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Prediction: When the Future is Beside the Point.
by April Elliott Kent

Originally appeared in The Wholistic Astrologer, May 2000.

Occasionally life finds us playing out some familiar piece of personal theater--a self-destructive response to particular situations, for instance, or a predilection for inappropriate relationships--when suddenly we experience a breakthrough of objectivity.  We are able to observe ourselves as if from a great distance, as if watching a character in a movie-- a genre movie, one that goes according to a well-established formula, like a teen slasher movie.  Our intrepid teenage heroine returns home from a hot date to find her front door wide open.  Instead of running for dear life (obviously the sensible response), she wanders slowly into the house, her eyes glazed over, almost as if she can’t help herself…  This is the point at which those in the audience—who’ve seen dozens of these slasher flicks and can predict exactly what’s going to happen next—rise up as one and shout at that luminous projection on the movie screen, “Don’t do it!  Don’t go in that house!”   After all, our protagonist would presumably have seen a few of these films herself, and should know better!  But of course, just because we the audience see what’s coming next doesn’t mean we can do much about it.   Even when it’s ourselves we’re observing in the all-too-familiar film of our lives, often we can only sit and watch in disgust as we wander, eyes glazed, into that house--and get ripped to shreds by a mutant serial killer.

Prediction in astrology seems to have roughly the same drawback (without the mutant serial killer): Even if we could use astrology to predict exactly what’s going to happen next (and I don’t believe we can), I’m not sure our predictions would be helpful or even particularly relevant to our clients, who have usually decided exactly what they’re going to do well before they come to see us.  Yet as astrologers, we have a powerful incentive to predict because when it works, we fulfill society’s expectations and both we and astrology look good. 

I came to astrology solidly on the side of free will and spent the first few years in practice neatly sidestepping the entire prediction issue by giving people full psychological profiles of themselves, which may or may not have been helpful, but for which I was certainly in no way qualified.  There were plenty of astrologers in my immediate circle, however, who were prediction fundamentalists: transiting Saturn squaring your Moon was going to pin your mother under a large rock, period.  While I was stumbling along in agonizing baby steps, struggling against the prevailing paradigm and irritating my few clients with my refusal to predict, my fatalistic colleagues were having little trouble attracting—and satisfying--clients.  This apparent victory of fatalism over empowerment flew in the face of everything I believed to be right about life in general and astrology in particular, but I wanted to build my practice; so for awhile I tried to play along.  I grew despondent as it became apparent that prediction actually could work on this fatalistic level, and that furthermore this is what most clients claimed they wanted.  But it really bothered me whenever I got lucky and “predicted” something for a client that “came true”, and they came back to me wide-eyed and impressed, wanting more.  It bothered me because I couldn’t get this question out of my mind:  What is the point?  Why is this helpful, “knowing” what’s going to happen?  Presuming we can know?

Today this kind of rhetoric runs fast and furious throughout the astrological community as we grow increasingly disenchanted with the old predictive model and embrace astrology’s unique ability to inspire and empower.  But as our approach to astrology becomes (we hope) more sophisticated, we have to battle the impulse to feel frustrated with, and a bit condescending toward clients and their very human desire to know “what’s going to happen next.”  Because let’s be honest: Despite our attempts to distance ourselves from this approach to prediction, to honor free will and present a more balanced and metaphorical astrology, speaking in terms of archetypes and psychology rather than events-- when we’re working with our own chart in a predictive way, don’t we look at that Pluto transit bearing down on our natal Venus and instinctively jump to the very best or very worst conclusion, hoping for the best, fearing the worst, with very little of the proportion we try to offer our clients?   Despite our best efforts to rise above superstition and fatalism, astrologers are after all mere mortals; and the need for predictability appears to be a generic human instinct.  >> There are practical reasons for wanting to predict the future... >>>