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

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One of my favorite tools is the use of eclipse cycles to help clients recognize the recurring patterns in their lives, interpret what these patterns mean, and work productively with moments of breakthrough crisis.  The emphasis is much less on using cycles to predict the future than on using them to understand the present within the context of the past.  By tracking eclipse patterns through the chart, I’m often able to demonstrate how these patterns link together unexpected periods of our lives and offer us healing through a series of developmental crises.  But more to the point, I try to present this information in a way that supposes astrological cycles have something worthwhile to offer us, that they needn’t serve merely as a cheap cinematic trick to flatter astrologers into feeling omniscient or to let our clients off the hook as co-creators of their futures, but rather as tools to excite curiosity and promote imaginative responses. 

Used thoughtfully, eclipse cycles or any other predictive technique can offer a way to anticipate, revision, and ultimately heal the life lessons suggested by natal aspects.  Having a tool for anticipating the next chapter in the unfolding drama of our lives can help us understand not so much what events will take place, but what part of us will be summoned up by those events and given the opportunity for further development.

So here it is: I don't subscribe to a causal astrology, which suggests that the planets cause us to behave in certain ways, or cause things to happen to us.  What  interests me is using the birthchart as a kind of roadmap to divine the roads available, determine paths of least resistance, and play with alternative ways of imagining one’s life, maximizing personal growth, and having the most fun allowed by law.  But any roadmap is limited to showing us the roads available; it can't tell which road we'll choose to take, or how we'll react to what we meet along the way.   In short, maps—including birthcharts--can tell us how to get where we're going, but not where we'll end up! 

I can't speak for all astrologers, or even for the few whom I consider kindred spirits.  But my personal astrological mission statement is expressed to my clients as follows:

When we work together, I'll aim to present my perspectives in an enabling, imaginative way; to speak clearly, in meaningful language; to use your birth chart to reveal something of your choices and challenges.  I won't tell you which road to take, or presume to know where you'll end up.  Instead, we'll use the symbolism of the chart to gain perspective, when you’re uncertain about which road to choose; to find hope, when life has disappointed you; and when you’re lost, to help you find your way home.