Why I Believe in Astrology
Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Separation.
While dropping by Books-A-Million for a couple of books on quantum physics and plasma waves (yes, a little light reading), I saw an interesting book on the remainder table.
A remainder table is the one most authors don’t want to see their books on because they’re not selling—and if they sell on the remainder table, marked down to $2 from $30, the author usually gets nothing. Such was the case with this book on astrology.
Do I believe in astrology? Yeah, moreso than I believe in Myers-Briggs or any of the dozens of personality tests they give us at work. Skeptics like to sneer at me for this and ask how I can be so intelligent and believe that far-off stars have any effect on me. That’s simple.
Everything in the Universe moves in patterns. The sun will come up tomorrow. Not because I say so, but because we have an established, long-term pattern of the sun coming up every morning. Even if our sun goes supernova or something, there’s a pattern to that, too, and its demise would be part of a greater pattern that we’ve not yet witnessed.
The patterns of the Universe include the sun, moon, planets, stars, asteroids. Even the cycles of our own bodies have patterns—menstrual, aging, healing, sex drives, and so forth. It’s all an intricate, elaborate, beautiful tapestry of patterns—that’s the fabric of our existence, the music of the spheres.
If certain influences are present in our lives and follow a certain pattern that we can interpret using the language of astrology, then why not? I’ve found horoscopes—the real ones, not the crap in the newspaper—to be far more accurate than any of the expensive personality tests I’ve been given in my career.
Looking too far ahead in the astrology forecasts doesn’t do me any good because too much can happen between now and then, but it’s interesting to look at natal horoscopes to understand personalities better, especially of the people I work with.
As for forecasts of the future, it’s always good to know what influences are in the patterns around me…will my energy levels be strong while under deadline, will my creativity most likely flow when I need to finish a manuscript, will my focus be, um, focused.
So when I stumbled across this huge astrology book in the remainder bin, I just had to pick it up. It lists, year by year and sign by sign, the personality traits and the relationship characteristics of anyone you want to look up, provided you know his or her birthday. So, of course, I looked up a couple of men I know…whose birthdays I remember. Lest that should sound stalkerish, once I hear a birthdate, I rarely forget it…just the way my brain is wired, but it sometimes spooks people.
It’s meant as a fun moment, looking up personalities in this book, but there’s more of an a-ha feel to it. The first man to catch my eye after my marriage broke up? Ah. The book says that silver-haired-but-youthful devil can’t stay faithful to save his life and no woman can ever measure up to his standards. Don’t even bother having a Coke with him at the food court during your lunch hour. Dead on. Okay, well, maybe not dead on in regard to the food court, but close enough.
The Treat? Ah, this explains a lot. He’s shy. I wouldn’t have thought it, given his energetic, talk-a-mile-a-minute, other- wise outgoing personality, but he’s…shy. I find that very sweet and endearing—and dead on.
The engineer my friends tried to fix me up with all through March and April? According to the book, not interested in a relationship but prefers it uncomplicated. That’s the way I would have preferred it with him, too, since I didn’t feel we had much in common but he was pretty to look at. I guess that wasn’t enough for me, and all I ever did was say maybe to him and later no. But again, dead on.
One cute young thing a friend tried repeatedly to get me to date is a hopeless romantic who always finds the positive in every situation and soothes the negatives in his life with spirituality. That’s dead on for what I learned about him on the couple of occasions we shared a meal with mutual friends. I also learned—from friends, not from the book—that he was still married, and that was that.
I can’t remember any other birthdays—probably never heard them—so I flip over to my own birthday. The book calls me a compassionate visionary and a rebellious romantic. I have to chuckle when I read that strength of purpose is a turn-on for me… because it is. Never thought of it that way before. But when I read the part about needing a partner who is real, I’m hooting with laughter. How true that I’ll bolt over a hint of artificiality from either sex, and that a man who has many different interests to share is irresistible to me. Yeah. Dead on.
Fortunately, I wasn’t born two months later or, according to the book, the kind of guy who’d appeal to me would be a romance novel cover boy.
“Looking too far ahead in the astrology forecasts doesn’t do me any good because too much can happen between now and then”
How often do I see this, and in my case, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!!!
I did this with an important relationship in my life. I took the charts of all concerned, and looked up important transits every three years from the beginning of the relationship through the next 25 years.
O
M
G.
Not only did I learn about childhood emotional problems I had that I never even knew about and REALLY needed to fix in order for this relationship not to crash and sink like Titanic, but I am also discovering that one’s transits can be divided into different timelines that describe the possibilities you have for your life to unfold into. YOU choose WHICH one you will get.
Sounds like stuff and nonsense, but it isn’t. My mom had BPD, and I have been so affected by that I spent my first 40 years devouring everything I could find on BPD, codependency, relationship problems, mental illness, emotional problems, you name it. My therapist tells me I know enough to be able to do her job. Without this background I could never have identified the three life paths that are unfolding right now in my transits, but I know enough about childhood emotional problems and how they unfold in adulthood to know when they are being described in a horoscope–especially when a former therapist like Liz Greene writes such wonderful transit interpretations I can look up and see how they apply to me.
Knowing what I know, and seeing what has come true over the past four years and why it happened, this is one chart and one set of transits that I can definitely see these really are the paths I can take in my life, and if I took this one or that one that really is what would happen. This has enabled me to shake myself out of some doldrums and find some courage to work hard, because I see what will happen to me if I DON’T, and what I could miss out on, too. This is far different from how most astrologers work with transits.
After my experience, I can definitely see the value of a “whole life” astrological reading.