The main objection of skeptics to astrology is that such a system threatens the notions of human agency and free will.
If the entirety of our personality potential is indicated in the birth chart, how can we ever grow? Do we really have the power to decide for ourselves, or are we merely pawns in a game we did not design?
If the future is limited to the planets that happen to appear on our maps, do we really have any power over anything?
Astrology and other forms of divination may seem fundamentally fatalistic to the casual observer, but upon closer examination we discover that the effect of these paranormal arts is liberation, not captivity.
Just as an artist is liberated from the chaos of ever-expanding potential by the boundaries of a canvas, astrology liberates us by defining the boundaries. It gives us a sense of the basic potential of each person or moment, and helps us understand what is within our power to change, and what we might best honor, accept, and adapt to.
Finding wholeness
To some extent, your essential character is innate, as we can see from children’s natural attraction to certain activities over others. You enter life with certain preferences, affinities, talents, and temperamental tendencies over which you have no control.
What is However, within your control is the level of consciousness to which you bring these energies, and the degree to which you balance or integrate them with the other elements of your personality.
Each celestial body represents a fundamental characteristic of the human mind, the whole of which encompasses the entire human psyche. Everyone has a certain way of expressing aggressive energy (Mars), and everyone has a style of connecting or interacting with others (Venus). Everyone has instinctive security needs (Moon), and everyone has some ambition (Sun).
You come into this world ‘pre-programmed’ to express these psychological impulses in a certain style. No one would deny this, because it is clear that some people are naturally satisfied by a level of variability and change that would terrify another who thrives on constancy and certainty. Some are natural warriors, while others live to please and accommodate.
However, our strongest tendencies do not create a balanced personality. Over the course of our lives, our job as humans is to balance, regulate, and elevate our primitive nature by seeking to find wholeness. We must establish all our planetary placements – not just those we most prefer.
Each of us tends to let some of our planets speak louder than others. There are activities or areas of action in which we feel more comfortable, and there are aspects of our own personality that we find uncomfortable, scary, or disapprove of.
These disowned planetary placements are often projected onto friends or partners; we are attracted to people who embody the qualities that belong to us, but which we find difficult to integrate into our own personality.
As inside, so outside
A disintegrated planet can only be ignored for so long before it powerfully demands our attention. This is where esotericists and psychologists come together. The great psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote: ‘If a situation is not made conscious, it happens outside like fate. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will determine your life and you will call it fate.”
In practical, worldly terms it is easy to recognize the truth of this. If we ignore our problems, deny our feelings, or go along with something when we know we shouldn’t for an extended period of time, the situation will eventually spiral out of control until we are forced to face reality.
It’s like there’s an elephant in the room that we’re ignoring, and it’s getting bigger the longer we ignore it. Soon our entire lives revolve around avoiding looking at the giant elephant. It takes us a lot of effort to avoid seeing it.
Denial or suppression of the truth destabilizes the situation from below, until eventually the truth comes to light. Such an explosion can be quite disastrous, affecting marriages, friendships, careers, finances and even physical health.
The same principle applies to any planetary placement in the birth chart. If you deny some aspect of your nature or try to be something you are not, this unlived part of your nature will knock at your door until you let it in.
This can be an unpleasant experience. When a relationship ends badly, it may reveal an emotional need that you have been denying, or the way you have been trying to suppress your real feelings. If you’re laid off, you may be forced to face the fact that you’re pursuing a career you don’t even like, and that you’re walking away from an activity you’ve always secretly dreamed of. A health problem may force you to examine your lifestyle and recognize how you have suppressed powerful emotions or creative energy with food, alcohol, or drugs.
Take life by the cosmic horns
When we embrace planetary aspects rather than denying, suppressing, or fighting them, we move from bondage back to freedom. We realize that these are needs that must be honored and satisfied somewhere in our lives, and we find opportunities to express them.
Some astrologers even apply this principle to transits. If you look ahead in your chart and see that a difficult Saturn transit is coming in your seventh house, instead of anxiously anticipating problems in your close relationship, you can choose to proactively work to resolve the long-standing issues you’re dealing with. that you already know about, you can obtain in your partnerships.
Instead of waiting for Saturn to reveal the weak links in your chain through painful constriction, you can take on this responsibility yourself. If the time is nevertheless characterized by this theme, you might as well state the conditions and anticipate any problem. In this way you forego the need for an unpleasant, cataclysmic revelation.
You are not born into a completely formless world; you are born into a world that has taken a certain shape, but which you can happily adapt if you adapt well to it. Your nature is the same. This is the answer to the question, “Am I ruled by fate or by free will?”
The truth is that destiny is what you have not yet applied your free will to. Take on the task of bringing the disintegrated aspects of yourself into the fold of your conscious personality, and you become the one who steers the wheel of destiny.
