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Ben wrote:...how we are "thrown into" these situations and relationships with people...

Suddenly my head goes:

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."


I think I agree with Curtis and Ben here. Some charts are more telling than others. From personal experience, some people's lives are quite obvious from their charts, while others...I have difficulties seeing anything at all from their charts. Aside from that, the Lots are quite useful because they often complement the houses. I have been working with a technique of estimating fertility, and one of the main problems is that, using WSH, there are many charts with the same sign in the 5th house. For example, if Virgo was in the 5th in 10 charts I examine, does that mean all of them will be infertile and have little to no children? However, if we examine the Lot of Children and its Lord, we can individualise the charts further (aside from looking at the planets in the 5th and those aspecting the 5th), so that even if the 5th is in Virgo, the person may have a moderate number of children if the Lot and its Lord are in fertile signs.

Of course, we do need to sort out what Lots we will be using, and how to calculate them. Too many Lots indeed makes the chart somewhat like those asteroid-filled charts O_O. We also have the issue of calculation. For example, whether to reverse the calculation for Lot of Brothers and Lot of Children or not (those involving Jupiter and Saturn). Then we have weird versions like Maternus' method of calculating the Lot of Children...
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The appearance changes, but the essence remains.

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Larxene wrote:
Ben wrote:...how we are "thrown into" these situations and relationships with people...

Suddenly my head goes:

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."


I think I agree with Curtis and Ben here. Some charts are more telling than others. From personal experience, some people's lives are quite obvious from their charts, while others...I have difficulties seeing anything at all from their charts.
Aside from that, the Lots are quite useful because they often complement the houses. I have been working with a technique of estimating fertility, and one of the main problems is that, using WSH, there are many charts with the same sign in the 5th house. For example, if Virgo was in the 5th in 10 charts I examine, does that mean all of them will be infertile and have little to no children? However, if we examine the Lot of Children and its Lord, we can individualise the charts further (aside from looking at the planets in the 5th and those aspecting the 5th), so that even if the 5th is in Virgo, the person may have a moderate number of children if the Lot and its Lord are in fertile signs.

Of course, we do need to sort out what Lots we will be using, and how to calculate them. Too many Lots indeed makes the chart somewhat like those asteroid-filled charts O_O. We also have the issue of calculation. For example, whether to reverse the calculation for Lot of Brothers and Lot of Children or not (those involving Jupiter and Saturn). Then we have weird versions like Maternus' method of calculating the Lot of Children...
agree completely with bolded part. I thought I was the only one who had that problem. I suppose that a major part of being a competent astrologer is to realize the actual limitations of astrology and what can and cannot be seen from the chart. I have been studying astrology on my own for a couple of years now, and up until I made this thread and read all these different opinions about it, I didn't realize that you actually can't tell everything about a person's life just by looking at their chart. As curtis/ben said, it appears to be heavily contingent upon the "tellingness" of the chart.