There are practical reasons for wanting to predict
the future. Ask any farmer whose livelihood depends
on predicting cycles of weather. But your average urban
client is not seeking advice on optimal planting times, and
I suspect the majority of astrology clients in the industrialized
world would tell you they seek predictions out of a need to
feel “in control.” In fact, I think many of us
would rather have advance knowledge of a miserable future
than entertain optimistic uncertainties; at least we’d know
what was coming down, instead of sitting back grinning and
hoping, then looking like an idiot when life pulls the rug
out from under us. Just as often, though, the desire
for prediction seems to have the opposite motivation:
A need for assurance that the future is preordained and we
therefore have little control or responsibility for creating
the future we want.
Astrology’s dirty little secret is that even
with a strong grasp of traditional predictive methods we cannot
predict events with absolute reliability, because we are only
human and because our clients have a great deal of influence
on how their lives play out. For skeptics, that’s precisely
the point at which the entire argument for astrology falls
apart. But what if we could predict the future precisely
and reliably? Even on those occasions when I play the
prediction game, it’s my experience that very few clients
alter their behavior based on what I predict. We’ve
all had the experience of being asked for advice by a client,
or even just a good friend, and after we’ve given advice—really
great advice, we think, usually a variation on “Don’t go into
that house!”—they listen carefully and nod and say, “Yes,
you’re right, you’re absolutely right.” And then they
leave and make a beeline for whatever destructive person or
situation we discouraged them from pursuing! Whether
or not my prediction will eventually be proven correct is,
at that point, completely irrelevant; the deed is done, and
the best my client can do is benefit from 20/20 hindsight.
So if we can’t necessarily predict events too
well with astrology, and if to the extent we can people don’t
heed our warnings anyway, what are we left with?
Hopefully, a system that encourages personal development and
change. Whether it’s ourselves or our clients whom we
observe playing out the same mistakes over and over, our new
paradigm for predictive astrology is a tool to help spot destructive
trends and redirect energies into more creative channels.
But change and empowerment are a hard sell, compared with
the passive gratification of predictions.
It seems most of us must come to a point of
flat-out emotional trauma before we’re willing to consider
change. It’s when we’re at this point of crisis—when
we have been liberated by pain from our usual defenses-- that
counsel of any type seems to have the best chance of actually
making a difference, but it’s also when we seek “prediction”
most desperately. It’s at these moments of crisis that
astrologers feel most pressured to give clients what they
want: prediction, and the certainty it represents. But
prediction at this stage of the game is dangerous, because
it encourages a mindset which seeks a static future-- and
that is not a mindset conducive to transformation in the present.
If we choose to work in the so-called “predictive”
realm—if we choose to draw correlations between planetary
cycles and cycles of human transformation--we need to find
a way of interpreting the astrological language in a way that
places past and future events in the context of a larger landscape.
Understanding can go a long way toward substituting for certainty;
if we have understanding and perspective, we have an inner
compass that guides us through whatever external dramas come
our way. Used as a tool for building this kind of understanding,
astrology can reveal possibilities in an exciting and meaningful
way and offer a satisfying alternative to the no-win choice
between fatalistic, head-in-the-sand fortune telling and the
kind of squooshy, feel-good soft-pedaling that leaves clients
feeling angry that “You didn’t warn me that would happen!”.
One of my favorite tools... (next
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