Jeanne Avery's book on astrological aspects is one of the very best books I've found that describes in REAL LANGUAGE what an aspect FEELS like.

Avery uses vivid and unforgettable examples from the lives of celebrities and people she knows or has read for. There is something about the way she relates these people describing their OWN feelings that sticks in your mind.

In my beginning days interpreting charts professionally (scarey! back in 85), I often relied on her descriptions of aspects to make my points with clients and invariably the clients were nothing less than astounded with the veracity. For the first time, I could really understand what it felt like to have Mars square Uranus when such a person in her book described it as a sugar high or a sugar addiction, the scratch that could never be itched, etc.

And I remember the Pluto Mars person in her book saying her son infuriated her so much that her husband had to hold her hands to her side to keep her from doing violence to him while she literally SHOOK WITH RAGE.

In my beginning practice, I actually had people break down in tears of gratitude when I used these analogies for them to help them understand the difficult energies they were dealing with -- they were so moved that FINALLY someone seemed to understand what they were going through.

It's a real shame this book didn't get reprinted because you can see that I found it quite invaluable. It takes awhile as a pro to build up enough case experience to have your own set of "snapshots" to use in illustrating aspects and Avery has some really, truly wonderful ones. Good illustrations of energy during a chart interpretation/reading build instant empathy with the client and that builds good rapport for anything important that is going to follow. It's part of the magic of astrology.

I would certainly recommend chasing this book down in the used section if you are considering a career in astrology.