In my opinion, students and astrologers can solve the above problem in two ways:

1. By not supporting astrological teachers who practise this deception to the detriment of the student
2. By purchasing Ancient Astrology and BaZi courses and tutorials that are self-contained. In other words, they are either complete or that they are specific.

By complete, I mean these astrological courses cover absolutely everything, to the necessary depth. Keep in mind that you are unlikely to find such.

And by specific, I mean they pertain to a given topic. So, if there are courses on specific topics in the chart (e.g. health, marriage, etc), by purchasing such the student would be able to master the topic and won’t have to spend on other materials on it.

However, this is clearly not what astrologers offer to teach. What you see are Western astrologers and BaZi consultants who divide their materials into smaller parts. They do this, so they can sell many more of them to more astrological and BaZi students. For example, a typical trick is to sell separate lectures on different predictive techniques. I mean, Distributions through the bounds, Solar revolutions, Zodiacal Releasing, Profections, etc. This is NOT how ancient astrologers employed these techniques. They used them together, not separately, when reading a chart. When an astrologer teaches them that way, they don’t not have to bother to unify and reconcile the indications. As a result, these lectures keep the astrological student at the intermediate level.

The analogy in BaZi chart reading are separate lectures on how to read the Luck Pillars vs the Annual Pillars. Again, the BaZi astrologer must synthesize this information, not apply it separately. Another approach is to divide the Ten Gods into separate lectures/packages. Again, this is not BaZi classical astrologers taught them.

Last but certainly not least, there has been this tendency over the last 15 years to create audio or video astrological and BaZi courses. Astrologers do it to save their own time and supposedly to make it easier on students. However, no one can substitute the written word. And this is not even mentioning the pernicious effect of technology and blue light on the human brain.  In my view, students who prefer only audio and video materials are not fit to study Ancient Astrology and BaZi to the necessary depth.

There is also the case of seeing an astrological course of many hours and assuming that it must contain advanced Astrology due to its length. This is not true. Such astrological authors who prefer to teach by video or audio invariably have an emphasis of the Air element. I mean, the Moon, Mercury or the Asc, Lot of Fortune and their lords. What I am saying is that when you teach exclusively by video and audio, you can talk and talk and not reach the necessary depth. This is opposite to when you sit down and have to write out everything in an orderly manner. Why? Because rereading and editing what you wrote forces you to write more orderly and thoroughly.

Having said, I am aware that the human attention span has been dwindling for years. Still, Ancient Astrology and BaZi are Metaphysics. They are not some university knowledge you can learn by heart. You have to learn to think deep, to sift, to synthesize, etc. Therefore, I claim that when you overwhelmingly study Ancient and Chinese Astrology by video and audio, you are slowing down your development as an astrologer.