What is Fate? The Polestar and Life Purpose

Before I delve further into the specific view teachings of Chinese Astrology, I need to backtrack and define why Polestar Astrology, in particular, is relevant to modern life.  To do this, I will explore the question—what is Fate?

Disassociation and purposelessness are among the most troubling epidemics of modern technological culture.  Now, more than ever, human beings dissociate from their natural environment, from one another, from history, from culture, and from their own embodied human experience.  Disassociated from natural cycles, we consume in excess and throw everything out of balance.   We have become a society of floating heads; we connect wirelessly, but in reality we seem to connect very little. 

Our culture, especially in America, has lost any sense of coherent or cohesive values.  As a culture, we are inundated with confusing, ever-changing ideas from the shrine of Scientism, which changes its mind every few hours, presenting us with contradictory and often conflicting views about everything.  Most of us reject our religious heritage, and if we don’t, we tend to prosthelytize others or judge them silently.  As a culture, we argue over just about everything, confusing each other with bad ideas, and, unfortunately, corporatism and consumerism provide the most coherent value structures in American society. 

Our hard fought individualism has given us freedom, privilege, and comfort but no idea about what to do with our freedom.  Because of this, many people lack what I will call “Life Purpose.”  We’re not quite sure why we were born, and we spend a great deal of time wasting our energy in pursuit of an outdated and unsustainable model of success.  Most of us exhaust ourselves trying to survive our own life.   

The American Dream died (probably sometime in the late 80’s), and its ghost is dangerous.  And yet the whole world tries to achieve it.  I have been to over twenty countries; I have lived in Asia, and I have seen the whole world struggling to have “everything,” or in some cases anything at all.  We want career, kids, family, money, two cars, a house, money in the bank, and so on.  If we do achieve this, it is often because of privilege, plain and simple.  Failing to achieve this, many become despondent and lost, and many blame themselves.  And who’s to blame us for feeling this way? 

The view of modern culture (or lack thereof) lags far behind the reality of our actual situation.  We cannot have it all because resources are limited.  And actually, we are not supposed to have it all. 
In the Chinese view, we are supposed to have what we are fated for, and very few are fated for "everything."  We’re supposed to work together and support one another to balance and create social harmony.  What one lacks, another is fated for in abundance, and through social order and the distribution of resources we keep the balance.  We have enough resources to feed, clothe, and shelter everyone on Earth, and yet we do not because we are disassociated from Natural Wisdom and one another. 

According to the Chinese view, we waste tremendous energy and life force (qi) trying to achieve things we are not fated for.  So first, according to Chinese Astrology, you have something called “fate.”  This may be news to you, and you may even object, which is quite normal.  So I will say upfront that fate is not determinism.

Fate means opportunity.  Obviously, we all have different opportunities in life based on where, when, and to whom we were born, meaning our opportunity is Astrological.  Furthermore, the circumstances surrounding our opportunities are much bigger than we can grasp.  Our actual situation is enormous. 
Some people seem lucky—in the right place at the right time.  Some people are phenomenally talented and yet live lives of quiet desperation with little to no opportunity.  The American Dream tells us we can “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,” and yet we all know this is insane.  Through no amount of hard work will I be a center in the NBA. 

The Chinese answer to this paradox is fate.  We are each fated to have a certain potential for experience and opportunity in life, and this potential manifests or unfolds based on the timeliness of our birth.  

Fate (opportunity), according to the Chinese view, is rhythmical, cyclical, and mathematical.  The Ancients observed the cycles of time, space, and nature for thousands of years and discovered within these cycles a number of different patterns.  One of these cycles generates what the Chinese call Character, which I will discuss in a future blog.  Another, which I will describe here, is related to Fate.  In Polestar Astrology, we call these cycles “Currents of Fate.”

The Currents of Fate are related to mathematical calculations based on the Polestar, or Emperor Star, the only star in the night sky which does not appear to move.  If you visit the homepage of my website, you will see the Emperor Star in time-lapsed photography, the heavens swirling around it.  Every few thousand years, the Polestar changes; it was Vega, and now it is Polaris.  Every culture on earth since time immemorial has used the Polestar for navigation and, more importantly, for Astrology. 

After thousands of years of observation, the Chinese noticed that the constellations in the night sky swirled in patterns around the Emperor Star, and that these patterns were cyclic, rhythmic, and mathematic.  Furthermore, they noticed that the circumstances or opportunities of human life were intimately related to these patterns in a predictable way.  These patterns are energetic expressions of vibrating light, and so are we.

Imagine that the energy or light of the entire universe (qi) flows in big cyclical patterns related to the relative position of heavenly bodies within space.  From our position on earth, we are related mathematically to one of many intertwined and interrelated swirling patterns of energy within the galaxy and greater universe.  Every planet, then, would determine different but related patterns.  From Earth, our patterns are determined or calculated by the fixed position of the Polestar.  The patterns observed shift every hour, every year, generating and concluding different phases in the cycles of time and energy (qi).  This flow shifts from one pattern to another in a predictable way—sunrise, sunset.    

Imagine now that the energy of the universe is not disconnected, cold, insentient energy, but rather that the whole universe is an intimate web of living, breathing, cycling energy.  Finally, consider the possibility that you are also an expression of this basic living energy, and that you are fundamentally interconnected to these greater cycles and patterns which operate beyond the grasp of your conscious mind.  No definable point of separation between yourself and the universe can be found; you are a breathing pulsation of the entire matrix of Life.

According to Polestar Astrology, when you were born, you emerged as an expression of the same pattern of energy the universe was exuding at that moment.  Imagine that in each moment the universe is exuding or “doing” a certain pattern.  At the moment of birth, the pattern of the universe, which you are fundamentally connected to, patterns you.  In other words, you become a living expression of that pattern.  Everything that “began” in that moment also expresses that pattern.  These patterns radiate outward, containing and relating to one another like a Russian Doll, and they express a continuum from microcosm to macrocosm. 

Imagine that in the moment of birth you are plugged into one of these streams, these current of cycling energy, forever connected to it temporally, and that this stream is already in motion, set to unfold as a rhythmic pattern, and it will carry you along in it like a flowing river.  As you flow through life, this pattern of energy will unwind and create the potential for certain kinds of experience to manifest.  This potential for experience, based on these patterns of energy, are what the Chinese Tradition calls Fate.  These Currents of Fate are finite in number (518, 400) but infinite in their potential, variety, and multiplicity of expression.

Have I confused you?  Not to worry.  To simplify, you have something called “Fate,” which is determined by the timeliness of your birth, by whatever streaming pattern of energy you “popped” into. 

So how is this related to life purpose?  Polestar Astrology is also called “Fate Calculation.”  A Polestar Astrology Session reads the particular “pattern” of your birth and can tell you the nature of how this pattern may unfold.  Remember, it is not fortunetelling, it cannot predict the future, but it can tell you the possibilities within the container of your “pattern.”  The value of Polestar Astrology comes through dialogue, meaning the Astrologer provides interpretations of Fate, but it is up to you to define that meaning in terms of your own experience.   

The Chinese Tradition is very practical, coming from Confucian values.  Fate, then, is read in relation to practical human life.  In a Natal reading, I look at family, marriage/romantic partners, children, money, career/work in the world, and pleasure.  And in the Chinese view, your fate lies within these categories.  And while fate is spread throughout these categories, our major fate, what we are here to “do,” lies within one of them.  Some people are fated to be parents, and that is the most important thing they are fated to do.  The rest is unimportant in the big picture and may even constellate around parenthood.  Some are fated for career but not everyone, which may terrify Americans.  Some are just here to enjoy themselves. 

Knowing this, Polestar Astrology can take an immense pressure off of the confusion of modern technological life.  First, if we lack direction it can give it to us.  Polestar Astrology can tell us, quite plainly, what we were born to do.  Polestar Astrology provides the big picture, the context for our entire life.  Sometimes fate is clear (yang) and sometimes it is mysterious (yin).  Knowing that our life is fated to be unclear may actually relieve us of trying to “figure it out.”  In that space we may even relax (!) and experience insight.  Knowing that our fate lies in family life, we can relax and not waste our energy trying to build a “successful” career.  In other words, knowing that we can’t “have it all,” we can stop wasting our energy trying to have it all, and we can put our energy into our fate. 

Sometimes we are fated for difficulties.  Polestar Astrology can tell us where those difficulties may manifest, which provides us a tool for navigating them.  Some people are fated for freedom, knowing this we can use our freedom to experience our original nature and benefit others.  Modern life tells us we are supposed to do everything, but perhaps this need not be the case.  Maybe we can relax. 
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One goal of Polestar Astrology is to relax because everything is self-resolving.   This means that in the cycles of time everything resolves of its own accord.  Birth always resolves in death, which resolves in birth, both of which express the continuum of Life.