Astrology in some form has been around since the Babylonians. The passage of the planets, sun and moon across the ecliptic was one of the very first things ancient civilizations thought worth recording, and they did so because they wanted to predict what the planets would do next and how it might effect them. Astrology predates Hawking, Einstein, Freud, Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Aristotle & Pythagoras. It predates the internet, rocket-ships, airplanes, automobiles, the steam engine, the printing press, the gun, & the abacus. It was here before Christ.
For centuries it was the first bit of knowledge conquering countries ransacked their fallen enemies’ libraries and tortured their scholars for. It was used by Emperors, Kings, Queens, and even the common man to predict bad times and identify ones enemies. To track the history of astrology is to track the history of Western Civilization.
Of course, nowadays God isn’t name-dropped in educated circles, and we’ve seen the end of the century which birthed the theories of Freud and Jung. Naturally, the astrology I practice is steeped in a deep cultural commitment to free will and psychology. However, for the past five years I’ve primarily used Hellenistic techniques, which are – on the surface – strongly predictive and potentially fatalistic. Marking a path through the tangled thicket where these two perspectives meet is one of the most provocative and provoking conundrums of my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Essentially, however, no matter how I slice it, astrology is simply my favorite way for me to do what I love most: curl up inside someone else’s life like I’m reading a good book. I believe we each have a purpose and that a part of that purpose is discovering what it is. That is easier for some than for others, but we all have moments when we lose sight of our path. If we didn’t our paths wouldn’t be worth forging.
To really exercise free will is to CHOOSE your fate rather than NOT choose it. You can spend your whole life denying you had an alcoholic father who abused you and try to choose a different fate, but if you do you won’t really be living your life. Gandhi and Martin Luther King chose powerfully to be members of oppressed minorities so they could reach out to their communities and liberate them from oppression. That isn’t possible if you don’t choose the circumstances of your life. I like astrology because it makes our choices extremely clear. The rest is up to us.
