Destiny, Fate, and Free Will
Using Astrology for Planning

 by Amanda Owen

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    Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you.
                                                                 Frank Tyger

    On the topic of astrology, nowhere does the subject of fate versus free will appear more often than when astrology is discussed as a tool for timing.  Where is the line between fate and free will? How do we make that determination? By what do we gauge?  For me, the answer is this: free will is the capacity, ability, and willingness to choose our own responses to any given situation whether or not we feel we had a hand in creating the situation in which we find ourselves. Fate can be described as those laws of nature that we cannot change.
    Astrology is, in part, the study of cycles. Cycles are a part of life. Day turns into night, summer into fall and winter into spring. Childhood slips into adolescence and young adulthood into middle age. The relationship between the sun, moon, and the earth brings us new moons which become quarter moons which lead to full moons to quarter moons again and back into new moons.  Venus and Mars come together in a new phase every 22 months. Saturn’s movement governs the 7 year cycles we hear so much about and Mercury stations and turns retrograde every 4 months for approximately 22 days.
    Everyone has experienced times in life when it seems as if no matter what you do, you cannot get something, such as a project you are working on, to move forward. Conversely, sometimes it seems as if you have the golden touch and situations work out better than you had planned. Astrology is an informational tool that articulates or describes when those times occur.  So, if I am using astrology as an informational tool for timing, I am going to launch my projects when conditions support forward movement. When conditions support a time to review, I am going to go back over those projects I am working on and develop them more thoroughly. When conditions are ripe for planting, I will plant and when it is time to harvest, I will reap what I sowed.
    Whether or not you choose to utilize astrological information is a matter of free will.  Information cannot take away your free will nor disempower you. Only you can disempower you. So, how you receive this information and what you do with it is a matter of individual choice. Let me use an analogy of consulting a train schedule. And for the sake of my example, let’s assume that trains run on time!
    If a train will arrive at the station at 10:47 AM to take you to your destination, you can still arrive at the train station any time you choose to.  The fate part is that the train will arrive at 10:47 AM. The free will part is you can get there anytime you want to.  If you choose to arrive at the station an hour ahead of time and want the train to come early, you will be out of luck.  Your desire, your motivation, and your will may be strong, but none of those qualities will bring the train one minute earlier!
    If you have a train schedule and consult it, you will know when to get to the train station to catch your train. Or, if you choose, you can not look at the schedule and hope that a train will be arriving when you get there.  Let’s assume you decide to keep a train schedule so that you always know when the trains will be running.  If someone said to you, “You don’t use that schedule to run your life, do you?!” you would think it was a strange question. The choice to exercise your free will is not predicated on whether or not you have and consult a train schedule! If it is snowing and you call ahead to see if the train is delayed you would not feel as if you were robbing yourself of your free will! And it would be a rare person who would question your choice to make that call!
     Using astrological information to help you with your timing provides you with information that can make your life run more smoothly by describing the cycles that are occurring during a particular period of time.
    Finally, although astrology assists you by providing valuable information, it is important to remember that it is up to you to make a beneficial cycle work for you or to minimize the effects of a difficult one. For example, if you are an easy-going person who can accept challenges in stride, then you will be better able to utilize an inherently challenging cycle. This is not magic - this is information! 

  Amanda Owen 2002,©