Susan Miller & Positive Astrology

Susan Miller is a bouncily over-enthusiastic American astrologer who says everything is coming up roses all the time, when it clearly isn't and apologises when she has to give bad news.  Her sun sign horoscopes are nearly useless – her asc horoscopes are slightly less so.  In the last 3 years she has been spot on once... and it was about something unpleasant.  During June, the quality of her horoscope and the unrealistic expectations it raised added to my depression. She insisted that everything was really going to change for the better.   She is now making the same claims for July.  I have annotated her predictions in the last few months for both my ascendant and my sun sign, and the word "Yes" does not really appear, there's a certain amount of "perhaps" - or "maybe she means"....mostly the notes say "NO! NO! NO!" Often she is a bit fixed in her ideas, and occasionally makes mistakes which send me rushing to the ephemeris charts to check. 

When I say fixed in her ideas, I mean she tends to focus on one particular aspect of a house e.g. whenever something is related to the 3rd house she bangs on about contracts, and of course, these are within 3rd house influence (although I think they have 9th house connections), but there's an awful lot of other stuff in 3rd house, and I find if there's a 3rd house aspect it's usually about neighbours, siblings or cousins - or one's wider family.  A recent Capricorn full moon occurred just before the death of my pa-in-law - I had already dismissed the contract-related prediction she made, his death made more astro sense - although someone will say, no, no, father in laws are ruled by the 4th house (i.e. the 10th house from the partner/7th house) but 3rd house seems a sensible one to bung the in-laws into. SM may be making contracts all the time, the rest of us are hanging out with neighbours, and family. 

The truth about 2013!

In a recent (26^th June) Washington Post chat she admitted that 2013 was a dire year astrologically. However, like oncologists, she clearly believes in preparing people for the worst by dripping out the bad news slowly - i.e., not preparing them, and instead making them feel progressively more  demoralised by disappointed hopes.  She said that this was such an awful year she was trying to bring out the best – well, that’s the first time she’s said it was a difficult year – apart from occasionally name checking the Uranus-Pluto square as the cause of much political upheaval around the world.  But, I continue to read her... although I am now taking her with buckets of salt.  I am sure personally she is very nice, but I cannot help feeling that this is the wrong sort of astrology - surely we should be prepared for challenging times rather than having it implied that all Scorpios are about to be successful in publishing, law and higher education and perhaps the media...She has a caring, hardworking persona and devoted followers who post endless "me! ME! Me!" questions on Twitter...which seldom get answered, no doubt she is very busy with her contractual issues!

Hope springs eternal...

I guess I just have that European cynicism about sunny US optimism, and perhaps with good reason. We are all such suckers for hope - my father has recently started berating hope... as a fraudulent thing that leads to distress and disappoinment.(but vainly flapt its tinsel wing as Marvell wrote)  It is a sad thing that he feels like this but after a lifetime of optimism I can understand why he does.  My endless optimism hasn't really made things any better in the last 3-4 years.  We are still here, alive, but financially at our worst ever, despite endless efforts to find new sources of work and income.  So I still turn to SM's predictions for July, knowing that she is going to generate whoops of excitement with her news of the "golden triangle" between Jup/Sat/Nep in the water signs... we shall see whether anything comes of this.  I'm not holding my breath.