Astrology and Psychic Ability

In the long shuttered television series, Babylon 5, psychics were a hot topic. You had two choices if you were found to be a “telepath”, work for the government sponsored, quasi-military group, the Psi-Corps or take “the drugs”, which had dangerous side effects, to suppress your abilities. In a neat little trick the Babylon 5 writers, from time to time, would use a “commercial, to illustrate the wider cultural context of the show in a form that was readily identifiable to us. In a particularly memorable Psi-Corp recruiting commercial a miserable young boy was picked on for “knowing things” other people didn’t. Magically a Psi-corp recruiter shows up and explains to Johnny that he is special and if he would only join the Psi-corp he wouldn’t have a single financial worry in his life.

Thankfully, we do not have the government scooping up our psychic children for “training”, but on the other hand we barely acknowledge that such abilities exist. Worse yet, if we acknowledge them, we misunderstand these energies even fear them. More than once, this astrologer has been at the receiving end of what I call “the look”. “The look” at once conveys fear that I know too much about them and the disbelief that anyone could.

You don’t have to be psychic to be an astrologer, and as an astrologer, you don’t want to admit it when you are. We don’t want to be identified with the cheesy reputation of “psychic astrologers” of 900 line fame. Nor do we, at a time when so many of us are working to bring astrology into the mainstream, cast a Neptunian fantasy aura around the pragmatic practice of our art.

For those astrologers with psychic ability, often the line is blurred between astrological insight and psychic impression. But how do you know, other than a feeling, if you have actual psychic ability? Let’s take a look at Terri McCartney’s study of the charts of a select group of psychics.

Thirty-three percent of psychics have the ruler of their ninth house in Leo or Pisces.

She says of this placement:

I view the 9th house as the house where we have experiences that push at the comfort zones of our conditioned beliefs and assist us in grasping the “bigger picture”— ultimately discovering that we are spirit having a human journey.
38% of psychics with a mutable sign rising, 31.25% (25 of the 80) have Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces rising. Pisces/Virgo is the work and service axis.
Sixty-one percent of psychics have a masculine sign on the Midheaven (Air or Fire).
Forty Seven percent have an outer planet in the eighth house.

As far as more traditional markers of psychic ability:

Twenty percent of our psychics have the Sun in Pisces, demonstrating the greatest percentage of positive frequency difference of any of our factors—146%. The ruler of the 7th house, the ambassador of our relationships with others is also found in Pisces in 13.75% of our psychics charts. This suggests the possibility that when the ruler of the 7th house is found in the sign of pure consciousness (Pisces) one of the significant relationships in our lives is with spirit and otherworldly realms of experience.

As for astrologers, in a separate study, Terri found:

38% had the Sun in Scorpio, Sagittarius or Capricorn and these placements were found in the astrologers charts twice as often as they were found in the control group.
 Sun, Moon or Mercury was found in a fixed house for 70% of astrologers and Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn were placed in an air house for 71%.
 Sixty-three percent of the astrologers had the ruler of the eleventh house direct.
 None of the astrologers tested had a mutual reception between Sun and Uranus. 
Pluto, Chiron or the North Node was placed in one of the Gauquelin power zones in 66%.
 Uranus was found aspecting the vertex in the control group more often than it was found aspecting the vertex in the astrologers’ horoscopes.
 Nothing was found in 100% of the astrologers’ charts.

Well this astrologer has a mutual reception between her Sun in Aquarius and Leo in Uranus, consider traditionally as a marker of an astrologer. But that particular aspect may be looking for a needle in haystack, since at the most 350,000 people in the United States were born with this aspect last go round of Uranus in Leo. While this sounds like a big number is actually represents just little over 1% of the population of this country.

Still the question remains for some us. If you are an astrologer do you think your insights come from pure astrology, psychic impressions or both? What do you do identify as the inspiration for you insights?

If you would like a question answered on these pages send your birth date, birth place and birth time along with your question to starrynightastro@aol.com. Sorry, time constraints prevent me from doing readings on anything other than a single question.