Or you can just link to a maintained list of conferences, such as:

http://www.astropro.com/features/conxions/meetings.html

and not worry about it any more.

That would be fine with me. I will send you an email with the other information you need now.

Very resourceful, thank you so much.

I would like to include this in our ASNT association newsletter.

Mira Cosic
President
ASNT – http://www.asntx.com
Dallas, TX

Some of the most erudite astrologers of our times are or have been Sun sign writers. Jonathan Cainer has a profound education in astrology, having been trained at the Faculty in London. Melanie Reinhart, one of the best educated astrologers alive, stood in for Patric when he was very sick with AIDS. So did Howard Sasportas. Rick Levine has is one of the most knowledgeable astrologers you will meet…and he writes Sun sign columns. Most of us who feel a true devotion to the work have pretty deep educations. You have to know a lot to be effective at doling out advice 365 days a year. If you’re going to be good, you must have something to say.

I view writing Sun signs as an essential part of an astrologer’s education. You get to boil down a lot of information into a salient statement that’s designed for other people to understand. It’s necessary to come out of jargon. And the truth is that ALL the same rules of interpretation apply. You are writing TO the Sun (sign) but FROM a position of looking at every factor you want, from several layers of rulership, to lots, to aspects, and if you’re creative you can even use progressions.

It’s important to distinguish the technique from the application. Sun signs appear deceptively simple, but I think they are prime training ground and I would repeat what I said at the Blast in 2007: we need the BEST young astrologers doing this work, not the bottom feeders.

I would be happy to contribute a more coherent op-ed to your site on this subject, Chris. Thanks for giving it air time.

Thanks for your comments. Your point is well taken, and I think for the most part we are pretty much in agreement here.

I should point out the purpose of my opening statement was not to completely reject the validity or usefulness of Sun-sign columns, but simply to distance or contrast what we might call full-fledged ‘horoscopic’ astrology from some of the more poorly written or just purely lame mainstream Sun-sign columns, some of which are not even written by actual astrologers at this point.

In fact, not too long ago I even featured a guest post from a friend of mine on how to write a Sun-sign astrology column, which actually shows up in the related posts section of this very article: http://horoscopicastrologyblog.com/2008/12/10/tips-for-writing-a-sun-sign-astrology-column/

So, I am far from being an opponent of Sun-sign astrology.

However, while I recognize the validity and usefulness of this form of astrology, I do not think that anyone should be content to just stop at that point in their knowledge of astrology instead of proceeding further. Moving on to recognize and study the more advanced forms of astrology is a necessary and vital step in order to have anything more than a superficial understanding of the subject, in my opinion. Sure, some Sun-sign delineations can be rather deep and meaningful, but that is not the same thing as a full delineation of the natal chart.

In some way I see this as a sort of logical progression of things, where people naturally start with some sort of familiarity with Sun-sign astrology, but then eventually they graduate to the next level, like going from preschool to grade school. At some point, if someone is seriously interested in astrology, it will be time for them to move on to the next level. While it is not necessary for them to completely denigrate and reject what they had previously learned through the Sun-sign columns, obviously they will be forced to acknowledge that there is something that is incomplete or lacking in that more simplistic approach to the subject.