Compliments of the season to you all!

This blog has somehow found its way into the Top Fifty Astrological Blogs as ascertained by the number of followers on Networked Blogs! This was a big surprise, because I had not thought of it as an astrology blog particularly, but as a writing and editing one. However, I guess at least some of you, dear followers, must be interested in astrology, and I know most of you are interested in writing. So let’s knock off two asteroids with one comet and have a look at how astrology can help writers.

Authors have often used astrology in their stories; it’s an important part, for instance, of Kim Falconer’s Quantum Enchantment science fantasy series. Kim, an astrologer herself, has devised an astrological system for her characters to use, and it certainly adds an interesting twist to both plot and characterisation. If you’re going to use astrology in your stories, you need to have more than a superficial knowledge of it. I was amused to read in one of my favourite historical novels set in medieval times that one of the characters had Venus and Neptune conjunct in her horoscope. Now this may well be true, but the character and her astrologer would not have been aware of the fact. Neptune was not discovered until 1846!

If you’re a writer, your own chart will undoubtedly show a bent towards verbal expression and some kind of artistic talent. Those among you who have horoscopes will know this already, and those of you who have not might enjoy a new voyage of self-discovery if you take the time to learn more about the subject. It might also show you the appropriate times to submit manuscripts to give yourself the best chance of success! Perhaps I’ll write a whole post on these topics sometime, but for today, let’s have a look at how astrology can help you develop and understand your characters.

I know some of you are cynics about astrology, and so you should be – there’s a lot of crap flying around out there on the subject. But even cynics can use this tool with useful results. There are lots of websites to help you and rather than reinvent the wheel I’ll provide links to a couple of good ones.

The Metaphysical Zone investigates various psychological and metaphysical tools for character development, including astrology, the Enneagram and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. In regard to astrology, it suggests going into considerable depth by ascertaining your character’s date, place and time of birth and setting up a complete horoscope. This is certainly the most thorough and legitimate way to use astrology – it’s what I do, and every time, I am amazed to find that by reading the chart in depth I can learn more about that character’s deep fears and desires, which add dimensions I was not aware of and explain why the character sometimes goes off on tangents that seem contrary to the way I want the story to go!

The problem with this method is that most writers are not astrologers, and while it’s easy enough to find sites that offer free charts and even free basic readings, to get to those depths in your characters, the bits that make them truly interesting, we need an in-depth reading. Here’s where the next website comes in. Over at Suite 101 Jo Lamb-White has written a series of articles on characterisation based on the Sun sign. That’s the bit of our horoscope that we all know – I’m a Pisces; she’s a Scorpio, he’s a Leo and so on. But the Sun sign is only a tiny part of the horoscope – a very important part, but pretty meaningless on its own, which is why the predictions you read in newspapers and magazines are so often way off the mark.

But once you’ve ascertained the main features of your character’s chart (they would include the positions of the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Midheaven and ruling planet) you can use Lamb-White’s articles to learn more about the characteristics of the signs involved. It won’t give you an in-depth reading, but it will help you on the way. And who knows, you might become fascinated enough to learn more – and pretty soon, if you don’t watch out, you’ll be buying astrological software, casting charts for yourself and learning how to read them.

‘But,’ I hear you ask, ‘how do I find out my character’s place, date and time of birth?’

There are two ways. Both require that you first decide the year of birth, which should be easy because you probably already know how old your character is. You probably also know the place.

Having got at least the year of birth, do one of the following:

*Ask the character! Just sit quietly and imagine the character has come to join you, and simply ask him or her for the data you need. It will probably pop into your head immediately, but if it doesn’t, thank the character anyway and accept that the information will come to you later, perhaps in a dream. It nearly always does.

*The second method, which I use more than the first (because I’m the Author and therefore the Boss) demands some knowledge of astrology. I look at what I know about the character already and hazard a guess as to possible dominant signs. (Sometimes something else leaps out at me, too, such as a possible aspect between two planets.) I follow my intuition as to which is the Sun sign. That gives me the Zodiacal month. Then I pick what I think should be the Moon sign – that will narrow it down to about three days. Then I look up those days and again just following my nose, I pick one of them to be the birthdate. Then I pick the possible rising sign to get the time to within a couple of hours. A bit of fine tuning and I can sit down and learn my character’s innermost secrets at my leisure!

But of course, it doesn’t matter how well I think I know my characters – if I can’t write them well the knowledge does me no good. Blending characters and plot is the essence of fiction writing and in that regard, I still have along way to go, despite my Air (intellectual ability, verbal reasoning) grand trine (a generally fortunate combination) of Mercury (verbal skill) Neptune (creativity, imagination) and Saturn conjunct Uranus (hard work + sudden breakthroughs and changes).

Ah well, plod on! And that’s Saturn talking.

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