For a long, long time people would came to an astrologer in order to have a forecast of their future – more exactly about what was written in the stars about this future in terms of success, money, health and love. That was fortunetelling.

So the astrologer would behave the same way as palmistry or cards readers, predicting a good or a bad future, like an omen.

Even today, there is still much of this fortunetelling game. People still come to astrologers looking for a reading of what is going to happen next year. Usually they come once for a rapid and extremely superficial ‘reading’ of their natal charts. Then they would come back once a year, for that “what’s going to happen to me this year” annual-limited fortunetelling.

Of course, the responsibility for that tragical use of Astrology is of the astrologers themselves. Having evolved from a primitive superstitious world of benevolent and malevolent gods, learning to associate some of these gods and goddesses to planets, moon and sun, they did believe that planets were the gods themselves and that all future of a human being was indelibly written in the stars.

For this beliefs largely contributed the Muslim idea of fate – Maktub, it was written! The reason for that is the tremendous importance the Arabs had in spreading mathematical, astronomical and astrological knowledge in the western world – bringing them from their Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek cradles and adapting them to their own beliefs system.

A XX century revolution

XX century started months after the publication, by Austrian physician Dr. Sigmund Freud, of his remarkable book “The Interpretation of Dreams”. At this moment modern Psychology was born. And, with the most distinguished collaborator of Freud, the Swiss physician Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, modern Astrology would come to its birth.

It has been Jung who, at the same time that he was conceiving his Analytical Psychology, dedicated a long time to study Astrology and to apply it to his own patients. We may say that Dr. Jung started to celebrate the modern marriage of Astrology to Psychology, a ceremony that was concluded some years in the future by the genial French astrologer Dane Rudhiar. (The Jung Letters to Freud on Astrology)

The fact that we still see much of the old-fashion fortunetelling associated to Astrology derives solely from the incomplete technical formation of a large number of contemporary astrologers, who didn’t study Psychology.

Psychology, at its beginning and for decades a mere specialization in Medicine courses, evolved always inside the academic media.

Astrology, in contrast was expelled from university in XVII century. So, as Psychology could develop under the rigor of university and of professional inspection, Astrology became a “land of no one”, where both technically/ethically proficient professionals and charlatans could thrive under the same title.

However, as XX Century started with the birth of Psychology and assisted the intertwining of this with Astrology, it ended contemplating the triumphal return of Astrology to the academic world. And the mandatory in deepness study of Psychology as a fundamental discipline of the astrologer’s professional formation.


A new approach for consultations

The modern astrologer is no longer a one-consult-a-year fortuneteller. The sound development of a Psychological Astrology resulted in a new approach to the astrologer/client relationship. Now they schedule a series of sessions, where all the capital issues are discussed and made clear through a highly psychologically oriented view. When needed, forecast techniques as the Strategic Planning chart may be used as accessories to the main objective of the sessions, that is always the quest for the Self, the process of Individuation and the finding of real happiness in the richness of within.

In Delphos Astrology, our approach is that of a humanistic, person-centered Astrology, in contrast with the old-fashioned event-oriented Astrology. Our basis is Jungian Analytical Psychology.

Our maximum goal is to uncover and let the client understand clearly every bit of his/her own Shadow.

By doing so, we get the maximum yield from astrological consultancy, profiting from the fact that the astrological birth chart shows in great detail the possible development of all psychological archetypes and complexes. The Shadow is the most important of them all.

By permitting the client to identify and relive the ways that Shadow formation was built during infancy, Astrology brings him/her a new opportunity of self-knowledge and of facing, defeating and integrating its blocks, fears, resentments, as well as equally hidden positive potentials.

Deeply seated fears, recurrent self-destructive behavior, self-programming for failure, self-boycott in professional or economic life, addictions to substances, smoking and eating, are all manifestations of an unresolved Shadow. Also, the hidden and unknown Shadow provokes crises after crises in relationships, a field particularly vulnerable to its manifestations through the psychological phenomenon of Projection.

That’s why our system of astrological guidance starts with a long first session where anamnesis is the most important part, followed by details for confirming the rectification of the birth time already done and the beginning of the Shadow-chasing journey along the following sessions.

Sometimes, the fact that the client is facing a particularly intense crisis forces that forecast techniques and Local Space techniques are employed in a first session. However, by no means, this is the ideal process.

The following pages deal with the Jungian Concept of the Shadow.