The most absurd and ridiculously unhelpful thing in our subject is followers of astrology obsessing about good and bad placements.
Think about it for a moment.
If there is any truth whatsoever in astrology, cosmic order is implicit.
So therefore, whatever placements you have in your chart have been specifically chosen for you.
This choice was either made by you as some kind of soul entity or by some deity or cosmic committee.
This choice has to have been made for a reason, to give you this kind of combination in order to see what you can make of it.
So to complain and want something other than what you have actually chosen for yourself is spectacularly dumb.
Maybe I resent this good/bad thing because I was born on a solar eclipse in Capricorn in the 12th house with Venus conjunct Saturn, all placements that traditional astrologers would have me living in one of the lower regions of Dante’s inferno.
Mind you, that would be a fair description of my teenage years but when I discovered serious astrology fifty years ago I stopped wanting to be someone else and just tried to learn how to work with the particular Saturnian life sentence I had chosen for myself.
Because the most important thing in this life is accepting that you have chosen it and your own chart, no matter how difficult it might seem to you.
This is the point at which you start to have some kind of agency over it, because your chart gives you a range to work with.
Your placements are no longer a sentence being imposed on you, they open up to show a range of operation and you can choose which level you wish to function on.
If you are always wanting an experience outside your possible symbolic range, this is futile but also a massive waste because by neglecting what is possible for you, the likelihood is that the things that happen to you are going to come from the lowest part of that range.
The most important job of an astrologer is convince their clients of this simple fact of life and to offer them help in moving upwards within the range that their placements allow.
But in order to do that, the astrologer has to fully understand what those placements mean, not in the tablets of stone fashion that has been handed down by astrology textbooks for millennia, but how they are operating in that particular person’s life.
These days no one reads the textbooks anyway, they just look up their placements through some AI thing, which is simply a plagiarism of everything that has ever been written on the subject.
But can AI take account of all this and include some broader perspective?
Take Venus retrograde for example. If you look that one up you will get –
“Venus retrograde in a natal chart often signifies an inward-focused, unconventional approach to love, beauty, and finances, reversing the planet’s typical outward expression. Individuals with this placement may struggle with self-worth early in life, preferring deep, intense connections over superficial ones. It often indicates a need to cultivate self-love and reevaluate traditional relationship norms.
Rather than chasing romance, these individuals may take a more cautious, introspective approach, often learning through past relationship experiences.
They may feel shy, insecure, or act as a “tomboy” or androgynous when younger, sometimes appearing aloof or private about their feelings. They often value deep, unique, or non-traditional connections.
A common theme is learning to love oneself and developing personal, independent confidence rather than seeking external validation.
It is not a “curse“: Being born with Venus retrograde does not mean a doomed love life. Instead, it suggests a “different” or more complex, internal path to love.
The “Karma” Factor: Some astrologers suggest it indicates lessons from past lives regarding love and relationships.”
Well duh.
All this is probably true in a general sense, but it is also missing a very important point.
This is that if you are born with Venus retrograde there will be some point in your life when it comes forward again.
Obviously I am not talking about transits here, because the longest that is ever going to take is 40 days, but when we start to look at the day for a year method of secondary progressions….
The other day, I was speaking with a client and towards the end of our session she mentioned that her Mum at the age of 60 had just met her soulmate and was experiencing true love for the first real time in her life.
As this sounded like my own situation, I wanted to check out her chart.
I suppose it goes without saying that she was a “good things come to those who wait” Capricorn, with her Sun close to my own Ascendant, but I was also intrigued to see her Moon in the same degree of Scorpio as my own Venus.
I noted that she had been through her Pluto/Sun transit but that was a few years back and apart from probably clearing the decks to make the new life possible, it didn’t indicate this soulmate appearance on its own.
So I thought, what about her progressions.
That’s when I spotted it. Her progression for this year is Venus conjunct her natal Venus.
Now Capricorns might live along time but 360 years is pushing that boat out a bit.
The reason for this particular progression occurring at the age of 60 rather than 360, is that in her natal chart Venus is retrograde.
Venus is retrograde about 7.5% of the time so it would occur in the charts of roughly 1 out of every 13 people.
In S’ Mum’s progressions it continued to move backwards for the first 30 years or so, stopping at 28 Capricorn and then heading forward until its current position back where it started.
A quick check with the other planets in her chart shows that the progressed Venus made absolutely no aspects to any of her planets in that whole 60 years.
I have no way of assessing what the odds of such a scenario occurring by chance are but my feeling is that it must be millions to one against.
This has to be a very specific soul agreement.
The reason why good things happen to Capricorns if they wait long enough is because they are built to do their work first, and as a rule that work has to be done on their own, unaided by others.
It is often the case that their 2nd Saturn Return (age 59) brings a lifting of this lifelong responsibility.
It’s as if Saturn says “ok, you’ve done your homework, now you can go out to play” just at the age when most people have forgotten what it is to play.
I understand that my agreement with my soulmate was that we would meet up when I was 63 because this time round I had to concentrate on my work (Venus conjunct Saturn in the 10th house) and my research (Sun and Moon in Capricorn in the 12th) before we got together.
S’s Mum has the Sun in Capricorn in the 4th house. She had to raise S as a single Mum first.
Her Moon is conjunct Neptune in the 2nd house, so finances were not easy.
These were the conditions she had to face and would be denied a loving partnership until after her 2nd Saturn Return.
It was all part of the plan.
I often think “if only I’d known I would fall in love with my soulmate at the age of 63, that would have made my younger life experience far more acceptable”.
I’m sure S’s Mum would agree, but that foreknowledge would have changed the plan.
All of this was prearranged as a soul contract before she was born. The astrology would have been taken into account.
It would have been “next time you have to go it alone with a 4th house Capricorn Sun and get past the Pluto transit and 2nd Saturn Return, then I’ll come along with the progressed Venus Return”.
“Ok that’s a deal then. See you later”.
AI is definitely not Saturn ruled, it is moving much faster.
In a relatively short time it has already started saying that “some astrologers suggest it indicates lessons from past lives….”
Now I have put my recently discovered method of Secondary Regressions into the public domain, how long before it will automatically calculate all yours and give you a detailed past life history?
My feeling is I won’t be put out of business quite yet, but by the time I come back next time round, I might have to find another job.
Posted on 4 February 2026
YOU CAN BOOK YOUR OWN PERSONAL ASTROLOGY CONSULTATION HERE
HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE – ASTROLOGICAL REGRESSION AND PAST LIVES
YOUR PAST AND PRESENT FAMILY PACKAGE – UNDERSTANDING THE PATTERNS
YOUR SOULMATE SYNASTRY – PAST AND PRESENT
TREAT YOURSELF – REMEDIES INDIVIDUALLY TAILORED TO YOUR BIRTHCHART AND TRANSITS
PROGRESSED LIFE SUPPORT – WHEN WILL YOUR SOULMATE BE COMING ?
WHAT’S HAPPENING MAN ? USING HORARY TO ANSWER ALL YOUR QUESTIONS
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR FATE – USING ELECTIONS TO ENSURE THE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME FOR EVERY VENTURE