Between Astrologers and Clients: The Foundation of a Relationship

By Bob Mulligan

Most astrologers have trouble earning a living. Success as an astrologer depends on the health of the astrologer client relationship. This book tells you the secret of this success. All the frustration as well as the joy and growth are carefully documented in "Between Astrologers and Clients".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 23, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462809806

Bob Mulligan

Bob Mulligan lives in Naples Florida and travels the world working and lecturing in the field of astrology. He maintains local practices in several other cities, including Louisville KY, San Diego, and New York City. For personal renewal Bob also spends time in India each year. Following Avatar Meher Baba since 1970, Bob was given astrology as a path of self discovery. This tool, used to help others, has also become his personal path to higher consciousness. Bob completed a Masters degree in philosophy and started professional practice as an astrologer in 1974. He was elected president of The Organization for Professional Astrology (OPA) in 1998. He has authored an astrological chart interpretation program called INDRA, and operates a four year correspondence school, "The Mastery of Astrology", training others in various aspects of astrology. He can be reached at [phone] or through his web site www.theastrologycompany.com

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BetweenAstrologersand Clients

The Foundation of a Relationship

Bob Mulligan

Copyright © 2001 by Bob Mulligan.

Library of Congress Number: 2001118067

ISBN #: Hardcover 1-4010-2423-8

Softcover 1-4010-2422-X

eBook 9781462809806

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

The Astrology Company PO Box 9237 Naples, Florida 34101 941-261-2840

www.theastrologycompany.com

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface to the First Edition

In The Beginning

BOUNDARIES -

MONEY -The Second Issue

COMMUNICATION -The Third Issue

DEPENDENCY -The Fourth Issue

VALUE OF THE WORK -The Fifth Issue.

PREDICTION -The Sixth Issue

THE PRACTICAL ISSUE OF TIME -

CONFIDENTIALITY -The Eighth Issue

ETHICALCONSIDERATIONS -The Ninth Issue

CONTROL-The Tenth Issue

THE HUMAN ISSUE -The Eleventh Issue.

HIDDEN AGENDAS -The Twelfth Issue

Astrologer as a Life Counselor

General Information For My Clients

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENDNOTES

DEDICATED TO AVATAR MEHER BABA LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

Acknowledgments

T here are so many people who have contributed to this work over the last ten years. But, there are a few who greatly influenced my thoughts expressed here even before the manuscript started to take shape. Obviously, this book is in part a deep expression of things that I learned from my mother and father, later formed into formal ideas by my philosophy professors in my college days. Further, I need to thank J. Edwin Cumbie, whose counseling (during my high school and college years) not only saved me from self-destruction, but also gave me a living example of the many alternate possibilities within a therapeutic relationship.

While in college, my Indian History professor, Kathleen Burt, introduced me to astrology. We became close friends and spent many hours a day together for a number of years. She encouraged my study and helped me understand astrology as a spiritual tool and as a path of self development. Later, she became quite a good astrologer in her own right. Our friendship has always been a source of joy. I would like to thank her for reading this manuscript and sharing valuable comments during the final editing.

I owe a deep thank-you to Dr. Ralph Carnes for our many long conversations over various technical points. Ralph taught me the spirit of adventure while exploring ideas, and that asking the right question, in some arenas of inquiry, is more mentally instructive than finding a pat answer.

Leela Bruner helped me through many painful experiences as a young professional astrologer. It is fair to say, her faith in me, and her material and nurturing support, aided me in the learning process of developing practical skills with clients. Her influence has been very meaningful in the formation of the ideas expressed in this book.

A special thanks is due Peter Booth, my long time personal friend in India, who offered many valuable suggestions in order to make the work more accessible to the reader.

There are numerous astrologers with whom I discussed this book. Arlan Wise read and offered suggestions as sections were being printed and re-edited. Ray Merriman read the entire manuscript and closely edited a section for me.

This work would have been impossible without my thousands of clients over the last 25+ years. These beautiful people from every walk of life gave access to the living laboratory within which the various issues between astrologers and clients emerge. To this end, I would like to thank the special few that allowed me to do the meta work (the work about the work).

There are many people who operated in a supervisory capacity through the years, some astrologers, some not. Some people have asked to remain anonymous. Of the non-astrologers, I would like to thank especially Naomi Miller, Debra Smith, and Dr. Walter Rutherford, who kept me more or less sane and on track with some particularly difficult special needs clients. Also I would like to thank Dr. Keith Auerbach for his professional insight, enthusiasm, and general encouragement.

Kathryn, my wife at the time, is truly a remarkable person. Not only is she a good astrologer and a good grammarian, her Saturn falls in my third house, so she is always good at catching typos and mis-wordings. She read and reread everything I wrote over the entire ten years of the book’s development. She had great suggestions in every chapter.

Susan Lee Freeman helped shape the manuscript at the level of idea content, continuity of style, and grammatical clarity. Over one year, we, Susan and I edited, read aloud, and generally obsessed over every word in the manuscript. It was great fun and a real learning experience.

Vicki Warner, an experienced editor and long time astrologer, edited the final version of the book and her input was invaluable in the long process of getting this book into its present form.

To the rest of you, the unmentioned helpers, please know you have my gratitude.

Meher Baba’s books (since June 1970) have always been a source of information and inspiration, but it was His personal guidance that pointed the direction in formulating this book and putting forward these ideas in this particular order and manner. It is because of Meher Baba that I became an astrologer in the first place.

Preface to the First Edition

July 2nd 1991 PROSIG (a special interest group for professional astrology operating within NCGR -National Council for Geocosmic Research) held its first annual conference. In 1990 while preparing for our upcoming conference, I outlined the keynote address for the conference, focusing on the relationship between astrologers and clients. This neglected arena of inquiry seemed to be the obvious missing piece of the puzzle for professional astrologers who were technically proficient, good at running a business, but still having less than satisfying careers.

As the president of PROSIG, I felt a great responsibility to have our first conference be a success. It was. Further, I felt that the first talk at our first conference should express thoughts about our most pressing issue, serving our clients.

For astrology to increase in social value it must have more consistent application to people’s lives. In order for this to come about we needed, and still need, to have astrologers do better astrology. Astrologers as a group are better educated and better trained than they were 25 years ago, and great technical strides have been made through the years. However, the way we deliver our services to our clients seemed to me, at the time, to be sadly lacking in skill and finesse. Our profession needed, not just a coat of polish on the way we communicated with our clients, but a deep underlying discussion of some basic fundamental principles which either limit or expand our effectiveness. For the practice of astrology improves, not just through more technical proficiency, but through having clearer and better understanding of our relationship to our clients. Correctly mastered, the relationship to our clients provides us with a battery of tools to become much better astrologers.

When preparing for my talk, I organized the basic circumstances inherent in the interchange between the astrologer and client into what was to be a 90 minute keynote address. As I started into the talk entitled Between Astrologers and Clients: Ten Current Issues several people from the audience began spontaneously offering up comments on the first issue -Boundaries. After a few minutes the talk expanded unceremoniously into an open forum. No-one was rude, discourteous, or hostile I might add, only urgent and persistent. Everyone had something to say. By the end of the 90 minutes we were still on the first issue. Several people requested that I finish my talk, either right then or later in the conference. As it turned out, there was not time to add more of this material at the conference.

Serializing the material and presenting each of the other nine issues as separate articles in The Career Astrologer (our PROSIG newsletter) seemed to be the best way to share the rest of my thoughts. Every issue was rethought and expanded as they were printed in the newsletter at the rate of four issues a year. One of these issues, Control, was presented as a talk at the second annual PROSIG Conference in April of 1992.

As I prepared the ten issues for the newsletter, two others occurred to me and were subsequently added into the series. It was my intention to print the articles in book form for our membership when the series was done. As I started re-editing the material, some other ideas emerged. These were printed as articles and have now found their way into this volume as Concluding Thoughts. Even though I shared updated manuscripts with my students right along, the re-editing, rewriting, and rethinking of the issues took several years.

Long before serious rewriting occurred, a new symmetry emerged in the material, causing me to rearrange the order and numbering of The Twelve Issues. After completion of this new order, amazing psychological patterns revealed themselves, pointing out deep astrological relationships between the various issues. This led me deeper into the study of the hidden dynamics in the astrologer/client relationship. Hopefully, in this final form, the material clearly exposes the beauty and symmetry of how each issue relates to every other issue, for there is a pattern, an intricate aesthetic network of interior continuity between them.

By following the inner pattern here, you will learn much about the structural similarity of these issues to astrological principles, and in turn these principles to the physical world, which is a reflection of your interior world. To understand this connection you must see the working principle. For instance, the fourth house is the end of a matter; i.e. Boundaries (First Issue) ends in Dependency (Fourth Issue), Prediction (Sixth Issue) ends in Ethical Considerations (Ninth Issue) which is fourth from the Sixth Issue, etc. Further, opposites represent two expressions of the same principle (Confidentiality: The Eighth Issue vs Money: The Second Issue, The Human Issue: The Eleventh Issue vs The Value of The Work: The Fifth Issue, etc.). Here, of course, I am using the patterns of the zodiac and houses and their various divisions and relationships to observe the patterns in these issues. Any astrological principle can be applied to these categories. As you read here, structural similarities will emerge between universal principles and these relationship issues.

Certain critical decisions had to be made during the editing process; what to leave in, what to leave out. Obviously, each point could have been expanded to a whole book. But brevity allows reading the material quickly, pondering the ideas systematically, seeing how attitudes, opinions, solutions, and judgments in one area impact another. If you clearly understand the issues AS THEY REALLY ARE, you will find your own workable solutions, thereby improving your interactions with your clients exponentially. And, I might add, deep understanding guarantees that you will seldom be surprised by the results appearing in your relationships with clients.

This material originally appeared in this order and form: In The Beginning Rewritten for this book 1998. Boundaries: the First Issue. A talk at the first PROSIG conference July 1991, printed in The Career Astrologer V.6, N.1. May 1995. Money: The Second Issue. The Career Astrologer V.3, N.1. January, 1992.

Ethical Considerations: The Third Issue. The Career Astrologer

V.3, N.2. April, 1992 Control: The Fourth Issue. A Talk at the PROSIG conference April 1992, printed in The Career Astrologer V.6, N.2. July, 1995.

Communication: The Fifth Issue. The Career Astrologer V.3.,

N.3. October, 1992. Prediction: The Sixth Issue. The Career Astrologer V.3., N.4.

December,1992. The Value of the Work: The Seventh Issue. The Career

Astrologer V.4, N.1. April, 1993. The Practical Issue of Time: The Eighth Issue. The Career

Astrologer V.4, N.2. July, 1993. Confidentiality: The Ninth Issue. The Career Astrologer V.4,

N.3. October 1993. Dependency: The Tenth Issue. The Career Astrologer V.4, N.4. January, 1994.

The Human Issue: The Eleventh Issue. The Career Astrologer

V.5, N.1. May, 1994. Hidden Agendas: The Twelfth Issue. The Career Astrologer V.5, N.2. August, 1994.

Concluding thoughts:

Astrologer As Life Counselor The Career Astrologer V.8, N.1. April 1997.

In the Clients Best Interest The Career Astrologer V.8, N.3. October 1997.

All of my thoughts were completed and in print by early 1994, but, it took several years of tinkering and editing in order to get this material into the current form. Concluding Thoughts was written in 1997. In The Client’s Best Interest was originally an article called Information, Manipulation, and The Charts. Both articles have been extensively rewritten.

After twenty-five years of work in the field and nine years of actively working with others to develop a professional literature for the practicing astrologer, only a very small group of books have emerged that are helpful in creating a career path. Still, this small group of books is a place for us to start. I feel very hopeful about our future. My heart is full of gratitude to be able in some small way to contribute to this literature.

In The Beginning

M argaret Craske was an early disciple of my spiritual master, Meher Baba. During my struggle to cross into the profession of astrologer, she mentioned to me one day, Undoubtedly you can learn to do astrology, but can you learn to love your fellow man? Her question made a deep impression on me. In a way, everything I’ve done as an astrologer has in some way been an attempt to an answer. Astrology as a technical discipline is mind boggling. As an interactive healing art it is unparalleled.

When I was new in my career as an astrologer, say maybe five years into it, a really formative experience came my way which opened me to another dimension of the question of loving others as opposed to merely conveying cosmic information. At the time I was living in a big old house which was split into a number of apartments. It was located just off the University of Illinois campus. My office was a tiny kitchen which I had converted into a place to see clients. On this day a man came to see me for an appointment. He was a big man, approximately six feet tall, weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds. He came into my small office. We started talking. I began discussing events that had made strong impressions on his development. We were about fifteen minutes into the appointment when I said, Your father’s death made a deep impact on your growth. He became silent. He looked as if he was trying to decide whether or not to speak. Then he slowly mumbled in a low, deliberate voice, I killed my dad. Murdered him with an axe. I was never discovered, and I’ve never told anyone about it before. I went numb. Quickly I assessed the situation. He was sitting between me and the door and he was a lot bigger than I. Nothing in my training or experience had prepared me for this very loaded situation. My mind went blank and I have no recollection of how the rest of the consultation went. I felt in danger and I probably would have said or done anything realistic at the time to get out of this situation.

If I had been capable of putting aside all personal considerations, my fear of physical injury, fear of inadequacy, etc., I would have been able to really be present for my client. Love and fear can’t live simultaneously in the same heart. This person had really opened up to me and I left him hanging. A missed opportunity became a teaching experience.

The need for this book arose that day, as I tried to come to terms with the missing ingredients in my background. How had I gotten into this predicament? How could I have prevented it? How could I have handled it better? What can I share with my students about the astrologer/client relationship which could make their lives happier, easier, and safer?

It is no small task to become a professional astrologer. It is even a greater task to carry out your career with any degree of competency and integrity. During my early years as an astrologer, so much of my time was completely absorbed in trying to become technically competent that how the information was delivered, or what my relationships to my clients were about, occupied very little of my thinking. To learn to erect a correct chart and to read the chart with any degree of insight or accuracy was such a big task, that it seemed like mastering this was to become an astrologer. Achieving mastery over technical aspects of astrology is the first hurdle. This aspect of astrology is so massive that most of us return to it time and time again when we are honest with ourselves. Still, mathematical and interpretive proficiency (while being the necessary foundation) is really only the beginning for a professional astrologer.

Three Components of Business

After feeling some degree of technical competence I turned my attention to the issue of earning a living and being self employed. This is an insurmountable obstacle for some people. It was quite difficult for me personally.

Part of running a business successfully is good old customer satisfaction. Ultimately, for us as astrologers, satisfying customers means being able to communicate useful information that the client recognizes and acknowledges as valuable. Certainly, learning astrology is quite a feat. Learning to run your business is a major life task. But even more than these lessons, learning how to communicate astrologically to my clients has had a directive effect on my consciousness. Now I think of these achievements as three components of an astrology business: technical competency, earning a living, and helping people. It’s not just an astrologer’s work, that can fit these three categories. Any business has a learning curve, the running of the business, and establishing a purpose or social need for its existence. In astrology as in any other business, these categories intermingle and reinforce each other a good deal so that it’s really only in the abstract that we can talk about them separately.

When I was in high school my first job was working for McDonald’s. I was told, Customers are not an interruption to your work, they are your reason for it. Sometimes we can forget that our clients are our reason for doing astrology. This happens because astrology is so darn interesting that we would probably do it -meaning study it -if we never saw any clients. But, inevitably when we only study it, and don’t see clients at all, it really means that we have only one client, ourselves. Astrology’s highest use is self understanding. Time spent studying, by ourselves, is to concentrate on the core of our being. Time spent assisting a client is to understand parts of our own nature better. Both are necessary in order to grow.

Astrologers who only spend time alone, not helping clients, will miss the opportunity to elevate aspects of their own nature. Astrologers who spend all of their time with clients, lose their core and stop progressing, then their work either becomes trivial or they burn out, sometimes both.

Clients are the astrologer’s customers. Without customer satisfaction the business fails. Many points in this book are aimed at helping astrologers achieve balance so they neither burn out seeing clients, nor do they retreat into complete self absorption. Instead of these extremes, we look to find a deep path of ever exciting and enriching self-development in the process of seeing clients.

Three Stages of Self-Development

It is helpful to examine astrology as containing three distinct levels of personal development. When seen from this perspective our path of internal exploration in some way mirrors the three outer components of an astrological business. My own inner process reveals these three stages of development, which I have now seen confirmed as objectively observable demarcations in the work of my students and colleagues. These stages are: Learning the language, communicating, and self transcendence.

The first stage, achieving technical proficiency, requires learning the language of astrology. Crossing this hurdle, we come to the place where the universe is seen from the astrological perspective.

The second stage, understanding the interpersonal dynamics, demands that we make wholesome the space connecting us to our clients, through the process of communicating the language of astrology. This stage requires astrologers to create a physical, emotional, and intellectual atmosphere in which both astrologer and client feel safe. This I hadn’t done in the early days of my own practice, as my illustration clearly shows. I was able to create safety for my client, but hadn’t managed to create it for myself. My fear blinded me to the immediate emotional needs of my client. This was a missed opportunity for healing.

Although this stage of development requires us to be able to understand and meet the needs of our clients, it is the focus on our