fate show thy force, ourselves do we owe

There’s been an awful lot of noise about horoscopes lately. I swear I heard something about this story years ago… just like the fact the solstice isn’t really the solstice because the earth isn’t in the same place it was a millennia ago. Makes sense… and yet… it doesn’t make sense to fluff off everything because one person sees the world in a different way.

I have a healthy amount of cynicism when anyone tries to sell me belief systems. Let me say that first. But, I am always curious to observe patterns and recognizing the grain of truth that spurs a whole elaborate fairy tale. That’s to say, I don’t swear by my horoscope, but I do keep a calendar by my desk that tells me where the planets are in the sky. Because I don’t doubt that when Mercury goes retrograde it does something to our atmosphere that makes whatever chemical in our brain that controls communication have serious performance issues. Or, I know my Leonine self has an easier way of it when the moon does her three day waltz through the lion’s star lined silhouette. It isn’t magic. I don’t think of it that way. I don’t even think it tells me the answer. I just think of it as another level of the weather.

So when the media needed a story that wasn’t depressing to fill the air waves, I didn’t – aside from some snarky Facebook commentary, I didn’t pay attention. Because, even if I am completely off the mark about my casual appreciation of astrology… I don’t think that makes me off the mark about how I see myself, whether I capitalize that with a lion’s roar or no.

Concurrent with this musing is the fact I’m living with my manuscript right now. Polishing and shining it up for the big launch (oy) soon to come. I suppose on a basic level, one can call it a paranormal romance. But really, at this point, I think it is a novel pursuing the classic theme of fate versus free will. So, yeah, definitely not original. I mean that theme has been used since the Greeks – and they were just the first ones to write it down… in the history of literature I’ve studied. But, they were the ones who invented this astrology stuff, this notion of the stars mandating our outcomes. A pre-destiny written before we take our first breath. 

I don’t believe in that. If anything, I’ve learned a great deal about free will in the last two weeks. Certainly there is a lot of stuff that does happen through no logical explanation, and often in spite of every intelligent determination to avoid it. But… I am a big fan these days of controlling my own destiny and holding the reins and realizing I have the ruby (silver) slippers attached firmly to my feet.

In a thread of my novel that got mercifully deleted, I used Macbeth. Because there was this whole idea of trying to outwit fate… but it really isn’t fate in that case is it? And the corollary to my story isn’t fate. It’s consequence. The inevitable, and perfectly deserved result from committing an action. That we all know… we all know is eventually going to come to us. And maybe that’s really why we want horoscopes, so there will be some magic message from the heavens telling us that the consequence we deserve is not the one we are going to get.