A Short Missive on Astrology and the Power of Intention

A few months ago, a client asked me to find a good time for her to submit a loan application for a new business. She asked that the time be within the next few weeks. I got on it right away, and within a few days I had found a good time about three weeks in the future.

About three days after the time I had chosen (elected in astrologese), I got an email from the client. She had decided to wait until she had an additional piece of information to round out the application. It wasn’t crucial, but she thought it would make the application stronger. Could I find a date in the next week that would be good to submit the completed form to the bank? I found a date about a week later, and although it wasn’t as great as the first date, I thought it was fine for the purpose.

A day before the second elected date, I got another email. The client had been very busy in the past week and had not had time to complete the application. What would be a good time in the next week? By this time, Mercury was going to enter the shadow of its retrograde, and a number of challenging aspects were forming in the sky. I did the best I could.

A month later, I got another email from the client, who was somewhat nonplussed that her loan application had been denied. Maybe, she wondered, I should have advised her to wait a little longer, until Mercury had gone retrograde and was moving direct again...

My client was inclined to see this as an example of failed astrology, but my take is a bit different. By continually delaying action, it became apparent that she was deferring the decision to move forward. Her initial enthusiasm was tempered by an attempt to make her application better, and then delayed again as other things took priority.

Whether we think of the power of intention as residing in our own psyches, with the gods, or in the Universe (the catchall name for whatever is running the show), we have to consider that even at this deeper (higher?) level, patience must have some limits.

Looking back at our initial talk on the matter, I recognized that my client presented the decision to apply for the loan as something she had already decided upon. There was little room for discussion about whether the project was going to go forward, the only question was when.

What I think happened was that my client had not fully committed to starting the business or getting a loan to do so. The protracted application process was really her acting out the decision-making, going back-and-forth in her own mind, and in a very real sense saying to the Universe that she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do.

There’s nothing wrong with taking time to make a decision, of course. My client may have had any number of valid reasons to hesitate before committing to a serious financial obligation. She may have simply been stymied by her fears, but she may also have unconsciously recognized dangers with the project.

Once we decide what to do, making things happen is surprisingly easy. It’s knowing what we really want that is the hard part (click here for a short article on this topic). The point is that it is fine to take some time to decide what to do, but once we make a decision it doesn’t help to step on the accelerator and the brakes at the same time. If our intention is focused, mountains can be moved, but if we act before we are sure we what we want, we tend to wind up with results that show our attention was half-hearted (that is, results that are half-assed).

In other words: astrology can help you to get clarity about what you want to do, and it can help you plan to do it.

But you have to get the two in the right order.