Destiny & Freewill
Destiny & Free-will
Some people tell me that they’d rather not know what is in their chart so that they can remain free, which is such an interesting concept. Basically, what they are saying is that if they bury their heads in the sand, then they stand a chance of escaping their destiny. Ok… that’s a way of looking at it!
The dictionary defines Destiny as the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future, or the hidden power believed to control what will happen in our future, in other words, our fate.
Free-will on the other hand is the capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action, unhindered.
So…. does astrology lock us in destiny, or do we have free-will?
Astrology comes from Astro-Logos, the language of the stars. The general consensus is that the stars incline but do not determine.
It is very difficult to dissociate Astrology from the concept of re-incarnation. When taking his first independent breath, the newborn is imprinted by the positions of the planets in the sky at that special moment, that reflect
- the good karma he has accumulated in past embodiements,
- the difficult karma he needs to transmute, and
- the lessons, he still has to learn.
His chart becomes the blue-print of his new incarnation. Even in premature births, or births by caesarian, that unique moment of birth, and the general conditions of a baby’s life (social conditions, geographic location, financial situation, education etc…) are never random. I believe that a mutual agreement is struck between a specific soul and his/her parents as many accounts of small children remembering how they chose their parents, attest.
But then, is absolutely everything written in our birth chart?
Read by someone who knows astrology well, that celestial map contains a LOT of information. A lot more than most people suspect. So make sure you truly trust the person you are giving your birth data to.
Our chart, the picture of the heavens for the date, place and time we were born, gives us a map. Just to stay as simple as possible, because Astrology is a quite complex science:
- the planets each represent an active principle of life: the Sun, our basic personality, the Moon, our instinctive emotional responses, our childhood, Mercury, the manner in which we think and communicate, Venus, how we express our feelings, Mars, our courage and self-assertion, Jupiter, our philosophy of life and adventurousness, Saturn, our relationship to duty, responsibilities, structure and hard work, Uranus, our ability to be uniquely ourselves, Neptune, our intuition and spiritual consciousness, and Pluto our passion, intensity, sexuality, penetrating insight and attraction to the mysteries of life.
- The signs these planets are in, color their expression,
- the houses, reveal the areas of our life that they rule and where they operate.
- and the aspects, the angular relationships between the planets, show how they interact with each other.
All of this creates an intricate map that is unique to each individual. Alan Leo, the great British Astrologer of the XIXth century said that “Character is destiny”. Which is very true. Quite simplistically, because people’s psychology is a lot more complicated than that, for example, a person with the Sun in Aries, will be courageous, forceful, dynamic, positive, enterprising, impulsive and bold, while a person with the Sun in Virgo, will be much more service oriented, attentive to details, hard-working, selfless, humble, great at putting order in disorder, and bringing healing to the diseased. In a sales job, that Sun in Aries person will be most suited for talking people into buying, and the Sun in Virgo will be happiest dealing with the accounting, buried in an office where he/she can work away without distractions.
If a child for example has Saturn in the Vth house, that child will gravitate towards serious hobbies, such as reading or writing. As an adolescent, romance is going to be approached so deeply, that it may not happen at all. But when turning into an adult, that person would either not want any children or just one, and that responsibility will be taken extremely seriously. That person, may turn a creative hobby into a solid, structured career and become a professional novelist for example. While the position of Saturn in the Vth house won’t change in that person’s chart throughout his/her life, the consciousness with which this influence is used, does. The planetary tools we were born with could be likened to the ingredients of a cake. With the same sugar, flour, eggs, milk, one will burn his cookies while the other will create a sumptuous cake. And this is where the notion of free-will comes into play.
What we need to remember is that we don’t have just one future, but many possible futures depending on the choices we make at any given moment. And that is the difference between a psychic and an astrologer. A psychic will predict the most probably future of a person based on their past and present and if the person accepts that outcome, the psychic is good. And Astrologer on the other hand cannot and should not predict for example if someone will get into an accident, what we can predict is that this is a period when our anger could be closer to the surface and we should give it a positive outlet, stay away from potentially aggressive people and be extra careful while driving. The value of astrology is to help us focus on the contents, the underlying energy we are dealing with, the specific lesson we need to learn at any given time. The outcome will then take care of itself and does not need to manifest in a dramatic way. The purpose of Astrology is not to determine what that future will be, because we are then imprinting a specific future in the consciousness of a person and that is NOT helpful in anyway. For example, when Saturn is transiting our Vith house of health, the way we relate to our physical body comes under scrutinity. This is the perfect time for a medical checkup and a reevaluation of our nutrition and how we take care of our body. Now, if we do not listen to that advice, continue abusing our health, doing drugs, drinking an excessive amount of alcohol, not sleeping enough and never exercising, that’s a time when we do run the risk of developing a serious illness. But this is not a fatality. We still have the free-will to heed Astrology’s advice and revamp our health habits. And that is also the beauty of it. When we experience dark periods in our lives, we may feel that things will NEVER get better, ever… And yet, looking at our chart, we can tell this is only for a time, maybe a few weeks, or a few months, but definitely NOT forever! As astrology shows us the light at the end of the tunnel, we can start walking towards it to create a much more positive future for ourselves.
Basically, what Astrology is saying is: “It is raining outside” and that is destiny.
But, our free-will, allows us to choose:
1. To stay home with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book by the fire
2. Grab boots, a raincoat and an umbrella and step outside
3. Without any protection, go and dance in the rain, and get ourselves totally wet!
All Astrology said was “It is raining outside”. Period.
When I started teaching astrology in my early twenties in Geneva, there was always someone in the audience to ask me how we could transcend our chart…….. That was such a weird question to me: “Why would we want to transcend ourselves?”. Isn’t the purpose of incarnation to fully live who we are ? My answer was, and still is: “By living it.”
But it was such an interesting idea, that I gave it some further thought, and as I was studying the charts of people I would consider enlightened such as Krishnamurti for example, what I found, was that the more evolved someone is, the more aligned they are with the highest expression of the planetary energies in their chart. On the other hand, people who are floating away, and not really achieving anything of value in their lives, seem to be walking next to their charts without ever entering it.
To me, not wanting to know our birth chart is very much like hoping to reach a destination without a GPS. If you are as direction challenged as I am, and I really am challenged…. ☹ you will lose a lot of time and money, just driving around, in the hope of getting where you want to go, with no guarantee of ever arriving there! It is much smarter to plan our itinerary to take the fastest route, or decide to enjoy the scenic road, visit places of interest on the way, and still arrive on time, having had a relaxed, fun, enriching journey.
So, while the big lines of our destiny ARE written in our chart, knowing what they are, gives us the free-will to choose how to lead our life to make the most of our gifts, talents, and lessons, and develop ourselves to the best of our capacities. If enlightenment were easy, there would be no merit in reaching the most refined expression of ourselves, but it is not. It requires choices, consciousness and work, and Astrology is an invaluable aid in helping us know what tools we came with, and how to wisely use them to reach our highest evolution.
Michelle Karén, M.A., D.F.Astrol.S.
https://www.MichelleKaren.com
https://www.YouTube.com/c/michellekarenastrologershaman