Astrology: Destiny, Possibility, or Irrelevancy?

There are those who treat astrology as a science, those who believe that our fate is determined by the “stars” and also those who believe that astrology is a pseudo-science with no real basis in anything that can meaningfully either control our destiny or even signify events in our lives. How can we understand what role, if any, astrology has in providing guidance and direction in our lives?

If we accept the idea that astrology rules our fate, then we are tacitly accepting the sense of determinism and doing away with any role for free will in the development of our lives. This position clearly runs contrary to our innate sense of free will, which, even if not absolutely correct, nevertheless expresses a deeply held intuitive understanding in our human awareness.

At the same time, if we recognise that we live in one coherent universal existence and all the parts are elements of the whole, subject to the vibrational patterns that occur in the whole, and therefore, there is, and must be, an influence Philosophers and certain scientists have noticed patterns that occur in the macro-universe and in the micro-universe. Fractals also repeat the pattern to ever smaller values and fractals are represented throughout the plant and animal kingdom. Clearly the sense of “as above, so below” has some real and serious meaning in the world. This does not mean that we can correctly interpret every perceived correspondence, but in the main, large patterns are able to express and signify for us the influence of forces that work at the universal level and impact individual lives.

We then come to the question of free will, and the ability to change the pattern at the individual level despite the universal influence that may be active. Sri Aurobindo discusses this point at some length:

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Many astrological predictions come true, quite a mass of them, if one takes all together. But it does not follow that the stars rule our destiny; the stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed, they are a hieroglyph, not a Force, — or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. Someone is there who has determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indicators. The astrologers themselves say that there are two forces, daiva and purusakara, fate and individual energy, and the individual energy can modify and even frustrate fate. Moreover, the stars often indicate several fate-possibilities; for example that one may die in mid-age, but that if that determination can be overcome, one can live to a predictable old age. Finally, cases are seen in which the predictions of the horoscope fulfil themselves with great accuracy up to a certain age, then apply no more. This often happens when the subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical, the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for a time, but there is no longer the same inevitability. This would seem to show that there is or can be a higher power or higher plane or higher source of spiritual destiny which can, if its hour has come, override the lower power, lower plane or lower source of vital and material fate of which the stars are indicators. I say vital because character can also be indicated from the horoscope much more completely and satisfactorily than the events of the life.”

“The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves see our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annual what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch. 1 Life Through the Eyes of the Yogin, pp.13-14