We all want certitude. We cherish security – that trust and knowledge that the future will be vouchsafed with financial, material and emotional well-being. But if you really think about it, security is a myth and deep within our hearts we know exactly what the fate of each and every single human being on this planet is. In the end, and that can be at any given moment, the ends can come. The next of your heart can simply stop. The consciousness you assumed was your body evaporates like a dew drop on a sunny summer morning.
This search for security or rather the insecurity about security, is a contradiction by virtue of the way people approach it. They visit astrologers like me while professing their absolute faith in the notion of free will and at the same time asking the astrologer to look at this blueprint of their lives which at birth are the planetary signatures emblazoned as their future by hard coding in their DNA. So what will it be? Do you have free will or not? If you have free will what’s the necessity of visiting an astrologer? And I see this on many occasions having asked clients why they happen to be coming to see me? Don’t you have faith in yourself and your ability to change the course of events in your life? If so you can easily map out what is to be without the help of an astrologer, right?
On this point, even in secular life, leaving aside the so-called mumbo-jumbo of astrology and psychic or metaphysical advice, we all go to doctors, have our blood tests done to predict whether or not in the next six months we’ll be here or not. If our PSA is up than there is a real danger that we have prostate cancer or happen to find that our cholesterol is through the roof, triglycerides are going crazy, whatever, these signals indicate disease and in some cases the likelihood that we won’t be here shortly so this deeply cherished notion of security is at once seen for what is – a flimsy house of cards which could collapse at any given moment from things completely outside our control.
Does astrology really benefit the individual? There are two extreme views and somehow I think the truth is somewhere between. On the one hand there are the faithful who believe that the horoscope is fixed and incapable of changing and on the other, those humanistic are psychological astrologers who take the view that one can work with one’s own bag of limitations and somehow construct something better out of this, thereby influencing the future with desirable outcomes. It’s also a middle view which roughly says that one’s destiny is fated but awareness is free and capable of perceiving whatever event arises in life as good or bad. Believing this notion has its limitations. If we are indeed hardcoded as the previous believers would have you think, we have to assume that consciousness, thinking and reasoning processes which are astrologically regulated by the third, fifth and ninth houses of the horoscope, and that what and how you think and also what you determine to be correct or otherwise is also for the most part embedded and intractable. And herein is the dilemma of astrology.
‘On the one hand there are the faithful who believe that the horoscope is fixed and incapable of changing and on the other, those humanistic are psychological astrologers who take the view that one can work with one’s own bag of limitations and somehow construct something better out of this, thereby influencing the future with desirable outcomes’.
Suffice to say that on several occasions I have had uncanny experiences in India where ancient karmic records thousands of years old the detail one’s life, including the birth date, one’s own name, and family names, dates and events from birth to death recorded and all from one’s thumbprint, not from any information provided. I’ve mentioned this account on many occasions to those who are hard-core believers in free will. The fact that from your thumbprint a record can be retrieved from an ancient archive detailing all of these things written thousands of years ago is enough to at least cast some shadow of doubt on this idea of free will. But then, are we left as puppets dangling in the air by some unknown force, a divine puppeteer (and that’s with a capital P and presumably a synonym for Almighty God ).
And speaking about God, (and it’s very hard not to when we are deeply embedded in discussions about free will and fate) He must necessarily be part of that equation. But even in religious terms there is ample confusion regarding this concept and one only has to read the Lord’s prayer wherein it is said “… Thy Will be done on heaven on earth as it is in heaven..”. In other words even religious believers if they trace their doctrine back to the core of what is said by someone like Jesus have to admit that this particular prayer completely eradicates the notion of one’s own free will by relegating this to some divine Will which reasonably speaking does seem to be the case if you look at the initial intent of God creating this whole creation including us. It becomes expedient to dismiss the evils that occur in the world to God’s will and the things that happen to us through our own so-called efforts as our own personal will. Unfortunately, this is what perpetuates this ongoing dilemma of fate versus free will.
You can’t have it both ways, or can you? We welcome your thoughts on this.
Dadhichi Toth, is one of Australia’s most respected astrologers and face readers and is also the founder and CEO of www.astrology.com.au. Having 32 years practical experience in the field with more than 10,000 personal consultations to his credit — including celebrity, corporate and political clientele — Dadhichi is also an author having written the annual best selling Astrology Forecast series for Harlequin Mills and Boon for nine years. Dadhichi can be contacted at [email protected]
