisfy your desires through the life-matters, activities and people provided by
your local environment and these days that can be the world.
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 Your life is a routine habit

According to the American Journal of Psychology a habit is defined as

‘a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through pre-
vious repetition of a mental experience.’

Habits are the result of repeated experience. Your behavior is learned and
conditioned by repeated experience and then it becomes a habit. Your char-
acter is a habitual mode of thought and action which represents a habit system.

Your daily life is a routine habit. You give the thought-instruction and your
action or behavior is automatically performed. You have eating, sleeping,
working, shopping and exercise habits. Your habitual mode of thinking and
feeling is a habit. Your likes and dislikes are habits and your reactions to this,
that and the other are habits. Most of your daily behavior is performed by
habit. You’re not needed. Your life is a habit-system.

Habit researchers have found that it can take 18 to 254 days to develop a habit
with 66 days being a common average. It’s the frequency of behavior engage-
ment that determines the time frame.

Habits are actions that you do automatically and you’re running on automatic
most of the time. But when a new situation arises that doesn’t have an estab-
lished habitual reaction you’ve got a problem that can tax your intelligence.
That’s when you – your soul’s problem solver – kick in.

Major life changing events – like a career change, marriage or the birth of a
child – result in the development of a bunch of new habits.

You’re a bundle of habits and personal experience will teach you that breaking
a longtime habit or establishing a new habit is very difficult. There is an easy
explanation. Forming and breaking habits is painful and you don’t like pain.
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 You feel pleasure and pain

You know from personal experience that you feel sensations of pleasure
and pain. Your feeling response to circumstance can be good – comfortable,
agreeable and pleasant – or bad – uncomfortable, disagreeable and unpleasant
and only you know what you’re feeling.

Pleasure is a sensation, feeling or mental state that involves enjoyment. Some

person, activity, place or thing is causing you to feel good. You like what is
happening. Maybe you like eating, reading, chatting, listening to music, play-
ing sport, watching movies, walking the dog, hanging out with friends or the
sound of rain. Maybe you don’t like doing any of these things.

Pain contrasts with pleasure. The feeling of pain or discomfort has you dis-
liking what is happening. Some person, activity, place or thing is causing you
to feel bad.

Pleasure and pain are closely related to your desires and values. All your
desires have pleasure and pain associations that vary in their intensity and
certainty. Your potential to feel is directly linked to the sensitivity of your
nervous system; and people are your primary source of pleasure and pain.

Pleasure has an attractive power and you naturally move towards the people,
activities, places and things that cause you to feel pleasure. Your feel-good
happiness providers enhance your wellbeing.

Pain has a repellent power and you naturally withdraw from the people, activ-
ities, places and things that cause you to feel pain. Your feel-bad unhappiness
providers threaten or diminish your wellbeing.

You know from personal experience that pleasure is good and pain is bad and
that the pleasure and pain you feel can be physical, mental or emotional.
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 Your conditioning by environment

When you were born you were a bundle of untamed desires and during
your childhood you were socially tamed and conditioned by your parents,
significant others, teachers and associates.

Conditioning refers to the process of training or accustoming you to behave in

a certain way or to accept certain circumstances. It involves repeated perform-
ance which acts to reinforce the thought, feeling or action. So, your current
response to any circumstance has been learned or conditioned by previous
experiences with the same, or a similar, situation.

There are three main types of learning: classical conditioning, operant con-
ditioning, and observational learning. But these need not concern you. The
term is bandied about but its relevance and importance are severely under-
stated. Only you know your conditioning.

Pleasure and pain played a crucial role in your conditioning. Pleasant and un-
pleasant first experiences set the conditioning process in motion. It resulted
in you developing consistent, habitual responses to situations. You can pre-
dict your behavior in a specified environmental setting.

Your personal circumstances included social, cultural and religious practices

that you’ve acquired. They represent your social, cultural and religious con-
ditioning. Your tendency to fight or flee in a conflict situation is a conditioned
response that you’ve acquired through experience.

It pays to have some understanding of the conditioning process and you need
to understand your own conditioning. Your life today is a bundle of habits that
represent your conditioning by experience; and if you want to make the most
of your life and reach your full potential you will have to apply and make intel-
ligent use of the conditioning process.
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 Your local environment

You’re a bundle of desires operating in an environmental setting and

your local environment includes people – your parents, partner, children,
lover, siblings, close relatives, authority figures, employers, bosses, work
mates, employees, neighbors, clients, friends and enemies – who influence
your life and what you do.

Environment refers to your external circumstances. It’s defined by the time

and place in which you live and includes life-matters, activities and places and
things like money, housing, food, shops, restaurants, clothes, books, trees,
flowers, pets, cars, planes, gadgets, devices etc.

Your local environment plays a powerful role in your life story. It provides
events and conditions, customs, cultural practices, traditions and beliefs.

Your desire to do or have something is satisfied through people, places, activ-

ities and things provided by your local environment. It specifies possible
events. It facilitates some events and negates others. It imposes pressures
through which you develop and keep on developing.

You learn, work, make money, travel, play, socialize, love, have sex, worship,
compete, win, lose, eat and drink and what you do and what happens is, to a
large extent, determined by your local environment.

Your local environment facilitates major events which define keynote episodes
in your life and from your (inner) perspective your physical body, genes, endo-
crine glands, and the hormones they secrete are part of your local environment.
Events involving your physical appearance and health can play an important
role in your life story.

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 Astrology is the science of the soul and stars

Astrology has a perception problem, so what is astrology?

It’s the name given to the study of the soul and stars.

Soul identifies the intelligence and ability that’s saved in the non-physical
astral form. It’s commonly known as the unconscious mind or character; and
your personality and actions are seeable expressions of your unconscious self.

The term stars is symbolic and embraces the Sun, Moon and eight planets of
our solar system and the twelve zodiac signs.

The seeable constellations – the stars in the sky – provide data pertaining to
their unseeable sign and decanate correlates in the zodiac. The origin of the
constellations and their encrypted data is unknown, but it’s attributed to ‘the
ancients’ – the first astrologers.

The pop-astrology that’s discredited and ridiculed has not been subject to
scientific scrutiny and is considered a pseudoscience, so its reliability and
usefulness is dubious and questionable.

Hermetic astrology identifies a particular school of astrological thought. It is

grounded in ancient knowledge and teachings and its current knowledge-base
only contains astrological data that has been scientifically investigated and
statistically tested to determine its validity.

This data is used to assess the birth chart (and progressed chart) and the
study of astrology is a massive task. But the assessment of your birth chart
reduces the data-base to knowledge that only applies to your chart.

And, to set the record straight: Astrology is the science of finding and utilizing
the natural potential that’s mapped in your birth chart.
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 Hermetic astrology is a self-science

The word science means knowledge and knowledge is acquired through

observation, rigorous testing and statistical research.

Hermetic astrology is the science of the soul and stars and when it’s applied to
your birth chart it provides you with self-knowledge.

Your birth chart proclaims: Here I am – this is me; and Hermetic astrology is a
self-science that allows you to learn about yourself. Its data-base is a galaxy of
research based astrological knowledge.

So, the vaults of heaven explain the ground rules for life and when they’re
applied to your birth chart they explain who you are and what you have to do
to reach your full potential as a human soul. Hermetic astrology provides
astrological data that can be rightly defined as scientific self-information and
you really can’t underrate the value of scientific astrological data.

Hermetic astrology is devoted to helping you assess and examine your birth
chart and to finding and utilizing your chart’s natural potential. It invites you
to study and learn about your soul or unconscious mind. It’s who you are.

You can feel safe in the knowledge that Hermetic astrology is providing re-
search-based astrological data, measurement and a systematic chart assess-
ment procedure.

Your capacity to trust birth chart data is enhanced when you know you’re
applying evidence-based astrological science to its assessment.

Your birth chart is a map of your character and life story. It’s a personal
resource that assists you to live an examined, worthwhile life. You ask ‘Who
am I?’ and Hermetic astrology and your birth chart invite you to crack your
astrology code and find out.
20
 Your birth chart is a me-map

When you look at your birth chart you need to know what you’re
observing. It is a map of the zodiac and the Sun, Moon and eight planets of
our solar system that’s been calculated for your time, date and place of birth
so it connects you to the universe. But there’s more…

It’s a map of your soul (aka mind, unconscious mind, subconscious mind, not-
conscious soul mind, astral brain or character) where your evolutionary back-
story is saved in memory. And you should select a term (unconscious mind,
soul, character etc) that you feel comfortable using to define what your birth
chart is.

Your birth chart is a set of statements or principles that explain a group of

facts that you can use to make predictions about you. It defines a theory and
your practical living puts the theory into practice. By producing results you
bring the theory to life.

Your birth chart is a blueprint for living provided by God, your employer. It
bestows purpose and employment. It scripts your life story and the special role
that you’ve been assigned to play in universal life. It explains your appointed
study course in the school of life. It defines the special type of intelligence and
ability that you’re here to develop and apply.

You can view your birth chart as a press release sent by the universe at the
time of your birth; or you can liken it to an MRI scan of your soul.

Whatever… it allows you to look inside yourself and see the unseeable you. It
allows you to learn about the unknown you – the part of you that you’re likely
to call your unconscious mind or character. It allows you to meet, view, assess
and inspect your not-conscious soul-self.
21
Your birth chart pictures the 22 letters of the Divine alphabet in a special for-
mat. You have an astrology code and you bring your code to life.

Your birth chart invites you to reframe your identity in the light of scientific
astrological knowledge. It allows you to piece the tapestry of your life together
– piece by piece. Your life brings you and your birth chart together.

Your birth chart is a me-map. It’s a textbook that you can use to learn about
yourself. It’s a me-manual that informs you about your character, mentality,
temperament and personality. It’s jam-packed with self-information. It pro-
vides instructions on how best to live your life.

Your impersonal backstory involved events and conditions that built your
character and your birth chart provides information on your strengths and
weaknesses. It instructs you on what you can do to repair the character
defects that result in mishap and misfortune.

Your birth chart will inform you about your physical and mental health. It
will tell you about your physical body and the functionality of your heart, lungs,
kidneys and endocrine glands. It will instruct you on your basic dietary needs
and when, at designated times, dietary changes are needed in order to main-
tain healthful body chemistry.

Your birth chart will inform and instruct you on your finances, career, work-
life, social life, friends, family members, siblings, partners, marital relations,
children, conflicts, disappointments and secrets.

Your birth chart facilitates self-learning. Its function is to inform and instruct
you about yourself. The science of astrology allows you to assess and extract
meaning from the data. Your task is to turn the information into knowledge.
And in the Age of Aquarius you’re harnessing the data to the public good.
22
 Fact check: You

Materialistic science killed your soul and replaced it with a genetically

created brain but Hermetic astrology gives you back your soul. The fact is you
are a physical body, conscious mind and astral soul.

The astro-image depicted in your birth chart will inform you about your phys-
ical self and conscious mental activity but it is first and foremost a map of your
unconscious mind, soul, character or not-conscious soul mind as it existed at
the time of your birth.

Hermetic science will tell you that your unconscious mind is your soul so the
popular perceptions of these mental abstractions must be vastly different to
those proposed by Hermetic astrology.

Your soul

Your soul is an astral entity. It’s on an evolutionary journey to acquire and

develop intelligence and ability and the events and conditions it encounters
produce states of consciousness that it saves in memory. Your birth chart
pictures its consciousness development at the time of your birth.

Hermetic science explains that your soul or unconscious mind is an evolving

thought-built intelligence so thinking is what your soul does. It’s composed of
many individual states of consciousness that have integrated into a unified
consciousness. It has a definite thought-structure that defines your character.

Hermetic science describes your soul’s thought-structure in terms similar to

those used to describe your physical body – elements and cells. Experience
produces thought elements, thought-cells, thought-cell groups and thought-
cell structures. Thought elements having the same vibratory rate fuse into
thought-cells and thoughts-cells fuse into thought-cell groups. The building
process is eternal.
23
Soul identifies the intelligence stored in your astral form and this intelligence
includes the know-how to animate your physical body. Your astral form is
made of high-speed, frictionless astral substance. It has no physical properties;
is responsive to the molding power of thought; exists on an astral plane and is
impacted and influenced by inner-world astrological energies.

Your soul’s intelligence – the fruits of its education – built your physical body
and manages its biological processes. It’s attached to your physical body by
the psychokinetic power of its thoughts and has a stellar post biological future.

Hermetic science explains that you, your conscious mind and unconscious soul
mind are an integrated consciousness; and that you – your soul’s objective
awareness – are the most recent addition to your soul’s expanding conscious-
ness. Self-consciousness permits an objective appraisal of what’s going on.

You – the witness to your life – are the intermediary between your soul and
your outer-world of people, places and things. Thoughts, feelings, impulses,
desires, inklings, whims and memories stream into your conscious field of
awareness; feelings goad you into action; and sensory inputs influence what
you think, say and do and

Your soul has a character, mentality and personality. It has likes and dislikes,
interests, intelligence and ability and you identify who you are with your soul.
It defines your way of life. But you’re not personally acquainted with the sum
total of its know-how talent. It’s hidden from you and you wouldn’t understand
how it does what it does anyway.

So, Hermetic science provides you with a detailed explanation of your soul or
unconscious mind that is vastly different from that provided by orthodox psy-
chology and traditional-fundamentalist religion.

24
Data-streaming is what your soul does

You can view your soul or unconscious mind as an underground network of

permanently saved thoughts, feelings and impulses. And in response to cir-
cumstance those appropriate to the situation stream into your conscious mind
to influence what you think, say and do.

The thoughts, feelings and impulses you experience are mental downloads
from your soul. It’s all made possible by your body’s electrical equipment.
The cells of your brain and nervous system fire electrical impulses and the
electromagnetic field that’s produced facilitates data streaming.

Your soul or unconscious mind is where your sensory perceptions are trans-
lated into information that’s instantly streamed back to you.

Thought data streams from you to your astral-self and from your astral-self
back to your physical brain and body where it influences what you think, say
and do. Data-streaming is something your soul has learned to do on its evolu-
tionary journey. The thoughts, feelings and impulses that influence your
behavior are streaming live from your soul.

Experience should have taught you that your character (aka soul or uncon-
scious mind) is quite complex and made of many parts: And your life story –
the good things, the bad and the things you can’t make sense of – is just your
character doing its thing.

You have a conscious mind and an unconscious mind and they’re not two
different minds. They’re a single unified consciousness. So if you’re inclined
to think that your thinking world is your mind and your feeling world is your
soul… oops, think again.

25
You’re a bundle of desires

Previous experience has provided your life as a human soul with a prologue.
Your thought-built not-conscious soul-self is the starter pack you brought
with you to your self-conscious existence as a human being; but when you
were born your soul’s thought structure was not set in cement. It was pliable
and supple, like soft clay. And first experiences caused the thoughts within
the system, as mapped in your birth chart, to acquire a special mode of expres-
sion and trajectory. They were conditioned by your environment after birth,
so only you know what happened.

You’ve been conditioned by environment

Pleasant and unpleasant events caused you to feel pleasure and pain and these
conditioning factors had a profound influence on the expression of the not-
conscious desires mapped (by the planets) in your birth chart.

Your not-conscious desires were trained to react and behave in a specific way
by events you encountered as a child. They were conditioned by your local
environment and the trajectory they acquired back then is with you today.

Your conditioning by environment is in accordance with birth chart predispo-

sitions, but the harmonious or discordant thought-cell tendencies mapped in
your chart when you were born may have been altered and reconditioned dur-
ing your childhood not only in regard to their harmony or discord, but by the
specific things for which they work. It’s a judgment that only you can make
based on your knowledge of your birth chart and conditioning by environment.

Whatever… the harmony or discord built into a thought-cell group by previous

experience as indicated by your birth chart determines if the events and con-
ditions it now desires will be fortunate and beneficial or unfortunate and
detrimental.
26
You soul is embedded with powerful desires that define who you are and get
you going. As a child they were conditioned by experience and you go where
they and your environment take you. Your desires have been conditioned and
socialized to find expressions doing this, that or the other and what you do
constitutes a habit.

Your life is a routine habit

Your birth chart reveals a potential to develop habits in response to your

conditioning by environment. Habits are behaviors directed by your uncon-
scious mind. Your soul is taking care of business. You’re not needed.

All habits are developed through energy relationships formed by the thought-
cells, thought structures, and dynamic stellar structures of your astral body.

When you do something for the first time a definite energy relationship is
established between the mental factors involved and the more often you do it,
the stronger the energy relationship becomes.

Your initial action is stimulated by feelings of pleasure or pain and once the
thought-cells involved in meeting the situation become so accustomed to act-
ing together in the manner required, the adaptation requires no close atten-
tion to detail and becomes habitual. It becomes a habit directed by your
unconscious mind. You’re a bundle of habits; and your not-conscious thought-
cell habits are imprinted in neural pathways in your brain and nervous system.

Your tendency to use spontaneous attention is a habit that’s been acquired on

your evolutionary journey. It gives rise to fantasy thinking, which has its use,
but the lack of critical discernment easily results in errors.

The behaviors associated with your dominant desires are known as keystone
habits. They demand satisfaction and the satisfaction you feel when satisfying
a desire is a habit.
27
You feel pleasure and pain

You feel pleasure and pain sensations and only you know what you’re feeling.
You’re inclined to describe an event that triggers a feel-good pleasure response
as good and an event that triggers a feel-bad pain response as bad. But if you’re
inclined to think of pleasure and pain in terms of reward and punishment it’s
time to think again.

In the school of life the function of pleasure and pain is strictly educational:
They’re your teachers. Through pleasant and painful experiences you develop
and keep on developing intelligence and ability.

Sensations of pleasure, which vary in their intensity and certainty, are letting
you know that you’re being successful in your efforts to survive and adapt to
your environment. They move you to take actions that benefit your self-
preservation and which you consider personally beneficial and rewarding.

Your sensitivity to pleasure is a very valuable attribute. A feel-good pleasure

message is letting you know that you’re moving forward, even prospering, in
your efforts to attain health, wealth, pleasant family and social relations and/
or career advancement. You’re being informed that some life-matter, activity
or person is benefiting your mental and physical welfare.

Your feelings of pleasure are teaching you about yourself – what you like and
what you’re doing right; and you’ll move towards the life-matters, activities
and people that cause you to feel pleasure. The pleasure you feel keeps you
coming back for more. And the feel-good pleasure you feel when you over-
come a problem is letting you know that all is well.

Sensations of pain, which vary in their intensity and certainty, are informing
you that you’re experiencing a degree of failure in your efforts to survive and
adapt to your local environment. They’re warnings of impending hardship or
destruction that prompt you to take actions that reduce or eliminate threats to
your welfare.
28
Your sensitivity to pain is a very valuable attribute. A feel-bad pain message is
letting you know that you’re failing in your efforts to attain health, wealth,
career success and/or pleasant relations with family members, friends and
associates. You’re being informed that some person or situation is threaten-
ing your wellbeing and you need to take action to prevent self-destruction.

Your feelings of pain are teaching you about yourself – what you dislike and
what you’re doing wrong. They’re letting you know there’s a problem – that
some life-matter or person is antagonizing your mental or physical wellbeing;
and you’re naturally inclined to destroy or move away from the person or sit-
uation that is causing you to feel the pain.

Your perceptions of pain drive many of your daily behaviors. You eat, drink,
work, save money and apply sunscreen in the interest of avoiding destruction
and staying alive.

Feelings of pleasure and pain are educating you about yourself; and you – the
thinker – are developing your thinking and reasoning skills as an effective
means of avoiding misfortune and escaping painful penalties. Your feelings of
pleasure and pain – not your thoughts – are your primary motivators so at
every step of your journey they’re influencing what you do, where you’re doing
it and who you’re doing it with.

Your local environment

Your intelligence and ability emerges in response to events and situations

made possible by your local environment. It includes people, places, activ-
ities, life-matters, laws and social and cultural practices. It facilitates and
negates events; and it has been observed that almost identical birth charts
operating in quite different environments produce very different results. This
illuminates the powerful role played by environment in what eventuates.

29
Time and place have a powerful influence on what you do and who you
become.

Hermetic science concludes that your birth chart and local environment have
an equal influence in what eventuates in your life. Each has a 50% influence.

Your life

Your life is a tapestry woven by the thoughts you think, the feelings you feel
and the events you experience; and it’s an investment in God’s great evolution-
ary enterprise. It provides you with on-the-job-training so you could say
you’re the apprentice and God is your employer. You exist because God –
your employer – requires your special kind of intelligence and ability which
can only be developed through a special training program. Your life is a self-
development project.

Your intelligence and ability adds something special to God’s grand enterprise
so you can view yourself as an associate participant in the greatest show on
Earth. And you’ll get a big tick from your employer when you do your best by
striving to develop your intelligence and ability in the interest of universal
welfare.

Your life is all about not-conscious thought-cell desire operating in an environ-

mental setting and the development of intelligence and ability; and when you
successfully overcome a minor or major problem your intelligence and ability
increases.

Your life is about you striving to fulfill your natural potential. See your birth
chart. It’s about the development of thoughts and feelings – love and wisdom
– emotional connections – spiritual aspiration – and intelligence and ability.

30
 Your birth chart’s astrodyne report
Your birth chart’s astrodyne report is straightforward and easy to
understand, but the idea that your chart and the character it depicts can be
measured may take a little getting used to.

Your birth chart is a mathematical structure so the strength and functionality

of each birth chart factor can be measured.

The planets, aspects, signs and houses in your chart are identified as factors;
and their special format provides data pertaining to you and your life story.

The planets, God’s agents, are the dynamic factors. They’re located by sign
and house and form angular relationships (aspects).

Astrodynes are a set of equations that measure their strength and function-
ality; and when they’re applied to your chart they measure the power and
harmony or discord of each planet, aspect, sign and house.

Your chart’s aspect grid records the aspects formed by the planets and their
power, harmony or discord measurements. And your chart’s astrodyne report
summarizes in power order the planets, houses and signs and their harmony
or discord scores.

You will refer to the planet, house and sign summaries when assessing the
planets, houses and zodiac signs in your birth chart.

You’ll refer to the aspect grid when assessing the aspects formed by the
planets.

The measurements reduce uncertainty and add reliability; so your birth

chart’s astrodyne report and aspect grid provide valuable data.
31
 Chart data collection and verification

You’re looking for you in a self-reference called your birth chart; and
your task is to collect, interpret and verify the data. It’s an academic exercise.

Hermetic astrology’s systematic data collection procedure facilitates efficient

data collection; and the astro-science you’ll apply to your chart is research-
based and very reliable.

Measurement fine-tunes the meaning of the data.

But before you – the interpreter – start to apply the astro-data to your birth
chart you should understand what you’re about to do and what it means.

Data-interpretation is the act of explaining, reframing, or otherwise showing

your own understanding of the language of the stars as it applies to your chart’s
special dialect of the language.

It means you’re probing the data for meaning within the context of your own
life experience. This will raise as many questions as it answers.

The reliability of your data interpretation depends upon your capacity to apply
astro-data and principles to your birth chart.

Data should be noted and recorded at the time it’s collected.

At the start you will tend to collect too much data but over time this will reduce
as you develop clearer concepts of its relevance and importance.

Data, data-clusters and data patterns with high astrodynes scores are chart
hotspots.

You can view your birth chart as a report of previous experience and it’s likely
that you will find some parts of the report more interesting than others.
32
How the astrological energies mapped in your birth chart express is revealed by
your real-life experience. Your only reliable source of personal truth is per-
sonal experience that’s been sensibly observed and carefully recorded.

Your birth chart shows you what your life looks like on the computer screen
(or paper) and you know what it looks like in practice.

Data verification involves checking chart data against life-data and life-data
against chart data. Real-life data corroborates chart data so you need to have
a personal life history of major events and the dates they occurred; and keep
an ongoing record of major life events as they occur.

Chart data will confirm what you already know about yourself.

Weaknesses in your data collection and verification will be due to a poor under-
standing of the chart data and yourself.

You’re the fact-checker who has to check the factual assertions made by your
birth chart with your sometimes unreliable self-observations.

Managing your personal data means taking notes and merging chart data with
life data.

So you will learn a lot about the events and conditions that define your life
story from your birth chart.

Past experience provides a wealth of evidence-based self-data which will val-

idate chart data.

Real-live evidence should be reviewed calmly and objectively and discord data
should be reviewed and verified in a sensible matter-of-fact way.

You can’t change your past but you can learn from it.
33
 Harmony and/or discord

The term harmony or discord is astro-jargon that’s easy to understand.

It’s applied to your birth chart to describe the functionality of both the astro-
factors and their character correlates as harmonious or discordant.

Harmonious means pleasing, pleasant and agreeable and discordant means

displeasing, unpleasant and disagreeable; and your soul on its evolutionary
journey had fortunate – harmonious – and unfortunate – discordant – exper-
iences that left a pleasant or painful memory trace embedded in the thought-
cells and thought-cell structures associated with the experience.

Harmony is all about pleasure; and the pleasant associations you have with
activities, people and places trigger feel-good feelings of pleasure. It indi-
cates that a comfortable, stress-free environmental setting is fostering har-
monious thoughts and feelings that promote your wellbeing and incline to-
wards forward progress and worthwhile, personal accomplishment.

Discord is all about pain; and the unpleasant associations you have with activ-
ities, people and places trigger feel-bad feelings of pain. It indicates that an
uncomfortable, stressful environmental setting is fostering discordant thoughts
and feelings that antagonize your wellbeing and incline towards breakdown
and adversity.

Your birth chart is a map of your soul and its harmony factors identify not-
conscious thoughts, feelings and impulses that are embedded with a conscious-
ness of pleasure; and its discord factors identify not-conscious thoughts, feel-
ings and impulses that are embedded with a consciousness of pain.

Harmony and discord are educational so you can learn from your fortunate-
pleasant and unfortunate-painful experiences. Both contribute to and sustain
the development of your special type of intelligence and ability.

34
 Deal with discord sensibly

Your birth chart has discord sectors. It’s inevitable – that’s the way
nature planned it – and they’re sending you powerful messages. So right at
the start you need to clearly understand what the discord signifies and how
best to deal with it. You need to deal with discord sensibly.

The discord in your birth chart is confirmed by the unfortunate events and
conditions you experience. It hasn’t suddenly appeared with your awareness
of its potential. You’ve been living with, adapting to, and surviving your chart’s
discord sectors from the moment you were born.

The painful discord situations in your life replicate themselves in your mental
world as irritation, annoyance, agitation, frustration, conflict and other pain-
ful states of consciousness. And your birth chart allows you to get an inside
look at what’s really going on.

It allows you to examine what’s going wrong in your not-conscious soul mind;
and when you realize that your mental indiscretions are causing you harm,
mishap and discomfort you’ll realize that you’re to blame.

The best way to deal with a discord hotspot in your birth chart is to get in there
and fix it. Hermetic astrology provides effective strategies for dealing with
high-stress situations. Intelligence and initiative are required.

The incentive to fix the problem and make the change is the promise of
improved relations with your environment; and the reward you get for your
effort is mental contentment and a slight increase in intelligence and ability.

The road you travel has rough spots. Tranquil waters turn stormy. And your
birth reveals where the discord is and who and what’s involved. Your job is to
deal with the discord sensibly as best you can.

35
 What’s wrong with my birth chart?

So you’re collecting and verifying chart data and oops… the person you’re
expecting to find in the chart isn’t there. It’s a dilemma that has you wonder-
ing: What’s wrong with my birth chart? And, if your birth data is reliable and
your birth chart has been calculated correctly then there’s nothing wrong with
your chart.

Looking for you in your birth chart involves two data-sets: (1) your birth chart
and (2) your real-life experience; and how well you do depends upon your
capacity to comprehend chart data and validate it with what you already know
about yourself through real-life experience.

But your real-life self-learning has lacked a reliable reference point. It has
been so general that it’s almost meaningless. You may have identified natural
inclinations, likes and dislikes and weak spots in your character; but a lack of
genuine self-knowledge makes it difficult to see you in your birth chart.

There’s no doubt that you’ve spent so much time observing the conduct of
those around you that you’ve neglected to observe your own. So there’s a good
chance that the image that you and other people have created of yourself is noth-
ing like the image depicted in your birth chart. It’s a situation where you might
have to erase what you think you know about yourself and start again.

Rather than subjectively experiencing yourself as a feeling or desire your chart

allows you to objectively interpret your thoughts, feelings and impulses as men-
tal downloads from your not-conscious soul mind.

Your birth chart is all about you – the whole works – so you will have to accept
that what you find in your chart is truly there and truly you.

Looking for you in your birth chart can be a problem if you don’t find the per-
son you’re expecting to find and the problem is likely to involve your poor self-
observation skills and lack of intrapersonal intelligence.
36
 Low level self-understanding

The soul deep data provided by your birth chart pertains to a region of
your consciousness that you’re not all that familiar with so there’s a good
chance that the self-data that you’re using to validate chart data is quite
superficial.

Your self-image has been built by your own subjective observations and the
biased observations of other people which you have taken on board; and both
sets of data will have a degree of error.

The perceptions you have of yourself were produced by first experiences when
you were a bundle of feelings so they’re a matter of conjecture. And without a
reliable self-reference the personal fact-file you’ve compiled of yourself and
your life could be filled with fanciful notions and errors.

So low-level self-understanding may be a problem that compromises your

search to find yourself in your birth chart.

Low-level self-understanding has several explanations. Maybe you were raised

to be who you weren’t; and if you took the line of least resistance you may have
become the person you were told to be. Maybe your parents created you in
their image. Were you allowed to be you? Maybe you were shaped by environ-
mental forces into someone you’re not; and if you’re a facsimile of a significant
other you won’t know who you are.

Or maybe your own search for an identify saw you develop fanciful assump-
tions about yourself based on flimsy evidence that just isn’t true. Or maybe you
just haven’t given yourself much thought, which is hard to believe as you are
your favorite topic of thought and conversation.

Whatever… low-level self-understanding can pose a problem but rest assured

the planets and zodiac signs in your birth chart are describing you far more
accurately than any mere mortal can. You can only do your best.
37
 Subjective bias

The primary contributors to the image that you’ve created of yourself

are your feelings.

As subjective perceptions they represent personal truth; and subjective self-

bias identifies a key problem that you’re bound to encounter when doing your
own birth chart.

The image that you have created of yourself is based on data that you have
collected subjectively. You can be impartial and unbiased about yourself, but
it isn’t easy. So the self-information you’re using to confirm birth chart data
has been acquired subjectively and your birth chart is providing objective data.

The chart allows you to collect objective facts and to process and analyze dis-
crete bits of chart data objectively – independent of personal feelings and
emotions.

You’re expecting the chart to describe its subject matter – you – but the
subjective image you’ve created of yourself could be quite different to the
objective image displayed in your chart.

So at the start it’s highly likely that the objective data provided by your chart
won’t be clearly supported by the subjective data provided by your life exper-
ience; and any temptation to misrepresent, distort or deny birth chart data
that doesn’t suit your purpose must be resisted.

Your birth chart is a personal fact-map. It provides objective evidence that

must be given an objective appraisal. But you’re fact-checking its facts with
data that you’ve acquired subjectively so the onus is on you and the reliability
of your subjective observations. Your birth chart allows you to get to know
yourself objectively – free from subjective bias – and the goal of your fact-
checking is to see yourself in your birth chart.
38
 Intrapersonal intelligence

Your astrological quest for self-understanding can be hampered by your

inability to clearly recognize in yourself the character, thinking and other traits
mapped in your birth chart. And the best way to overcome this impediment is
to develop intrapersonal intelligence.

Your birth as a human soul was rewarded with self-consciousness; and your
potential to become self-aware involves the development of a significant
degree of objectivity and detachment in regard to the inner workings of your
own thoughts, feelings and impulses.

Only you know your degree of self-awareness but there’s no doubt that you’ve
spent most of your time with your attention riveted on your external environ-
ment and understanding other people – not yourself. You were compelled to
develop interpersonal intelligence; but to study yourself and effectively blend
birth chart data with conscious and not-conscious mental activity and real-life
experience requires intrapersonal intelligence.

Intrapersonal intelligence – the highest degree of self-awareness – is not only

the ability to objectively assess the functionality of your own behavior it’s the
capacity to form an accurate model of your behavior and to be able to under-
stand and use this model to operate effectively in your daily living and self-
development.

By looking inwards you can observe and assess your own thoughts, feelings
and impulses as they stream from your not-conscious soul mind to your con-
scious field of mental activity; and the application of intrapersonal intelligence
allows you to glimpse your soul and verify birth chart data.

Your birth chart provides data pertaining to your not-conscious self and to
understand the data you’re relying on your intrapersonal observations. With-
out them the person your chart describes could be an unfamiliar stranger.
39
 Chart data analysis and application

Your birth chart causes nothing. It’s a personal reference and like any
map it provides specialized information. It reveals to you – the occasional
thinker – what’s going on in your not-conscious soul mind – the part of your
consciousness that’s hidden from you. It’s all very personal so you’re the only
person who can give the data a first person analysis.

Chart data analysis involves the close inspection of the data and the hard
evidence provided by your real-life. It’s aimed at giving you a better under-
standing of your not-conscious thoughts and character traits and why they
cause the events and conditions they do.

Chart data analysis brings the astro-data into clearer focus. It’s aimed at
developing greater insight into your chart, the person it displays and who you
can become. It enhances self-understanding.

Chart data analysis reduces data complexity and extracts meaning from the
data in the interest of a better life outcome. Its focus is on knowledge discovery
for predictive rather than descriptive purposes.

Chart data analysis organizes the data in terms of its personal importance and
relevance. The astrodyne measurements help fine-tune your analysis.

Chart data is measured and recorded as numbers so you’re working with

quantitative and qualitative values. They allow you to better understand the
strength and functionality of your not-conscious thought-cell activity.

You will code data as strong, moderate or weak and as harmonious or discord-
ant. This is called coding up the data.

Chart data with high astrodyne scores is more important. It marks for very
active not-conscious thought-cell activity and major events. And discord-data
indicates you’re not perfect.
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Chart data analysis reveals what you’re doing wrong and your discordant
thoughts, feelings and impulses are destined to cause you mishap and mis-
fortune until you correct their misguided expression.

The only way you can improve your life is to mend or modify the flaws and
defects in your character. And your real life experience is constantly provid-
ing you with more and more data to check, analyze and correct.

Chart data analysis involves asking questions. Why do I have financial prob-
lems? Why does my home life give me so much pleasure? Why do I have poor
relations with my workmates?

You should ask: What is my chart telling me? What should I do with this bit
of data? What should I do to remedy this ineffective character trait? And
what should I do to ensure that I do my best?

You have questions – who am I and what am I doing here? – and you’re
expecting your birth chart to give you answers.

You should think about the data strictly within the context it is presented by
the chart; and never disregard a piece of data. If it’s in your chart you’ve got
it. Data that surprises you or which you find puzzling should be carefully
analyzed to determine just what’s going on.

When you’ve analyzed the data and assessed its meaning you can take action
to merge it into your life. The application of chart data involves its practical
integration into your daily living. This involves personal change.

In time, you will see yourself emerging from the chart; and as your under-
standing of your chart and yourself gradually deepens you will view the astro-
data and yourself in more enlightened ways.

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 Make your self-searching a grand adventure

You’re curious about you and probably believe what you don’t know and
what you want, so the idea of learning about yourself with a reference that’s
decorated with astrological symbols may involve a leap of faith. But Hermetic
astrology and your birth chart are a dynamic combination. They dispense with
the weird notions, unsubstantiated beliefs and strange ideas. They explain who
you are and what you have to do get the best out of yourself.

You’re assessing your birth chart to learn about you so you’re expecting the
chart to explain your life story. It allows you to examine your life and then it
invites you to live an examined life.

You’re the best person to assess your birth chart. That’s because you’re the
one who’s having a personal subjective experience of its data; and when you
know your chart you’ll know and understand yourself.

Your chart – you see – is all about you: It’s bursting with self-information.
You can clarify what you know of yourself and match thought-cell desires and
the events they demonstrate with their astrological markers. Instead of trying
to be someone else you can concentrate on being you. Think about that.

So get curious about your birth chart. It’s a vault of self-knowledge. It dis-
penses with the superficial physical genetic stuff and goes beyond conscious
thought to the precursor realm of not-conscious thoughts, feelings and im-
pulses. It goes to the core of your being and reveals the mystery that is you;
and by unleashing your curiosity you can discover the mystery. So get curious
about you. Be eager to learn your astrology code. You and your life story are
written in its language.

You don’t need someone else to tell you who you are. You’re smart enough to
figure it out for yourself – with a little help from your birth chart. And it’s a
fact that only you can explore and understand you.
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Who else can see your potential? Who else can explore your desires, hopes
and aspirations? Who else can appreciate your intelligence and ability? Who
else can hear your private intuitions?

Who else can acknowledge and understand the strengths in your character and
the struggles you’ve overcome? Who else can learn from the mistakes you
make? Who else can appreciate everything that is you and everything you can
become? Who else, but you?

It will take you a life time to know who you are. Each new experience is a self-
learning opportunity that provides new data and new evidence, so let’s get
going by dispensing with the froth and bubble.

Get curious about you. Start taking notice of yourself. Start listening to your
thoughts. Learn the language they speak – your birth chart is written in the
same language.

Your birth chart reveals your natural potential and you should ask: How can I
make it happen? It proclaims you’re worth exploring. So, explore sensibly and
learn about yourself with gratitude, love and inspiration.

The sooner you understand your birth chart the sooner you can take control of
your life. Your job is to assess your chart in a smart efficient way. You have the
task of creating an objective assessment of your character; and you’re a bundle
of desires that produce good and bad outcomes. So the best time to commence
your astrological quest for self understanding is right now.

Your life has a special purpose and you will only reach your full potential when
you correctly discern your nature and the role you’ve been allocated to play as
a participant in the greatest show in the universe: See your birth chart.

Make your soul-searching a grand adventure. Enjoy the wow moments. Your
goal is to see yourself in your birth chart and reach for the stars.
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