I agree, Cat, on the question of the literal/figuretive spectrum.
This thread was probably going to touch on the general question of fatalism, which some people find in astrology, and others do not in general, so much, and that might be related. For instance I didn't mean that astrology was itself generally fatalistic, just that some people find pluto above all to be one of the deepest astrological influences, and may be what people find most easily interpretable as fatalistic. Pluto, is what people read as fate (also power sex, and other deep resonances).
Philosophically speaking (aside from astrology) I would say it would depend on what people mean by fate, for me to indulge such an idea, beyond a healthy skepticism.
To start with, a theoretical determinism doesn't work to explain anything in general. I can only think it is a basically mistaken notion out front, to identify so much with any theory determining reality. Isn't it clear it is humans that conventionally or theoretically "determine" things, in whatever concept? Or do people now say nature determines or is deterministic? People identify with ideas in a broad way, and there are many causal determinists who take their position, and the paradigm they identify with as most reasonable. This "modern" idea of fate as determinism is interesting because it seems clear, such determinism comes from the way modern people theoretically conceive and strongly identify with the world in terms of their knowledge of it, and yet they project something from that as an ideal intelligibility of things, (a "determining" nature), which is actually just speculative. I do not even know what to say, to anyone's suggestion in that sense. I'd think that is really just an image and myth, what modern people deify, playing itself out, that I don't follow along with. It is not science, but a metaphor and image drawn from it by relation.
As for fate in general though I actually reserve some metaphorical possibility, if the metaphor strikes people in their existence. I think the idea can be a less "mechanical" metaphor, or less deterministic, for instance. I'd think of fate like in Homer's poetry, in the Iliad, where Achilles learns he has an essential choice. He has to decide whether he would fight in the trojan war, and create an immortal legacy - but in that die - or if he would choose not to fight, and live a long and happy life, and have many children and grandchildren. In that sense fate is in a person's existential choice. As it goes, Achilles chose to fight, and created a legacy and narrative that went beyond himself, but as a consequence, dies. Only to be fate, to Achilles it was no choice, but actually, his following the way of his way. Achilles was his fate, because he knew himself.
But fate is not just power or strength. It could also be expressed in ease with oneself, and acceptance, and there is no jutting decision or action to take in ones way. Like Robert Frost wrote:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth,
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same...
Fate could be a strong and unwavering narrative that may transcend - by burning through - what we ourselves are, or are wholly aware of at a time. Or it can be in the principle of ease, and least resistence, more passive like water, filling in. The less elemental and more "theoretical" principle of what is known and not known comes into play, when modern people talk about fate in their own lives. Knowledge or what one knows and comes to know can be the narrative. "Determinism" can be fate. I am not sure I would say I believe or do not believe in something like fate, because it usually needs to be broken down a little from a strong principle of knowledge we modern people live by. Achilles had a choice and at the same time he was heroic in that he did not. What is the path in the woods, which diverges, with no moral, of right vs. wrong, better or worse, and with no essential hindsight other than lived life?
So to put it in astrological terms. In the end I think I look to a passiv principle of knowledge, and see the world though interpretation, ie. the self reflective knowledge, and from there I understand how people may indeed have a strong understanding of their path, and convicition, or may be able to easily embrace whatever comes. I'd say there is no argument for fate, there is just poetry.
I would definitely not urge anyone to think anything is determined, in astrology like the way an apple fell on Issac Newton's head like a mechanical law of gravity. That is too literal. (And there is nothing wrong with identifying with science, in my opinion either, if a person understands its extent and purpose, and where its knowledge based principles begin and end.) Clearly if there is anything going on with the planets, in their different relations, and harmonies, astrologists speak of, it is a different principle. The way people look to a sky and the stars around them is in a much broader sensibility, of simultaneous resonance with these celestial phenomena, and interpreting the human events around them. I'd guess early humans drew figures of animals, like heros in the stars early on, and noticed how the planets (wanderers) moved through these "signs", and people learned to find a correspondences between symbol and life, as a whole. Where there are strong pulls in the planets, (in ones nature) they pull to "fate" to resonance within these interpretive terms, to ease, letting go, or identification and strength. The forces would be more like yin and yang. As modern and reasonably skeptical people, we might recognize explicitlty that this is an interpretive or figurtive correspondence, if anything at all though. Astrologers would clearly interpret the events around them, in broad correspondence rather than force any force of physical reality on people one way or another. Even if the interpretive correspondence in astrology would seem to imply that the planets have "effect" upon us, that has no basis if there is no personal or existential resonance. The sky is what it is whether it is just to look at to interpret, just the same. So it is better to say, astrology is not an interpretation of "force" when it is not exactly dealing with those forces, on a human level first.
If there are fates in general, likewise, in view of life, I think it can't be without regards to one's existential way of being. We regard that, choice that diverging of the tree branches, or the stream or the path is of life, in its most basic sense, and people begin there. That to me is nothing astrological, so I would say I have much respect for all who come to the existential, and the essential in general.
As for astrology, to me freedom is in figurtive interpretability. When conveying this, the challenge seems to be in giving someone new, with interest, enough information to work with, without it being too much. It is best to work with the general, and what resonates, in my opinion, and allow the particulars to come and appear in themselves without need of elaboration, because that is life.
Anyway... although she won't remember it probably, I actually remember Pachoo telling me in these forums a while ago that you can read the aspects as unresolved or resolving Karma, and I thought that was right on point. It changed the way I saw things. Karma definitely offersmuch to work with, as any good yogi knows...
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