The Stars Impel, They Don’t Compel

Timidly, I do admit to reading horoscopes now and then, especially when I get lazy and have time on my hands.  I no longer follow them as closely as I did like, say, twenty years ago.  One tends to outgrow some things, so to speak.

You’re bound to meet the love of your life within the week, a horoscope may reveal.  But if one is ninety-one years old, one may as well totter instead of blush on the brink of new love.

So there, I read horoscopes for their entertainment value and not for truths.  They can be taken as guidance, but not in the absolute sense as guidance can be had anytime, with common sense and a prayer.

Take extra care today as an accident may come your way, another horoscope may say.  It goes without saying that one has to take precautions every day to avoid accidents.

One of the common senses is to regard with improbability that about one-twelfth, because there are 12 zodiac signs, of the world’s more than five billion people who have the same birth sign may also have similar luck and experience.  Or can human experiences be generally categorized only into 12 varieties?  The same holds true with the Chinese zodiac signs.

Which is why the best way to take horoscopes and similar prophesying practices is to take them as games.  Take the good and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, heed the bad and pray for guidance.  This was the soundest advice of a faith healer friend who suggested long ago that I do away with a certain plant in the house because it made me vulnerable to betrayals.

No harm in following her advice.  She was never at the house nor did she even know my address, so how did she know that I had that plant?  Most confounding of all, she knew the direction of my bed and the direction of my head when asleep, and that it was giving me regular headaches.

But I couldn’t kill the plant that I had nurtured.  So I brought it to my workplace, with due warning to any taker.  It took less than five minutes for a claimant, an unbeliever, to come forward.

Time was when some friends made me a de facto tour guide of sorts to this different world.  What’s your preference, I used to ask, an immediate coverage or a long-term one, an advice or a salve for your pains?  Suffice it to say that I knew where to lead them.

I even had the confidence, the brash kind expected of the young, to write a regular horoscope ages ago under an assumed name for a paper edited by a close friend.  I researched and saw to it that no one would feel bad.  If I were asked to do the same now, I’d laugh it down.  And it’s not only because the youthful confidence is long gone.  Age simply makes life simpler.

Astrology.  Phrenology.  Graphology. The then youthful Mr. Loy Palapos may remember how he regaled us with the latter, thus whetting my appetite to study it.  And now there’s this currently popular feng shui.

Numerology, the domain of the ancient Jewish body of mystical beliefs called Kabala.  The country’s longest-serving first couple was said to have been into this, which struck me as somewhat believable.  There was a KBL party (or KaBaLa in the local alphabet), and projects and ideas came in threes, sevens, and elevens.

On hindsight, aside from curiosity, I gravitated to those things and practiced meditation because they provided emotional and psychological crutches.  People who are into these things have other insights and are great to talk with. Think of a psychiatrist without the couch, or a father confessor without the guilt.

I was sinning against the Sacrament, I was told.  I didn’t buy that, sorry.  It’s like sinning by reading Harry Potter books.  My sorties into those unknowns didn’t get in the way of my fundamental faith.  I was taking risks, perhaps, in my way of enhancing my religion by choosing the untried and unacceptable kind to the traditionally organized one.

Now I no longer care to see the color of people’s auras to know how they feel.  But to have become more sensitive, to physically feel the reassuring warmth of the Blessed Sacrament, to be truly uplifted when the priest gives his final blessing at the end of the Mass, these I am most thankful for.

(13 Jan 2008)