What's up with your Saturn?

John Marchesella attracts powerful people. His clients are the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, celebrities in business, fashion and finance. “I get all the power people,” he said. “The producers. People who green light pictures and spend money.” They flock to him for advice on deals: will the deal go through, when will it go through, and most of all, will it be worth it?

He’s not a Hollywood agent, a hedge fund manager or a network executive. He’s an astrologer.

Practicing astrology full time since 1981, John Marchesella doesn’t need to advertise. In his office on 19th Street just off of Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, he has seen probably thousands of people over the years. “People come to astrologers for the same reasons they go to shrinks,” he said. “They want to know the cause of their anxieties and when it will be over.”

They also come for something else that they don’t even realize. “They come for a diagnosis: ‘It’s Pluto squaring my moon.’ That’s just the shorthand for what’s going on in your life: That means my mother is driving me crazy. It puts objectivity on it. Suddenly, there is a beginning, a middle and an end. And hope. People come for hope.”

He started practicing in July of 1976. While still in the early stages of his astrological career, John studied Jungian psychotherapy and received certification from Temenos Institute in Connecticut. After practicing therapy for five years, he decided that astrology was more effective for his clients. When closed his therapy practice, many clients switched over to astrology and are still with him today.

When John reads an astrological chart for someone, they get a one and a half hour discussion on the story of their life and where they currently are in that story. The talk is recorded on CD and given to the client.

John likes to focus on the planet Saturn. It is the planet that indicates the problems in your life and what you can do about them.

“We live on a spectrum of free will or fate,” he said. “Saturn teaches us how to behave, it’s the planet that can help fulfill our potential. It lets us be conscious of our choices and decision-making powers.” Saturn even determines who comes to see him. “When Saturn is moving through a sign, those people with that sign prominent in their chart will come in for readings.”

Currently Saturn is in the last degrees of Leo and will enter Virgo in September of this year. “It’s not just Leos that are coming in hordes, but people with prominent planets in Leo. These people are being challenged. George Bush has a Leo rising. This is a very challenging period for him.” When asked if he had any advice for Bush, he said he did not. “But I have wishes,” he added.

Charts even live on after death. When Marilyn Monroe’s estate was auctioned off at Christie’s for a record-breaking amount, he updated her chart for his students. “It showed a period of great success—she was in a cycle of one’s highest achievements. But she had already been dead for 45 years.”

John also teaches astrology classes through the National Council for Geocosmic Research. In a two-year course of study, students begin by interpreting the chart of a famous person. Next they study aspects, or how planets relate to each other. “This is what makes a chart very sophisticated,” he said. Then there is another level of advanced interpretation and predictive work where students study transits and progressions. The final class discusses what clients expect and how to prepare for a reading.

“The state of astrology is booming,” he said. “The numbers are huge. There are many more full-time astrologers now than when I started. And there are many, many more part-time astrologers. Technology has made it more accessible and faster to learn astrology.”

I asked John if he ever had a client come back to him and say nothing he said was correct. “Oh, all of the time,” he laughed. “And I’ve had clients not come back and say that, too. What’s most puzzling is when, year after year, the client comes back and says the reading is accurate. Then one year, they come back and say nothing was right.”

This happens for many reasons. “If the birth time is wrong, then I’m going to be wrong. Sometimes, I pick the wrong manifestation of the symbol. I might say to a client, ‘You’ll have trouble with your car in May.’ He might come back to me and say nothing happened to his car, but his bike got stolen.”

Some predictions are based on an action, and if the client didn’t take the action, then the predictions aren’t going to happen. “Not all events are events are fated. Some things that happen are based on free will. There are times I can say to somebody, ‘You will get a new job in the middle of September, I’m sure of it.’ There are times I will say, ‘If you start looking for a job in June, you will get a job in the middle of September.’ If you don’t use your will, I can’t predict the outcome.”

John said that while there are many who only practice “sun-sign” astrology, they don’t do a good service to the profession. On one hand, they keep astrology in the common language. Sometimes newspapers and magazines won’t allow anything more than sun-sign astrology. “But it’s like junk food,” he said. “There is nothing substantial about it.”

When asked why John gets so many powerful people as his clients, he said, “I have a very powerful Pluto in my chart. When you have a powerful Pluto, you attract power. Even people who are in the dry cleaning industry, I get the megastars—the people who own the chains.” But, he insists, he reads for everyone. “I read for CEOs, their limousine drivers and the limousine driver’s wives,” he said.

John said there are two reasons why astrology works. One is that planets explain lives in the same way that dreams reveal messages. According to Jungian psychology, dreams are linked to the personal and collective unconscious. Astrology works on the same principles. Planets are symbols that reveal messages from the zodiac instead of the symbols deep within the psyche.

The second reason? “Beats the shit out of me,” he said. “It just works.”
-Sherry Mazzocchi

Comments

[Andy Lee]

Seems an odd topic for this blog -- basically a full-page ad for a upscale astrologist? What is the Chelsea connection? Does he practice in Chelsea? Does he bake cupcakes?