A Worldly Insight to the Stars
By
Sophia Jensen
Published Thursday Feb. 22, 1979 in The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Note: Last December, 2005, while I was unwrapping Christmas ornaments to decorate my tree, I can across this newspaper story written about me back in 1979. I had somehow used the newspaper which contained this interview to pack away ornaments. Most surprising of all is that I have no recollection of this interview what so ever! I am putting it on my website to be stored in ‘Archives.” Time marches on!”
~ Walden

Friends and students speak of astrologer Walden Welch in such awed and reverent tones that it’s a shock to find he’s not a white-haired patriarch. He’s a slight, impish-looking fellow of 34 who claims that he’s “so normal I’m boring.”

A Stockton native, he’s been fascinated by astrology since he was 16. Then, a friend gave him a gift reading and the astrologer greeted him with “Don’t worry, your mother isn’t going to die.”

Since she was in the hospital at the time and seriously ill, that got Welch’s attention right away. Two years later, he was an astrologer himself. He claims it’s not a profession for those who want to get rich, “but I make a very good living.” He’s booked months in advance for the readings he does Saturdays through Wednesdays in an office behind the Curry and I Antique Shop in Agua Caliente.

The office is businesslike and very orderly (probably because he has tidy Virgo rising), but has such bewitching touches as leopard print blinds and a cloudy sky painted on the ceiling.

Welch never looks at a chart until the hour-long reading starts. An assistant does the math and draws the chart for him, and he just looks at it and starts talking. His favorite clients are those with problems, not because he enjoys seeing people suffer, but because “It’s just awful trying to fill an hour with trivia when there’s nothing going on in the chart.”

A chart on his desk during the interview was that of a man who was divorced twice, both times when the same planetary aspects were in effect. “Now, I’ve told him that the same conditions will prevail again in 1983, so he should be taking a look at his own personality, and starting to understand the things his ex-wives have told him about selfishness, if he wants to avoid another divorce in 1983.”

Welch maintains there’s nothing fatalistic about astrology. “The influences are there, good or bad, but it’s always up to the individual to decide what to do about them. I get upset when people come back to me years later and say something like “You were absolutely right, I got divorced in 1976,” because the point of the reading is to understand the influences and do something to lessen the problems.

Many of his clients are psychologists and psychiatrists with doctors and real estate salespeople ranked second and third.

As a youngster Welch had numerous psychic experiences and was a psychic medium before he became an astrologer. He’s aware of the debate in astrology circles between those who say clairvoyance enters into an interpretation of a chart, and those who claim its pure math. He doesn’t think it really matters. The math is there, and it works, better for some astrologers than others.

What really gets to him is the state of the law. “We’re just simply not allowed to do what we can do, because of various laws. I can’t predict; all I can say is that the influences in say, September, will be thus and such. Did you know that San Rafael totally outlaws astrologers?”

Since he once did a show on San Rafael ration station KTIM, that really hurts.

He sometimes is a guest on KGO, and finds that frustration, again because of legalities. “We have to be so general,” he says, that nothing of real substance is discussed.

Welch hasn’t published anything yet, but is planning a book on the late prophet Edgar Cayce and astrology. Sometime in the next couple of years, he will probably move to Virginia Beach, Va. Where Cayce’s records are kept, and are available to researchers.

His mundane advice for all of us right now is: “If you own property in California and you plan to stay in California, hang on to the property. Inflation isn’t going to end for a long time.”