Astrologers: You own every word you say.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to be careful of the things you say to a client. Just now I read a comment from a terrified woman whose astrologer told her that her husband won’t live past 2010. Did she ask for the information or did the astrologer just volunteer it? Is her husband even ill? I don’t know.

For the most part, when a client poses a horary question, I have to assume that they are prepared to hear the answer. I cannot baby them or patronize them. But William Lilly says in his letter “To the Student of Astrology” in Christian Astrology:

Afflict not the miserable with terror of harsh judgment; in such cases, let them know their hard fate by degrees; direct them to call on God to divert his judgments impending over them.

In other words, we must not destroy hope with a difficult judgment dropped on the client’s head, seemingly from the stars themselves. We aren’t infallible. And mercy is always possible.

You don’t have to be a practicing astrologer to see the wisdom and kindness of this approach. Choose your words carefully. It is not just that one day you may have to eat them, as the witticism goes; but like stones thrown into a pool of unknown size, you cannot know how deep they will go nor how far out the ripples will extend.