How to recognise a serious astrological consultation

Anyone looking for an astrological consultation finds a bewildering range of offers. There are a few marks by which a serious one can be recognised, and they have nothing to do with fame.

The marks of a serious consultation

• Exact birth details are asked for. Date, time and place. Anyone who does without the time cannot calculate the ascendant or the houses — that is half the chart gone.
• The limits are named. A serious consultation says where a statement stops — and that a chart describes dispositions and periods, not events and not dates.
• The reasoning is visible. It is clear which position a statement follows from. A reading that cannot be followed has to be believed instead — and that is not what it should come down to.
• The price is fixed beforehand. Before the start, in full, with nothing added later.
• Health, law and money stay out of it. No diagnosis, no legal advice, no investment recommendation.

The marks of a dubious offer

• Fear-mongering. A misfortune announced in advance that can be averted for a fee is the oldest pattern of all — and it works because it reaches people who are already worried.
• Statements about death. The tradition knows the technique; every serious practice refuses to apply it to the people who come for advice. Anyone who offers it has said quite enough about themselves.
• Add-on services. Rituals, stones, cleansings, releases — anything sold on top of the reading itself.
• No legal notice. In Germany and Austria it is required by law. Anyone who does not say who they are has a reason.
• Per-minute billing over the phone. That way of charging rewards length, not clarity.
• Other people's charts. Anyone who reads a partner's chart without that person knowing will handle the client's own chart no differently.

What a consultation can do

It can describe what someone has to work with: temperament, dispositions, recurring difficulties, and the stretches of time in which something moves. That is less than some promise, and more than critics allow.

See also: the personal horoscope and the order a reading follows.