Prediction – Never say never!

Definition of prediction: a thing predicted; a forecast (p 1140, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Oxford University Press 1996)

The question of whether it is possible to foretell the future is one which has preoccupied humans ever since we evolved into self-conscious beings and began to conceptualise past, present and future – around 80,000 years ago, we now think. Prediction has thus been around for a long time. Economists do it. Weather men/women do it. Politicians do it. Physicists do it. But most of the foregoing direct scorn and derision at the people who have done it for longer than anyone else – astrologers.

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“Teach me your mood, o patient stars, who climb each night the ancient sky”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is at least six thousand years’  worth of recorded empirical evidence, much of it stored on clay tablets, as yet undeciphered, in the basements of museums across the world, demonstrating that the movements of  the planets in our solar system correlate with particular shifts in “the affairs of men” both collectively and at an individual level. This empirical observation continues into the present day in the consulting rooms of astrologers across the world.

For example, a number of politicians and economists consult astrologers regularly. They are mostly unwilling to admit it – though we astrologers know who they are!

What is my view, after nearly thirty years of  observing correlations between individual and collective life on earth and the planets’ movements?

There is no doubt in my mind that astrologers can look at the unfolding pattern of energies through space/time, cut a section through any point or moment of the past, present or future, look at what the essence of that moment is, and speculate regarding what some of the branches manifesting in the wider world, or in individuals lives, may be.

What they can’t do is see how those branches are going to manifest exactly. Our track record on hindsight is much better than it is on foresight, historically! There have been some spectacularly accurate predictions made by astrologers in the public realm over the centuries; a famous one was made by Luc Gauricus in 1555 to the effect that King Henry the Second of France (then aged thirty-seven) was in danger of death in his forty-second year, by a head injury incurred in single combat in an enclosed space. And five years later Henry duly died of a lance splinter which entered his eyes and pierced his brain. There have also been some spectacular failures, eg to predict that the Munich agreement of 1938 would lead to war.

We do much better at describing the essence of a pattern – identifying the exact branches is much more hit and miss. Personally this cheers me, since it appears to suggest a creative balance between fate and free will in the universe – chaos theory in contemporary physics also has strong parallels with the astrological paradigm. Not everything  is pinned down – both the language of astrology and the language of contemporary physics tells us that!

Because of this I am very hesitant about both the accuracy of prediction and the wisdom of doing it at all, especially for individuals, in any more than a “describing the core and speculating about the branches” kind of way. Predicting that a specific branch WILL manifest, in my opinion closes down options rather than opening them up, also taking us into the realm of self-fulfilling prophecy….

I began to study astrology seriously in 1980. Until then, my attitude was sceptical, to say the least. But in the 1970s I had an encounter with astrologers which really shook my scepticism, bringing me an experience which I was unable to deal with or understand at the time.

Bath, Somerset, England, June 1974

My First Astrologer

I was engrossed in the Sunday evening chore of doing washing in the launderette on the London Road, in Bath. It was a liminal time in my life; having resigned from a lecturing job, I was preparing to leave Bath to stake my all on becoming the writer I had always felt myself to be. It was June. Return to the Outer Hebrides was imminent.

A strange looking couple came in, accompanied by a little girl of about five years old. The woman was tall, slender, with long dark hair, a very scruffy Afghan coat, and a distinct look of Cher. The man was smaller than her, slight, with unruly greying hair and a mischievous face. His dishevelled air was suggestive of an unmade bed.

I carried on with my laundry. The little girl was chatty; soon, she was putting money into the drier for me, I was telling her stories, and we had become great friends. I met her parents. They were both painters, and astrologers.
“Not the kind who do that rubbish you see in the papers,” said Seamus scornfully, having noted the fleeting look of disdain which crossed my face at the mention of the word astrology. I had given one of my mature students a very hard time a couple of years previously for her public devotion to what seemed to me to be a subject unworthy of  someone of her intelligence. “We are the real thing.”

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in their cramped basement kitchen, drinking tea and being charmed by Seamus. He was Irish, and you would have had to be not only deaf but also dead not to succumb to his combination of erudition, intensity, conviction, humour and blarney.

“Do you know your birth time?” he asked.
“Yes, ” I replied. “Why are you interested in that?”
“Because I am going to draw up your Horoscope”, he replied. Whether I wanted such a procedure embarked upon or not was of no consequence to him. So slain was I by his charm that I didn’t offer any resistance.

As I watched, interested in spite of myself, Gloria and Seamus assembled a hefty tome, a slim pamphlet, blank sheets of paper, a calculator, a fountain pen and a newly sharpened pencil. The tome was an Ephemeris, they informed me –  a list of the planets’ placements every day at noon for the whole of the twentieth century.

“This would be my book choice for Desert Island Discs,” he announced.
Then, I thought he was mad. Years later, I would understand why. The pamphlet was a Table of Houses for Northern Latitudes. “To enable us to calculate your Ascendant, or Rising Sign” Seamus explained. I was none the wiser, having no clue what an Ascendant was.

Seamus then took a blank sheet, and carefully drew a circle freehand in the centre of it. Then he and Gloria got their heads down, and after much muttering, reading out of numbers and jottings down in pencil they wrote out a thirteen-line list of numbers and symbols.

“Ten planets including the Moon, the Ascendant or Rising Sign, the Midheaven, and the North Node of the Moon”, announced Seamus in a satisfied tone. “Good. Now we shall draw the Horoscope.”

Taking the blank sheet with the drawn circle, he proceeded with great rapidity and fluency to insert squiggles – “Planets!” – and numbers around the inner edge of the circle. He then drew lines within a smaller inner circle – “Aspects, or links between the planets at the time you were born” – and he and Gloria sat back and gazed with silent preoccupation at the image they had created.

My first Horoscope

I can still recall very, very clearly what followed. Seamus, looking at his drawing and only briefly at me, gave an astonishingly accurate description of my father’s complex, domineering, idiosyncratic and wayward character. That was bad enough. Worse was to follow. As we all do, I did my best to conceal the less attractive facets of my own nature from other people.

“You are a person rich with creative gifts,” he said. “But you need to know and face more closely the darker facets of your own nature. It’s time to do that, since you are approaching thirty and your Saturn Return.” With that, he forensically summed up those parts of myself which I knew were there, but had tried very hard to avoid facing or admitting to anyone, even my closest friends. I was feeling by this time as though I’d been hit on the side of the head with a sock full of sand.

Then, with true rhetorical skill, he delivered the punch line. “You may be a total sceptic now,” he said. “But stop fooling yourself. You have a deeply spiritual nature, which needs to find meaning and connection with Something greater than yourself. Until you manage that, you will be driven by the same restlessness that still drives your father, and you will not find inner peace.”

There was a long pause.

“And I can see, from where the planets will be in a few years’ time, that the spiritual is going to come seriously calling at your door. In your early thirties, you’re going to end up either doing what I’m doing now, or something very like it.”

I was utterly shocked. I had known those people for less than an hour, most of which had been spent walking back from the launderette to their flat, and organising cups of tea. They knew nothing about me of any significance. How could they produce such specific and accurate material from marks on a piece of paper?

I couldn’t even begin to get my head round the prediction. It seemed beyond absurd.

Shocked though  I was, I was also very drawn to Gloria, Seamus and their child. I stayed and talked with them for some time, then left for my own flat, less than five minutes’ walk away, knowing that I would be spending more time with them before leaving Bath for my native island.

“Never mind, Scotty”, chuckled Seamus as I hugged my new friends goodnight. He realised what a jolt he and Gloria had delivered. “It’s usually God, or someone like that, who chucks a spanner into the works when you least expect it.”

Slowly, I carried my laundry home. There was no way I could find to make sense of the experience I had just had. There was no file inside my head into which it could fit. So it bounced around for many months, eventually settling in some dusty corner which I dimly realised, as my twenties went on, was beginning to pile up with experiences for which I could not find any rational explanation……

TO BE CONTINUED……

next chapter is Part Nine: Premonitions

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1800 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page