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Part 2 - I Received The Call

It was Saturday, March 15, 2003. When my phone in Nashville, TN began its persistent ringing, I just barely managed to catch the call as I was heading out the door to face the day.

The Ides of March
I knew that March 15th was the dreaded "Ides of March," due to my one very small claim to fame of an article of mine on the Ides of March being (at the time) one of the top Internet destinations for that one particular day of the year...

But waking up that - otherwise nondescript - Saturday morning, it was supposed to be just another Saturday. Damn it, it was supposed to be just another Saturday like all of the many uneventful Saturdays that had passed before it.

It wasn't.

According to the hesitant, but steady voice of my mother's physician on the other end of the line... my mother had been diagnosed with a fast growing tumurous growth in her kidneys. Mom had already made the difficult decision that she would not have the elective surgery to be followed up by chemotherapy that might or might not briefly extend her life. Because of this... my mother had now been given a maximum of six months to live.

Mom, a retired school teacher, living 1,000 miles away along the eastern border of New Mexico, had called a couple of days earlier in order to let me know that she was in the hospital. According to her, she'd admitted herself for the rather benign purposes of regulating all of the various and asunder medications that she had been taking.

This was Mom’s typical modus operandi of letting me know that she was or had been in the hospital. After everything was already okay and squared away, then she’d call me with the news. At the same time... I, as her only son, was expected to let her know immediately if anything were wrong with me. Being my mother's son, I usually didn't.

Feeling adrenaline and accompanying panic now surging through every inch of my body, I knew that my sister, Karen, living 300 miles away from Mom on the other side of New Mexico, would still be able to reach our Mom much faster than I could.

Unfortunately, I also knew the odds of getting hold of my sister on that particular Saturday were somewhere between slim and none. My sister was scheduled to be on the road that day, traveling to Albuquerque to pick up her son during his very first college spring break. And my sister and nephew were seemingly two of the last people on the planet that didn't yet have a cell phone.

With a hopeless sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I called my nephew’s dorm room. My sister was there. She immediately headed for Mom.

Looking At The Charts
For better or for worse, over the years I have made the conscious decision to not immediately start casting astrological charts when (to put it lightly) hitting a rough patch in the road.

In the first place... when caught up in the heat of the moment, I'm not likely going to be clear-headed enough to get much of anything right. Besides... the forecasting of future events, based on whatever astrological symbols are involved is (and has always been) a dicey and hazardous endeavor at best.

Chaos Theory and Prediction
As demonstrated in the Chaos Theory, when studying, examining, and making predictions about complex systems and/or organisms in nature there is most normally a hidden thread and/or pattern underlying what was on face of things seemingly chaotic and/or random.

Put simply... nature knows what it's doing. Thus far, it has been easier to see and explain this hidden pattern after the fact, because the second tenet of the Chaos Theory is that very small intervening variables (events) can cause complex behaviors or events. This has been called the Lorenz Butterfly Effect, where it's somewhat "tongue in cheek" asked: "Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?"

Astrology, and precise forecasting of future events, is much the same.

Aligning With Destiny
According to Jungian author Dianne Skafte, Ph.D. in "Listening To The Oracle," in ancient times it was normally considered impious for a pilgrim to consult an oracle for predictions of the future. It was, however, considered proper to ask an oracle how one could become aligned with their destiny.

Speaking only for myself, astrology has generally been most effective in my life when used as one of several augmentative tools that assists me in confirming what I already know (or should have known) in the inner-depths of my being.

The very idea of predictive astrology being used to gain a sense of control over one's circumstances reminds me of the wonderful Scottish astrologer Isabelle Pagan (1867-1960) that commented in the 1930 edition of her book "From Pioneer to Poet" that as a rule she avoided making predictions about such things.

"Few have the fortitude to face predictions of calamity without loss of energy; while many, assured of coming luck - especially financial - are inclined to take things easy."