An Introduction to Astrology

When I was 13 I had a rather strange friend with a very different background than mine. She wasn't my best friend but she was the type of person you never forget. We were both about the same height and build with long red hair. Kristin was the type who leaped without looking and I was the type who never leaped at all for fear of all the things I couldn't control. So here we were, good twin and bad twin, sitting at a lunch table, our attention riveted in an enormous purple book. It was her mother's, that she'd brought into school that day. The pages were yellowed, the corners were folded, and we turned each paper with care as they tried to escape the binding. The book looked so mysterious and important to us that we took it as seriously as if we were opening the tombs of pharaohs for the first time. And in that book were descriptions of all the twelve zodiac signs along with descriptions of the different planets and what they mean in your chart. Kristin and I drew up charts for ourselves with her mother's help. And this became an ongoing theme in our lives for many years. Even when I thought I had exhausted my interest in astrology and even though I hit dead ends and gave up sometimes, eventually I always return to my original fascination with this ancient science.

I've heard astrology described as a pseudoscience. If you're not familiar with the term, it means a fake science! But chemistry is a very real science and all the ideas and innovations in chemistry can be credited to ancient people's fascination with the idea of alchemy. Ancient alchemists were obsessed with the idea that they could turn ordinary substances into gold. Their thinking was that all things in the world are made of the same little pieces, and if they could just rearrange those pieces then they could make anything into what they wanted it to be. That sounds a lot like wizards and magic but it is also the founding principle of chemistry. Every thing in the world IS made of the same elements. Rearranging them is far harder than ancient alchemists could've ever dreamed but the concept was still true. And I would like to suggest the same thing about astrology. I believe that the methods astrology uses are outdated and no one can dispute the fact that the stars HAVE changed since the ancient Babylonians were looking at them. However, I believe that the underlying principle to astrology is that the time and place of a person's birth is an indication of their personality, their relationships with other, and to a MUCH smaller extent, their destiny. I know a lot of people don't believe in destiny and I'm not out to prove that it exists. The truth is that when your life seems unremarkable you want to tell yourself that you were " born for greater things" but then when you feel like you're stuck in an awful pattern where bad things keep happening you tell yourself " I'm the master of my own destiny! I decide" Funny thing isn't it?  People are rarely happy or satisfied, and when they do manage it, they don't like to stay that way for long.

So here's what this has to do with astrology the way I see it.... weather you believe you have an ultimate destiny or not, most of you will probably agree that your life has a pattern to it. The pattern may be subtle or it could be very obvious. These patterns probably happen because of the similarities in the decisions you've made over the course of your life. These similarities are a representation of your personality and where you are on your personal journey of emotional development. I'll talk more about all of these things later but for now I will wrap up the point. Astrology helps you understand your personality and your personality is what causes you to make similar decisions throughout your life, and so it can help you understand the destiny you are going to make for yourself, through your own actions.