Can Astrology tell the future? Well, yes, actually it can. But not in the cut-and-dried way many people would like to use it. It won't tell you when you're going to win the lottery. (Let's face it. The almost-certain answer to that one is "Never." No, not ever ... put it from your mind, save your money. There are reasons why people joke that the lottery is a tax on people who are really, really, really bad at math.) It won't tell you if that cute guy who hit on you last night is going to propose. (Talk about jumping the queue on the various stages of a relationship necessary to get to marriage, for crying out loud!!) However, it will tell you what kind of relationships you're likely to attract at the moment -- and how you work with the presence of other people in your life.

In some very interesting and important ways, Astrology will tell you what's going on in your life right now ... and what's coming up in the future. And in that way it can, yes, indeedy ... predict the future. But the real value of Astrology -- the pure gold you can mine from this fabulous and fascinating body of wisdom -- is that it can teach you to think differently about yourself, your life, your possibilities, your "problems" ... and from that it can help you understand and work more productively with the events of your future than you might have done fumbling along in the dark.

That said, I have to agree half-heartedly, half-jokingly, that sometimes ignorance is bliss -- and I sometimes have that thought in the back of my mind as I open up my chart and look at what's coming over the hill in the next several months ... or several years. But ignorance is not such bliss that I'm willing to adopt it as a lifestyle. There's a real difference between ignorance-as-bliss and sheer-cussed-stupidity. (And for me, informed preparation and a heads-up alert beats them both hands-down.) I have never yet refused to look at my chart because I didn't want to know what it says. (Maybe that day is coming -- but not so far.) And I have to admit that sometimes what stares back at me from that page with all the funny symbols is not one bit joyful.

But to know what I know and not use it -- even when the going is tough and really, really unpleasant, makes no more sense to me than slapping a blindfold securely over my eyes as I fire up the car and pull out of my driveway onto the road. Or refusing to look at the map because it may show me that the river I'm sailing on is steering me straight toward one mother-bear of a waterfall. There are some people who are even more adamant about the benefits of preparation than I am ... and others who just as firmly prefer the ignorance route. Both are choices -- and people get to make them.

But whether you want to be sure you have your life-jacket cinched on well and your cargo tied down twenty minutes ahead of time, or decide to beach the boat and, if possible, carry it and YOU around the problem on a different path, or whether you really "don't want to think about it" until you hear the deep roar of falling water on rocks and see the edge of the world coming up fast, the information is there. And how you choose to use it ... or whether or not you even choose to know about it ... can have a real impact on your future, the quality of your experience, and the message you take from whatever happened.

To me, that's Astrology's real value. Not as a predictor of "what's going to happen to me" as a helpless victim of Fate ... but as an indicator that there are both pleasures and potholes (to put it mildly) on the road ahead, and I have some things to learn and some choices to make on how to deal with them.

(c) 2007 Rebecca Brents, All rights reserved.