Like any other language, it only provides a way of ordering our perceptions. At its best it aids us seeing ourselves more honestly. At its worst it drops a wall between us and the rawness of our own experience. Each astrological symbol represents a spectrum of possibilities; each birthchart contains the roots of 10,000 personalities.

An individual can respond to a birthchart in an unimaginable way, or vibrantly or creatively. His or her response can never be known in advance. There is no such things as a good birthchart or a bad one.

Astrology can help us in only three ways. It can vividly portray the happiest life available to us. it can tell us what tools we have available for the job and how best to employ them. And it can warn us in advance about how our lives will look when we are getting off the mark. From that point on, we must affirm that all choices lie in our own hands and that no planet or sign ever preordains a specific fate.

Once those points have been made, we can listen to the message of the birthchart or we can ignore it. That is our own business. And even if we do choose to ignore it, life itself will get the same message across to us sooner or later.

Then why do we need astrology? No reason. Many people live very well without it. Nothing can be learned from a birthchart that could not be learned someplace else. Go into psychotherapy, meditate in a Tibetan monastery, fall in love, discover a lost city-any of those might do the same thing. Astrology is just one path to self-knowledge.And like all other paths, it has certain advantages and disadvantages.

Astrology's principal advantage is speed. Without it, we may stumble around for years trying to sort out good information about who we are from all the phony truths and empty dreams with which we have been programmed. Psychotherapy may accelerate the process. So might a dynamic marriage. So might an adventure that pushes us to the limits of endurance, stripping away everything but the barest essentials of our character.

But all those process take time. And each has pitfalls of its own. On the other hand, an astrological reading can re-frame your current level of self-awareness in a relatively short period of time.

Astrology's disadvantages? All that fine information can go in one ear and out the other. Astrology does not change people any more than psychotherapy changes people. People change themselves!

The Seven Principles
1.	Astrological symbols are neutral. There are no good ones, no bad ones.
2.	Individuals are responsible for the way they embody their birthcharts.
3.	No astrologer can determine a person's level of response to his birthchart from that birthchart alone.
4.	The birthchart is a blueprint for the happiest, most fulfilling, most spiritually creative path of growth available to the individual.
5.	All deviations from the ideal growth pattern symbolized by the birthchart are unstable states, usually accompanied by a sense of aimlessness, emptiness, and anxiety.
6.	Astrology recognizes only two absolutes: the irreducible mystery of life, and the uniqueness of each individual viewpoint on that mystery.
7.	Astrology suffers when wedded too closely to any philosophy or religion. Nothing in the system matters except the intensification of of a person's self-awareness.