An interview with John Frawley

το πρωτοειδαμε απο την ouranitsa.blogspot.com εδω, & πηγη εδω,

John Frawley has recently published his third book The Horary Textbook - sure to be an international best seller. His first book,The Real Astrology, received widespread applaud and the Spica astrology award for International Book of the Year, 2001. It has been described as "a searching - and often hilarious - critique of modern astrology, and a detailed introduction to all the main branches of the traditional craft". It was quickly followed by The Real Astrology Applied, in 2002. John is one of the most outspoken proponents for traditional techniques, having adopted a style which is challenging, provocative, and indeed very witty. John also publishes his own magazine, The Astrologer's Apprentice, teaches his own correspondence courses on horary, natal and electional astrology, (the 'Apprenticeship'), has an active practice, and lectures widely. Further details are available on his website at http://www.johnfrawley.com. The following article was originally recorded in 1997 and published in the spring edition of the Traditional Astrologer Magazine in 1998. John has given permission for it to be republished as it first appeared, with the incorporation of additional material, obtained in January and February 2000, which is appended at the end. Q: How did you get interested in astrology? I've been interested in astrology since my very early teens reading sun-sign columns, 'Is the girl at the bus-stop going to smile at me today?' - the usual stuff. And then progressing from there gradually studying more and more seriously. Q: So did you get into horary fairly early on? No, it's only within the last five or six years I've been involved with horary astrology mainly through frustration with modern schools of astrology being very vague. I had much more affinity with the ideas behind horary, and the astrology is very definite, very concrete. You are definitely right or definitely wrong. Q: Could you give an example of the kind of thing you mean when you refer to 'modern schools of astrology being very vague'? If we look at the keywords that the moderns tend to use in considering the planets - so many of them are vague, more-or-less meaningless tags. With traditional technique we are working with the concrete right from the start. Mars, for example, is not 'aggression', nor Venus 'harmony', but they are 'your dad' or 'your sister' or whatever. So, inevitably, our judgements are concrete, even if we are working on a psychological level. The traditional technique also makes it far easier for the astrologer to keep himself and his pre-conceptions out of the chart. We don't have to regard being a healer as the highest form of human life. Q: So far as vagueness goes, isn't it inevitable that, people being as complex as they are, character analysis will be more vague (or ambiguous) than a horary judgement? Is the issue here one of traditional versus modern astrology or is it more a case of you preferring horary to psychological work? There's a measure of truth in what you say; but traditional method, whether natal or horary, is capable of very sharp psychological delineation. It is sometimes necessary to do this, even with horaries. I think it helps in that with the traditional method, by virtue of the way in which we have learned it, we are working straight from the astrology, not thru this dreadful sub-Jungian vernacular in which so much modern astrology is cast. This gives even our psychological delineations a great clarity. Q: Were you seeing clients before you started doing horary? I saw clients for a while, a long time ago, doing natal work. But it's only in the last three or four years that I've been working with clients as a main income. I'm not very good at doing things by halves. I can't do something in the daytime and then do something else in the evening. So it's only since I actually gave up a day-job I've been seeing clients. Q: What difference did you find in seeing people pre-horary and post-horary? It's difficult to judge really, because it's such a long time ago that I was seeing clients. So what comes from a different approach, and what just comes from greater maturity it's difficult to tell. One of the nice things about horary is that you can tell if you are getting it right. So you get your confidence boosted by feedback - or have it knocked down if you get it wrong! Q: Who would you cite as being your major influences? Definitely William Lilly. I follow Lilly pretty closely. At least, I follow what I feel is the spirit of Lilly pretty closely. Q: Are you as one with Olivia Barclay on that because she seems to take Lilly almost as being the final arbiter? Yes, I don't have quite the veneration of 'Lilly as the word of God' that some people do, but he was obviously an immensely experienced astrologer - which is why I respect him so much. It's his experience: there isn't anyone to compare with him, at least in English. There are some people who regard him as the True Gospel, which I think is stretching things a bit - not every word he wrote is accurate. So yes, Olivia and I have our differences, but we're pretty much agreed on Lilly's importance. Q: I'd like to find out more about what's behind your article 'The William Hill Astrology Awards'. In that, you're saying that it's possible to live from predicting the results of football matches. Is that something you mean, literally? A: Yes, if you want to devote yourself to it. I don't live by it myself, but I do make a profit out of William Hill. I do find, though, that the pursuit of lucre gets in the way of one's astrological judgement. It's certainly very possible. And it's a very good way of honing your astrology because you're predicting events, and you get the results very quickly. It's not like predicting who is going to win the next general election in five years time. And you get a very clear, unarguable answer. If William Hill is going to pay you for doing the research, so much the better! Q: So you would say that getting too caught up in earning money by doing astrology can get in the way of one's skill? Purely the fact that, if you are pursuing greed, it's very easy to distort one's judgement. If you have a choice in for example a football match, between the favourites going off at 2 to 1 on, or the underdogs going on at 3 to 1, it's very easy to convince yourself that it's worth backing the underdogs just because it's a much nicer price! So this is why the real money options tend to get in the way a bit. I also find that my knowledge of football, my interest in it apart from astrology, obscures the issue as well. I tend to look at astrological judgements and think, 'Nah, that's not going to happen!' Q: And do you find that the astrology tends to be born out rather than your football knowledge? Definitely, my supposedly expert knowledge of football is evidently pretty patchy. Q: There's been quite a bit of talk lately about raising funds to help the AA buy a new HQ in London. Do you believe that, theoretically at least, astrologically-informed betting could be a viable way of funding the organisation? Or is the idea rooted in hubris, and doomed to failure? In the abstract - and I stress 'in the abstract' - it's pretty poor show if an astrological organisation can't finance itself by investing, whether in William Hill or the stock-market. In practice, it becomes rather more difficult. After my TV predictions, I found myself under pressure from various quarters to provide lucrative predictions, and did disastrously. It's only now, when these people have washed their hands of me and I can do it for fun again that I'm getting predictions right. It's a question of focus: like in tennis - if your focus is on hitting the ball, you'll do fine; if it's on lifting the trophy, you'll lose. So in astrology - the focus must be purely on the prediction, not on the consequences of that prediction. So always in horary - the focus must be absolutely on the chart, with no regard for what the client may or may not like. As soon as there is the slightest hint of trying to please the client, the focus shifts and error creeps in. Q: You must have had a look at what's going to happen in the game on Saturday? (Italy v England World Cup Qualifier) I have. It's a very confused chart. Both the event chart for the match, and somebody asked me a horary about it. And they've both got very strong testimonies, in favour of both sides, which is unusual. I shall be having a few bob on England, but without a great deal of conviction. I think it could go to England 1-0. It's a very confused chart, unusually so. Q: Would that just reflect in events on the pitch, or could it also show up on the terraces? I didn't see anything there to say there was going to be particular disruption. You do sometimes see things like that in a chart, but I didn't see anything of that kind. It's a puzzle to try and understand what will happen - it's a learning process, I'll see what happens and try to make sense of it afterwards. Q: [Later] We met just before the Italy/England game; you said that the chart for the match was unusually confused, and that you would be interested to see how it turned out and learn from that. Do you have any additional, retrospective, comments on the game? The match was a goalless draw - the chart didn't have quite the grid-locked feel that goalless draws often have, but certainly had no clear suggestion of either side coming out on top. Q: At the AA Conference, Bernadette Brady was talking about Bonatti, and his approach to working out who was going to win battles which she'd then translated onto sports results. Does your approach line up one-to-one with any particular author from the past? My approach in predicting matches from event charts is unfortunately completely empirical. Bernadette Brady's methods obviously work, but I can't help thinking that her reasoning is flawed; I can't accept the model of a castle siege, to be honest; I don't think anyone really regards the Ashes as being a siege! It's a straight fight between two teams. I don't see that anyone really gives a toss about who holds on to the Ashes per se - it's a purely nominal thing. But she does do very well. I also find this whole data-heavy approach completely uncongenial. I'm not saying it's wrong; this is just a personal view. Q: How about a way of figuring out lottery results? I've thought about it, to the extent of 'Well, that would be nice!' It's the first question you get asked by most people. I wouldn't know where to start. The problem is that you're dealing with numbers above thirty, and in astrology you don't have numbers above thirty. There are some specious schemes. One guy sent me a scheme which he'd paid $100 for, and he was convinced he'd get the winner with it, but it was total rubbish. Q: How about motor-racing? If you could get charts for all the drivers, then that would give you quite a good basis to evaluate who was going to win any particular race? You could do. It's hard work if you've got to look at all the charts of the drivers, though I suppose realistically you'd look at the charts of two or three drivers. I've never actually evaluated a contest looking at birth charts. One of the problems with birth chart data is that it is incredibly unreliable. There is a technique for picking the winner from a field, which can be applied to horse races, golfing tournaments and so on but there seems to be a piece missing. There's something lacking, though I was able to break even using it - which indicates there is something in it. Q: Who developed the technique, and where can interested parties read about it? John Addey. There's one brief article in, I believe, The Astrological Lodge Quarterly, or maybe the Journal, I think from the early 60s (the year after Oxo won the National, if that's a help), but I've been unable to find it to give you an exact reference. This only sketches it, however, so there may be more elsewhere. Q: Going back to football, and this approach of taking the chart for the kick-off as signifying the nature of the match. On Saturday in England, you have extremely similar charts for all the teams kicking off at three o'clock on Saturday. What happens then? I cannot make head nor tail of what happens on Saturday. This method works fine where there are one or two significant matches - the Cup Final, European championships, stuff like that. But what happens on Saturday, I don't know. I've tried a kind of micro-astrology, looking at minute differences between the charts to see if they explain why the home team here wins and the team two hundred yards down the road loses. You get the same problem in snooker at the start of a snooker tournament, you have half a dozen matches starting at the same time, in the same room. And the favourite will not win all those matches. Q: That probably says something deep and important about the way astrology works. Yes, I'm sure it does. It's probably something to do with what Carter talks about his 'doctrine of subsumption', the idea that what happens is taken up into a larger destiny. That being the case, all those charts (of football matches at 3:00 pm on Saturday) would be subsumed by one chart for three o'clock at the Premier League's headquarters, Lancaster Gate, or wherever their headquarters are. Pick the bones out of that! Q: Where does Carter talk about that? I can't remember, but he talks about it in relation to Hiroshima. The people who were killed by the bomb didn't all have it in their charts that they would die that day - their fate was subsumed by that of Japan. Lilly talks about the same thing, regarding one of his judgements which he got wrong. He was talking about Prince Rupert, and he says he got his judgement wrong because he shouldn't have been looking at the chart for Prince Rupert. He should have been looking at the chart for England; his fate was subsumed by the fate of the English nation. Q: You've appeared on TV, on 'Predictions' and 'London Tonight' - what was that all about? With 'Predictions' they phoned in, over a period of a month, a list of questions, for which I cast horaries. Some of them came out spectacularly right. I suspect the ones that came out right were the ones that the people asking the questions were actually interested in. Because the problem with horary is, that if you're not really interested, you're asking just to test - hence you're not asking that question, you're asking 'Does this guy know what he's doing?' And my judgement of the chart can only be on the question that is asked; I cannot judge the chart, 'Do I know what I am doing?' You get a necessarily invalid question. It went quite well. And then the 'London Tonight' team just asked about Wimbledon. I just put up an event chart for the start of the tournament, and said that it would rain a lot - which it did, and that the favourites were not going to do well. I've written up a couple of the judgements - Cup Final and England v Italy - in 'Astrologer's Apprentice' (3 and 5). The football ones offered the greatest scope for precision - with others, like Charles not marrying Camilla, Edward not marrying Sophie (though they were engaged, according to the press at the time) it was more a case of Yes or No. Q: Does that kind of appearance pull in lots of work? It attracts a few loonies! Less than I expected. I expected mass adulation Q: How do most of your clients get in touch with you in the first place? Word of mouth. End of story. I don't really advertise. Q: How long does it take you to prepare? It varies. I don't do natal charts at all. Horaries vary a lot - some of them, it literally takes a glance to see the answer. Obviously you don't judge it just on a glance, you then go and check to make sure. But it can take hours and hours. One of my clients is involved in Pakistani politics. The charts reflect the situation in Pakistani politics: seriously muddy! So you have to peer into this little muddy pool to make out what is happening - that can take a very long time. Lilly would turn round clients in ten to fifteen minutes, and my aspiration is to do the same. It concentrates the mind! Q: If you're doing questions about Pakistani politics, it must involve you in quite a bit of background research in order to know what the background factors are? It's sometimes necessary, yes. I'm quite an expert at fouling up relationships, and I can answer questions about relationship problems quite easily. Background knowledge is always crucial. Q: Why don't you do natal charts? I just prefer to concentrate on horary. I'm very careful to make it clear that what I offer is just astrology. I'm not a counsellor, not a validation service. Also, all the classics say that the first thing you do when you tell someone about their chart is to tell them when they're going to die and you're not allowed to do that! Q: Are there any things that you might see in a horary that you wouldn't tell the person? A: Yes, there are. One has to get involved in issues of privacy, in particular. Once you have accepted the question, you have to give the answer; but there are some question that I wouldn't accept. Third party questions 'When is my daughter going to get rid of this dreadful boyfriend?' 'When's Granny going to kick it?' Q: But if someone asked, 'When am I going to kick it?' Would you have a problem with that, or regard it as their choice? My attitude is very much that you ask at your own risk. If you don't want to hear the answer, you shouldn't ask the question. But I do temper that with a consideration of the way society sees such things, so I would only answer a question like that for a regular client. Also, since all of my work is done over the telephone, I have a very limited knowledge of a person's current state whether they are sitting there with a gun to their head, waiting to end it all, for instance. Q: So all of your work is over the phone? Yes, the only time I would see somebody here is if they are interested in the astrology and want to work through the chart as a tutorial. Q: I guess since it's not natal work, it isn't really a problem I'm not doing hour-long consultations. Sometimes a judgement can involve a long conversation - up to, say, half an hour. More usually, though, it's quite short. And I don't think there's much point in someone spending an hour getting here, just to hear me say, 'The answer is no!' and then go away again. Q: What does it mean to you, to help a client? You're probably helping people a lot of the time in some way or another - but more likely in ways that you don't know about. What you might regard as helping them is not necessarily helping them at all: the real help is probably just the exposure to the process - the opening of an awareness of what astrology implies. Q: Lilly said, "The more holy thou art, and more neer to God, the purer judgement thou shalt give" - do you believe that, over and above knowledge of astrological technique, there is some quality, some nearness to God or not in the astrologer that has an influence on how good a reading they give? Yes, I think this is true in two ways. Firstly, techniques can be taught, but the astrologer still has to choose which techniques to use. Secondly, the more self-interest is set aside the truer the judgement will be. The beauty about horary is that it's very black and white, it's difficult to impose your preconceptions on the chart. And that is what astrologers do, a lot of the time - start off with their preconceptions and desperately try to see those in the chart they are looking at. This is what we must strive to get above. An extreme example of self-interest is where someone you find attractive comes in for a consultation and asks, 'Should I divorce my husband?' And the temptation is to say, 'Wa-hey, yes, come on, divorce him, I'm free!' This is what one seeks to avoid. Q: If you had to choose examples of magnificent success and terrible failure, what would you choose? A notable success would be a published prediction (in an American astrology magazine) of the time of the fall of Mrs Bhutto's government 18 months before it happened. Q: Are there any additional details you can add? The prediction was that her government would fall in November 96. At the time, May 95, my clients, who were heavily involved in the situation, were expecting her to fall at any moment - as was the general expectation, and as were the predictions they had received from various other astrologers, eastern and western, who were not using these traditional techniques of horary. These same techniques have continued to provide further predictions which the best-informed political sources have said were impossible, yet have come true - such as the recent dismissal of the Chief Justice. As for spectacular failures - like everyone else I thought Princess Diana would get married again and have children. Q: How would you label your beliefs about life? Capricorn rising sums up most of my beliefs - miserable bastard! I'm a practising Catholic - I found it was the only system which was intellectually rigorous enough to satisfy me. Q: How do you square doing astrology with Catholicism? 98% of me sees no contradiction at all. I wasn't born Catholic, I came to it through astrology. The catechism says that all astrologers are servants of the devil (Paragraph 2116) - and the other 2% of me thinks that could be quite accurate. I suspect there will come a time when I shall cease to practise astrology because of that. But at the moment I find that the faith expands my astrology, and astrology expands my faith. Q: Do you feel that astrology can help you find an answer to this dilemma? Or is there a paradox in asking astrology about astrology which rules that option out for you? I think it would be impious. There are some things that are more important than astrology. Astrology works with the spectrum, but it is the source of the white light that is ultimately important. Q: What do you think about sun-sign columns? Would you do one? I do one at the moment - it's a bit of a silly one, for a football magazine. It's the worst of both worlds - a sun-sign column which is supposed to make specific predictions for players whose birth-charts I don't have! I can see both good and bad things about it. Q: What about the free will and predestination issue? The debate just shows how little people understand the concept of free will: when most people talk about 'free will', what they actually mean is 'free whim'. What the chart tends to show you, is what your will actually is - the end product. It's your final wish to the fairies, saying 'Put it back as was before please, take this sausage off the end of my nose!' That's your will. Q: So free will is to do joyfully what God wills for you? I would say so. Q: Would you be willing to reveal your birth data? 16th May 1955, at twenty to one in the morning BST, in London. Q: Could you home in on one or two factors in your chart which explain why you've been attracted towards the path in astrology which you have taken? Yes, I would say a very strong Saturn: Capricorn rising; Saturn on the MC. Saturn, obviously, gives a respect for tradition; an awareness that you can't just make it up for yourself, or take it from someone who thinks they just have, and a willingness to accept the discipline of learning how to do it properly, rather than adopting the popular attitude of "it doesn't work for me, so I'll dream up my own method". This Saturn influence makes it comparatively easy to get the focus I spoke of above: one doesn't expect to please, so one can go rather more easily for what the chart shows to be true. Q: Why do you publish a magazine? It must be an awful lot of work? It is a lot of work. Basically, I started doing it because I got so irritated with people editing my work. This way, I can write what I want and if it upsets people, so be it. Also it allows me to indulge my interests - football, literature, rock music - just stick a thin layer of astrology over the top of it, and there you have it. Q: I heard that, in a talk you gave recently, you talked about the 12th house as being 'malefic', and that some of the audience got quite upset about this, because they understood it to apply to natal charts. What do you understand by the word 'malefic' in the context of an individual's natal chart? And what about the 12th house in particular? Yes, that did cause something of an upset (Good-oh! We aim to please). Rather than saying it was malefic - which a house is not able to be, as houses don't do anything, planets do - I said that planets in the 12th, in whatever form of astrology, find it very hard to act unless there is a way out of the 12th, which is usually by exact aspect or strong mutual reception. This is particularly difficult in a nativity if the Lord of the Ascendant is in the 12th. Tony Blair is a case in point: Lord of Asc in 12th, but is in mutual reception with Mars, which is exactly on the Asc, allowing him to achieve, but thru a kind of false persona (if that isn't tautology - but I'm sure you catch my point). The objection raised was that 'OK, so they can't act in the world, but they can act on a spiritual level'; but to my jaundiced view, this is just the modern misunderstanding of spirituality: "I'm crap at life, therefore I'm deeply spiritual." That the possessors of these crowded 12th houses have nothing better to do on a weekday morning than attend astrology lectures rather proves my point, I feel. With the idea of 'malefic', there is, of course, the sense that 'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger', on some level or another. But implicit in astrology is the idea that there is a set good and bad. If, for instance, the life is dissipated away in drink, whatever shows that in the chart will be malefic. It is unfortunate in both this world and the next - there is no silver lining to it. The traditional view is that the malefic planets tend to be obstructive; planets debilitated by sign or house position tend to find it difficult to act. Q: How do you feel about your own 12th house north node? I've never been able to decide if it's responsible for my good looks, my charm or my modesty. Q: The state of astrology today: what changes would you like to see? I'd like to see all astrologers have their heads banged together until they stop arguing with each other. Q: Is the point that you think astrologers should tolerate different approaches in others, because they are equally valid - or do you think that everybody should settle on one basic approach? I think that people can have differences, without taking it personally. For instance, I could have a blazing row with you about astrological technique, but still be quite happy to go for a drink with you. I think the main problem there is that people feel insecure about their techniques, and so feel as if they have to defend them at all costs. Q: A problem which probably isn't helped by the fact that astrology is seen as a questionable pursuit in the first place by most people. Do you see any possibility of that changing? Not for some time. Q: Do you see that as a problem? Would you like astrology to be more accepted, to be taught in universities for instance, or do you feel that it's reached its natural level anyway? Well I wouldn't necessarily wish astrology on the universities - or the universities on astrology! It is a shame - there was a time when the best and brightest would study astrology, and that isn't the case now. Q: What would you say were the major factors which resulted in astrology being sidelined? We can look at this from so many different angles and find so many different reasons. The Astrologer's Apprentice is at heart an on-going examination of this one question. We can see it as the product of social, political or religious change. The root was the abolition of the concept of essence, on which astrology depends. This suited the new socio-political structure and enabled the technologists of the so-called 'Enlightenment' to assume a place of honour. If we wanted to label one specific cause, we could go maybe for the Reformation, which set Man above God, or possibly the printing press, with its consequent massive levelling down of intellectual standards. Q: What can we learn from that? That the intellectual basis of astrology is far more solid than that of the modern pseudo-sciences of physics, astronomy and the like. Q: What do you think astrologers need to do in order to claw their way out of the pit of obscurity into which they and their subject have fallen? Forget all this Uranus nonsense and come back to our glorious Mercury heritage. We are thinkers, not eccentrics. Additional Q & A - emailed by JF 28th Jan and 2nd Feb 2000: Q: You've appeared on TV a number of times - could you explain a bit about what these appearances involve? My TV appearances have all involved my making specific predictions - I have no interest in confrontional debate. I had a regular spot on one sports programme making predictions for the coming week, and one-offs on various other shows, again making sporting predictions from astrology. Q: What do the TV people generally make of astrology, would you say? Amused ignorance - and a strange fascination with the word 'Uranus'. Q: Could you give some examples of predictions which you have made on these shows? For a recent show I was taken to a sports bar and filmed watching the European Cup Final. With Manchester United trailing 1-0 and only 5 minutes left, I was recorded reassuring fans that there was still plenty of time and they would fulfil my pre-match prediction by winning 2-1. This they did, with two goals in the last minute. I have a long series of correct forecasts in high-profile football matches, often predicting the most unexpected outcomes: France beat Brazil; Norway beat Brazil; Hearts beat Rangers; Dortmund and Real Madrid both beat Juventus; Denver Broncos win the Superbowl - all these teams were written off by the 'experts', yet the astrology showed clearly that they would win. In many cases I have been able to predict the correct score-line as well. Other examples include forecasting that the hot favourite in the most reliable car would drop out of the San Marino Grand Prix with engine trouble, and winners of the Grand National Q: What is your record like for getting these predictions right (in terms, maybe, of percentages)? The exigencies of TV mean that I am often required to come up with predictions when I frankly have no idea of what the outcome will be: I make no claims to omniscience! So a percentage measurement is meaningless - just as a heart surgeon will have far more of his patients die than a surgeon who mends broken legs, but it doesn't mean he is a bad doctor. On my own ground, my record is excellent: predicting the final matches in football tournaments, for instance, I have never been wrong - and this includes many quite unexpected results, as shown above. Q: Could you give some other examples of noteworthy successes in your work? Many, many examples - medical diagnoses purely from the chart, confirmed weeks later by specialists who had previously been baffled; locating lost objects - and obviously this needs to be pretty exact: you can't 'almost' find something! Political events which the people on the spot and supposedly in the know assured me were impossible. It is utterly remarkable what the astrology comes up with. Q: Suppose someone suggests that all of these examples just represent the workings of chance. How would you answer? I wouldn't bother. Q: How many finals have you made predictions for? No idea. Including other sports, with the same reliability, dozens. Q: Could you give some other examples of noteworthy successes in your work? Many, many examples - medical diagnoses purely from the chart, confirmed weeks later by specialists who had previously been baffled; locating lost objects - and obviously this needs to be pretty exact: you can't 'almost' find something! Political events which the people on the spot and supposedly in the know assured me were impossible. It is utterly remarkable what the astrology comes up with. Q: More examples would be nice… A mother asked about her daughter who had been suffering severe headaches for some months. Medical specialists had been unable to find the cause. The astrological chart clearly showed that they were the consequence of a liver disorder, a conclusion at which the specialists themselves arrived some weeks later. This was done purely from astrology, without seeing either mother or daughter, or having knowledge of any medical history. At some point over the last few weeks, an elderly woman had gone out wearing a valuable shawl; she had hung it up somewhere but forgotten where. The chart showed that it was in a French restaurant a couple of doors away from her house. This was without any indication that such a place existed or that she had even been to a restaurant. Another client had a pair of pistols missing. He was convinced that workmen who had been in the house must have taken them. The astrological chart showed that they were still in the strong-room, just where they ought to be. He denied this - but went back, looked again and found them there. A client was planning to hold a garden party on a particular day in a couple of months time. The astrology showed that it would rain all day, which it did. Knowledge of this enabled her to make alternative arrangements. The President was on trial for corruption, and was certain to be found guilty and dismissed. The chart showed that he would cut a deal with the judicary - who were determined to unseat him - and charges would be dropped. The client, who was close to the seat of power and in a good position to know, assured me that this was quite impossible - yet it is exactly what happened.