My Latest Astrological Reading

Over the past twenty-five years, I’ve occasionally contacted an astrologer to have my chart read. The first astrologer, whose name I’d gotten from a friend, did my natal chart. I found her reading both interesting and intriguing.

Interesting because it did truly indicate many things that had happened to me in my life up to that time. Intriguing because she didn’t know me and her explanations enlivened my spirit about that year and the future.

Between then and now, I’ve had my chart done several times. I still really don’t know what I believe about astrology, but I do know that whenever I have a reading, I come away enthused about possibilities. Also, the readings always reaffirm my own intuitions about my life. 

Two weeks ago, a Minneapolis astrologer with a sterling reputation did my chart for this year. She began by saying that the past three years had been hard ones for me. (That’s true.) She was surprised she said, to hear the vibrancy in my voice “because I’d expect you to be very weary and depressed.”

I admitted that I am experiencing some depression and that some days I sink into self-pity. However, I told her, I also know that my body is recuperating well and that each week I’m reclaiming more of my life—more of who I used to be and more of who I want to be as I age.

We talked for two hours. Yesterday, I received two CDs of that reading. I haven’t played them yet and so what I’m sharing with you here is simply the highlights that I remember. What follows are those highlights.

For the rest of this 2017, I need to let go of “having to do things,” of feeling compelled to accomplish anything, of wanting to be productive. Instead, because of Venus something or other—I don’t understand the terminology—I am to seek pleasure during the next six months. I am to do things that make me happy. I am to let go of ought and should and embrace joy.

So I hope to get out the keyboard as well as my watercolors and jigsaw puzzles. I hope to play some music CDs and dance around the kitchen table. I hope to go to a lot of movies with friends who drive. I hope to do some baking and cooking of new recipes. And . . . if the spirit moves me . . . I’ll write, but I won’t do that because I feel that I must. I’ll write for the simple joy of crafting a good sentence.

As to the future, the astrologer said that 2018 would be a year that would be enriched by the creativity of 2017. Then in 2019 and 2020 I would experience something that happens only every 84 years in a person’s life—a wellspring of inspiration. I will be inspired by all this creativity to do something new and different.

I have no idea what that will be, but then I don’t have to know. I simply need to let myself enjoy life without feeling any compulsion to be productive. I’m hoping that my future postings for this year will be about pleasure—the pleasure of simply being in the moment.

Peace.