Organization for Professional Astrology

President’s Report

by Bob Mulligan

After taking two planes in the middle of the night, I arrived late at LAX airport in Los Angeles. Dvora Weil, along with her husband, picked me up at the airport. We had a brief middle of the night visit with long time astrologer and energy healer, Sandra Michaels at the airport Hilton; then drove to Calabasas where we prepared for the first OPA one day workshop.

This workshop is the brain child of Arlan Wise, who suggested this as a method to familiarize astrologers with OPA; we are always looking to attract more people to the cause of professional astrology. After our winter board meeting in January a group of us had spent two days working on this material at my home. Los Angeles, is the first materialization of our collective effort.

On Saturday, April 10th, 2010, six of us gathered in Dvora’s home for our first one day workshop. We explored basic OPA principles for establishing a professional practice. Both new and old OPA members grappled with the issues important for professional astrology. We spent the first half of the day examining issues of earning a living as a professional astrologer in the 21st century:
• Ways to attract and keep clients
• How to manage a practice
• How to use technology to improve efficiency

We spent the afternoon doing peer supervision with each other; it was excellent. Each person presented a challenging case history from their practice. It is fair to say that each of us left the workshop inspired and full.

After the workshop we had a meeting on the certification program; Dvora Weil, Gisele Terry, Karen White and I went over the requirements for OPA certification, the program to certify group leaders, and the timeline to move forward. Lots of progress was made quickly.

Karen White, our new marketing director, lives in Los Angles; I had the great pleasure of having dinner with her and her husband late in the evening while in Los Angeles.

Our next one day workshop will be in Connecticut June 12, 2010 in Manchester. Arlan Wise, Jacqueline Janes and Robert Corre will be our presenters. To register: call Arlan Wise 508-645-9292 or email arlanw@vineyard.net. The cost of the workshop is $75 and you receive $100 off the price of the retreat for attending…already registered for the retreat…then you can attend the workshop for free.
We are having board elections this summer in June. If you would like to run for a board position please let me know during the month of May. The current board is hard working and quite harmonious. OPA has always had a very dedicated, talented, and hardworking board.

We have so many members in Florida that have traditionally been supportive of our OPA programs; we will doubtless have a one day workshop here. We haven’t been able to fit it on the schedule just
yet.

Every summer the OPA group leaders get together on Martha’s Vineyard, at the home of Arlan Wise. We will meet this year on June 3rd to the 7th. This is an opportunity for us to run the retreat in peer supervision format for ourselves. Also, we get a chance to run through the particulars for this coming retreat as well as plan the general outline for the next year’s retreat.

We keep working on the retreat for the fall. October 20th 2010 at Asilomar, California will be a wonderful event. The first day of the retreat is blessed to have a lively discussion about how the concept of fate directly affects our practice. There will be talks in the morning by Monica Dimino, Glenn Perry, Bob Mulligan, Sandra-Leigh Serio, Maurice Fernandez….In the afternoon we will have a panel on the same topic and then an open forum. The rest of the program keeps coming into focus and this promises to be our best retreat ever.

Something interesting happened to me. A student of mine asked for a refund on classes that she paid for but didn’t take…sounds like a reasonable request…However, she started taking the classes by correspondence in 1994, sixteen years ago. And, I hadn’t heard from her since that year. What would you do? I sent her the beginning material and she never got back to me. It was a puzzling situation to be in….I called every member of the board and discussed this unique situation, and I spoke with several group leaders who give instruction regularly. We are so blessed in OPA to have a spirit of openness and generosity that we can freely discuss issues as they emerge. This is another way in which we can use our amazing community of peers to discuss and improve our practices.

Deb Thompson, our dear friend and long time OPA member, passed away quite suddenly…I’ve known Deb for many years; last year at the retreat I remember her quite well because she was in endless debate about coming to the retreat and we talked much before hand….then we met at the airport and went to Asilomar together…we also traveled back together in a rental car to the airport in San Francisco. We spent several hours together at the airport before heading our separate ways back to our homes. She was a delightful human being…and yes, we did speak about her health at the time, but she seemed unconcerned, even though we are both astrologers and there was some difficulties coming up. When I heard that Deb passed on, I was so glad that we had left nothing left unsaid; it was a good reminder of how short life really is.