BTW, for anyone reading this thread who has not yet seen it, Astrodienst (
www.astro.com) has wonderful charts and tables on fixed stars in your horoscope. Just go to their free charts section, and look up under "chart drawing style" for the constellation charts, to find how your horoscope maps onto constellations and fixed stars. Then the tables are listed under the feature "special charts."
I will say that I personally have trouble with the idea that stars have evil influences. From the standpoint of theodicy we have to ask why God (or other supreme creator deities) would create a universe with stellar bad guys in them. Most religions today speak of a loving creator. Does anyone on this thread seriously believe in an evil god or evil spirits?
For atheists, the whole notion of planets with evil effects in individual human lives makes no sense. We are left with a scientific, impersonal, an unpersonified universe.
The problem of evil in the world today pertains in either type of belief system: the wars, famines, horrible things that happen to little kids, natural disasters, and so on.
The biblical response from the Wisdom Literature and NT may not be very satisfying, but it is that God's actions surpass human understanding. The older OT response (pentateuch and prophets) is that there is a link between human conduct and bad things happening on earth. When people live ethical lives, the universe responds favourably. When people live unethical lives, they get punished--not merely as individuals, but as clans and societies. Thus there is a huge burden on each human being to behave ethically.
For the atheist, the bad actions of human beings individually and collectively are sufficient to explain the horrors of the world.
I have real problems, too, with the notion of karma and wicked past lives explaining bad things that happen to people today. It has functioned in some Asian societies as a means of justifying horrific oppression of poor people. We don't need fixed stars to explain the situation of the Untouchables prior to Ghandi and even today, for example: millions of people suffer, and they do not all have Algol conjunct a personal planet.
I think planets and fixed stars have both positive and negative expressions, and that human beings have a certain amount of ability to choose which one they want. Obviously, poor children born with severe handicaps have few options, whereas privileged able-bodied young white American males have more options.
Astrologically, we might follow Dr. Farr's lead, in realizing that a problem area in one part of the horoscope may be balanced by positive areas in another part.
And if we really believe in astrology, we should consider that each of our horoscopes contributes to whether we have a basically pessimistic or optimistic outlook on life, independently of our circumstances, or those of the world as a whole.
Adrianastrologer, you appear to have chosen some positive manifestations of Algol in your life. And sometimes in life, "the way out is the way through."