Wow, lots to answer in there.
First thing, and the easiest way to efficiently answer most of your questions: you must go right now and buy a copy of John Frawley's
The Real Astrology immediately and read it cover to cover. The best price I can find online is a1books.com for about $19. Frawley answers almost every one of your questions intelligently and with enormous wit and brio. Highly highly recommended. The downside is that it really is a passionate rant of a book by someone who knows their material thoroughly. His subsequent books are much more hands-on practical texts, as is Barclay's horary book and some of the other titles I mentioned above. But go buy Frawley right now. He is what you're looking for as far as simple, direct answers to the basic questions in entertaining, inspiring prose.
If you're wanting to really get a handle on it, you absolutely should read Agrippa & Lilly at some point; both are available online for nothing, but there are much friendlier books on traditional astrology that will ease you in. Now, as for the rest of your points, the only way to answer you is to state personal opinion, and I imagine this is going to yank some cranks. So with that caveat...
A short answer while you're waiting for your Frawley: modern psychological astrology is barely related to traditional astrology beyond an overlapping symbol set. A bit like comparing Flaubert in the original French and Swiss enema instructions because they both use the Roman alphabet. The differences between traditional and sunsign astrology are deep and systemic and intentional. Traditional astrology focuses on planets and reception, sunsign astrology is focused on the zodiac and moods. Even the idea of "psychological astrology" is bizarre, because psychology is a VERY recent, completely fabricated myth pattern, and astrology derives from a much older worldview over a much longer span. And no, it isn't a literalist view of rocks in the sky "sending rays" that yank us like puppets... neither is it just "psychology writ large" although that's a broader convo. It is a fundamental belief in the connectedness of everything. So (as Zoller puts it somewhere) it isn't that Mars "makes" me angry, it is that Mars IS my anger; they are entangled and inextricable.
As for modern astrology getting things right... it's easy to get things right if you're viewing everything through a self-help lens: people LOVE to talk about themselves
ad nauseum... just repeat mushy generic platitudes that apply to large populations and you're golden. If they agree, you're a genius, and if they don't it's because they're "in denial." Brilliant no? One of the reasons modern astrologers get so freaked out by horary and elective is that it actually produces
concrete verifiable results. Likewise moderns love to invent comets and planets and angles and faux-Sabean horseshit that bear no relation to any tested system or any legitimate tradition. In the New Age, anything goes... you can discard anything that's too "hard" and anything in print is as valid as anything else. Sloppiness
über alles. Ravenwolf is equivalent to Agrippa. Arrien is as valid as Crowley. Enema instructions equal Flaubert. Immediate expertise, just lower the bar till its on the ground.
For my money, the idea of using psychology in divination or insisting that divination is a
synonym for counseling seems vaguely skeezy and unethical. If it wasn't then why aren't Tarot readers going and getting certification as therapists and counselors before accepting clients? In fact, it is actually illegal to present yourself as a qualified therapist if you are not trained. To say otherwise is flat-out irresponsible. I realize this is an unpopular view, but actually I believe the hideous psychologization of EVERYTHING during the me-generation is a zeitgeist that's ending, not beginning. Bottom line, traditional astrology produced verifiable results for 1000s of years, modern sunsign astrology provides empty cliches and platitudes that can only exist in the subjunctive... unprovable and unproven. BECAUSE THEY ARE DESIGNED TO DEFY INVESTIGATION.
Personally, I think this is why a lot of Tarot (and astrology) right now is about "self-help" and "personal growth," because it requires no verification and it makes everyone feel like an instant expert, while leeching them of rigor and vigor. Lowest common denominator mastery: another crappy byproduct of the 70s psychologization of the cosmos. Gnosis in a can.
Vile. Blecch. Not that you can't use the cards for that, but it's a bit like cutting pie with a bonesaw. How many clients come to you to get an "affirmation" and how many want to know if they're gonna get the raise? I ask you. My favorite side effect of this is folks insisting they read "intuitively" because they can decipher meaning from
scenes depicting interpretations based on an astrological system that follow certain rules. Being ignorant of that system doesn't make it vanish, any more than studying a scenic picture and recognizing tropes equals intuition.
So a fundamental difference is function: traditionally an astrologer who couldn't predict things and identify favorable elections wouldn't work very much. It was a
job for which you were
paid, and providing crappy info to nobility could get you
killed. People didn't come to you to be told they were misunderstood and had inner beauty. They expected practical, verifiable solutions.
Predictions. WHY ELSE WOULD THEY PAY? The modern trouble with predictions (the bedrock of traditional astrology) is that you can actually get things
wrong which is anathema to the huggy, groupthink psychobabble that is the oxygen of sunsign astrology. How can everyone be an expert if most people don't get results? Sunsign astrology coopted a symbol set that worked for several thousand years, so it does stand to reason that the symbols themselves are useful, even if there misapplied. A child can still make music he first time they pick up a horn, but it's not going to be virtuosic. Lots of people sing in the shower, but they don't get PAID to do it. So again, it comes down to function, are they studying astrology because the Judo class at the Y was full or because they want to actually learn something? Is the goal comfort or results?
Grrr. I'm getting pissy but I have to get to bed for a meeting tomorrow morning. I think I answered some of them. But I'm happy to mouth off more.
Buy Frawley's book; you won't regret it. He's hilarious and very well informed.
Hold off on Jstor; when the time comes I can help.
More later,
S