Astrology: The Internet Romper Room

Think of the splintered broom in Fantasia and see the correlation of those professing knowledge in Astrology and are here to help (their own egos usually).   This is one of those fields…. I myself do not care for the need of certification, as I am skeptical off any and all facilities that offer such, no offense to them, it is my skepticism.  But I am considering embracing them now as the litmus test of when someone is indeed an Astrologer.  In other fields, you don’t go out and buy a stethoscope and say, “hi, I am a Doctor” with out professional schooling.  I unfortunately live in a state that thinks anyone can hang a shingle and call themselves a councilor.  But does the average person looking for help know that is our state law?  Are they expecting a more rigorous  standards and protection by the state than, sure if you can buy a business card, you can be a counciler too.  Now applied to Astrology, how does the average person know anything?

I frequent a forum (not for much longer as the one Ryoin and I started I am hoping takes off…. see the link to the right of this article) and lately have been just appalled by what is allowed to take place on there…. and honestly, this is the kind of stuff that has made it impossible to convince the scientific world of the value of a legitimate look at Astrology as a scientific principle.   I have had to intervene on the behalf of a child that was reported to be abused and all grandma wanted was to have someone look at the chart so she would have ammunition to fight with the child’s mother on the behalf of the child’s health…. EXCUSE ME???  Grandma said and described the abuse.  Even after my posting to report the parents and worry about Astrology later, the follow up postings were in giving the grandmother sympathy and advice…. Poor Grandma, old enough to escape a deadly situation, lets coddle her and further victimize her granddaughter….. This wasn’t one or two “astrologers” it was about a dozen or more postings after that.

Who would turn to strangers for their children’s mental health?  Apparently, there are plenty of parents out there doing just that.  Not just in Astrology, but that is the place I am focused on with this blog.  I was just dealing with another ( Neptune, Chiron conjunction rx… there have been many) flair up.  Mom writes in wondering where to find the place in the chart that would make a child clairaudial.  But what is written really warrants a quick trip to the medical field before preceding.  What a blow up that was!!!   Immediately out of the woodwork came those claiming it was spiritual voices, or ghost other dimension voices… and I am not saying that wasn’t the case… I was saying, go get it checked… there are various reasons that audible hallucinatory impulses happen and they are not all psychotic…. check that out first.  You would think that I was the messenger from Hell’s pit for suggesting it.  It got ugly in places, we have a member that is part of a few different professional organizations and holds some very important positions within them, and bless his heart, he came out to say how it is unethical for anyone to diagnose over the internet and the medical issues need to be taken up with medical professionals.   (yay, he is my hero) and immediately came the back lash…. all spiritual and religious rhetoric.  The sad thing is I know most of the individuals, and I would be weary to take advice from them on how to trim my toe nails…. yet a desperate person will listen and feel justified when one of the flakes agrees with their assumptions and then run with it.   We all want to be special and want those in our lives to have special talents and gifts, so it is easy to believe what we want to hear.

Personally, this has given me motivation to work harder on the forum we had created last year.  I am sure nothing is perfect, but  I can’t imagine a time where I would be okay with the forum being used to promote spiritual agenda against common sense.

Oh, and if I see one more person suggest to another Clinically Depressed person that yoga and a nice walk will fix it all …. or to shake it off, man… I will blow up!