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Provided the question is not related to illegal activities, and provided the question fulfils the basic criteria of a horary question (it is relevant to the querent etc) and provided the question is not about snooping into other people's private affairs, I tend to be fairly amoral on the issue. I see my role as astrologer as primarily one of translator first and foremost though keep in mind that we have a responsibility to consider the well being and care of the people involved.

In other words I don't babysit other people's moral or ethical judgements - I assume that other people have their own moral compass. My role isn't to play judge over your questions and weigh them against a feather and decide which ones are ethical or not. Sometimes this means that I answer questions which clash with my own sense of what is appropriate but at the same time I accept that if I'm ever uncomfortable with a question, I'll simply not answer it.

I'm sometimes uncomfortable with questions but still answer them as I try to accept that the person is coming to me for astrological advice not for me to get on my soapbox on what I think is right and wrong. A good example is where a person came to me to ask, something along the lines of "Should I marry a man of a lower caste than me, or will there be someone better".

Re: What kind of questions should horary astrology accept,

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Lakewind wrote:and which questions, if any, should be refused by the ethical astrologer?No more information given, this is a wide open topical question. All comers welcome.
The Suicide prediction/fortune telling stuff on your other thread tends to be frowned upon nowadays for all sorts of reasons. You can consult some Ethics guidelines for clarification here.

I was wondering more about the legal side. In a situation where if the person did not take this information with a pinch of salt and act on it as 'real or true', were the site owner not to have made clear this is a form of entertainment or similar then they might run into some serious difficulties. However Internet Law is complex.

There was an article here sometime ago about fortune telling and the law in the UK but I can't find it at the moment, you might find it interesting if you can uncover it.

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About a question such as 'Will X commit suicide?': No, it's not appropriate for the casual treatment of an Internet forum, especially when asked by someone who might not be closely involved, a bystander. But it could be asked by a concerned close friend or relative, with the chart delineated by a very experienced serious astrologer. Ethically, not too terribly bad.

It's the wrong question, however. Instead of 'Will X commit suicide?' the better question is 'Will X enter a dangerous state of suicidal thoughts?' or 'Is X now in a dangerous state of suicidal thoughts?' That's enough ? we don't need to know if the act will occur. If the querent truly cares about the person, and if the astrologer is truly in the business to help others, they need to know what the person is going through now. Such a question is much more compassionate in that it addresses the immediate pain of the person, it connects the querent and the astrologer with the emotional distress the person is feeling now.

Ethical considerations, or the lack thereof, can be found in the question. To ask 'Will X commit suicide?' coldly directs a curious eye to a future corpse that will no longer feel anything. Constructively helpful ethics direct the feeling heart to painful current conditions and prompt investigation into possible current emotional pain.

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Lakewind wrote:Oh Boy, Paul, do I ever agree with you!!!!! Although I sometimes snoop into other people's business anyway, I must admit. (blush).


But what about death?
Regarding death, it's very difficult. If the question is "Will my neighbour commit suicide" my first thought is, well is it any of your business? I know that sounds harsh because you care about your neighbour and want what's best for them and to protect them. But at the same time I take an amoral stance that not everyone would be comfortable with here which is that I let other people live their lives and have their privacy - so unless you were someone I thought really and truly had the neighbour's best interests at heart, I probably wouldn't answer - after all, why do you want to know?

If it's to help the other person, then you can do this without the aid of a horary - you can go and see your neighbour/friend/whoever and talk to them and help them and encourage them to get help. After all, if you are asking the question, then it assumes that you have a fear that the person is suicidal. Whatever the horary says, clearly the neighbour/friend etc could use someone and so from a practical point of view, you may not need to know.

In other questions there can be more shades of grey. I remember answering someone asking about whether someone will come home from hospital only to see in the chart that there was likelihoods of death (I cannot remember all the signatures now), I judged that she would come home only to be made worse or more anxious or more sick, or, if the context was appropriate, may come into contact with mortality. The person contacted me to say that their aunt was terminally ill and so it was possible that she'd die, the question was asked in fact because the aunt wanted to die at home. As expected, the aunt was released from the hospital, sent home, and she died the following day.

In still other questions there is a clear signal that answering would be beneficial: Is this lump fatal if I don't get it seen to? for example. I remember someone else asking me about a lump - due to health care in America she wasn't going to go to the doctors for another month or so cos she needed to save up some money. When people criticise the NHS here in the UK, I'm always reminded of this. The horary clearly showed the person was with serious health issues and there was definitely cause for alarm, so I told the person to seek medical help immediately and to borrow the money if she had to. She went a few days later and was told the lump was malignant and she had to have her breast removed. She was told that if she had left it too much longer it may have been too late. She contacted me several months later to thank me, but I've not heard from her since. I assume she's alive and well.

I use these examples to point out several things: sometimes having an automatic embargo at even thinking about issues pertaining to death can actually be the less ethical thing to do. If we believe, and most of us do, that horary can be accurate and appropriate, then we know that it can sometimes point out health problems or things which may affect our mortality which could be prevented. I do not believe that the future is so fixed in stone for us all that we cannot affect it. If this is the case I struggle to know why we would ever do a horary to begin with. I'm of a mind that if this lady had not asked a horary question regarding her lump she may have left it too late and the situation would have been much much worse, all because we can be sometimes a little sensitive about death issues.

That said, there is a case to be made that it is not appropriate on an internet forum. Because it is so important and carries such sensitivity, it should perhaps be only done in a context where that sensitivity and importance is understood and respected. Unfortunately sensitivity and respect can be found in short supply sometimes online.

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I certainly agree with much of what you say, Paul, especially the last paragraph. It seems to me what many posters have missed, is that it is the woman next door who was asking the question about suicide. I stated that early on ,and was amazed at how many posters wandered off into the theoretical, about who was asking what.

People sometimes ask questions like this because they are doubting themselves or are wanting to avoid further useless struggle, and I see that as legitimate, although utmost care and personal responsibility must be displayed in answering such a query.

Dastars was the only one who actually got it. I am going to go to my neighbor today and encourage her to look at other therapies, and I think she will.

Now, back to the general topic. As I said to Nixx in a pm, anyone who thinks that astrology developed to answer vanilla questions is just not thinking at all. People have always needed and wanted to answer life and death questions, not just "Where did I leave my papyrus?" The amount of effort it takes to observe the natural world and record, organize and make viable a body of such knowledge, is never made to answer such questions.

I know fear of legal implications is a real one, but I sometimes doubt the sincerity of people who are always acting as if certain questions must always be refused on the basis of "ethics". It is just as often their own hang-ups, cultural or religious beliefs that they are referring to.

Failing to question these factors is frequently the sort of "ethics" that I really find wanting. My own feeling is that rigorous self examination of these areas is a prerequisite to even thinking one HAS ethics.

Your example of the lady with the tumour is a good one, because it lends itself to many different inquiries. Half of my family is Canadian, and having spent my early years living with the Canadian healthcare system, and living in a border town, I can tell you that the American system here is overloaded with Canadians with tumors or other possibly life threatening conditions, who cross the border to avoid a six month wait for an MRI in Canada. Things are rarely simple.

No one should take my example to mean I oppose single payor healthcare, as I have worked politically for years on that score, and am very disappointed in Obama for that reason. I'm just pointing out the complexities, as you were. Again , I don't know if England is troubled with crazed Christian fundamentalists as we are in America, but religious prejudice, unacknowledged by many "ethical" astrologers I have met, is a big problem for astrologers, and one infrequently discussed.

I see a big cultural divide on this forum, and assume it plagues astrologers worldwide to some degree or another. I find statements made and accepted as polite, that curl my hair, and I'm sure others see that in my language. C'est la vie. I have few worries about you, Paul, as I see you are thoughtful, but other views do scare me a bit, and I agree that huge damage can be done by the unthinking.

You say you take an amoral stance in most cases, but somehow I doubt that. You may take a live and let live attitude more than others, which I applaud, but you clearly are not taking an amoral view, rather, I see you taking a neutral one as much as possible, in judging the actions of others. I think there is a difference.

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Lakewind wrote:I know fear of legal implications is a real one, but I sometimes doubt the sincerity of people who are always acting as if certain questions must always be refused on the basis of "ethics".
Do you know I really don't think it is a real one. I think it's a red herring argument. The legal implications are secondary to the ethical considerations and shouldn't be conflated. With this in mind, how many astrologers do you know of in recent times who were litigated against? I can't think of any. I only ever hear this argument thrown up when it comes to some other problem that the person cannot argue against cogently or succintly -then we get these red herrings and strawmen.

I mean, what has death prediction got to do with litigation? Why not litigate against the astrologer who said that "Leos are generous and Libras are fair" and based on this you give some money to your leo and libra friends knowing them to be generous and fair and they don't give it back and blah blah blah - we can all make up ridiculous litigation ideas from any form of astrology, we don't need to jump to death predictions, or even any other form of prediction to point out the completely obvious: astrologers aren't giving cast iron guarantees on the future and nor do they claim to, most people have common sense.
Your example of the lady with the tumour is a good one, because it lends itself to many different inquiries. Half of my family is Canadian, and having spent my early years living with the Canadian healthcare system, and living in a border town, I can tell you that the American system here is overloaded with Canadians with tumors or other possibly life threatening conditions, who cross the border to avoid a six month wait for an MRI in Canada. Things are rarely simple.
Right, and every single person in my family who has died has died because of a cancer of some sort so it's a totally valid question in my mind. I can imagine a lot more harm being done if the astrologer ignores such questions.

Of course if you genuinely believe astrology cannot help the person, then the more ethical approach is to explain that to the person and to not accept such questions. If you genuinely believe that you CAN help them though, then I see no ethical reason why you wouldn't, provided you also encourage they seek medical attention or whatever else as well - but this is just common sense.

What I was trying to show in my examples is where dealing with death can be a normal part of life and there isn't necessarily a reason to automatically put an embargo on dealing with such questions. There's a big difference between my examples and say, someone asking about career, and you putting on a weird voice rolling your eyes in your head and telling them they're doomed DOOMED!!!! We're not into scare mongering. There is a way of dealing with issues of death sensitively and carefully.
You say you take an amoral stance in most cases, but somehow I doubt that. You may take a live and let live attitude more than others, which I applaud, but you clearly are not taking an amoral view, rather, I see you taking a neutral one as much as possible, in judging the actions of others. I think there is a difference.
I mean this in the sense that I let other people have their own moral compass. It seems unethical to me to talk about people in terms of 'a better caste' or a 'lower caste' - so to ask "should I wait for someone from a better caste to come along?" just seems highly unethical to me, it's just not the right way to think about marriage in my mind. But that's in my mind. Not in this woman's. In her world, with her moral compass, this is not only perfectly fine, but perfectly normal too. So I will be amoral on these issues provided that they are not illegal. In other words, I'll bow to the fact that the person has come to me for astrology, not for my proselytzing(sp?) or badgering them with right and wrong as though they are children or incapable of deciding their own moral compass. In that sense, as an astrologer, I am primarily a translator, translating the astrological symbolism rather than placing value judgements on it. Imagine if a translator was to turn to the person she was translating and said "Oh sorry love, I don't think translating your aggressive words is a good thing, as per my sense of what's good and what isn't, so I won't be translating that, and whilst I'm at it, I don't think your aggressive language is good for you either" - it would be considered unprofessional.

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Kirk wrote: About a question such as 'Will X commit suicide?': No, it's not appropriate for the casual treatment of an Internet forum, especially when asked by someone who might not be closely involved, a bystander. But it could be asked by a concerned close friend or relative, with the chart delineated by a very experienced serious astrologer. Ethically, not too terribly bad.
These conversations often come back to what constitutes this.

Should an astrologer only deal with 'death' if they have undergone bereavement training or 'suicide' if they are a trained psychotherapist ? Is the astrological nous very much secondary to the psychological one ?

By and large astrologers are dealing with questions of human behaviour or mental states. So on what basis can they ethically operate without considerable, and ideally assessed, exposure to material which provides information about these ?

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Paul, your thoughts are very thorough and humane. I really like your point of view. I didn't bring up the legal thing, though, someone else raised it in a pm. Even though I'm an attorney, I don't know anything about internet law/international law.

Nixx, very interesting point. I wonder how others feel about it?

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Nixx wrote:
Kirk wrote: About a question such as 'Will X commit suicide?': No, it's not appropriate for the casual treatment of an Internet forum, especially when asked by someone who might not be closely involved, a bystander. But it could be asked by a concerned close friend or relative, with the chart delineated by a very experienced serious astrologer. Ethically, not too terribly bad.
These conversations often come back to what constitutes this.

Should an astrologer only deal with 'death' if they have undergone bereavement training or 'suicide' if they are a trained psychotherapist ? Is the astrological nous very much secondary to the psychological one ?

By and large astrologers are dealing with questions of human behaviour or mental states. So on what basis can they ethically operate without considerable, and ideally assessed, exposure to material which provides information about these ?
OK. You caught me. :lol: I was becoming impatient and didn't want to take the time to write something that more accurately reflects my thoughts.

I don't at all ? at all ? like the idea of handing astrological qualifications over to the academic and governmental racket, using the farce of modern psychology as the standard of measurement. When I wrote it I knew that "a very experienced serious astrologer" hardly even hinted at what I had in mind. I came closer in another thread recently when I wrote of astrologers who are "mentally, emotionally and spiritually centered".

As I view it, astrology is far more spiritual than psychological, in the academic sense of modern psychology. Astrology is divination. It is an activity that connects the mind and heart of the astrologer to God, the Cosmos, whatever you want to call it, in order to gain helpful insight. In our era we want accreditation, the stamp of approval from academic and governmental bodies that somehow, through their own (questionable) magic bestow great power on folks who spend piles and piles of money on 'education'. We want specialists to give us answers and explanations. We want some solid meat for our money. Insight is often forgotten as being too slight, too fluffy. But insight is the true home turf for astrologers. A good astrologer opens doors; he or she doesn't hand out dry reasons and fixes.

A ?very experienced serious astrologer? was my grossly inadequate way of slipping past all that. I shouldn't have done that.

We don't need those academic and governmental power brokers. We have our own intuitive insight ? it just gets rusty due to lack of use. I'm sure we've all seen recommendations for finding a spiritual teacher. Good spiritual teachers aren't usually expected to have graduated with a degree in spirituality and a license to give insight into the heart. It's up to us to simply listen to them, to question whether something about them doesn't feel quite right, to see if they are dishonestly trying to get something from us, etc. It's up to us to listen with the mind and soul. It's our responsibility to listen and make our choice. So it is with choosing an astrologer: Choose the very experienced serious ones, the ones who are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually centered. The power is in having gone through the process and made a choice, not in reading a list of standardized qualifications and picking the one who has purchased the most socially impressive ones.

Now that I've clarified it, in the future is it OK if I just write "a very experienced serious astrologer?? :???: There's a certain satisfaction to be found in brevity.


EDITED TO ADD: I forgot the important part! :bl The universe likes those very experienced serious astrologers. It's their personal experience and preparation - mentally, emotionally, spiritually - that makes the strong connection which brings the most helpful and profound insight. Their involvement is the key, not academic psychological training.

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Kirk,

Overall your response was the one I expected, albeit based on a limited exposure to your posts. So what exactly is astrology and should it be associated with this 'spiritual' of yours?

As you may know Western Horoscopy is a broad church.

Nick Campion's survey on how astrologers view astrology
British (AA conference) American (UAC conference)
- As a science 24.50% 36.10%
- As a divine science 42% 52%
- As a psychological tool 64.80% 60.50%
- As a form of divination 33.30% 40.10%
- As a religion 6.90% 7.90%
- As a path to spiritual growth 66% 55.90%
- As a form of counselling 57.80% 65.10%
- As a healing art 53.40% 57.90%
- As a means of predicting the future 42% 43.40%

So state of play wise assuming these stats are much the same in 2012 only a third approximately see astrology as a form of ??divination??, so this crowd in your view may not regard it as important to study human beings in detail or depth first , or concurrently with their astrological studies. Whereas the ??psychological tool ??mob is nearer two thirds and they might?

Spiritual is a what does it mean and to who word. I tend to associate it with the ''New age/Theosophy' bods in this context. Nevertheless, I think we know many astrologers don't regard themselves as operating with, or within, anything all that spiritual. The Naturalists, amongst others. In fact there are astrologers who would agree with the need for considerable psychological training but do not believe in astrology as a ?real? phenomena, merely a means to discuss different aspects of reality, like an Inkspot.

My own view on this is I have encountered to my mind gifted and ethical astrologers both with and without psychological qualifications/knowledge, but not many of the former. So it seems to me a certain type or quality of person has an inbuilt ability to understand human nature without needing to study it formally. In the same way a tennis player can excel without a coach, or years in the academy, training 5 hrs a day, etc. But those who don?t arrive at Wimbledon this way tend not to do so well!

The problem here is that we can objectively measure a tennis player?s performance whereas this is harder for the astrological ones. We can only assess predictive astrology empirically. Thus natal ?psychological? astrology tends to be judged the way psychotherapeutic interventions are. Did this make you feel better, improve the quality of your life, give it more purpose, enable you to come to terms with something, or your connect you more intensely to the divine, etc. Subjective evaluations.