Destiny or Free Will “Dependency on any form of subjective imagination, fantasy or knowledge results in fear       and ruins freedom” - J. Krishnamurti       When will I get married?       You will get married at 36 and your wife will be from abroad.       How many children will I have?       You will have two children, a boy and a girl.       This is a part of a typical conversation you can come across in working areas of most various clairvoyants worldwide. If you listen a bit better to the echo of voices, you will notice that a large part of those who call themselves astrologers follow the same pattern in communication. What will happen in our life and when it will happen becomes more important than what we will learn through that experience. Eternal conflict between quality and quantity, dialecticians would say. Before getting involved in predictions, everyone should clarify what is the purpose of this act. What is the point in seeking and providing information on the number of children, inheritance or even the duration of one’s life?       Any dealings with esoterism and even astrology should include a human component. Dane Rudhyar called it a humanistic approach to astrology. Destiny or free will? I still remember very well the faces of astrologers who, through the TV screen, talked very self-confidently about fateful determination of human existence. Everything is written in advance at the skies and it is our task to accept it in the least painful way. Such a fatalistic approach has its counter-balance in voluntarism and in the view that every person creates his/her own destiny. Although apparently contradictory, these views are inseparably connected.       The problem of destiny and free will is the problem of the mind. As much as we may seek the right answer, it will always be incomplete, as it will be within the boundaries of the mind which is the source of delusion. In words of Ramana Maharshi: “Only those who do not know the source from which free will and destiny originate, will discuss which of the two will prevail. Those who have become aware of their selfhood, the source of both their destiny and free will, have left behind such discussions (and have nothing to do with it any more).”       There are two ways to deal with this problem: to overcome one’s own destiny or to depend on it. One way is to examine to whom this destiny is intended and to find out that only ego is linked to the destiny. The other way is to get rid of the ego by completely surrendering to God and to reach one’s real selfhood. Astrology is one of the techniques within the framework of the first way. Any attempt to make predictions in astrology must take into account the problem of destiny and free will as presented above only in most general terms. Disregarding this basic existential dynamics will necessarily cause a failure. Consequences are detrimental and can bring a lot of damage to both client and astrologer.       Let’s take an example. Saturn in progression comes into an inharmonious aspect to Venus. Members of astrological club of fatalists will immediately start talking about a divorce or breaking up a relationship with a close person. However, what if the said contact of Saturn and Venus concerns a three year old child? For a three year old, it is hard to expect that he/she will get into solving his/hers painful relationship with a partner, but it is nevertheless possible that he/she will go through experience of expanded consciousness on interpersonal relations. Such an experience can be brought to the fore if he/she has broken up with a friend from the kindergarten whose parents have moved to the other side of the town, through the divorce of that friend’s parents or maybe through the illness of his/her favourite parrot who saddened the whole family. If this planetary contact concerns a twenty five year old person, it can actually be linked with divorce, just as it may mean starting a new relationship or financial problems.       Progressions and directions, as well as transits symbolically explain and temporally arrange a set of psychological changes within the structure of the natal chart. Every attempt to temporally determine a concrete event is a very ungrateful activity, because you just cannot predict an experience in advance. What we can determine is the significance of that experience for a particular person. The same goes for mundane astrology with the only difference that instead of persons we will be dealing with people of particular countries. Identification of archetypal level, a level within which planets exist, with our everyday material world is a great danger for astrology practitioners. These two levels are not identical. What is up is not identical, but corresponds to what is down.        In order to manifest at the material level, archetypal symbols go through the filter of consciousness and it is only then that they get their final form. Therefore, the level of consciousness of a particular person will be actively involved in creating the outer events. This is why it is said in esoterism that man is a being who is offered a possibility to exerce his own free will.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Igor Ognjenovic