Planetary Cycles: That Get You from Beginning to End Without a Guide

This book is an excellent guide to the ups and downs of daily life, in that it points out how the continual flow of the astrological cycles can help us prepare for, and sucessfully live through, many of the traumatic experiences in our life. You don't have to be an astrologer to benefit from this book, although it does help if you are familliar with the art of astrology.

According to the author, this book was originally intended as a companion to her better known work "Transits: The Time Of Your Life". This makes sense, as "Planetary Cycles" doesn't really give the whole picture, even though there is much top quality astrology, psychology and information as to how the cycles of the planets operate.The book is divided in to 3 sections, "Planetary Cycles And How They Work", "Crisis Years: Ages And Stages", and "Counseling A Crisis". The first and last sections were the most useful to me. In the middle section, although a tremendous amount of hard work has been done to give a balanced picture, I feel there are too many attempts to be specific about the experience of individuals at different ages. The Saturn return, age 29, and the mid-life crisis, age 37-42, are obvious crises and easily identified, but many of the comments about having children, career success or failure, marriage and so on in relation to other ages, often seem rather old-fashioned. I suspect that this shows how much the previously "traditional" patterns have broken down since this book was originally written. It is up to the reader to read between the lines to get a feel of the unfolding patterns as they might relate to them in today's society. Observe them in your own life and other people's. The basic astrology itself is excellent, but would indeed benefit from being absorbed in conjunction with one of the classic works on transits, such as the author's or "Planets In Transit" by Robert Hand or "Future Signs" by Maria Kay Simms.