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Delineation Book
Preface

I have been writing for a few years now, and for the
most part it has been very rewarding for me to be able to
finally have a chance to share my experiences as an
astrologer with my peers.

It would seem that I started with my passions right off,

the first book having been on my observances of twenty
years of working in the psychiatric system, and observing
and collecting birth data, of people diagnosed with
psychiatric difficulties and diagnoses. The experience of
working in astrology with a background knowledge of
astrology was indeed, very insightful and rewarding.

My second book on Mid-Life Crisis according to

astrology was a labor of love as a Saturn-Sun conjunct
developmentalist. All the great psychologists who emphasize
the developmental aspects of human growth have a
prominent Saturn placement and I am no exception. Though
Mid-life crisis has that additional sociological attraction to it,
that hook that mid-lifers might want to find out what is going
on, to me it was just part of the greater developmental
picture of our lives that Betty Lundsted writes so capably
about in her book "Planetary Cycles". It is unacceptable that
psychology is unable to come up with a cogent blueprint for
the life span that does not end at age 21. Now that they are
acknowledging the mid-life and beyond developmental
stages, it was time to give astrology it's due.

My third book, (one so eclectic that of course, no-one

will ever read it), is again combining my passion for music
with my passion for astrology. My look at the famous
composers and the equally famous musicians is not in itself,
a brilliant treatise in astrological insights. No; it is more a
commentary from an astrological point on just how these
musicians were able to translate and channel through them
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the brilliance of the celestial music of the spheres, as

modified by the planetary configurations that they chose to
be incarnated in.
I have found that it is through watching how well known
people live their lives and express themselves (without them
knowing astrology) that we can learn a great deal about the
astrological underpinnings of their chart. In the case of
music, it demonstrates the actual meanings of the aspects
and planetary configurations of those composers through
their expression of these through music.
No matter how modern science has modified Johannes
Kepler's work, he continues to inspire me with his Music of
the Spheres. He certainly had most of the physics right, and I
think sometimes we all hear the music of the celestial
spheres. (I just hope someone reads the work…)
This, my fourth book, on delineation techniques, holds
all the promise of living up to the designation of the 4th book.
The number 4 in astrology, and numerology has all the
meaning of a hard but square work, a solid work.
Beethoven's 4th Symphony was solid and true, but it held all
that he knew of the past, of his mentor Handel, of the
current symphonic structure that he was about to transcend
in the fifth symphony.
I guess that I would like to take that a step further in
this book number four. I do want to talk about and honor the
past teachers that have lead our way in their thought
processes and techniques, and affirm their knowledge and
insights that hold true today. That said, in the true form of
the square I want to break from some of the ideas that have
been promoted though the years, ideas that stay because
they remain unchallenged by real life observations. This
would be true of all astrologers, that their actual readings
would help us to further understand if indeed a certain
aspect of positioning of a planet actually works, or if that
commonly accepted knowledge is inaccurate or outdated.
I have long been unhappy with the delineators that I
have had to work with through out the years, not because
they are always lacking, but because it is always a variable
whether what they say will be accurate or pertinent to the
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client that I am reading. More often than not, I find myself

giving the client the delineation book and asking them to
read what it says about that aspect, then tell me which parts
pertain to them and which don't, and why.

The reasons that a delineator would be inaccurate are

many, but it is a given that one paragraph written to
describe one set of variables is not going to be able to fit all
people, due to the many factors affecting the description. It
is here that the astrologer has to take into account the many
variables that modify the aspect, such as other aspecting
planets, current transits, and the demographics of the
person being read.
The above is also why I am so resistant to using the
pre-printed aspectarians that have become so popular in the
last 15 years. Though they also contain much accurate
material, they also equally contain much in the way of
contradictory material, as they would need to. They are
printing out pre programmed comments on specific aspects
which will of course be voided by other conflicting aspects. It
is not that I do not think the experienced astrologer cannot
benefit from these and make sense of them, but they cannot
help but to confuse clients who order them with the
conflicting information presented. In this case the
astrologer's brain is the superior tool.
My work is based in seeing four to six hundred people
per year and asking each and every one of them how theses
aspects work in their life. I then take into account all the
variables that I can in the reading and modify back to them
what astrology would say about those experiences, how they
could vary in their chart, and how I would read the chart or
aspect based on those variables and my experience in
reading. This is how any experienced astrologer helps sort
through the many conflicting inputs in a reading and
synthesizes insights that are extremely valuable to their
clients.
The reason for this book then is to help both beginner
and intermediate astrologers come up with ways that they
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are able to sort out all the parameters in a reading and know
that they are doing their best to synthesize all the variables
into a cogent reading for the client. I am writing essentially
to astrologers in their 20's and 30's, to assist in formulating
their own heuristics. I am not being critical of any astrologer
over 40ish, as though there is nothing I can share with them,
but by that time they have probably formulated their own
methodologies by that time, and could also write a book like
this.
I feel that in formulating a reading there are necessary
as well as optional methods that astrologers need to utilize
to incorporate all the important parameters in a reading. I
have my methodologies, as do other astrologers, and each
has it's efficacy, but there are still a set of necessary
parameters that I feel all astrologers should be able to
elucidate to have the fullest understanding that an astrology
reading is able to give. It is these parameters that I will talk
about at length in this book, in the hope that the astrologer
when finished has an insight into greater scope of ideas that
they will be able to wield, and should be able to wield in a
reading, even if there is not time for all of these ideas to be
discussed.
This is, in a sense, a duty book. Tropically, Saturn is in
Virgo, and I have felt for some time that this book needed to
b e written, to help alleviate some of the chaos in
delineation, and bring about a methodology to our art. That
said, as a Neptunian/ Saturnian with moon in Pisces, my
heuristics remain a solid knowledge base that I then
regularly transcend with leaps of faith and intuition in a
reading. I am not sure that I truly felt the need to share all of
my methods with others, but I am impatient with the lack of
methodology out there since the initial generational burst of
astrological writing that took place in the 1960's and 1970's,
so I felt this needed to be written.
I also felt that, in the manner of method books, this
should not be a wordy tome, but a concise handbook, (a trait
that my Saturn has and my Neptune regularly washes over).
One of my literary heroes is E.B.White, of Strunk and White;
"Styles in Composition", Univ. of Chicago press. His writing
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was concise, almost sparse, yet said everything that he

needed to say. I shall endeavor to emulate him in this book
and keep it to almost a handbook size, one easily digested if
not referenced.
*
Not so my next and hopefully last work. I hope to finish
one more work while I am still a progressed Gemini rising.
My great love in astrology is watching how the progression
of the planets gives form and structure to successive
generations in their endeavors. To follow just one planet in
its successive orbits gives a great deal of insight into what
its current effect might be in the present. It also gives us the
most satisfying looks at the greater picture of humanity's
growth and repetitive struggles. I know that this will be a
work of Wagnerian operatic grandiosity and scope, and will
be difficult to contain in any easily limited formula. Wish me
luck, and if I do extend into the time that my progressed
ascendant turns to Cancer, perhaps I will gain in historical
acknowledgement what I lose in time creating the work.
Wish me luck.