Orbital Vitality

I love it when a book prompts a personal revelation of sorts, even if it’s just a little “wow” moment when it really explains something about your own life. It’s the same feeling many people get when they have their astrological chart accurately read. But astrology books are all or nothing: they vary between generalized sun and moon sign information, which can offer little wow-factor material and don’t always help astrology to be taken seriously, and detailed wow-stuff that only a specialized reader would be able to use, like predictive astrology.

As an astrologer with over 30 years experience, I had long searched for a way to share with the “non-astrologers” the excitement and wonder that astrology manages to instill almost every time you look at a chart that really “works.” Although a natal chart can do it, the real thrill is when a client’s life perfectly matches the play of transits (the positions of the planets at this particular time in their life). I wanted a way to let people not only “get the feeling” for themselves, but to see the power of cycles and use them to make predictions — without an astrologer, any special knowledge or fancy software. That’s why I wrote Cycles of Life.

The idea for the book came when I had to do a prediction for some friends in New York. I decided to give them copies of their graphic ephemeris for the year. This is an ingenious system called cosmobiology, a graphical way of representing when planets make “contact” with each other, devised by the astrologer Reinhold Ebertin. I then taught them the simplest of keywords for the planets, and in ten minutes showed them how to read the graph. They spent the next year like the amazed assistants of a clever stage magician. Still, the real magic would mean letting them create similar charts on their own, without the special software that’s needed for a graphic ephemeris.

Astrology is quite technical and subtle. It takes most people years to reach the point where they can clearly see the value and power of its predictive methods. Not only is there a confusingly wide array of techniques, but to try and synthesize it all in a meaningful and accurate way really makes astrology look like an arcane art. No wonder so many people think it is one!

As the teacher of an astrology course for many years, I knew that most students would likely not easily grasp learning predictive astrology before the rest of the material, especially since divination is controversial. However, ancient astrologers used it frequently when astrology was at its peak, when people studied it very meticulously. Surely, just as ancient astrologers learnt best by understanding predictive principles, today’s students could learn better by actually seeing planets in action and getting the feel of transits right from the start?

I wanted a way to show everyday folk who aren’t astrologically inclined how powerful and direct astrology really is. Even more importantly, I wanted to provide a way for newcomers in the field to quickly grasp the essence of what makes astrology work and to be able to use its predictive power right from the beginning.

I devised a simple set of tables that can be understood and used without prior astrological knowledge or math, yet it allows the reader to create a predictive chart for the major changes of an entire lifetime. You just look up a few numbers in a list and mark the changes! A keyword table helps you to interpret the changes, and the book shows you how they are related to major growth stages common to us all.

Discovering how the transiting planets parallel cycles in life is central to the book’s method of teaching you to understand the meaning of the changes. For most people, big life changes come at ages related to planetary cycles; many other changes happen when cycles interact (when the planets aspect each other). The tables are able to show this information very simply and quickly, and they only need to be used once — the first time you fill out the number chart. After that you’ve got a map for life.

At first I was worried that the absence of the critical time-and-place details that make prediction a fine art would weaken the cycles of the planets. But soon it was clear that the major transit cycles and interplanetary aspects went a long way in describing the timing and significance of life’s cycles.

It can be quite intense for some people to catch a glimpse of the whole. When it comes to learning astrology, however, you do need to be willing to look at the greater picture in your readings for others, even if you don’t want to look at your own! I’m sure that Cycles of Life will be a fast, eye-opening way of learning these methods. For new astrologers and hopefully others, it just may provide a “wow moment” or two!