I feel like sometimes astro newbies (or people who predominantly learned through tumblr/twitter and maybe some super modern astro websites) would really benefit from viewing astrology a little more technically. It's all good and nice to have a very fluid, meaning-oriented, or even spiritual approach to astrology but it's a very technical practice with lots of different cogwheels and it's supposed to work in a way that you can put things together without having to know every placement interpretation from the top of your head.
Planets are tools. Signs are building blocks. Degrees are there to be technically applied. View sect like a dark mode/light mode switch if it helps you. It's fun to get prosy and the gut wrenching comfort you feel from a more emotional, fluid astrological interpretation is nice, but it really, really helps - especially when you only want to check for something and not sit there crying doing soul searching for an hour like you're at your therapist's office - to be more technical, sober, practical. Check the hemispheres, check the quadrants, check off the singular placements, just add it together. Step back to actually think about what, matter of factly, planets, signs, houses, aspects do. How do they actually work? What kinda gears are they? Apply them strictly according to that. Stop personifying the planets like roles in a poem every once in a while and use them as mechanical tools.
Trust me, the prosy part can and will come all on its own, but in terms of quick but accurate, cut-to-the-chase interpretation knowing how to get a little mechanical really helps tons. And I promise you also won't end up with questions like "if I have an 8th house mercury is that like scorpio mercury or if I have a Sagittarius rising is that like Sagittarius sun" anymore.
