Caveat Amateur Astrologers

I am not a professional astrologer, this gives me the chance of exchanging thoughts with a curious lot of people who undertake to predict their future by doing some research on the Web. Trust me more often than not the predictions go awry. Not because astrology is a pseudo science as some people love to call it, but because these people are into pseudo research. Unless you have a foundation you cannot understand what astrology is all about. The bottom line is astrology does not deliver. We all know of amateur homeopaths who read a book, maybe Materia Medica, and start prescribing for themselves and others. Have a candid answer from these newborn homeopaths and you will see they find themselves suffering from 60% of the diseases in that few thousand page book and 80% of the medicines seem their acute requirement!
Surf the Web for result for a specific astrological incident in the natal chart you will have about 10, 000 results and 20 different observations on it. If you note each of them down and you will be shocked to find that for every negative prediction you have a positive prediction too. I call this amateur astrologers paradox. This does not happen with a seasoned astrologer because their base is strong. It does not require an amateur to take astrology classes to be clear sighted but it does require having a learned guide.
Astrology was popular in the past as it is today, and every civilization had its own version of astrology. Today we are a global village and we share all these versions in a common language, English. An unsuspecting newbie would be reading predictions of one astrological incident from all these different books expecting a unanimous prediction, that cannot be. Just as grammar of any language is different from another, so does the analysis and interpretation of a method of astrology differ. The Chinese system is easier to identify due to their naming convention by animals types, that too if you are on the right page. Indian, Arabic and Western astrology easily intermingle as one system. How many times do we check the name of the author of the article and judge their location and probable source of knowledge. Our amateur researches definitely miss this aspect most of the time. Sometimes even some authors are as confused as our amateurs, their research too suffers from the same disease.
Normally we end up reading articles of Indian astrology with that of western astrology as one whole, while each is a separate unit in itself. The predictive calculation of each is different from the other, yet amateurs easily conclude their future by using planetary location in their natal chart. The result is confusion due to varied prediction of the same incident.
If you have read till this point you must be wondering the solution is simply identifying which system of astrology the author belongs to by categorizing them into broad based groups like Indian, Western, Persian etc. Well you must not reach your conclusion yet. This is because in one system there may be various methods. In Indian system we have a bunch of methods, each different from the other in calculation and predictions. Even each have their individual strengths and weaknesses. Jaimini system is different from the Parashara system. In Parashara system we have further subsystems, like prediction through Astakabarga, Rashi and Argala, Nakshatra dasa , Rasi dasa, Yogini dasa, Sudarshana Chakra, Kalachakra, etc.
In astrology a line of text out of context will invariably leave you blundering, what would a mess up of the system lead to! If you are Indian especially from Bengal, you would know the story of the barber turned physician of the king. When this guy was just a barber he could easily slice off a mole from the king's nose without fear of medical complexities. The king promoted him to the rank of the king's physician and he now had to learn physiology. In future the king had a mole again but this time the barber turned physician fervently refused to do the same again, now that he was aware of the consequences that may take place.
This is the predicament of the serious practitioners of astrology. Professionals often deal with one sub-system and make a prediction without verifying with other sub-system about the validity of the forecast. Indian astrology has multiple systems with the purpose of cross verification and moderation of the results. Professionals hardly validate their results due to time vs. fee equation in their practice, resulting in dissatisfied patrons about the quality of predictions. It does not affect their practice since almost all practitioners have the same flaw. The success in prediction is directly dependent on multiple use of ratification methods, the more you recheck the more chances of being correct.
Would the amateurs still want to predict their future surfing the Net?
Well, a word of caution for the professional too, just in case you are one. Please do not correct the division method of Parashara from 360 days to 365 days. If you undertake the correction you need to correct the predictions to that degree too, that is not possible unless you are a seer too. Our miscalculations bring a bad name to the subject. Why would one suppose the ancients who could predict intricacies of astronomy without a telescope or modern gadgets, would falter in major details? They must have had their reason and since we cannot consult their gurukul today as they are long lost, let us not mess up their system, go wrong, and blame the science. Let us not forget astrologers must have intuition and their natal chart too must predict their astrological capabilities... that is what the Vedic astrological books say.