Page 24 - Talented Astrologer • Volume 2 Number 1 • Winter 2019

create the first “cookbook” astrology reports. Para Research enlisted the skills of up-and-coming astrologers, including Robert Pelletier, Robert Hand, and John Townley, to write a series of specialized “cookbook” interpretations on love, transits, relationships, houses, progressions, and so forth. These were then published as the “Planets In” series of books, which included Planets in
Aspect (Pelletier, 1974), Planets in Composite (Hand, 1975), Planets in Transit (Hand, 1976), Planets in Youth (Hand, 1977), Planets in Houses (Pelletier, 1978), and Planets in Love (Townley, 1978).
When personal computers became household items in the late 1980s, you could purchase software to run your own astrology charts and reports. My first foray into the world of astrology began with the purchase of the Time Cycles astrology software for my new Mac computer in 1992. The impact that personal computers have had on every facet of astrology is too vast to explore here. It requires its own article (stay tuned).
A hallmark of modern astrology is the Astrological Alphabet developed by Zipporah Pottenger-Dobyns. Dobyns was an anthropologist, clinical psychologist, and Religious Science minister who began her astrological studies in 1956. She wrote numerous books, lectured on astrology around the world, and had a thriving clinical practice where she combined astrology and psychology to help her clients. Dobyns made immense contributions to the use of astrology in a spiritual, psychological, and counseling environment. But she also introduced the Astrological Alphabet.
The Astrological Alphabet is a system that groups planets, signs, and houses together, based on their apparent similarities. For example, Mars, Aries, and the First House are all “letter 1.” Dobyns was not the first modern astrologer to note similarities
between planets, signs, and houses. However, she was the first to codify these correlations into a system. And her reputation and popularity in the astrology world spread that system far and
wide.
I consider the Astrological Alphabet to be
the NutraSweet® of Astrology. NutraSweet, an artificial sweetener, seemed like a wonderful idea at the time, and today, it’s hard to find any diet or sugar-free food that doesn’t contain aspartame
(the main artificial sweetener in NutraSweet). But most people now realize that NutraSweet does the opposite of what it’s intended to do. It claims to help with weight loss by reducing the caloric content, but it creates the same insulin
24 Talented Astrologer