My Astrologer & Me

The first thing he told me in our first reading was that I have been a very lucky person my whole life. That the alignment of the planets at that specific moment that I was born, February 3, 1953, in the early evening, with a triangular setup of planets, ensured that luck was in my pocket throughout my life.

“Lucky?” I replied. “You’ve got to be kidding. I had a terrible childhood. I moved 15 times by the time I was 16, which really meant I lived most of my life by myself because my family lived in a home where basically our rooms were studio apartments, and gathering, even for a family dinner, was saved for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas.My father was terrifying. And you never knew when, so you were constantly on alert.”

Lucky?

But as the months have passed and we’re coming up to 24 lunar cycles, and this pleasant, brilliant, trained psychotherapist and astrologist has walked me through so many things, every single day, I am more and more aware of how very lucky I am.

I have never had hardship. Not real hardship. I’m in my eighth decade and my body, unnoticed by me over all these years, dragged out by me with nary a stretch when I wanted to play a game of tennis, or stay up all night talking, or drink Diet Coke for decades just because I liked the way it tasted - has never, ever complained. Okay, two hip replacements, but the next day I was walking. And, then there is my financial security which has never been in question, and an amazing daughter who stuns me almost daily with her passion and commitment to so many meaningful things, and the places I’ve been and the people I know, and the friends I have and have had. Lucky. Oh yes.

He’s right, but more important than being right, realizing it has changed the voice in my head and how I approach a given day. That’s a lot. Big. Game-changing big.

I’m not well-versed enough to speak to you about astrology and what my Venus rising means to my Aquarius foundation, or the fact that when my father walked out of the hospital, if he had looked up, which I’m sure he didn’t, he would’ve seen a perfect triangle of three incredible planets, beckoning me to Earth. I like to think they were welcoming me to the world and connecting to each other saying, “Wow, this one will be worth watching.”

I leave most of that to be in John’s memory, as we meet every two months and we go over what’s happening, what has happened, and why I need to pay attention to certain days in the future or certain things about me that are just because of the way the Earth stood still for that brief second when I was born. Imbedded in my core.

Many people who know me are shocked that I have an astrologist. Her? Seriously, I don’t think so. Not only that but that I consider him to be in my inner circle of advisors. And my teacher, about more than just me. I’m the person who wrote an article about how I looked for God in all the wrong places and realized that God was me, and that voice inside me. My search for spirituality has not led me to a clear highway toward the setting sun. And, now, I sit under a moon and ponder so many things out of reach before John came into my life.

Oh how I’ve come to love the moon. And a full moon? I don’t miss it. If it’s a clear night, you’ll find me out there, perhaps having lit a fire and just sitting there, looking at it and opening my mind to what it offers me.

I’m a curious person by nature, which now includes my astrological makeup. I will be forever curious about what I can learn about the energy and the stars and the Earth and what it all means around me.

But mostly, I’m grateful to this man who meets with me, who spends his entire day helping people find their way through their predetermined predictions and assets, without asking for anything much in return. He doesn’t share much about himself, but when he does, I am struck by his lack of needing to present himself as certain on anything. He questions things, too.

In the end, if there are mistakes in a reading, it’s probably around interpretation of what things mean. We are humans, and our ability to reason is limited by our personal experience, curiosity, and ability to dig deep. What that means is that trying to figure it all out always has a little element of uncertainty or possibility for error.

What I can tell you is that what astrology has brought to me is a certain peace that has eluded me my entire life. That some things about me are just that way because of that split-second timing of when I was born and where I was born. It’s not that I haven’t tried hard enough to be what I see in others and wish was ‘me.’

I imagine this is the way some people feel about religion and God. I looked for peace in religion. Studied it for decades. I’ve admired the peace my religious friends have in a certainty of an afterlife. I never found anything there. And I also felt like investing now for an afterlife that may or may not be true was somehow … decadent? Self serving? Not sure of the word there.

So this new world of energy and the position of the push and pull of the stars as we walk through life works for me, and I’m now as certain about astrology as a Catholic is about Catholicism or a Buddhist is about Buddhism.

But the first time we met? I wanted to catch him. Fraud. Hocus Pocus.

In our first meeting, I asked him, “if that predetermination of what makes me me is based on that split-second moment in time, then if I looked at other people who were born in the same hospital at the exact same moment, wouldn’t they have the same life as me?”

He told me that they would not, because we have not lived the same life. Even twins don’t live the exact same life. And those external things, the people we let in, the people that are there because we were born into them, and the choices we make along the way about what we do and where we go and who we speak to at a dinner party, will affect who we become just as that core center of attributes that come from this vast universe around us will also determine who we become. But it’s the combination of them. Some we control and some we don’t.

And yes, of course I asked him if he knows when I’m going to die. And the answer is no, he does not. I know. I know. Would it be. Or maybe not.

I am sad that I needed him to be right about things for me to believe what he said in that first reading. I hate that the jaded part of me that showed up had to have that gotcha moment where I tried to prove him wrong.

He walked me through things he could never have known. Specific times, actually. Moments when things changed in my life because it was the end of a certain cycle or a planet no longer sitting right in the middle of one house of mine or another.

When we first sat down, he told me I still had a year, or a little more, to go where I am finishing up a 15-year inward journey. Where I am not meant to shine in a bigger light until 2025. I was spending the time inside myself figuring myself out. He gave me the exact month and year, however, and he was exactly right about the change that took place that sent me into a more internal dialogue rather than the extroverted life I was leading before. To the month.

I told him that if he had told me 15 years ago I was going to have to be searching inside for 15 years, I would’ve stuck my head in the oven. He replied that if he had had the opportunity to meet me 15 years earlier, I would’ve not believed a word he said, or I would’ve thought he was a crazy old man. We laughed, but it was really a moment of reckoning. If you’re not open to possibilities outside the certainty of what has kept you safe for so long, you can never really know what might’ve been.

I wanted to write about it for a long time, but I haven’t known how.

My name is Christine Merser and I work with an astrologist who has shown me the patterns of myself that were laid out at birth - how I’ve walked through them and where I can take them and how I can change them. Best of all, he has shown me how I can not waste time trying to make something about me right that was never wrong.

And I am so grateful to my friend who gave me a session with John, who is actually probably the only astrologist I’ve come across who could’ve walked with me on this journey that I needed so desperately. I thank him. And I thank her. And I thank that moon every month. And the stars around it. And the fact that no matter what happens in the politics of today, they are still there. Unchanged.

At least so far.

CM

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My astrologer is John Marchesella. Feel free to reach out directly if you would like. CM