How I Came to Astrology

by Robert Wilkinson

Over at the FB KISS page, at one point we had a thread going where all kinds of Astrological students and practitioners were asked how they came to Astrology. Today I’ll share with you what I wrote and a lot more.

I last gave this to you four years ago, and since several recently asked me how I became an astrologer, I figured I post this again with rewrites where appropriate. I still get questioned about whether I made a conscious decision to be a professional, and when did I know I had studied enough to have the confidence to do charts. Other questions are “How did I begin to learn anything that made sense?” And “Did I have a teacher and what were my beginning textbooks?”

I’ll begin by saying that how I came to astrology actually was driven by my search for meaning in a collegiate world that was fairly morally and spiritually bankrupt at that time. Thank heaven I was in Austin…..

It was early 1971. I was finishing my junior year in college, majoring in psychology and history, and had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. I was taking as many advanced psych courses as I was allowed that would transfer into psych grad school so I could get out with an MA asap. And I had two great big questions that had never been answered by all the psychology and philosophy classes and discussions that anyone could have.

Why does something happen when it does? Why not yesterday? Why not tomorrow? This question had bugged me for a long time, since the timing on events seemed random. Then there was the other question.

Why are we instantly turned on by a person, idea, or behavior, and instantly turned off by a person, idea, or behavior? Despite the best efforts of the Freudians, I KNEW that I was attracted to women who were not like, nor did they resemble, my mom, or grandmother, or any female in my family line.

As for behaviors, well, as a young man who was willing to let his freak flag fly very high in public in the 60s, I probably broke all kinds of precedents for acceptable behavior in my family lineage! So I knew that some things I gladly embraced had not been learned in any way from my family, or even my friends. Why was I attracted to certain behaviors, and not others? Certain girls, and not others? Certain ideas, and not others?

It was when I was hip deep in these ponderously trenchant considerations that I unexpectedly found myself visiting a friend in the Spring of 1971. She asked me if I wanted to know anything about my horoscope. I was skeptical, but gave her my birth info, she did some calculations, and then opened a big book and started to read the sign and house positions of my planets, as well as some other things.

When she was done, she asked me if it was accurate. I told her some of what she said was astonishingly accurate, while other stuff didn’t fit. I told her some things were spooky in how they nailed certain personality traits, while other things were so off as to be perplexing. I asked her how this could be, and she said she really didn’t know astrology, and suggested that I investigate it on my own.

A few weeks later, I went to our metaphysical bookstore in Austin at the St. Hilarion Center. I found the book she had been reading from, the A to Z Horoscope Maker and Delineator. I asked Brother Anthony, the person behind the desk, for more recommendations. Though he was not an astrologer, he pointed me toward Heaven Knows What by Grant Lewi and the Astrological Aspects by Charles Carter.

Another friend became very interested in Astrology about the same time, and we learned how to compute charts and analyze them. He was more interested in horary, I was more interested in natal, and we bounced insights off each other in both fields. We pretty much ate and slept astrology, and both of us got leaps in understanding that accelerated proportionate to the time we spent studying and applying the parts of the craft that interested us.

I got more books by the week. Rudhyar, Jones, Davidson, Meyers, Sakoian and Acker, Lilly, Hall, Leo, Sepharial, Hone, Hickey, Schulman, Ruperti, and too many more to list here. I studied natal, various types of progressions and directions, horary, electional, medical, mundane, meterological, esoteric, transpersonal, humanistic, and spiritual astrology. Eventually a sense of an overview arose, and I understood how the various schools and disciplines of astrology serve the greater good.

I got a lot of resistance during my first couple of years. Many discouraged me, mocked me, doubted me, and pestered me with questions I could not answer. But I just kept studying, kept trying to see what didn’t work as well as what did, and took a common sense, practical approach to the nuts and bolts of what could be verified and what could not. (Yes, these traits are all in my chart….)

Eventually, over time and experience, I found my practice paid off in a concrete ability to prove the craft to be as absolutely accurate as the practitioner cares to be. When we’re accurate, we can predict many things that blow minds. But I also learned along the way that’s something to be downplayed, since our craft involves more important considerations.

Because all who diligently study and apply that knowledge are bound to be rewarded with greater knowledge, we are responsible for that knowledge. That requires us to be servants of a greater good. We are ideally the grounded embodiment of Uranus, which overrides lesser things. A good Astrologer becomes a Time Master, each in our own way. And that’s something desperately needed by our overly materialistic world that believes everything is random.

I’ll finish by closing up a loose end in the story. The punch line as to why some of what my friend told me was accurate and some was so far off as to be very perplexing? I found out in late 1972 that my mom had given me the wrong birth time! Once I corrected the time, the chart made perfect sense.

Since then, I’ve found getting an accurate birth time to be one of the most difficult parts of being a professional astrologer. Over my 48 years of doing charts, there are far too many speculative birth times.

And there you have the story of how I came to the art and science of Astrology!

Copyright © 2019 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Debra Mathis]

I remember when I got my first chart done in Austin, and you're the one that did it. I felt very open to astrology but knew nothing. You looked at my chart and I'll never forget one thing you said, you asked me what had happened when I was 17, you said it involved knives or being cut, and your intuition kicked in and you asked me if I had had surgery. I in fact did have surgery for gallstones when I was 17. I definitely got goosebumps. I also got inspired, but have never felt that I could really understand astrology in any complete sense. I am grateful to you.