Dealing With Fate - Is Our Fortune In Our Stars Or Our Choice?

In writing about the great comet of 1246, Roger Bacon espoused his belief that if the comet had been discovered on time and rightly interpreted, the slaughter of Christians in the warfare that followed in its wake could have been mitigated or avoided. Bacon believed, then, that enlightened leadership can protect the uneducated masses.

      So it was in ancient Nineveh. Biblical tales suggest that prophecy is often a warning of logical consequences and that negative prophecy can be nullified under certain conditions. The King of Nineveh was no fool. The prophet Jonah, reluctant to accept his job, but thinking it better than remaining in the stomach of the whale, broadcast that Nineveh would soon be destroyed in retribution for her people's sins. The King and the populace took the message to heart. When nothing happened, Jonah was aghast at having made a fool of himself by announcing a prophecy that never took place.

      In The Astrology of Fate, contemporary astrologer and Jungian psychologist Liz Greene brings forth a fascinating concept-that the machinations of fate change with the times. Giving us a window into the world of the Renaissance astrologers, Greene notes that they gave extremely precise and often dire predictions. In contrast, modern-day western astrologers usually couch especially negative predictions as "potential" happenings. We tend to throw out the window much of the medieval fatalistic fanfare. The only problem with such a disowning is that the Renaissance astrologers were remarkably accurate.

      Greene illustrates the point with the case of the unfortunate King Henri II of France. In 1555, an Italian astrologer called Gauricus warned King Henri II, who was then thirty-seven, to beware of death during the summer of his 42nd year, through an injury to the head during single combat. It didn't occur to King Henri to refute this dark augury. Rather, he responded by announcing in fashion true to the Aries that he was, that combat was a noble way to go. The king's death was also predicted by the seer Nostradamus. He published a verse which did not mention the king by name but which alluded to his crest. According to the verse, "the old lion" would be overcome in single combat. "Through the cage of gold (the King was known to wear a gold helmet) his eyes will be pierced. Two wounds become once, and then a cruel death." No one doubted the prophecy would come to pass. Quietly, arrangements were begun to prepare for the next monarch.

      Yes, he died as predicted, in the summer of his 42nd year, during a tournament. Analyzing Henri II's charts, Greene shows the probable significators of certain and cruel death as interpreted by the Renaissance astrologer. The same transits, she notes, no longer necessarily bode the same evil. Greene contends that Henri knew of himself only in terms of the persona created by his office, what he had been taught to think, believe and feel. Since he accepted his role as such, his fate outplayed itself on the only level of reality he recognized-the physical.
      Greene concludes that it is necessary for us today to look at the horoscope psychologically, for we live in a psychological age. "Outer and inner reflect each other and if an inner meaning emerges linked with an act of outer fate, then one's relationship with that fate has changed. Sometimes the form in which the fate manifests changes too." In truth, we live in a psycho-cosmo age as not only our understanding of consciousness is radically changing but also our understanding of the physical universe we inhabit.

      Remember, during the time of King Henri II's reign, Saturn, the gatekeeper, was the seventh and last known planetary sphere. In the last two hundred years, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto have been discovered. Now it is curious that the influence of planets seems to concur with their discovery. Uranus didn't pop up out of nowhere, but following its discovery a series of revolutions rocked the world. Observation has shown Uranus to be the harbinger of drastic change. This principle works in the personal astrological chart as well. A memory or record emerges from the unconscious. It was always there, but we denied it or were ignorant of his value. Now we must deal with it consciously, in the here and now. According to Dane Rudhyar, the outer planets symbolize the process of metamorphous of man becoming "more than man", our collective destiny at the threshold of the Aquarian Age. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, "shatter, dissolve and purify" us so that we can perceive of ourselves in new terms and become "citizens of the Galaxy" (see Atlantis Rising issues 14 and 15). Rudhyar noted that man always discovers outside of himself what he is to become. Our understanding of self and the world we inhabit, beginning with the discoveries of physics in this century, are becoming increasingly multi-dimensional and at the same time increasingly simplified. Grasping inner reality is, in fact, ultimately more essential than knowing what will happen. Overlapping the discovery of the outer planets have been studies in the dimensional nature of consciousness. Unconsciousness and subconscious were not forces to be reckoned with in King Henri's date. When we look at the chart as karmic effect, rather than karmic cause, we can grasp core concepts and by embracing fate, rather than running from her, turn her around.