This is also shown by the results of a reader survey by the German periodical ESOTERA (1): For 62 % of the persons asked, the wish to get to know each other better was the deciding motive for the consultation with the astrologer. Accordingly, 83 % of them had a character report made and only 58 % a prognostic report. In this connection, the question of the degree of satisfaction with the consultation is particularly interesting: For the character report, 77 % of the persons asked found the report to be completely or at least mainly accurate; for the prognoses, the number was still 44 %. The obvious lack of reliability of astrological event-orientated prognoses that expresses itself in these numbers is surely also one reason for the decrease in interest in the prognoses; the desire of many modern astrologers to delimit astrology from fortune-telling distinctly is another. Surely there are additional reasons in the view of those who want to learn astrology: Even in the field of the Radix interpretation, we are already dealing with a multitude of methods or systems (that are confusing for the beginner), but the multitude of methods for prognosis grows into the grotesque, and new methods come up every year, nonetheless. Now, as a rule, new methods of interpretation arise when the existing methods are considered insufficient. Methods with a high degree of accuracy would surely not be altered constantly. So this multitude of methods is an additional indication that we are obviously not so sure of ourselves in the field of prognosis. It always surprises me again how doggedly the individual methods are defended by their advocates as being the "only useful" one or how certain astrologer circles make the question of the method used into a kind of "Do you believe in God?" question: How do you deal with the solar-returns (or the directions, etc.)? The German astrologer Erich Carl Kuehr, known for his method for the calculation of the primary directions, is said to have claimed that, regarding the possibilities of astrological prognosis, the limits of the chart are in truth the limits of the astrologer (2). In his well- known book: "Calculation of the event times" (Goerlitz: Regulus- Verlag 1936), he explains that, in his view, "to accurately time events" gives astrology its high practical value. In my opinion, such a point of view is only possible if one considers the following five preconditions to be given:

1. One can attain an (almost) arbitrary accuracy in the astrological field.
2. The precise birth-time required for the precise temporal determination of events can be derived reliably from the generally relatively imprecise registry office data or from the time coming from the parent's memory through verification methods.
3. The (fateful) events in the life of a person are clearly assigned to specific constellations of the prognostic chart.
4. It is clearly definable what is to be understood by the term "event".
5. The important events in the life of a person are precisely definable temporally (at least in principle).
All five preconditions are dubious, as I would like to show:

1. No absolute accuracy in astronomy

For this purpose, I would like to quote a German astronomer and creator of extremely accurate computer programs for the calculation of charts, Mr. Norbert Kordts: "In actual fact, an absolute accuracy cannot be attained in astronomy, nor in any other natural science. (MERIDIAN 1/84) The orbit data of the planets on which the ephemerides are based result from observation and measurement, and every measurement contains a measurement error. Not only that: The astronomer differentiates between the geometric location and the "apparent," or visible position of the planet, the position at which one sees it. This position is not identical with the position at which the planet actually is at that moment (we must just remember the finite speed of light).

At this point, I would like to disregard the fact that, looking at it in a relativistic way, the fixation of a point in time itself is already difficult, that is, the determination of simultaneity for the position of the planet and the position of the observer on the earth. Independent of that, it is almost a philosophical question, which position on the planet I want to consider to be the "correct" one, the geometric one, that is, the one at which it actually stands, or the apparent one, that is, the one at which I can see it in the sky. We must take into consideration: At the time astrology originated, with the "old-timers," one could only work with that which was visible.

There are still more such difficult interpretation problems of the astronomical and quasi-astronomical type, be it the difference between the geographic and geocentric latitude of the places of birth; be it the precession-related question of whether, for transits and solar-returns, one should calculate the return to an ecliptic point or to that point in space at which the sun resp. the planet actually was at birth-time, etc.

2. Dubious rectification of birth-time.

Faulty prognoses are commonly accounted for by an inaccurate birth-time. I do not want to doubt the legitimacy of this reason here at all. I do, however, have my doubts concerning the solution to this problem suggested by fellow practitioners. Let us examine the favorite excuse of prognosticating astrologers: "The birth-time had not been verified, of course," more closely: By verifying the birth-time, I am trying to bring the structure of the chart into correlation with the life data statistics that I have at my disposal. Let us use the popular case of a wedding (The argumentation can be transferred identically to any other event, such as the death of a child or a parent). First, one probably calculates the constellations at the time of the event, using the method the investigator takes to be valid, and looks for those constellations which conspicuously have almost exact aspects to relevant chart-factors and form exact aspects within a realistic period of time before or afterwards (Generally, I assume that the birth-time does not differ from the given birth-time by many hours but by a maximum of 20 - 30 minutes). From these constellations, I then choose those that are sensible, that suit the event. I may then decide that a conjunction of Jupiter with the descendent lying in the orb is "suitable," but on the contrary, a square from Mercury to the ascendent (or descendent), also lying in the orb, isn't.

How can I know whether my choice was right? The naive colleagues simply believe in a fixed assignment of specific planets to specific events. Marriage, for example, has to do with Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, the moon and the sun. As if there were no purely "functional" marriages, which one would then most likely have to call "Mercury-marriages". Apart from the fact that a number of different planets must always be assigned even to such fixed assignments that, for certain rectifications, may often even be considered simultaneously (since they are all in the orb)--the giving up of this fixed relationship, at the latest, shows that an act of interpretation, an evaluation of the events lies at the central point of every birth-time rectification. If it is a Mercury-marriage, then I would have to use Mercury for the rectification, if it is a Jupiter marriage, then Jupiter. But who can tell me reliably whether it is the one or the other? Can even the person involved make the distinction dependably? If I choose the standard procedure to avoid this problem, that is, to record both values and to finish by taking their average, then I am reducing the procedure to absurdity. If I take an average, then that only makes sense if I start from the assumption that significant constellations do not have to be exact. Therefore, I am not determining the birth-TIME but the birth-time PERIOD. To be honest, I would have to state this when giving the result of a birth-time rectification.

One CALCULATES to the exact radiant second; the basis of the calculations, however, lies in the interpretation of the event whose adequateness can never be judged with the same precision that the combination with calculation precise to the second would actually require. To me, that seems to be just as senseless as another method encountered occasionally, which is to derive interpolations exact to the second from ephemeride data that is calculated exact to the second. In fact, nobody has yet been able to demonstrate to me that the constellations of ALL relevant life data had been correspondingly accurate to the radiant minute for a birth-time only rectified to a minute level. A colleague tried to show me this in a test on myself--he failed.

The fact that different astrologers end up with different results for one and the same rectification problem should also make us stop and think. The subject of the rectification of birth-times is a kind of special case for an access to astrology and astrological research which I would like to call the "100%-attitude." It is a question of what degree of correspondence I can realistically expect between an astrological constellation and the aspect of reality it is connected to (be it an event, be it a specific personality trait), of what degree I can consider the astrological counterparts to be valid to on the one hand, and on the other, of how close I consider the connection between the constellation and the concrete counterpart to be. Some colleagues start with completely unrealistic expectations here.

3. The stars do not make you inclined, they force you.

Nobody has expressed the conception that there is a clear connection between events in life and the constellation of the chart more pointedly than a German astrologer named TROINSKI, who distributed sheets with mundane prognoses during his lifetime. The heading of one of these sheets will remain in my memory forever. It is the reversal of a famous statement by THOMAS VON AQUIN (3) into the sentence: "The stars do not make you inclined, they force you!" During the time that I was the chairman of the German Astrologers Association, I had the opportunity in approximately a dozen cases to test the capabilities of colleagues who had turned to me to convince me of one method or another. In most cases, they were prognosis methods. It was always very surprising for me to see how these colleagues swept aside other methods with one quick gesture and looked at their own method as a "magic formula" with not a trace of self-criticism. In none of the cases, however, did the colleagues succeed in proving the their method in controlled conditions. The more demanding and less carefully their claims were worded, the more obvious was their failure. The colleagues belonged to all sorts of schools, incidentally. They did not fail, in my present opinion, because their respective methods were totally wrong. They failed due to their hyped-up demand on precision, be it regarding the temporal fixation of an event, the subject of the rectification of the birth-time or the determination of the type of event. This is not only true for the prognosis. A colleague from Uranian astrology thought: "If a person is a businessman, then he has the businessman's formula in his chart, and if someone has the businessman's formula in his chart, then he is or will become a businessman with absolute certainty. The following example will probably be classified as "absurd" by many (4): If absolutely everything is laid down in the chart, every smallest action, then assuming I was using the correct method, I could surely find a tip there that I will make the comment "nonsense" now, immediately. Perhaps it can also be seen that I intend to say it again in a minute. Since I, possessing the correct method, now already know whether I really will say it again, and assuming the case that the chart says "yes": Can I do nothing against saying it? Will I speak the word in any case, as if I were under a posthypnotic order, in spite of the fact that I may possibly have specifically decided not to say it (to prove to myself that there is a human freedom of choice)?

I once discussed this problem with a colleague and found it amusing, how he "checkmated" me: He rightly reproached me that I couldn't prove the opposite. Nobody was claiming to already know the method with which one could make such precise predictions. If, however, our incomplete methods made tendency predictions possible, then why shouldn't perfected methods make precise predictions possible? A few minutes later, he inveighed against investigation methods in psychology that are orientated towards a natural science ideal that regards a human being as a complicated machine. He did not see that his conception of an absolutely precise prognosis is only imaginable if the person (and the whole world) follows a program in his chart that is legible in advance, and therefore unchangeable like a computer (at least it can still have "disturbances").

In astrology, we work with symbols. Symbols are ambiguous, as can already be seen in the many differing counterparts that can be read from each of these symbols. Whether a specific event or a specific action can (or even must) be assigned to a specific symbol is a question of interpretation. Let us assume that a person cuts open another person's stomach. Can one assign a specific constellation to this action? Is it the same constellation if it is a stabbing or an operation? If so, the one cannot even differentiate between two such basically different actions as "murder" and "life saving" with this constellation. If not: Which differences are registered by the different constellations? Do the different constellations reflect that one takes place in the hospital and the other on the street? Or that one takes place with an anaesthetic and the other without one? Or that one involves all protective disinfection measures and the other takes place without these? Or do the different constellations reflect the different motives of the "stomach cutters" (in one case an aid, in the other case an attempt to kill) or, finally, the different consequences for the person involved (after all, it is his chart)? In other words:

4. What, exactly, is an event?

Or, better, what is an astrologically ascertainable event? Is there a constellation that expresses: "My stomach is being cut open"? If there is such a constellation: Is there a specific constellation for the case in which it is a knife or an axe? And if this is possible too, are there different constellations for green or yellow knives, or for knives of steel or of brass, etc.? Where does the exactness end? These questions may sound exaggerated, but the absurdity of the demand for precision only shows when one thinks it through to the end. Besides, nowhere in astrology is there a description of what is to be understood as an event. It seems to be so self-evident. An accident, a marriage, a professional advancement--all these are "events?"

If, for example, a physician undertakes the above mentioned operation without the consent of the person involved, which would be a physical injury in legal terms, is it the same "event" (operation) as if it had been done with their consent? The actions taking place during the event, seen objectively (or recorded on a film, as the case may be), could be identical in both cases. Would this result in identical constellations? If someone drinks a cup of poison, knowing that there is poison in the drink: Is this the same "event" as when he doesn't know it? The results (death) and the purely physical process are surely identical. Are the "suitable" constellations that one can (must) consult here identical?

Let us use one final example, popular for the carrying out of a birth-time rectification: The death of a close relative, for example, the father. Is this an "event" in the sense that one could assign one or more constellations to it clearly? The death of my father can mean a broad variety of things to me in the way I experience it. It may be that the most important aspect of the experience lies in my possibly first confrontation with death in my lifetime, and the corresponding analysis that results from this. It may be that the essential aspect lies in the fact that I must now take leave from a loved one forever, that in other words, the pain of departure is the most important aspect of the experience. It may, however, be that I feel the death to be a savior (for my father or for myself), that I welcome it, so to say. It is possible that the most important aspect lies in the fact that I am inheriting now and becoming rich or am finally getting rid of the person who was always giving me orders. And, finally, it may be that the death of this person is a matter of complete indifference to me, maybe even that I know absolutely nothing about it because it happened far away. What if I don't even know the man that is my father? Are all these experiences to be taken as DIFFERENT "events" or is it always the SAME "event": the death of my father? Is there an individual constellation corresponding to each of these experiences (and to an arbitrary number of other imaginable experiences related to the death of one's own father)? Is there a single one that belongs to this experience and only to this experience? Or is it true that ALL experiences related to the death of my father can be described by a SINGLE constellation or a small number of constellations?

Every experience only gets its meaning out of the context in which it appears, the same way that every sentence gets its meaning from the context in which it is spoken. Let us think about the different types of murder: In a war, I receive a medal for killing a person, as long as he has the right nationality. In times of peace, I end up in jail. Is it, then, the same event (murdering a person) in both cases, in war and in peacetime? Or are they two different events (with the hypothetical exception that the perpetrator and the victim are the same people in both cases)?

I once read a story that comes from the orient. A small child gets a horse as a present from his father. All the neighbors, especially his friends, are envious of the child's "stroke of fortune." The "personal astrologer" surely will have chosen a corresponding Jupiter constellation. A few weeks later, the child falls off his horse because because he has overrated his abilities and jumped over too high a hurdle. He breaks his backbone and is then paralyzed for the rest of his life. The neighbors say that it was too early to give the child its own horse. Without the horse, the child would still be healthy. The "personal astrologer" may now look for Saturn constellations that they may have overseen the time before. A few years later, a gruesome war breaks out and all people the same age as him are drafted and lose their lives. The child is the only survivor in his age group. Wasn't it also a stroke of fortune, that he was spared this gruesome war? What the "reality" of a person consists of depends very strongly on his point of view, his attitude. The optimist says "The glass is still half full," the pessimist says "The glass is already half empty." Do both have the same or different constellations at that moment? If both have the same constellation, then the chart seems not to be able to see emotional differences and the subjective "truth" of the chart's owner, then it says nothing about his "experience." If both have different constellations, then there are no definite astrological "events," rather, the chart shows how an event finds expression in the subjective experience of a person, what this event means for this person.

The conception described last is also the official attitude of a majority of astrologers. In the "Thesis paper of astrological organizations" signed by the four largest German astrologers associations and the Swiss astrologers association, it is stated: "For a prognosis also, not the `concrete event' is comprehensible but the `meaning' resulting from the structure, a meaning that can manifest itself in different `analogous' events" (from thesis 7). This thesis is based on the distinction between the symbol and its counterpart. In my opinion, astrologers mix up these two levels when they give precise event prognoses. The counterparts of a symbol are always only examples, interchangeable examples for possible concrete realizations of this symbol. One must be careful not to mix up the meaning of an astrological symbol with a list of counterparts. To want to infer concrete events from symbols or combinations of symbols (astrological constellations) is just as senseless as to try to clearly define what happiness, love or freedom are or to want to determine precisely to the day (or even to the hour) when childhood is over in the biological (not the legal) sense or from which age onward one is "aged."

5. When is someone dead?

Anyone who wants to make concrete event prognoses should remember that today, even physicians have difficulties to establish clearly when someone is dead. (It is, one must say, a matter of "agreement," arbitrary within certain limits). As a rule, we cannot determine when we began to love someone (we only know when we became conscious of it. And the time a disease broke out is generally difficult to determine to the exact hour (or the day). The things that we can state accurately are often laid down and can only be specified for this reason: The beginning of spring, for example, is clearly defined astronomically but cannot be sensibly determined as clearly in reality. Often they are simply legal decisions: One takes a certain point in time and "DEFINES" it as the beginning (of a marriage, for example). If such definitions are astrologically binding points in time, this leads to paradoxes: An exact death chart from the last century (using cardiac arrest as a criterion) would now have to be called false in retrospect (using cerebral arrest as the present criterion).

Now that I have described in such great detail what, in my opinion, is not possible with a prognostic chart, I would like to deal with the question: What message does the prognostic chart convey?

Our physical, psychological and mental development does not proceed continuously in all fields: For certain skills, there are phases during which we are particularly receptive for some certain technique. In the vernacular, it is said: "If little Joey doesn't learn it, Big Joe never will." At a very young age, we learn to speak our mother tongue "as easily as a child". If we move to a different country later, then we also learn the new language there "as easily as a child" as long as we have not reached puberty. After puberty, however, the "plasticity" of our language development is reduced drastically: We must NEWLY LEARN the new language as a "foreign tongue" (more or less laboriously). With many animals, such sensitive phases of development are very noticeable. One must only take the veterinary researcher Konrad Lorenz' grey goose as an example: In his famous experiments with grey geese, he showed that after birth, a young animal feels the first living being that it sees as its "mother". For one of his grey geese, Konrad Lorenz himself was the mother animal, and it followed him in every step he took.

The development of our personality follows certain rhythms. Partly, these rhythms are preprogrammed in a relatively narrow way genetically. In sexual development, for example, but even here there is a large mean variation (in some cases, children begin their puberty at the age of 7, the average in our society lies between 11 and 14). A boy will react to a girl that has fallen in love with him completely differently before puberty than after puberty. The result: "A young girl has fallen in love with me" then leads to a completely different EXPERIENCE for him, an experience that he could not have had before. But even after puberty, his reaction will depend on various circumstances. Surely it will, for example, depend very strongly on which girl it is, but it will also depend on whether he is "in the mood," whether he is receptive for the topic. I am convinced that there are "sensitive phases" for certain developments during our whole life-span: We generally call short-term variations "moods" or "feeling like doing something, "but we have probably all experienced that the importance of certain topics increases or decreases for phases of weeks or months or even for entire periods of our lives. In a sensitive phase, we are particularly receptive for certain topics (after puberty, a boy suddenly sees a girl "in a different way"), we (consciously or usually, subconsciously) look for ways to develop or further develop a certain aspect of our personality through experiences made in the corresponding field of life, to become more mature through an analysis of this topic. We then become more strongly (or for the first time at all) aware of all the things in our surroundings that have to do with this topic. We see things that we did not pay attention to before, and suddenly we react to events that have to do with this topic very sensitively. To express it in a pointed way, the prognostic chart does not say what WILL happen but what SHOULD happen. I think of the prognostic chart, as well as the Radix chart, as a structure toward which we have to develop to be "sound", "whole", or "in harmony with our most inner nature", "healthy", in this sense of the word. In my opinion, even the Radix chart does not tell us how we are, but how we should be, it is an "instruction" and draws its productiveness for the development of every individual's personality from this: It helps us along, when we are finding ourselves, on the road to becoming the person we "actually" are. I have described this somewhere else in detail already (5) and would only like to clarify how this idea takes concrete form in the field of astrological prognosis. This can best be done through examples.

Saturn and Jupiter in the prognosis

A transit of Saturn with another planet or a house, for me, basically has the same meaning as in the Radix birth-chart. If the contact in the Radix relates to an emphatic point in the life of this person, then it relates to a certain (shorter or longer) phase in the life of this person in the prognosis. A square from Saturn to the moon, for example, means:

"In this phase, you are particularly receptive to ways to broaden and extend the depth of your world of experience by the additional dimension of sorrow and/or pain. Be willing to accept the experience that the realization of needs and longings has its limits. Feel how and where norms, conventions and necessities in your life fall short of your naive expectations regarding fulfillment and satisfaction, and that this makes you sad. As the case may be, also feel (depending on the house-position and on other constellations) that it may be necessary, from case to case, to adopt a hard shell or to delimit or separate yourself from human beings. Look for the harder side in you and the fear".

Naturally, these are only signs, since the concrete meaning of such a Saturn-moon contact only arises from the meaning of the entire structure, especially from the cosmic situation of the moon and Saturn in the Radix. The tenor should have become clear, though: "Accept your chart! Go along with your constellations, in harmony with them, not against them! Grow and mature by seizing the opportunity the moment offers you." Analogously, for a trine of Saturn and the moon, I would shift the accent as follows:

"In this phase, you are particularly receptive to the experience that you have the capability to adjust your desires and longings to the concrete possibilities of your life's situation, and to feel renunciation and restrictions not only as something that is a contradiction to your needs, but also as something that helps you to understand or to be able to suspect what the deeper meaning, the actual root of that which you long for, actually is. You may feel that seriousness and a certain degree of reservation correspond to your momentary state of mind, harmonize with it more than boisterousness and the search for distraction. Trust this feeling!"

These general interpretations can naturally be expressed more concretely, if one includes the sign and house-positions of the moon and Saturn, and, as a rule, they can be applied to totally concrete situations in life, if one knows the background of the chart's owner and can take it into account in the interpretation.

The difficulty that one encounters in this approach to the chart often lies in the fact that the client is in a situation in which we, ourselves, find that "fate" has burdened him with too many "Saturnian" things and that our admonition to tolerate these experiences may only seem cynical to him. In this case, it can be helpful to check, together with the client, whether or not he contributed to an escalation himself that only served to lead him to this situation, by attempting to avoid Saturnian experiences during an earlier stage of the situation in which he finds himself today. As a rule, the client does not need to decide to look for Saturnian situations at all, since they seem to force themselves upon him anyway (usually against his will). This experience is probably the reason for the subjective conviction of many colleagues that the chart does show what happens, and not only what should happen. But the truth is that there is a force in the psyche of every person that presses him to fulfil his "self." The impulses resulting from this force are rarely in harmony with that which the person (except for the wise men) strives toward consciously, since our conscious strivings rarely serve to develop the subject's own nature comprehensively, but rather concentrate on satisfying a few dominant desires (a somewhat different combination for every person), such as the need for affection, sexuality, independence, freedom, sovereignty, power, prestige, fame, etc.

That certain constellations often lead to events which are always similar is not so much the result of the fact that these constellations are indicators of these events, as that most people live out their impulses coming from inside them in a very unimaginative way, following the patterns common to our society. If one has a very limited picture of the possible ways of sustaining a relationship, if, for example, a "relationship with sexuality" can only be pictured as a marriage, and, in addition, one of the kind "common" to our society, then what else but a divorce can take place, if there is a Uranus transit over the descendent or a Venus in the 7th field? Those who do not know what it means to refresh a relationship can only strive for a new relationship if they want to change anything. And once again the rule applies: Uranus over the descendent means a divorce (or separation).

I would now also additionally like to interpret a Jupiter transit as an example, for purposes of comparability it will first be a Jupiter-moon trine:

"In this phase, you are particularly sensitive to the possibility of feeling happy (and this even in conditions appearing adverse `objectively'), since you can experience the things you need as being sensible and productive for your development. Your longings are in harmony with that which you feel as being `good' from deep inside you. Enjoy it! If it is an unfamiliar feeling for you: Try to develop a sense of confidence and welcome it with open arms, anyway. Allow yourself something and make the most of the experience of treating yourself and other people well. Track down the generous one in you and try to understand or to suspect the deeper meaning of the joy."

Analogously, I would shift the accent in the interpretation of a square from Jupiter to the moon the following way:

"In this phase, you are particularly sensitive to the search for`happiness', whereby it is important for you to have a good look at the question where your longings, your `needs' possibly limit the complete development of your personality to its full extent.You may experience this conflict as a `value conflict', you may feel that values on an `objectively' equal level can become contradictory to each other. It is a matter of reconciling the things that `do you well' (in a direct, beneficial sense, in the sense of well-being) with those things that `do you well' (in the sense of growth, the fostering of the development of all aspects of your personality)." The "art of living"

The art of living

One could misunderstand the aforementioned examples by thinking that our aim is to talk the client into a fatalistic acceptance of his living conditions, even where they may be in need of change. A further example may help to prevent this misunderstanding: For a trine from Saturn to Mars, I would recommend that the person reflect on his power to withstand, for an opposition of Pluto to Mars maybe even on his destructive potential. For the prognosis, the following is also true: It is a matter of doing justice to the entirety of the person at all times, expressed in the entirety of the personal chart, of the prognostic chart, too, and to merge the different aspects of my personality, the different aspirations, into a unified expression of my individuality. That is the true "art of living,"and the chart can help us to become true "masters in the art of living".

Notes

1. ESOTERA 3/86. The evaluation has not been published yet.

2. MERIDIAN 3/83, Reader's letter from Wilfried Pauk.

3. "The stars make you inclined, they do not force you."

4. Let us pay attention to the following, though: There are colleagues that use a "micro-analysis" of the constellations in the minutes before and after the birth to make conclusions regarding the fullness of the midwife's bosom - and that explain this in an engaged way in lectures at astrological conferences.

5. See my essay: Become your real self