Dear Eleanor (not her real name):

This is further to our discussion Saturday night in a Facebook group (where all rational thought and civility eventually goes to die) about your assertion that certain placements of the asteroid Lucifer in the birth chart constitute the signature of a serial killer.

I’ve written about asteroids a couple of times before, and anyone who has read my work for long probably knows I’m pretty dismissive of asteroids in astrology in general… or at the very least, I’m suspicious of anyone who makes any claim about anyone based on an asteroid placement without lots of supporting info from the usual planets. You know: actual planets… the ones astrologers have been using, testing, and observing for thousands of years.

First of all, the assertion that all serial killers share an astrological signature involving the asteroid Lucifer in a conjunction, square, or opposition within nine degrees of the Sun, Moon, or any planet out to Pluto does not statistically stand up. Simple math can demonstrate that about 90% of the human population has the “signature” you’re talking about. And — do the math — if a “serial killer” is someone who has killed two or more people, wouldn’t we all be dead by now?

But that isn’t my real issue with you, Eleanor. Anyone can make a mistake, and few people want to be called out on it — even though all it took was a little simple math to dismiss your Lucifer theory. My issue with you, based on our interaction and my subsequent reading of your blog, is that when it comes to your astrological abilities (and at least as important, your ability to convey those concepts constructively) you seem to have gotten pretty high on your own supply, to the detriment of both your clients and astrology in general.

The reason I’m concerned about your abuse of an asteroid isn’t that it mangles the real usefulness of astrology (although that’s bad enough). First of all, it fuels one of the otherwise dopier criticisms skeptics level against astrology: that it can be used to discriminate. I don’t mean “discriminate” in the sense of “choose wisely,” I mean “discriminate” in the more hateful sense, the way one a person might discriminate against another based on gender or ethnicity or whatever. The world already has enough of that crap without you adding to the pile, thank you very much.

Yeah, I know. That totally wasn’t your intent. Still, that’s the effect it has.

When the Facebook conversation wasn’t going your way, you made some pretty startling “observations”… most memorably the assertion that both I and mother must be “evil.” This, without having seen either my chart or hers — based only on the information that Lucifer was a few degrees from my natal Moon. And on your blog you’ve got some pretty out-there assertions where you use your particular spin on astrology to present “proof” to support your preconceptions. That’s not how evidence or logic or astrology are supposed to work.

Let me explain to you (again) why statements like that are a huge disservice to astrology in general, and makes you (potentially) a very harmful influence on your clients. Having had a look at your blog, you seem to have a much greater need to be right about your worldview and moral perspective than to find real answers for people and be of genuine help to them.

Finally: take a look at that birth chart at the top of the page, and let me “interpret” it for you, the way you seem to approach a birth chart.

This is obviously the birth chart of someone who is willfully delusional about their importance (Neptune in Leo on the Ascendant) and uses violence to get their way (Mars square Neptune) . The asteroid Lucifer closely aspects all these points, and this person was set on the road to killing by something that happened around the age of 8 to ten, when Solar Arc Moon was conjunct natal Saturn and square natal Pluto. Thus, in all likelihood, this person was beaten severely by their obviously-evil mother at that age and became a serial killer.

See how nice and neat an interpretation that was? Too bad the birth chart in question actually belongs to beloved actress Betty White.

In conclusion: astrology is meant to help people understand themselves and their circumstances. Astrology is not meant to be a mechanism for astrologers to get off on their egos, or for astrologers to re-enforce their own worldview by finding a boogeyman behind every birth chart.

Subjecting your clients to that kind of thinking is abusive. Before you go looking for the “Lucifer” in others, seek it within yourself.

Stop being a jerk. Or at least, stop using astrology to be a jerk. That’s what politics and organized religion are for. Go run for office, or start your own cult, and leave the astrology to the astrologers.

With all due heartfelt Christian Love, the blessings of Ganesh, etc. etc.,

Matthew

PS: You bill yourself as a “psychic astrologer.” Being “psychic” is fine and all, but it doesn’t give you a pass on the intellectual rigor required to understand astrology. Just sayin’.