Weirdly enough, for someone who’s a double-Gemini, I’m extremely against e-mail memes and chain letters and “send this to all your friends!!!!!1″ propaganda. However, if it’s serving a noble purpose, like getting to know fellow astrologers in their own words, I’m more than happy to play along. This one that follows is five astrology-related questions. I got them from Neeti Ray of Astrology Expressed; Neeti’s interviewed me and lots of other astrologers before, and she’s an exemplary interviewer as well as writer and astrologer, so any time she can interview me, I’m game. And it’s a great opportunity for me to work on my own interview skills.
Here’s how it works: if you want to be interviewed, you have to ask the author of the post you’re reading (in this case, me) to interview you. They’ll (I’ll, what the fuck am I writing they for?) send you five unique questions that you have to answer and post in your own blog. Here are my answers to Neeti’s questions:
1. Have you gone to weird lengths to obtain someone’s birth data? If yes, please tell us about it.
Weird lengths? Hmm. I think the weirdest thing I’ve ever done to get birth data was to ask someone’s mom. Most people just give me their info if I ask for it, but if I ask and someone says no, I don’t push it. If I’m really curious for myself, I’ll just look in the ephemeris. Fortunately in cases of emergency I’m pretty desensitized to going to weird lengths for information. I once had to look at this guy’s mail when he was out of the room because we’d been on like three dates already and he refused to tell me his last name. Birth data is the least of my concerns.
2. Do you discuss astrology with your non-astrology friends?
Immediately I’d say no, I don’t. But my non-astrology friends would say, “Yeah, you do.” A couple months ago my best friend told me she was watching that VH1 show My Antonio, and one of the contestants was supposed to go zip-lining and she said, “Oh my God, I’m supposed to go zip-lining when there’s a solar eclipse AND it’s Mercury retrograde?!”, and my friend thought to herself, “Oh my God, it’s Lucy.” I said, “Oh, come on, I don’t do that.” And she said, “Actually, a lot of the time you’ll talk about other people and say things like, ‘Well, he’s Libra with Pisces rising, OF COURSE he’s being like this,’ and I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” Okay, okay.
3. Which planet do you struggle with in your own chart?
My two angular planets (the Moon and Venus) are double-edged swords, just because while they have a lot of advantages, they’re SO DAMN PRONOUNCED I can’t escape them. I feel like I’m as oversensitive as I am not because my Sun is in Pisces, but because my Moon is on the Ascendant, all hanging out for everyone to see, and even when I think I’m making an effort to conceal it, other people can still pick up on it. It’s kind of like how even when I’m wearing a totally un-revealing turtleneck sweater, my mom hassles me because my breasts are still visibly gigantic. My Venus in Aquarius on the MC just confounds me, because I’m sure there is a constructive way to own it, and I have not found it yet, except for dressing for the job I would want if it was 1948 or 1972 and being incredibly ornery and non-flirtatious.
4. Which branch of astrology did you find challenging to learn?
I really don’t have a ton of experience with most branches of astrology outside Western tropical, which I badly need to change. I tried to teach myself Vedic in college when I was procrastinating writing my conference papers, and that was kind of hard to wrap my head around at the time, not just because it was a whole different system of calculation, but because what I was reading seemed to be more predictive than analytical (which now I know isn’t always the case). I’m interested in learning about Gauquelin’s methods as well simply because I’m embarking on a more scientific leg of my career, and I think it might be interesting to sort of pare down what I do know of Western astrology so I’m using it more effectively. Sort of how most psychologists acknowledge Freud for making the field of psychotherapy what it is today, but don’t necessarily believe (actually, don’t believe at all) that psychoanalysis is the be all and end all of the human experience.
5. Imagine your perfect man. Now describe some important aspects of his chart.
Hmm. In reality, I would never not date or marry someone because of astrology, and I do know that good synastry isn’t all there is to it. (I can’t remember who said it, but I heard an astrologer once say, “There is no bad synastry, only bad relationships,” and it’s SO TRUE.) But for the sake of the interview, I’ll bite. First of all, his chart would go very easy on the Libra and Sagittarius, because I’ve had awful experiences with both signs and I’m sick of it. If he had a Moon in the 1st House as well, or even in any angular house, I would really appreciate that- because then we could actually have genuine emotional conversations and there wouldn’t be that stupid game-playing you see so often. He would also have strong Saturn or Pluto, because 1) I don’t really like fluff, and 2) he would probably have a better-timed, more dry sense of humor. No, he really would- I know way more funny Capricorns and Scorpios and so forth, way funnier than someone who was like ALL Venus or ALL Gemini and never knew when the hell to stop. It would be great if he had Venus in Scorpio and Mars in Aquarius, because 1) that’s the opposite of my Venus and my Mars, 2) my Pluto final dispositor would actually be kind of an aphrodisiac, and 3) the sex would be AWESOME.
If you want to be interviewed, do the following:
1) Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2) I will respond by e-mailing you five questions (that I pick).
3) You then update your blog with the questions and your answers.
4) Include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5) When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will come up with five questions to ask each of them.
Who’s next?
