An Interview with Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green
by Hadley Fitzgerald, M.A., M.F.T.

This article first appeared in The Mountain Astrologer (TMA), and is reprinted by permission. For Ms. Fitzgerald’s bio and contact information, please scroll to the end of the article. For Steven and Jeffrey’s definition of Evolutionary Astrology, please scroll to the end of the article, or go to our About Evolutionary Astrology page.

In ancient times, as cultures appropriated one another’s deities, the Romans latched onto a god named Pluto as their correlative to the Greek god Hades, lord of the underworld. This god’s realm gradually became synonymous with “hell” down through the ages in repetitive cross-cultural mistranslations. We’ve forgotten that the Greeks commonly referred to Hades by his more popular epithet, “Pluton,” the name used in the mysteries to designate the wealth-giver.

“Pluton” is a direct lift from the Greek word “ploutos,” which means “riches, wealth, fortune.” As in treasure. And it is in the nature of treasure that we do not reach up for it. We must dig down deeply into the netherworlds of our lives and psyches to find the wealth buried there alongside the dark and creepy-crawly things.

Steve Forrest quips that he and Jeff Green have become known in certain circles as “The Pluto Brothers,” that the theme from Shaft can be heard in the background when they step onto a stage these days. Both of them have Scorpio rising and Pluto in the 9th house, and everything about their astrological work digs deep and aims high. They re-mind us that the descent into the redemptive darkness is an essential, grounding counterpoint to the New Age “flight into light” that I see at times in my clinical practice. Steven and Jeffrey are treasures, and we are richer for the work they are doing on this Earth.

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I spoke with them in San Clemente, California, about that work and about the collaborative effort that has resulted in their book, Measuring the Night: Evolutionary Astrology and the Keys to the Soul, Volume One.

Hadley Fitzgerald: How did the two of you decide to work together?

Steve Forrest: There was an ethical crisis involving another astrologer, and circumstances seemed to dictate that Jeff and I become involved with trying to resolve it in an equitable way. Essentially, I came to respect Jeff’s basic values as they were revealed in that crisis.

HF: So you’d never really had a conversation with one another?

SF: No, I think we’d said hello to each other, but we’d never really had a serious conversation. By nature, I react to people on a pretty emotional level rather than an intellectual one. If somebody’s theories are great, that doesn’t motivate me to want to work with them, but if I feel good about their heart and their soul, I do. And I began to feel that way really strongly about Jeff. Then I started paying some attention to what he’d actually been saying all these years, and I realized that, in his twisted Sagittarian way, he was saying a lot of the same stuff that I was saying [laughter].

Jeff Green: Yeah, the crisis he was talking about was a major crisis, so we had to really put our heads together and figure out the right way to proceed for all concerned–including the world of astrology.

HF: It’s an interesting birthing in the astrological world, then, isn’t it–you two people coming together? We speak of it casually here, but an ethical concern is what brought you together. I don’t know exactly what that means, but–

SF: It means that we both have Pluto ruling our Ascendants!

HF: I look at the nature of the seed-planting as relevant, though. Energetically, it’s a different beginning for a relationship from “We were at a party, and said ‘Hi, gee, I’ve read your book–it’s great.'”

JG: Well, the timing was interesting, too. My progressed Moon was then at 28° Capricorn, and Steve’s Mercury is 29° Capricorn. So, you put all that through astrology, and you see that what came out of it is a Mercury thing–and that’s a book thing!

HF: What exactly is the project, and how did you decide to work in that particular arena? Did you decide you wanted to do something together, or did you just sort of get talking one day?

JG: What I remember was that, because of the nature of that crisis, Steve and I fell in pretty close. We started e-mailing each other almost daily and just became friends, really, and got to know one another pretty well that way. Then it was David Friedman’s idea to have us work together in Laguna Beach, and out of that Jodie [Forrest] got the idea to pull our material together and write Measuring the Night. One day I got an e-mail from her saying, “Hey, why don’t we do a book out of this?”

SF: We had the lecture titles planned, but not much else. I didn’t know exactly how Jeff worked. Speaking for myself, I have a body of astrological knowledge, but my lectures tend to be very spontaneous. I’ll have the title and a little bit of planning, but I find that if I plan them too much, they become rigid and they lose their responsiveness to the moment. So, we knew basically what the chapter titles of the book were going to be, but not much else.

JG: I work the same way. I get shown a title in my head, and I speak to it. That’s it! You can do the same lecture with the same title twenty times, but if you do it spontaneously, it’s different every time. It keeps me enthused. Some of these folks, with their outline and their reading, you know, they may as well send in a tape recording. What’s the point?

SF: We did workshops together in several cities and fell into a really productive rhythm right away. That generated material for the book and was a lot of fun, too.

HF: What differences–reconcilable and irreconcilable–in terms of your respective points of view on astrology did you know you had, going into this project?

JG: Nothing. We’re saying the same thing in different ways. I can’t even imagine where there’d be something of a conflicting nature.

SF: I don’t think there’ll ever be any conflicts, but I think there were triangulations–where you put Jeff’s point of view and my point of view together, and there’s no conflict, but we’re each looking at the same mystery from a different angle. I think, as people get to know Jeff’s work really well, they’re surprised at what a good psychological astrologer he is. He has a reputation as a very metaphysical astrologer, and my reputation is as more of a psychological astrologer, but as people get to know my work, they’re surprised at how metaphysical it is.

JG: There you go. That’s a good way to put it. I think there have mainly been correlation issues. I know Steve connects ego to the Sun, and I connect ego to the Moon. But we’re not standing up there saying, “I’m right, and he’s wrong.” We approach it with:  “Take what you want, and that’s that.”

HF:  Jeff, you believe Pluto represents the soul, and Steve, you believe Pluto represents our deepest wound, and I have some thoughts about how those work in tandem. But people tend to get very fixed, for example, in “Pluto is the soul,” as if there is some absolute reification of that. And you do have to stand somewhere, but you two are obviously building a bridge between these perspectives, so how do you do that? As opposed to the ego being the Sun or the ego being the Moon, here you’ve got the same symbol, but you’re looking at it quite differently?

SF: I’ll make a beginning on that one. I want to respond both to the “ego as Sun or Moon” question and to the Pluto question, because my first answer really applies to both of them.
    Words like “soul” and “ego” are English-language words describing an English-language perspective on things. The symbol system of the English language has produced those words, whereas astrology is an independent symbol system that is rooted in Nature and the actualities of Nature.
    The reason we astrologers can make a living is that it’s possible to translate out of the astrological symbol system into the English language, so that other people can understand it. But the translation is never perfect, so Jeff and I will never fight over whether ego is Moon or Sun, because my guess is that he would agree that if you want to understand the person’s ego, you’d look at the whole chart. Mercury is part of it; Venus is part of it, every part has some ego manifestation. The word “ego” has a kind of a Moon-resonance for Jeff, personally; it has a kind of a Sun-resonance for me, personally.

JG: The same is true for “soul”‘–it’s going to permeate all planets. It seems to me that most “reality” is now primarily left brain, which is linear, which wants to have classifications and names for everything and everybody. This thing over here wants to be called a “lamp,” not a “table-and-a-lamp.” So, I think what Steve is trying to suggest–and I agree with him–is that, given the kind of reality we’re working with, we’re probably going to have to give designations–specific names to specific symbols–to fit our existing, functioning intellectual consciousness.

HF: Then can you say some more about what Steven said, in regard to his seeing Pluto as our deepest wound and your seeing it as soul?

JG: I would agree that Pluto represents the biggest wound, in the sense that the soul has been wounded ever since it had a patriarchal transition and experienced the progressive suppression of Natural Law. Any time we have anything natural which is suppressed, it’s going to become the basis of distortion and rage and wounds, because now the soul is being asked to live in violation of Natural Law. So, of course, Pluto’s going to connect with a deep wound. But then the question becomes: “What is that wound connected to?” And my answer would be “the soul.”

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SF: Let me go back to the psychological versus metaphysical appearance of differences between Jeff and me. My view is that what draws us to incarnate into a particular family system is the wounded condition–or the nature of the wounds–in the soul. For example, if one of us had been tortured to death on the rack by Torquemada in order to make us a better Catholic, that had an impact. It created a wound in the soul. We might very well at some point be drawn into a family in which one of our parents was a religious fanatic and provided a repetition of the Torquemada scenario for us.
     So, let’s imagine a person who grew up in such a family, someone who had no metaphysical beliefs at all but had a very psychological orientation. Let’s imagine this person did some authentic psychotherapeutic work to recover from what they viewed as the traumatic wounding experiences of their first twelve years of life. And let’s say they do that work effectively– cry, release, all of that–and never once believe in reincarnation and never once have any idea that they were, in fact, healing a far more ancient wound than the one that a psychologist would understand. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t matter at all that they don’t have the metaphysical understanding. The work is still authentic.

HF: That makes me think about the two words, “psychology” and “metaphysics.” In Greek, psyche and logos together mean “the language of the soul.” Meta and physikos mean “beyond the physical,” so they’re not that far apart anyway.

JG: The word “metaphysician” used to mean “doctor of the soul,” someone who could access a diversity of disciplines to reflect the actual needs of the person. That’s what it means: doctor of the soul–not doctor of the body.

HF: When Bruno Bettelheim went back and looked at Freud’s original writing in German, he found that the German word that got translated into English as “mind,” which so permeates Freudian analysis, was actually the German word for “soul.”

JG: Well, it makes sense, because when you translate German into English or vice versa, it’s almost impossible to make an accurate translation. I know this because my books are in German, and in the first one, they actually reversed principles because of the translation problem. The second one just got translated, and I made sure that the translator was a student of mine, who could then fit into German what I actually meant. When he took it back to Germany, the editor said, “This is not correct German!” And he wanted to change it back to “correct” German–where it would have a reversal of principles! We had to fight tooth and nail to have these bizarre German words that Germans rarely speak stand in the book, because that was my meaning. That’s the problem between German and English.
    “Soul” in German is “Seele.” It has a very specific meaning; it means an “energy that cannot be destroyed.” So, if you translate that as “mind” in English, you’ve just totally changed everything.

HF: In our astrological “language,” Steven, you use the basic Ptolemaic aspects–very few, actually–in your work. Jeff, you work with the more intricate sets of “minor” aspects, which are less common. Do you see this as just your respective ways of working?

SF: I have a good reason for what I do, though I want to say very emphatically that I find quincunxes and sesquiquadrates and even quintiles very interesting when I’m kind of “playing” astrology; when I’m experimenting and enjoying and playing with it, I like those aspects
     To me, though, the key to successful interpretation of a chart lies in a very clear set of priorities about what is more–and less–important. I feel that it’s imperative to go deeply into the core message of the chart rather than superficially into the 27 million unimportant–or relatively unimportant–things that a chart says. So, for me, the Ptolemaic aspects, defined with pretty tight orbs, are the ones that carry the major energy of the chart. If someone has a dead-on Sun-Saturn opposition in their chart, that’s going to tell me a thousand times more about who they are than if they have a sesquiquadrate between Pallas and the midpoint of their Mercury and Venus.

HF:  But what if they have a dead-on sesquiquadrate between Mars and Saturn?

SF: That would be a serious aspect. I’m going to own that this may be a weakness in my technique, but I’ve found that a really good rule of thumb for me is to set rigid priorities about what is more important and what is less important in terms of how I see the chart.
    Emphatically, I would want to say there are lots and lots of good ways to interpret any chart–there’s not just a single method. I’m not an astro-Fascist about it, even though I’m a Capricorn!

JG: I approach everything from an evolutionary view, and therefore, from zero to three-sixty on the zodiacal wheel. To me, all these aspects are what I call “evolutionary transitions” relative to the phases–new, gibbous, balsamic, etc.–in which the two planets are aspecting each other. They’re like their own “evolutionary gates,” so to speak. Until the soul of the individual can pass that particular transitional stage or gate, the person will remain within that aspect, because aspects themselves evolve.
    For example, I can have Pluto standing at 5° Leo and I can have Venus at either 25° Libra or 15° Scorpio. If I accept a 10-degree orb in either case, I’ve got a square between Venus and Pluto–a “Venus problem”–but for me, as an Evolutionary Astrologer, there’d clearly be a difference.
    From an evolutionary point of view, the Venus problem, relative to a square from Pluto, is one wherein the individual intends to confront all the ways that he or she has been relating–to others in general, to another in an intimate relationship specifically, and also to the inner self. The intention in this confrontation is to metamorphose those old ways of relating into new forms of relating, inwardly and outwardly.
    So Venus at 25° Libra (applying to square Pluto) would symbolize a soul who has just begun this evolutionary process. Therefore, the nature of such inner and outer confrontations will be very intense and, in most cases, will set in motion a series of lifetimes in which the soul will experience intense abandonment, have loss and betrayal issues through the misapplication of trust vis-à-vis others, and/or set in motion a series of lives in which they use others relative to their own needs
    Thus, in forming relationships, they will typically be oriented toward others who symbolize or represent something that they feel they need because, in their own estimation of themselves, they think they’re lacking what another, or others, already have. In this way, they will typically sustain a relationship only as long as they continue to need what brought them into the relationship in the first place.
    In contrast, Venus at 15° Scorpio means that the individual is in a different evolutionary stage and has already come through many lifetimes in which those kinds of dynamics have played out. There’s nothing new here. Thus, compared to the person with Venus at 25° Libra, this person’s inner orientation and understanding of such an aspect are totally developed. They have passed the “test” of this evolutionary gate or aspect.

HF: So that would mark a very different way that the two of you work.

SF: Yes, that’s a technique that Jeff uses that I don’t use. It’s interesting. I hear it, and I get all excited, and I think that I’ll learn some of what he does, and I’ll see if it works! And that’s actually happened. My work has changed as a result of my friendship with Jeff.

JG: Well, it does work! For example, take the gibbous-phase sesquiquadrate–say, Sun at 0° Aries and Saturn at 15° Leo– which is a very purposeful lesson in the paradox of “egocentric humility.” The soul is now beginning to open up to social demands, and it’s a Leonine type of vibration. This person has all this self-created purpose; they’re ready to ride on the stage of life, but they have an attitude that says, “Now here I am!” without acknowledging what the larger system needs.
     So, here they come to you as a client with all this tremendous frustration: “How come nobody’s responding to me?” Astrology’s job is to say, “You have to adjust your dumb ego here. You can’t just come from this Leonine consciousness, thinking everybody’s going to respond to you simply because now you’re here. You have to learn to adjust. That’s the nature of this particular aspect–in the midst of all your ego-centered concerns, you need to learn a kind of humility based on what your environment is telling you it needs from you.”
    So, if you can then tell that to your client, and they can make that adjustment, and you’re seeing this through that specific sort of aspect, it works. It proves itself 20 years later.

HF: I’d like to hear a bit about how each of you work, how you prioritize certain things. For example, given the amount of time you have to do a reading, how do you rank the importance of various transit cycles in someone’s life?

SF: I don’t have a particular order, but a good rule of thumb is that the more slowly something moves, the more powerful it is. I think that generally works–the transits of Pluto have demonstrably more impact than the transits of Mercury, for example. They simply have more time to develop depth and complexity, because the aspect is within orb for so much longer.
    But as far as the order of approach, I always try to find out where the real thrust of the symbolism is going, and I structure my approach to the interpretation to reflect the natural priorities that the planets themselves dictate. I would gauge the priority in terms of the intensity of the “weather,” so to speak–Uranian weather versus, say, the Neptunian weather or the Saturnian weather. It’s a bit like comparing poker hands. Progressions, in general, and transits of the slower planets beyond Mars beat quick transits. Hard aspects, because they’re so much more dynamic, beat soft ones.
    Conjunctions beat everything, aspect-wise. For example, if someone has Uranus transiting over their Sun, there’s a good chance that will be the centerpiece of the reading, because that’s such a fundamental, powerful kind of transiting event. If Pluto happens to be making a transiting trine to Mercury at the same time, that too will become part of the reading, but it will be subsidiary to the main Uranian event for me. If transiting Venus is sextile natal Mercury, that probably won’t even get mentioned. It all comes down to having clear priorities about the best use of your time with the client.

HF: Do you pretty much agree with that, Jeff?

JG: No, I do it totally differently. The way I work with any client is that I have no agenda to deliver. With any given client, I ask, “What do you need? Why are you here? What questions do you need answered? Where are your immediate concerns that need addressing?”
    My answers follow their lead. Their answers tell me what transits are in operation, because the nature of the questions demonstrates that. So, in effect, the clients determine the order, and I follow their lead.

HF:  A colleague very much wanted me to ask you about eclipses. I make note of them in my own work, but I don’t focus on them. Do you use solar and lunar eclipses in your work with people, and, after all these years of working in the field, do you see them as having any particular impact or importance?

SF: A lot of people get really wrapped up in them, but I don’t use them very much, frankly. I’ve fiddled with them. I’ve experienced solar eclipses on my Ascendant a few times in this life, for example, and those weren’t particularly momentous periods of my life. I’ve had a few examples of eclipses that seem to coincide with important events, but I personally find them not nearly as reliable as the transits of the outer planets and progressions and solar arcs. Maybe I’m oddly immune to them. I know many astrologers would disagree with me, and they may well be right, but I can only speak from my own experience.

JG: I’m totally supportive of what you just said. In my twenty years of experience in observing over 20,000 clients and my own life, I haven’t found particular relevance in eclipses.

HF: Now for more theoretical questions. The first is pursuant to a discussion you and I have had, Steven, about “psychobabble” in the psychological community. As the two of you bring forward the concept of “Evolutionary Astrology,” you, of course, have no control over what anyone does with it or says about it. As a consequence, it seems to me that the term itself is at risk of becoming one of those designations, such as “mother complex” or “codependent” or “family systems,” that can easily get short-handed and therefore short-minded. The term becomes the rubric for a multi-layered concept that quickly loses its richness and depth–i.e., I think I know what Evolutionary Astrology is because I took a class in it once. So, maybe I’m now an Evolutionary Astrologer
    So, if someone claims to be practicing Evolutionary Astrology, as the two of you are teaching it, what do you want to have as a baseline for understanding what that looks like? What is that Evolutionary Astrologer saying about him- or herself?

JG: For me, that comes down to a really simple issue. If I start reading a book by reading a chapter halfway into that book, I probably should have read the earlier chapters in order to have a real understanding of this one.
    Similarly, to me, Evolutionary Astrology means to understand:  the dynamics that have brought an individual into this existence; what this life’s prevailing limitations are, based on the preexisting orientations; and what the current life challenges are, so that the individual can grow beyond those preexisting orientations. That’s evolution.
     We’re forever, one way or another, confronting our existing sense of reality, our Scorpio limit. We’re always given Scorpio choices, Plutonian options, either to make old choices relative to an existing stimulus–which most people do–or to make a new choice relative to circumstances that are triggering existing responses. That’s evolution in a nutshell.

Evolutionary Astrology in Action 

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SF: Beautiful answer. I agree with everything Jeff says. I wouldn’t change a word. I guess I would want to emphasize that, in Evolutionary Astrology, we’re assuming that the person is a lot older than their birth certificate suggests. And I don’t care how a person comes to terms with that idea themselves. Whether they want to believe in reincarnation, or whether they want to believe they were floating around in the mind of God or whatever, it doesn’t matter.
    But the idea is that we are born with preexistent natures. Some would say that’s a fuzzy-minded concept. I would say there’s nothing fuzzy about it at all. Look into the eyes of a baby. Spend two seconds doing that, and you see the proof of this. We’re all born with natures, and there’s nothing metaphysical about that. That person got in there somehow.
     Here’s a kid who looks scared–and may be born into a violent family–but let’s say Mom and Dad haven’t had a whack at this kid yet, because the child is only five minutes old. But the kid is already scared. I respect modern psychology; it has provided some very insightful and powerful ways of understanding the interaction between the first few years of life and the subsequent development of the personality. But modern psychology has also grown arrogant.

HF: Full of its models?

SF: Yes, full of its models. It has mistaken its models for the truth, and whenever the human mind does that, it conveniently leaves out important data, such as:  Hey, here’s this baby only five minutes old, who already looks scared. How do we account for that? How do we explain that?
    So, Evolutionary Astrology is a very grounded, simple kind of astrology that’s based on what we actually see with our senses and experience with our hearts. We are older than our birth certificates. I would say that an Evolutionary Astrologer assumes that life is meaningful, that there’s a purpose in life, that there’s absolutely nothing random, that nothing ever happens by chance. And that we’ve come into this world to resolve the dilemmas that were in our eyes when we were born, however they got there. And there are optimal methods for doing that; those methods are described very clearly in the birth chart. And we’re free to use those methods or not.

HF:  In other words, how does what came with you into the world find a place in the world?

SF: Yeah, exactly. And how does it improve itself–become more conscious of itself—and develop more creative possibilities for itself?

JG: Another thing to examine in all of this is built into human language itself. You will find in almost every language, as far back as recorded language exists, that the word “lesson” or “to learn” has always been part of a language structure–East and West. Well, if in fact there is no “evolution,” why learn anything? Why do we have lessons? Why is there a purpose for living? It just speaks for itself.
    Within that context, what is consciousness? You can’t open a brain and find consciousness. You can’t open a brain and find thought. You can’t open a body and find emotion. So, we’re talking about the nature of energy. Even physicists admit that energy cannot be destroyed. It can only change form. So, what is changing form here? What happens when you look at a baby? They’ve now proven that babies dream in utero. The nature of dream, most experts agree, is imagery. So, what existing imagery is the baby dreaming? What are the skeptics going to say to these facts?
 

HF: And we could also get really simple and ask, “How did Mozart start composing at age three?”

JG: The example I use all the time is a true story. These new parents, bless their hearts, had a six-year-old kid who refused to go to the bathroom in a normal way; he was still wearing diapers. This child had been given only love from the moment of his birth–total nurturing. No doctor, no psychiatrist could explain it. Nobody could solve it. And they finally came, as you and Steve know, to the astrologer–to me, in this case–as the counselor of last resort. They finally dragged themselves into our office, right?
    Well, it was the instant glimpse: This little boy had six planets in the Eighth House–including Pluto! So he had this incredibly dominant fear of loss, betrayal, and abandonment, which was keeping those diapers on. He was even afraid to lose his poop! I gave his parents a magiccal little Eighth House ritual to do and said that, within two weeks, this kid would be normal. The ritual was simply to get close to his ear when he’s sleeping and whisper in his right ear, “We love you, we will always be with you, and you will never be abandoned.” In two weeks, the diapers were off. How does a skeptic explain that? And we can demonstrate these cases–how many times?–just by playing evolutionary detective and seeing what the underlying problem is.

HF: When I’m working with a therapy client, I still do a chart, though I use it for background and never thrust interpretations onto the client. But I have a very strong auditory sense, and I know, from being with therapy clients and just listening, I can hear something in the voice that tells me this is not just a present-life problem. The voice can tell me that this person is reacting to something deeper, older. So, there are times I have to find a gentle way to bridge that issue–i.e., “Do you think there’s maybe a possibility that perhaps there could have been another time when such and such happened?”

SF: Exactly.

JG: The simplest way to know a past-life issue is being triggered is when you have a disproportionate response to an existing stimulus. Every single time.

HF: I’ve noticed that the psychotherapeutic community is becoming much more open to spiritual matters. Twelve-step programs especially have given people license to talk openly about God, about their spiritual gifts, and that’s been a great boon. Concomitantly, in the astrological community, there’s a growing awareness that we have got to have some psychological chops and counseling skills to do our work.
    Now, however, in the effort to sustain a more “credentialed” respectability, we hear of astrologers who are operating in the psychological venue and who dismiss the discussion of matters to do with the soul’s evolution–such as past lives and matters metaphysical–because “there’s no empirical evidence.”

JG: I have so much evidence. I don’t need any more evidence. So, what is the question?

HF: Well, this seduces astrologers into a “nature versus nurture” debate, which I think is highly irrelevant and at risk for putting us into opposing camps. How do you counter someone who says reincarnation is irrelevant; you’ve got no empirical proof, and how dare you lay this on a client?

JG: You’re just talking about insecure people with limited intellects, and because of their insecurity, they need to defend the limitations of that intellect. That’s what I call a “bunker consciousness,” which is the very origin of wars and conflicts between people. It correlates with–it can even create–the Televangelist archetype that needs to convince and convert everybody to its limited point of view. A true person will never say that his or her point of view is the only one. It is a point of view. And if you can find meaning in it, go for it. If it doesn’t resonate within you, walk on by. But to stand there and say, “I’m right and you’re wrong” is the very essence of the patriarchy. So, people who make these sorts of statements are defined by self-interest and self-glorification, which are connected to their need for self-sustenance, which itself is caused by their insecurity.
    As for “empirical proof,” there are volumes, as we know. I’ve had people give a name, birth and death dates, and where they were buried in a previous life. What do you do with that? To say that past life is irrelevant is no different from saying to a 32-year-old person, “The fourth year of your life is irrelevant.”
    Reincarnation is not a belief but a matter of direct knowing. If the people who make these statements decrying reincarnation–astrologers or non-astrologers–would stand back and examine their statements, they’d see that they are, in effect, dismissing the essence of human history. Three-quarters of the population of this Earth, as we speak, have a “belief” in reincarnation.
    People who don’t “believe” are in the minority! It’s only been within the last few hundred years that this has even become a question. We all know that the original Bible, up until the 4th century C.E., had the doctrine of reincarnation in it, and then it was removed by the Council of Nicea. It’s still in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus is talking about his actual name in his last life.

HF: Tell us a bit more about your new books. You decided to self-publish?

SF: Yes, we did. Jeff and I each have successful relationships with other publishers, but we were eager to have more control over the content and tone of the material and to put a little more shine on the financial picture. My wife Jodie had already done all the legwork to establish Seven Paws Press for her Rhymer and the Ravens trilogy, which has been quite successful. Jeff was eager to learn more about publishing and to found his Daemon Press. So, as with the rest of this project, everything came together so beautifully that anyone who looked at the process logically would have to struggle to remain an atheist!

HF: Are you planning any more joint publishing ventures? Other authors, perhaps?

SF: Well, Measuring the Night, Volume Two, will be out in a few months. (Webmaster’s note: the book was published in 2001 and is available on our website.) We had a lot more material than we thought, and we decided to break it up into two books rather than publish a single volume with a prohibitive price. At this point, we’re not looking for other authors. Also, Daemon and Seven Paws are separate entities, as are Jeff and I!

HF: Thank you both for the work you’re doing, separately and together.

Note:
1. Our editors asked Jeffrey Wolf Green about his unconventional method of calculating phases between two planets. Here is his reply: “I use the Sun in determining phasal relationships with the other planets, because the Sun is the center of our solar system upon which the integration of the solar system is dependent. Thus, I use it as the reference point when calculating phases to other planets. I don’t read very much in astrology, so I don’t know if other astrologers have ever done it this way. I do know, from my experience and observation over all these years, that it does work very well.”

© 2000 Hadley Fitzgerald. All rights reserved. Used here by permission.

Hadley Fitzgerald, M.A., M.F.T., has been attending to the soul as an astrological consultant for 33 years and as a licensed psychotherapist for 20 of those. She has a private therapeutic and an astrological consulting practice near the Studio City area of Los Angeles, CA, and does phone consultations around the world.
    As a free-lance writer she regularly examines current socio-political and environmental issues from a psycho-spiritual, systemic, and symbolic perspective.  Her book Traveling Eternity Road was published in 2002. She can be reached at (818) 766-9674, FitzHere2@aol.com, and P.O. Box 4458, Valley Village, CA 91617-0458.

Measuring the Night: Evolutionary Astrology and the Keys to the Soul, Volume One, by Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green, published 2000 by Seven Paws/Daemon Press, and Measuring the Night: Evolutionary Astrology and the Keys to the Soul, Volume Two, published 2001 by Seven Paws Press/Daemon Press. 

Evolutionary Astrology embraces paradigms and methodologies that specifically measure the growth of the soul from life to life. These methods invariably focus on the planet Pluto and its relationship to the nodal axis. Although Evolutionary Astrology is composed of a set of specific formal methodologies, it is ultimately characterized less by a technical approach than by a set of philosophical principles defined by Natural Law. Evolutionary Astrologers may use somewhat different interpretive methods, but they can always be recognized by their devotion to the following core perceptions:

1. An acceptance of the truth that human beings incarnate in a succession of lifetimes.
2. An acceptance of the truth that the birth chart reflects the evolutionary condition of the soul at the moment of incarnation.
3. An acceptance of the truth that the birth chart reflects the evolutionary intentions of the soul for the present life.
4. An acceptance of the truth that the circumstances of the present life, both materially and psychologically, do not arise randomly, but rather reflect the evolutionary intentions and necessities of the soul.
5. An acceptance of the truth that human beings interact creatively and unpredictably with their birth charts; that all astrological symbols are multi-dimensional and are modulated into material and psychic expression by the consciousness of the individual.
6. An acceptance of the truth that human beings are responsible for the realities they experience, both internally and externally.
7. A respectful intention to accept and support a person seeking astrological help, no matter the evolutionary state in which such an individual finds himself or herself.

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