So just how does one get to be an internationally syndicated horoscope columnist? For Santa Cruz, Calif. native Rob Brezsny, it all started when his bike got stolen. Must have been in the stars...
WE: How did you get into being an astrologer/writer/horoscope go-to man?
I studied astrology beginning in my teenage years because I was raised to be an intellectual and probably still am to some degree but the arrival of music and astrology in my life I think saved my soul.
I took it pretty seriously and at the same time was cultivating my skills as a writer, really beginning when I was a teenager. And I took astrology seriously and so I never gave much credibility to astrology columns because to me they seemed like fake astrology, because to do astrology right you need to know a person's entire chart, where all the planets are placed and not just where the sun is placed in a person's chart.
And at a certain point well, I was very poor after getting out of college and doing odd jobs like picking apples and washing dishes and doing janitorial work and one day my bike was stolen and this was my only way to get around. I turned to the classified section of the local newspaper in Santa Cruz and right next to the advertisement for used items being sold there was an advertisement by the publisher of the newspaper seeking an astrologer to write a weekly column because his astrologer had just quit in a salary dispute. I said, "well, I do need to eat and it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it." So I applied for the job and I got it and I think I've written a column for more than 30 years at this point.
On the way, I made it my intention to bring as much integrity as I could to the lowly art of the horoscope column and not just in terms of writing it well, but also in thinking it well and imagining it well and it's a long story but I developed a lot of ideas about how I could do it well and with integrity and actually be of use to people and not just scare people as a lot of astrologers and astrology writers do.
That's a pretty long story though...
But you do write a different kind of horoscope, what is your tactic? How do you approach the 'lowly art of the horoscope column'?
Well there are lots of technical aspects. Any particular time of the year corresponds to a particular phase of a 12-phase cycle in each sign's evolution or cycle. So, for instance, when we enter the astrological month of Capricorn that lights up the First House for Capricorn, it lights up the Seventh House for Cancer, it lights up the Second House for Cancer, all of that, that means something to me. The First House, the Second House, the Third House all correspond to a particular area of life for each person.
The Second House, for example, is any actions that involve consolidation or building one's resources, stabilizing one's navigation through the ordinary chaos of life and of course, on a basic level, to financial matters. So that's an example of what I would have as a frame as I meditated on what Sagittarians are going through during this particular astrological month. But it's also highlighted by the movements of the moon and other planets if they're in a major aspect or an interesting aspect to each other or to the sun and the moon.
So, at any particular moment, I've got a lot of technical data to guide my meditations. On the other hand it's also an art to me, it's not a science. Over a number of years I've been trained by my audience to know what they need, because I get feedback from my readers at a pretty rapid rate and have for many years. In a sense I'm a creation of my readers, they let me know what's working, what's not working. And so in a sense I think my imagination is attuned to the needs of my readers.
I once went to a psychic who told me there are two kinds of telepathy or mind-reading. One is that which is displayed by a performer, a salesman or a psychic which is one-on-one and one which is a broadband form of telepathy, which she said that I had, in which I'm connected to a number of people simultaneously.
So when you say you studied astrology quite seriously, what do you mean? How did you study it?
I read books at first but I also studied it at Goddard College, which is a very experimental college a legitimate college in Vermont. I didn't get a degree in astrology there but I studied with a man Peter Kubaska who went on to become the president of the theosophical society and he introduced me to the art of studying astrology.
But of course along the way I've also learned from a lot of teachers through books as well.
How old were you when you started studying astrology?
I was a teenager.
How old are you now?
I'm 55.
Wow, so that's really been a life-long vocation for you.
I've done many other things. I regarded it as very much secondary to my life for many years because I was primarily a rock and roll musician and I've written three books and I always regarded those as my primary work in the world. But I've come to love astrology and I'm not a rock and roll musician anymore. Since I quit the music business my column has become more and more a central part of my life and, of course, it's my main way of making a living at this point. So I really love doing it and love having a readership that's so responsive and I love getting my words out there once a week. It's a great joy.
How many publications run your column?
It changes as the weeks go by and people add and subtract but I think at this particular date it's 116.
What band were you in?
A band called World Entertainment War. You can look it up on Wikipedia. We were signed to MCA and Bill Graham was our manager.
Cool. Around New Year's must be astrologically significant for you, how long does it take you to get people's year-long forecasts together?
It's quite a big job, because I do it not only for my written horoscopes but also the expanded audio horoscopes that I offer for the year ahead and the year that's passing.
There's three weeks worth of those and three weeks of my expanded long-range forecast for my written column.
It's always difficult to assess how much time anything takes because I'm really in a sense working all the time, I'm always tuning into the vibes and collecting data and noticing things and overhearing conversations and asking my friends for what's going on in their lives. All that counts as work in not only the day-to-day operation of my astrology but especially at the end of the year when I'm trying to look at the bigger picture.
Is that what you mean when you say you try to bring integrity to your columns?
Well I can't judge anybody else's integrity in terms of how they're writing their column. But what I can say is a lot of columns depend on stimulating fear in a lot of people and foreboding and I'm very much against that. And the other thing other horoscope columns do is concentrate on the materialist interpretation of reality, which says that money, power, popularity, hipness, seduction those are the important things to know about and think about and I try to aspire to extolling and exhorting people to imagine their lives on a higher plain and to think about their spiritual work as well as their material interests.
So that's one way in which I think my column is distinguished from a lot of columns. But I've spawned some imitators out there and a lot of them are doing a pretty good job of reaching higher and not just appealing to the lowest common denominator.
How do you deal with skeptics? Are you in contact a lot with people who think this whole astrology thing is just pure fabrication?
Well I'm kind of in between because I do have a lot of skepticism about the way astrology is practised itself. I find a lot of carelessness in my field and so I try to bring some more reason and analysis and discernment to the way that I practise astrology.
As for those people who, I call them fundamentalist materialists, those people who believe dogmatically that there cannot be any such thing as astrological phenomena, they're usually too closed-minded to have a reasonable conversation with, I think they're just fundamentalists of another sort. Furthermore they're usually pretty poorly informed about the nature of astrology.
For instance, a lot of self-described skeptics aren't really skeptics really because they're dogmatic, and skeptics by definition are skeptical, they're not dogmatic, they don't have an axe to grind or an ideology to promote, they're open-minded about possibilities, even as they're eager to test possibilities. But anyway, even the dogmatic skeptics who purport to debunk astrology often bring up the false idea that astrology believes the planets send some kind of vibes down to affect us and that's just plain misinformed because most astrologers don't believe that.
Most astrologers believe the planets are signals or signs by which we can read the big picture of what's unfolding. But most astrologers don't think that Mars is sending some sort of gravitational beam down that's influencing the way that I act. The way that Tarnas describes it is he draws a comparison to a clock. A clock doesn't cause time; it's a way to read time. Likewise we read the movements of the planets but the planets don't cause us to act in particular ways.
A lot of the dogmatic skeptics start with that as their premise that we astrologers think that the planets are affecting us with their beams. So how can you argue with somebody that doesn't even take the trouble to be informed about how astrology works?
Is it a belief that there's something predetermined out there and the planets are telling you what's going to happen?
No, absolutely not. And in fact that's why my approach to astrology is to hopefully awaken people's imaginations and exercise their free will. That's why my column is called Free Will Astrology. My approach is that the future is not set in stone; there are tendencies and inclinations, but you have the power to shape those tendencies and inclinations.
