Customer Reviews

Meet Your Planets: Fun with Astrology

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It seems like it would be a good way to introduce people to astrology: Alexander makes each planet into a stock character (Venus is the Temple Dancer, Mars is the Tennis Pro...), and then he makes each sign and house into a job. The book mostly consists of descriptions of how each character fares in each house, and what that means for you astrologically. But there's problems with the book, some of which are inherent in the concept. First of all, there's too much emphasis on planets being good in some signs and bad in others--that's kind of an archaic mode of astrology and it just makes people more neurotic, in my opinion. By turning the planets into characters, it makes them seem like something separate from yourself--giving people the opportunity to say, "That's my Mars in Scorpio doing that, not me." And Alexander totally equates the signs and houses, as if they had no separate function at all--which makes astrology both less interesting and less useful. I'm afraid this book would be too misleading to get as a beginner's introduction to astrology. As a more advanced student, I found there were some interesting ideas in the introduction that I wished had been more fully developed. This may be a case of astrology-made-too-simple.

Given the complexities of astrology I applaud anyone who can make a very basic text like this both informative and interesting. Mr. Alexander manages to take a unique idea, the planets as personalities and the signs as occupations, and provide just a bit of insight into the basics of astrology.

This is not a book for the serious astrologer. This is an adequate book for those seeking some insight into their own chart without having to engage in math or try to interpret some massive ephemeris.