“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The idea of counterparts¹ somewhat shatters that old concept, yet you still want definitions for the self so that you know where you “stand.” You are so taken with the idea of labels that many follow astrology blindly. You are born at a certain time, at a certain place, under certain conditions — but consciousness always forms the conditions. If it is to some extent affected by those conditions, then, it is because the effects follow in the same way that a painter is affected by the landscape that he has himself created. So you decide to be born, say, in a certain month when the planets are thus-and-so. Ahead of time, you choose the seasons of your birth.

Now: Dictation: When you think in conventional terms about astrology, it is as if you are looking at the cover of a book, not realizing that there are many pages within it.

Some persons will be much more affected by, and sensitive to, other probabilities — which, for instance, do not show at all in conventional astrological “charts.”

The emergence of consciousness into those physical conditions automatically alters them — a fact not recognized by astrologers. Each child born alters the entire universe,⁷ and changes the world of its time and birth by bringing into it action not there earlier, in your terms, and by impressing the universe with the stamp — the indelible stamp — of its reality. Each child chooses its own probable version of any given birthdate. Such dates are obviously not just points in time, pinpointed in space. In the first place, since all time is simultaneous, you are always dying and being born, and your later experience affects the time of your birth.

Give us a moment … Using conventional astrology, you will find certain correlations, because of particular events occurring, that are indeed interrelated. Yet many individuals will not discover semblances of themselves in the charts of astrology simply because their chosen probabilities are, qualitatively speaking, so different from the “norm.”

When astrology works, it works because the astrologer is using his or her creative and psychic abilities, and then projecting that knowledge into a pattern that is of itself too small to contain it. The chart then simply becomes an aid.

I am not comparing astrologers with ants. I am, however, trying to show you that you are not ruled by the stars — and that when you behave as if you are, then you are showing as little comprehension of your true position as our ant did. You are small in relationship to the stars, also, but when you seek to place your fate in their hands, figuratively speaking, then it does seem as if you have little control over your own destiny.

3. Jane and I appear to be two of those individuals “who follow a different order of probabilities” as far as astrology is concerned. Beyond some general reading we’ve done on the subject — both pro and con — we know little about it. However, horoscopes that readers have cast for us, after we’ve given the requested information about our births, seldom show much correlation with the Jane and Rob we think we know — nor will one person’s charts for us agree with those prepared by others. We’ve ended up feeling that astrology, as it’s presently practiced, is too limited in conception.

Seth has briefly referred to astrology a few times over the years. As an example, Appendix 21 contains the remarks he made in ESP class last November 26, 1974, concerning the “hidden variables” that can be associated with a recognized birthdate. For the moment, then, Jane and I think that Seth’s material on astrology in this 729th session (and, it soon developed, in the 730th) can serve as his answer to those who have asked for his opinion about it.