Tis the Season of Turning Points

Original https://tinyurl.com/wtzm6sf wishingmoon.com This article was originally published in Ambush Magazine.

As you’re reading this column your mind will be occupied by the goings on of the season. Religious rites coloring different times of the year find their footing in the seasons. For example the hopeful moment of the birth of Christ on the darkest day of the year finds expression in the cardinal turn of the winter solstice. Cardinal, turning points are the screws upon which the world and our lives spin. The Greek word tropos means turn and is the origin of the word tropical. Maybe you just need to get the hell out of town and go on a vacation! Western Astrology based on the tropical zodiac, the zodiac embodying the turning of the seasons, has something to say about this season and you might want to stick around. I believe the gift of this year is the gift of family. Regardless how far one wanders family ancestry is never far behind. Your deep emotional connection to past origins emerges and when you explore this terrain, you make gains. Family interactions bring up issues of identity because how you’re known to the world and how your aunt knows you are two very different things. You are likely to have more of a vested interest in the former. The trick is not to be stubborn about this. It is actually an opportune moment as tropos is also the root of the word opportune meaning this is where you can take bold action and triumph when the gift of family presents itself. This is not a material, conspicuous gift but a gift that gives personal gratification namely in the form of love and nurturance from irritating family members. Do not drink too much as you’ll find moderate sobriety provides the healing you’ve been seeking. When you’re given the chance to let go of your idealized self for the person your family knows you by, realize this is a gift in disguise even if it leads you straight into your grandmother pulling at your ear, gushing over just how much you’ve grown.   

Aries: March 21 - April 19 

More than any sign this season, you make gains with your family, especially your father or paternal-like energy. This is helpful for you but you have to let some past incidents go. You’ll find that by balancing some of the tension with family, the other sectors of your life light up.  

Taurus: April 20 - May 20

Your family gets entangled with your romantic life and children. This is going to take a little bit of juggling as it’s ironically hard to find love amongst family drama and the needs of your kids. The “kids” can also be your creative projects or creative babies. Communication is key here and this is where you make gains. Protecting yourself regardless of the outcome and emphasizing your thoughts as opposed to deeply held beliefs.

Gemini: May 21- June 20

Don’t be afraid to look into the family finances this holiday season. Proceed with caution and diplomacy, but there are massive changes occurring in the structures of the wills being written. You’ll find that dealing with the demons of inheritances and family trusts provides you will some long term psychic relief while ultimately padding your own checkbook. 

Cancer: June 21 - July 22

Siblings come to the fore for you this holiday season. You also make gains in relationships and friends, but you lose some partners along the way. This is surprising but choosing the company you keep allows you to progress personally.  

Leo: July 23 - August 22

You’re feeling a bit snooty about your money. This is related to your mother and her past sacrifices she made to get you where you are. However, the psychological challenge is to let this attitude go and receive the gift you’ve been given. Money is only as good as the current along which you spend it. Spend it wisely and don’t worry about its literal worth. 

Virgo: August 23 - September 22

Out of all the signs, you yourself are most deeply connected with your family this season. This is very feminine, maternal, changeable energy that is related to your past. There are great gains to be made here amongst friends and family but only if you juggle these intense feelings and realize they are part of the larger picture as you move into the future. Let go of your criticisms and pretensions. 

Libra: September 23 - October 22

The male head of the family is strong this holiday season, and you do best to go with him. A rich, dark son will seek to overthrow him, and might succeed in doing so, but stick with the elder. He will need your help even though he might not realize it. Help this modern King Lear pick the right child this time around. 

Scorpio: October 23 - November 21  

You’re generally in a very powerful position through the end of the year into 2020 and then again in spring. Be careful though not to get in fights with coworkers or siblings during those respective times. You do best when you apply power judiciously. If you don’t, you end up scorching the path for all those around. 

Sagittarius: November 22 - December 21

You’re feeling very proud of your career, and so is your mother. However you believe in yourself so strongly that you don’t see the bigger picture of your finances. Glory is great, but cash is king. Make sure your thinking is clear about the realities of the money related to your work life or you might be headed for a wrong turn that grounds you out. 

Capricorn: December 22 - January 19

For the next year, you’ll be juggling a lot of things as you bounce from one area of your life to the next, but this season, focus on the love that your family can give. This really provides something spiritually for you, and you might all even decide to take a trip together. If not, at least connect philosophy about what y’all believe and get to the core of who you really are as a family. 

Aquarius: January 20 - February 18

It’s critical that you take your time during this holiday season. We can’t escape the time in which we inhabit in this dimension, and as Aquarius your head is usually in the future. Your father or paternal energy is reemphasized this season, and you do best to ground yourself out a bit, coming down to earth and putting your futuristic visions on hold. You’ll be surprised what happens when you get your head out of the clouds. 

Pisces: February 19 - March 20

This holiday season, you are able to make gains creatively, romantically, and with children. With friends, not so much. With things going so well, your partner feels a bit cocky. You do best not to get emotionally tied up with that feeling and let things going spiritually. When you let things go, magic happens.  

Astrology was originally understood as omens, prophecies, and oracles. Whenever you go to a psychic, tarot reader, or astrologer like me, you’re engaging with the possibilities of the future. But modern astrology is also the alignment of the heavens at your moment of birth that serves as the signature of your personality. This combination of your star chart and sun sign—Aries, Taurus, etc.—and the usage of that tool to divine the future is here for your taking. Astrology offers the LGBTQ community a chance to reclaim a space lost to modern science and religion. Ancient pagan cultures venerated divination and celebrated what we now recognize as modern gay elements. These horoscopes are for your entertainment, so let’s start the party that will take us to the stars!

Is it Fate or Free Will?

I recently gave a lecture at the American Italian Cultural Center in NOLA, the topic exploring the spiritual dimensions of three major Italian films. For all of you astro buffs out there, there was a massive amount of transiting 9th house activity in my astrology chart, the area concerning travel, both literally and figuratively, and higher knowledge and learning. I was struck by the complex and paradoxical nature of the directors’ spiritual and faith orientations; for example, Federico Fellini was a lifelong Catholic yet consulted the I-Ching, an ancient Chinese system of divination, and also recorded his dreams dogmatically. He, under strict supervision, took LSD to gain insight into different realms, yet learned through some of his dreams that though he often played the part of a rebellious child, he appreciated the check of the church on his creative machinations.

What ultimately interested me, though, was Fellini’s admonition that one shouldn’t always consult such tools as I-Ching or astrology, and if one did, he ran the risk of being paralyzed by an idle, overactive mentality. Interesting, in astrology, the 12th house, arguably the most spiritual of all, symbolizes isolation but also spiritual freedom from the material world; so, perhaps confinement isn’t always so bad. Yet Fellini had an inarguable point, namely the intent, and perhaps even the spirit of consulting a higher, mysterious power has as much to do with the act of divination itself, whatever the method.

Which brings me to the greatest of all the questions: is our existence governed by fate or free will? This question has animated virtually all cultures over all time. It seems the more ancient you go, the more a culture believes in fate. But with the rise of Western civilization, science, and modern religion, and the subsequent discovery and reinterpretation of the laws of nature (notice I did not say mastery of nature), many of us lead incalculably more comfortable lives than those even one hundred years ago. But the questions still remains, what is fate, and what is free will?

The author of the famous Moment of Astrology believes that astrology as the Queen of all systems of divination allows us to negotiate with the heavens. We might not ultimately decide our fates, but we do get to negotiate. I take this a step further and submit that the reason (pun accidentally occurring) we get to negotiate is because we accept chance and fate in the form of things like astrology. One is born at a specific time and place, the heavens transfixed in a moment, the seed that ultimately flowers into one’s existence. Yet coming to an astrology session means a momentary suspension of one’s supposed free will agency and that by consulting and asking a different, oblique, and arguably higher power for guidance, one gains free will agency. I’ve been holding as of late that it is no “I” as an astrologer who performs astrology, but I is “I” who learns and studies astrology and in the moment of an Inner Makeup session, performs a reading. This is akin to a musician who learns his craft through practice and then performs a piece of music or an actor who studies his lines and then recites them in a play. This is certainly not the egoistic “I” of free will.

Yet again, by suspending one’s self, the self actually becomes empowered in a circuitous turn of events, akin to a suspension of disbelief during the witnessing of a performance or work of art, a momentary slip of the inquiring mind, and the gaining of insights that come from within, or somewhere else, that lead to a transformation of the self. 

Might Fellini have been onto something? That how we approach such matters is just as critical as the matter itself? As the poet Rilke famously asked of us, Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

This theme led me to recall an old episode of the Twilight Zone, Nick of Time, now available on Netflix where a young, newly-wed couple becomes stranded in a small Ohio town and discovers a “Mystic Seer” machine/napkin holder in a local diner. We are introduced to the wife who brandishes a confident, striding attitude whereas the husband (a young William Shatner) fashions a much more brooding, anxiety-laden attitude towards everyday affairs. The husband is up for a promotion at work, and after consulting the Mystic Seer, who spits out a slip “it has been decided in your favor,” he hurriedly rushes to a pay phone to call his employer. He learns through the grapevine that he has received the promotion, fulfilling the prophecy of the oracle. The husband consults the oracle obsessively over a variety of matters with varying degrees of ambiguity and accuracy, but nevertheless the couple comes to believe in the oracle, that is until they decide it is better not to consult it rather than consult it and to follow the wife’s initial buoyant “take life as it is” attitude vs. the fatalistic, fearful attitude of the husband. The episode closes with another couple who apparently consults the Mystic Seer machine habitually and are portrayed as addicted and entrapted, in astrological terms by twelfth house matters. 

Which brings me back to Fellini’s charge that one shouldn’t consult methods of divination too much and that intent has a lot to do with the outcome especially where self-fulfilling prophesies are concerned. But this still leaves open the question of fate vs. free will. We like to think, think being the operative word, that we have free will. But the material sciences, and/or spirituality, have taught us that within and outside of ourselves there is much more going on beneath the surface. Regardless, does the mind, especially our conscious perceiving mind, have the ability to govern fate? I believe yes, but the percentage is small. Also, as Carl Jung noted, when the conscious ego becomes inflated, when we try to become gods controlling fate, we are invariably slapped back down by nature via tragedy. Yet this does not imply an entirely deterministic existence.

If we have the ability to freeze phenomena, like an individual’s birth as symbolized through a natal chart, through the art of astrology, at least for a moment, we are gifted a glimpse into something beyond space and time because a birth chart, and any astrology chart, is a snapshot in time—but it doesn’t stop time. It is a chance to reflect and glean new insights garnered from a process largely governed by chance. This is where I’ve struggled a bit. Is chance deterministic? Is there a set order of numbers, directions of particles, and movement of light that is destiny? Yes and no, because we know that when we look at something, the observer effect, we change it. However, that does not mean we receive a blank check for free will, and regardless of our perspective, massive forces forever flow beyond our control.

So again, it goes back to Fellini, who started as a gag writer and artist, and in his words, ended up a philosopher. In astrological terms, this progression would look something like Gemini to Sagittarius, curiosity to knowledge. The only question is, what are your questions? And will you love them enough to believe in them and hopefully receive divine revelation? Or, will you fearfully seek the answers that may never come?