Raye and Gretchen discuss whether astrology required our lives to be fated, or if there is indeed free will.
Raye Mathis (she/her) is a noted astrologer, a professor of multiple disciplines at Atlantic University, and has a B.A. in Mathematics (magna cum laude) from Furman University, as well as her M.S.W. in Clinical Social Work from Norfolk State University
Raye teaches 4-week online astrology groups on learning how to work with your own chart. In addition, she has a 40-year ongoing astrology practice giving private astrological consultations and publishes a quarterly newsletter entitled "The Capricorn Times". She can be contacted at rayemathis22@gmail.com
Gretchen O'Neal is a spiritual accountability and empowerment coach. She owns and operates www.cometoyourself.com. Come To Yourself provides unbiased, easily accessible information from the top scholars in the fields of transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies, coupled with personal insights from successful artists, musicians, and business professionals, to anyone looking to start their spiritual journey to discover and serve their soul's mission in life
Raye:
Well, I think that brings up an issue that people get confused about and that is, are we fated in life? A re, do we have free will? Yes. And, u m, I think one of the things, and this is an interesting thing that I bring up in my classes a lot. U m, it's important to move past either or with any kind of thing. It's usually both. And, and I think, y eah, in this case, it's both. And one of the illustrations that I use s ometimes when I'm teaching with astrology is looking at astrology chart is a little bit like looking at the wiring diagram of a house. You can see the wires running all around i n H room. There's an outlet, u h, or several outlets for electricity, but you have no idea what the p erson's going to plug i nto that outlet. U m, now you can make some educated guesses and the kitchen, you would assume there's probably a refrigerator, but u h, people have refrigerators in their living room, a ll t he bar, they m ight have it in their bedroom. Uh, you don't know till you ask. Um, so, um, the, the energy is available. We have free will as to what we're going to plug into an outlet and everything in astrology. I mean, essentially astrology is made up of 12 architects, well, patterns and archetypes can be expressed positively or negatively somewhere in between. There, there are millions of ways that for instance, the mothering nurturing archetype and express, it can be issues with your mother. It can be issues with your mothering. It can be the way you mother yourself, the way you mother others. Um, yeah, there, there are just millions of ways for an architect hi, to express itself. Um, and where you have free will is, um, dis adding how you're going to use the energy. Are you going to plug again, um, on electric knife to cut, um, up a roast or are you going to plug in a change the whole, you know, it's, uh, this is where we have freewill. And a lot of times the, the events, the outer events that happen to us, we think, look, sure, didn't choose this. This is not my FreeWheel. I didn't want this in my life. Um, but it, according to astrology, those things are based on past decisions we've made either in this life, if you will leaving reincarnation in a previous life is hard to work with astrology without at least considering reincarnation, because otherwise things would be extremely unfair to say the least.
Gretchen:
Would it be fair to say that if you were to have your chart done, it's not as much that your chart is only, uh, providing a diagram for you, this particular life that you're leading, but maybe your chart is more a diagram for your soul, you know, your spirit and therefore every aspect, you know, as we know the spirit, the soul is infinite. So, you know, and perpetual. So that chart is giving more of a diagram of where the outlets are for the, you know, without a time constraint.
Raye:
Yes, I think that's true. Except probably I would add that the chart is showing a diagram of this life and how, what energies you're coming in with, um, in a general sense what issues, uh, you may have to meet. And, um, everything in the chart is really you, even though, uh, we talk about, well, this is this, the houses are those 12 posh shaped areas. And we say, well, there, this house rules, partnership. And most of the time astrologer will interpret it as our partnership, but it's really the inner partner. It's, uh, what Carl Young call the relationship with the Altima or the animus. Uh, and once you make that relationship with your inner partner, like an alchemy where you have the King and the queen, uh, Mary, and the birth of the divine child, well, that is your creativity. Once you can make that inner marriage, then you can have the birth of your creativity. So, um, everything in the chart is really us. We project parts of our safe zone to others. So we do often project the area that has to do with partnership on our partners. For instance, I have Taurus in my chart on that area and I'm married to a Taurus. So, uh, that's just an obvious, simple that doesn't always work that way, but that's, uh, it, it, we do project those parts of our sales on to others and draw people to us who carry those characteristics. And the purpose is so that we can learn. We can learn how to get along with it and incorporate it into ourself if we need to, or do it a different way. If we need to.