Astrology - the Cosmic Clock

        Astrology.  What a subject.  There are few subjects that are as misunderstood even by the practitioners and certainly by those who reject it as ridiculous.  It isn’t hard to understand how someone can think it is nonsense given the approach taken by so many who claim to have a secure grip on it.  How, for instance, can your astrology be given to you in a newspaper column that makes such generalizations about “Signs” as those columns do?  I have read some of them and they make little or no sense whatsoever.  Besides which to use the chart of the heavens for purposes as mundane as those to which they are often applied is to trivialize them completely.  It is, however, the inclination of many to misuse any gift that is given to us, to turn any tool on the path into a goal all of its’ own and this is done all too often with Astrology.

        Let’s talk about what astrology is and what it isn’t keeping in mind that this is only my opinion.  Here is the most basic question.  Do I believe that the planets - those bodies out in space that circle our sun – do I believe that they affect my life, that by their movements they have the effects that are so often attributed to them via the art and science of astrology?

        No.  I don’t.  Not any more than the hands of a clock make the earth rotate and change the time of day.  The planets do not have the effect that is credited to them.  Rather, they are the hands of a clock.  They simply tell you what the condition of the universe is at a given time like a clock will tell you what the time of day it is rather than being the cause of change.

        Well, in fact, they don’t work quite the same as a clock.  A clock will tell you what time it is now but has no ability to tell you what the results of that time will be.  A clock can’t tell you that, given the way things look right now for anything that has its’ beginning at this moment, this or that is what can be expected in the future.  There is no level of clarity to what the clock can say beyond the simple statement about the “now”.

        The planets, however, in spite of their not being the source of anything, do give us far more information than the clock ever will and, given that I don’t believe that God created anything that He wasn’t very adept at using fully.  I have no problem with the idea that the positions of the planets can be used, once we know how to read that cosmic clock, to tell us a lot about the nature of the universe at the time and to tell us a great deal about our karmic situations as well.  And a birth chart does just that.

        When you are born, at the moment you are born, the planets positions can be used to indicate what the karmic environment will be for that lifetime - because of the condition of the universe at the time of your birth.  You might think of it as a kind of  'time stamp'.  These are the issues we need to deal with this lifetime in order to progress on our individual paths.  Where people get the incorrect impression is when they assume that the astrological chart compels us.  It doesn’t.  It impels us.  That is to say it pushes us in a direction but we are free to accept or reject the environments it urges us into, the tendencies we are given are just that - tendencies.  Another way of saying it is that karma will return to us but nothing dictates immutably our response to that karma when it arrives.

        Saint Germain tells us that through the judicious use of the Violet Flame we can overcome any and all karma that we have incurred so that it will not only cease to affect us but will be balanced, that negative karma will be burned up in the Violet Flame itself.

        Kryia yoga is another tool for burning away negative karma.  Paramhansa Yogananda was known to keep track of his astrological chart to determine what the chart said would be his “worst” days for doing anything and then he would make a point of getting more done than otherwise.  He did that to point out that we are not the slaves of our charts but rather that the chart is a tool to use to know when we need to put extra energy into this or that area of our lives, to watch out for certain proclivities.

        Bottom line is that astrology is a great tool to use but a lousy master to be enslaved to.  However, despite it being a useful tool on the path it is not an essential one.  You can get there without it.