Some years ago, within the same month, I happened to look at the charts of two men born only a few days apart. Their Saturn was in the same sign, in the same house, receiving almost exactly the same aspects. On paper, the two charts said very similar things about responsibility, delay and hard work.
One of them was a senior civil servant who had spent thirty years building a reputation for steady, careful judgement. The other had spent much of his adult life caring for a parent with a long illness, putting his own plans to one side again and again.
Same Saturn. Both lives full of duty, patience and weight. And yet if I had described either man's life to the other, he would not have recognised himself.
This is something I think about constantly. The classical texts talk about desha, kala and patra: place, time and the person. An astrologer is supposed to consider all three before drawing any conclusion. Where were you born, and into what kind of world? What stage of life are you in? What choices have you already made, and what circumstances have shaped you?
A Mars that drives one person into surgery might drive another into competitive sport, another into the army, another into running a demanding business. The courage and precision of Mars are there in all of them. The form it takes depends on everything else.
That is why, when we begin a consultation, I want to hear a little about you before I say very much about your chart. Not to make the reading easier, but to make it accurate. The chart tells me which themes are present. You tell me how they are living.
I think this is also the most honest answer to people who are sceptical of astrology. If you expect a chart to describe a life in exact detail without any context, you will usually be disappointed. If you treat it as a deep and reliable map of the forces at work, and then pay close attention to the ground itself, it becomes something genuinely useful.