Predictions
When I first met Peter I believed in predictions. Now I know “it’s complicated”. That’s the phrase people use to describe their love relationships when some things are true and some things aren’t as they’re meant to be. “It’s complicated” we say—like when two people love each other but question whether they are meant to be together—when they look at their partner and say: “I can’t live with you, and I can’t live without you.” In any relationship at all, there’s often the questions of: “Is this meant to be? Are we fated to be together? If so, why? Am I learning something here or repeating a pattern from a past life?” And even if we don’t even believe in these things, most of us are still curious.
These were the questions that were brewing in my head the day I met Peter. I was 29 then and I was pondering my single life. In what way might I be fated to be a solitary Soul? Maybe I would never meet someone to love; maybe I was too proud or impossible. In retrospect, I believe my desire to meet Peter helped bring us together. The world desire means “coming from the stars.” Maybe it was meant to be.
I still believe in predictions, but I know now that astrological predictions are lived out in their very unique and particular ways. How do we survive the transiting “death and rebirth experiences” and live through the hard times? When astrologers look at the predictions for these times—like all those “2012 predictions,” they are alarmed by how full of challenge and change they are. The predictions sound complicated and full of optimistic pessimism, or pessimistic optimism. You choose. True or not true, fate is questionable, change is hard, and still we have to keep making decisions.
When I was very young I lived with these questions, and when I heard my first astrologer speak, I decided to deal in the world of predictions—I decided to become an astrologer. I joined the ranks of those who were “attempting to read the mind of God.” I believed in astrology then, and that meant I believed that there was a meaning and an order in the Universe that was –almost but not fully--beyond understanding. This “reluctant astrologer” knows that it’s complicated. And because I knew I needed to learn about love and loving, I decided to write a book about it: An Astrological Guide to Different Kinds of Love.
And so I began the book and still write long emails to the young woman I began mentoring in astrology. Kendra is 29 years old and I’m 59—but that’s now. When I first met Peter, I was young and believed in predictions of a different sort….a more predictable sort. Perhaps I underestimated the power of free will and the Tsunami-like impact of the unconscious, and how our multiple selves and inner voices, like our planets, each have their own agendas and desires that don’t always agree. It takes, what Carl Jung, called the “Self” to co-ordinate them. I like to think of the Self as the center of a mandala.
So, was I destined to meet Peter that day in 1982 on Beacon Hill in Boston? Would I accept “us” without question? No. That’s not what an astrologer would do. Astrologers look up charts and ponder endlessly. But the question remained: Were we meant to be together or not? Was the hand of fate involved?
And what about now—that Grand Planetary Cross we are all living through, and those gloom and doom predictions of 2012? What about the perfect metaphor of Uranus entering Aries in March of 2011 as the earthquake and Tsunami happened in Japan? Uranus, the planet of revolution and unpredictability literally quaked the Earth, and what about the revolutions breaking out in Africa? The accuracy of the symbolism is uncanny.
Astrology presupposes a meaningfullness, a lack of randomness, a mathematical patterning that can be measured and felt. Fate and destiny. A planet is strongest and acts up when it enters and leaves a sign—and this revolutionary planet, Uranus, had just left the watery sign of Pisces to enter the fiery realm of Aries. Mix Aries and Uranus together— what are we supposed to do? Fear is not the answer. Does astrology help us prepare? Maybe. But perhaps what it does best is give us hope as we look back and see how the “dots in the picture of our life and times” are strung together. Good or bad, if meaningful patterns exist, then God has a chance to exist in some form as well. Call this a higher power, meaningful evolution…you name it.
The synchronicity of meaning-making, or astrology, is most clearly seen in retrospect rather than in prediction…yet still we want to know. We want to imagine our futures and make good decisions—so we look at the many ways these planetary predictions may play out in our lives. It seems to give us a measure of control, and is the subject of a book—this book. And love…
And so, I met Peter and our story began…do you think it was predictable?
© Elizabeth Spring http://www.elizabethspring.com/ (Preface to new book: "Predictions: Private Papers of A Reluctant Astrologer"
