PROFESSIONAL ASTROLOGY, ACADEMIA AND RESEARCH  Thoughts expressed by members of the South African Astrology Community in June 2009 (The items in bold were mentioned more than once,  and those highlighted in blue more than three times)

Professional Astrology, Academia and Research Suggestions 1-6 1.       I would like South Africa to become a country where there are many full-time astrologers, making a successful living with their work 2.       Professional astrologers need to establish credibility, ethics and standards of professionalism. 3.       Professional astrologers need to organise themselves. They have quite different needs to those of students or the general public. They could get together and talk about what those needs are, or identify and share them nationally, on a national forum – maybe as a closed Facebook group. They need a formal, professional organisation. 4.       As a new astrologer, I need help with developing a successful astrology business 5.       As a full-time astrologer, I would like to meet with others who are earning a living with astrology – to share ideas, tips and problems. I sometimes need a shoulder to cry on, too. 6.       I’d like to know about how things are for other working astrologers. How do they find clients? How do they cope after a difficult reading? What do they charge? How many clients can they work with in one day? Do they do telephone astrology? Do they make recordings, and if they do, how do they do it? There are so many questions.

Professional Astrology, Academia and Research Suggestions 7-10 7.       Astrologers are not producing the evidence because to-day their science has become too psychological in its orientation and client driven, which often means pandering to the self absorbed. Unfortunately the schools of astrology do not discourage this approach. 8.       Code of ethics for astrology practice, as a guide for us all 9.       I would like to see more working being done on scientific validation of astrology through research 10.    In supporting and promoting astrology I think many ideas could come out of http://cura.free.fr . I would like to see more investigation and research, particularly statistical research, have it scientifically validated, and use the media to publish the results. To-day there is so much information available on the web, as for example in astrodatabank.com, that the chore of amassing data is minimised. However there are still many fields, such as medical and sports astrology which would need access to medical records or tedious recording and accumulating data.   11.    It saddens me the most about the state of astrology in South Africa is in part that it lacks academic recognition 12.    Unfortunately astrology resembles academia, and there is too much internal competition and politics. Astrology is a type of 'spiritual' study and should be geared to personal growth in whatever manner that might take.