Consulting the stars
By : Alexander Stocks
At the same time they entrust their computer systems to that hi-tech mystic, the IT specialist, some Polish businesses have been calling on much older though equally abstruse practitioners to better understand people, places and events before making difficult corporate decisions.
Surprising as it may sound, astrologers and psychic practitioners ranging from palm readers to Tarot-mancers and Reiki masters have been reading staunchly Roman Catholic Poles their cards, tea leaves and palms for ages.
For most of the 15th century, Krakow's Jagiellonian University was the only university in Europe with an astrology department. Copernicus studied it there along with several other disciplines from 1491 to 1495, drawing on a tradition that flourished in places such as Bharat, Babylon and China as far back as 6500 B.C.
What's new is the way specialized astrologers chart horoscopes for stocks and markets while businesspeople discreetly stop by their favorite psychic when considering corporate prospects, pitfalls and recruitment moves.
What's your sign
One Warsaw firm even specializes in this area. Gwiazda advertises itself as an esoteric parlor offering human resources consulting. The 2-year-old firm has two kinds of clients: individuals with problems, and companies that have made bad hiring decisions, said Barbara Radzko, an astrologer with Gwiazda.
In the age of split loyalties, job hopping and corporate corruption, Gwiazda is banking on the notion that honest and loyal employees are worth more than their weight in gold.
"One can tell in advance what important character features a person possesses," Radzko said.
When it comes to skills needed in the modern workplace, such as the ability to mediate in conflicts, "an astrologer-adviser can tell whether a given person will meet the boss's expectations," she said. "An astrologer picks a person apart."
When given a potential employee's date and place of birth, an astrologer can also provide such information as a person's hierarchy of values, motivations and moods, Radzko said.
Some employers show up with information regarding several candidates for a position and Gwiazda helps them determine which one would fill a given role most effectively. Radzko said she can tell a businessperson who is looking to hire someone whether a potential partner cares about harmonious relationships and if any two partners' relations with the stars will cause immediate or eventual disagreements.
Though she declined to discuss specifics, Radzko said Gwiazda has advised Polish, Swiss and German companies in Warsaw and throughout Poland, including everything "from a small shop with three employees to a huge financial company." An individual horoscope costs no less than zl. 200, she said.
Other firms offer personality tests and psychology-based evaluations that are only conducted with a candidate's knowledge and participation. Predictably, human resource heavyweights don't lend such practices much credence.
"That's not how you recruit people," said Krystyna Wasilkowska of ASA International, a human resource firm, who became more incensed as she spoke about the issue. "We accept psychology but we absolutely do not accept that ... It's a joke as far as recruiting goes." Wasilkowska said she felt certain that any "Fortune 500 company multiplied by 1,000" would never turn to astrology in recruiting an employee because that approach is not scientific.
Armand Ziemienski, a consultant with Nicholson International, agrees. Psychological testing and graphology are sometimes used as problem solving and placement tools among human resource companies, he said, but never Zodiac signs.
But Radzko still believes Gwiazda's services are superior. Human resource companies "won't answer the question whether an employee who has just filled out tons of forms will cheat or not," she said.
Although Gwiazda has built its business around astrology-based consulting, it's not the only star searcher fielding inquiries from businesspeople. Teresa Tarkowska, a Warsaw-based astrologer, said she provided astrological consultation to a psychology-based training firm whose clients include Shell and Commercial Union. The firm contacted Tarkowska wanting to know why members of its eight-person team of trainers were not working well together. She charted horoscopes for each of them, which "showed they could be very good playing together rather than working together," she said. Tarkowska's horoscope charts indicated personality differences and other polarizations that split the group in half. She suggested the company form two four-member training teams, which it did.
Some individual businesspeople also take work-related concerns to their favorite practitioners. Tarkowska said approximately 80% of her clients were women.
One Warsaw businesswoman, who asked to be identified only as Agnieszka, said she's made five or six visits to astrologers and fortune tellers over the past three years. Some visits have been spurred on by pressing relationship matters, she said, but others have been connected to difficult career decisions. Once, an astrologer accurately predicted she'd soon be working for a U.S. company, she said, even though she wasn't looking for that kind of change.
However, "I think in business it isn't a good idea to talk to each other about it (astrology) because it's not appropriate," she said. Agnieszka added that she doesn't always take her practitioner's advice.
Another businesswoman, Joanna, works in the telecom industry and has visited a fortune teller three times in the past two years. "Fortune tellers are definitely the way to go in Poland. Everybody has one. Everybody's got their favorites," she said. Joanna's Pani Alicja uses mostly Tarot cards to see into the future, but only as far as relationships and personal questions are concerned because, Joanna said, she doesn't mix business with clairvoyance.
"Fortune tellers are the Polish equivalent to having a shrink," the Polish-American said. "It's somebody to listen to you and tell you everything's going to be fine."
Joanna found Pani Alicja through word of mouth, she said, and pays zl. 50 for a one-hour session.
Others sometimes charge in the neighborhood of zl. 100-zl. 120 for half-hour sessions, but rates vary, said Leszek Werez, director for the Center for Cosmological Analysis in Radien and a former vice president of the International Society for Astrological Research.
Werez is the author of "The Unknown World of Astrology and Cosmobiology," and will soon be moving to the European Academy of Astrology in Krakow, which is still under construction. He said that about 80% of those who practice astrology in Poland had been his students.
Though no relevant statistical data seems to be available and the Central Statistical Office (GUS) lumps astrology-oriented registered businesses in a statistical category known as "other services and activities," Werez said he has a pretty good idea about the number of practitioners in Poland.
In Warsaw, he said, somewhere between 30 and 50 registered and unregistered businesses provide astrological services. In Lodz and Poznan, about 10 exist per city, while Gdynia, Szczecin and Krakow have maybe five apiece, he said. As for fortune tellers, about 200 are reading Poles' futures for a price, although only 20 or so meet Werez's estimation as "good," he said.
Learning the trade
Although astrologers and those practicing related crafts don't need a license, a handful of schools are offering astrology-based curricula. Schools of psychotronics exist in Warsaw, Lodz, Wroclaw, Poznan and Krakow, Werez said. The forthcoming academy in Krakow is affiliated with the Jagiellonian University and will have branches in Poznan, Warsaw and possibly Lodz, he said, and will instruct in such areas as astrology, cosmobiology and the cosmoecology of culture.
Werez was unsure as to whether or not degrees offered in any of the private institutions would fetch credit in the state university system, but many students go on to study in such disciplines as sociology and psychology, he said. Six or seven lecturing astrologers currently reside in Poland, he said.
Werez, who has a background in international law, was drawn to astrology some years ago in an attempt to disprove it, he said. Now, he describes it as the "queen of science" and the "only objective way to describe phenomena" such as the natures of individuals and entire groups of people.
Tarkowska, who received her training at the London School of Astrology, said Polish society, which she described as not generally attuned to dealing with instincts and right-brained thinking, has become more open to astrology since communism fell in 1989. However, forms of clairvoyance have always been present in Poland, she said, regardless of the Catholic Church's disdain and even condemnation. The reading of normal playing cards has been passed from mother to granddaughter in many Polish families, she said.
According to Tarkowska, Poland experienced a new-age boom around 1995, which brought a proliferation of books and the appearance of former services. Currently, astrology and clairvoyant fairs and gatherings take place almost every weekend in major Polish cities. Once a year, a major gathering of astrologers is held in the Palace of Culture and Science's technical museum in Warsaw.
The relatively recent interest here in new-age ideas itself stems from an astrological occurrence, Tarkowska said. It started in 1992, when Uranus, the planet linked to scientific reasoning, converged with Neptune, the planet responsible for clairvoyance and dreams something that only happens once a century. In 1995, Uranus entered Aquarius, known for its links to intellectual awareness and openness.
Alhough Tarkowska describes astrology as a scientific approach to helping others through times of crisis, "A good astrologers should be a clairvoyant," she said.
