Are You the Captain of Your Own Ship?

Man at the Helm, Theo Van Rysselberghe

If you've ever steered a boat (or dreamt you were doing so), you'll know that sometimes you just catch everything right: the sail pulls taut, the boat leans and slices through the waves; she strains and leaps at your fingertips, you move with her, braced just right to meet the wind and the water.

But then your mind wanders, you've misjudged the wind, the sail flaps, the boat bucks and you feel a fool.

Or the wind gets up suddenly, the waves get high and you know you're not strong enough to hold on to the wheel. You thought you were in control, but actually nature is much, much bigger than you are.

Life is like that too.

Sometimes you go off course through no fault of your own, battered by the high winds of the banking collapse or felled by a bereavement, or maybe it was your fault: you made a wrong choice, a bad decision.


What we're all looking for on life's voyage is a boat that is "yar".

Yar = "easy to handle, quick to the helm, bright." That's the word Katherine Hepburn's character Tracy Lord uses in Philadelphia Story to describe the True Love, the boat she sailed in with her ex-husband.

When you find yourself off course, adrift or even capsized, it is possible change direction - to trim your sails, adjust the steering, take another look at the map and pull on another sweater.

If you can navigate by the stars, so much the better.

Astrology can help with all that. I find that people usually come to see me when there's something that needs fixing. What we're usually doing is correcting a navigational error, or sometimes reaffirming that the course is right. I'm checking your life course against the compass of your natal chart and the weather of the current transits.

After a good session, your course may change direction, you may handle your sails or your wheel differently; you may pay more attention to the weather from now on.

Often what an astrology reading does is remind you of how brave you are, how far you've already traveled and how much you're capable of doing. You are the captain of your own life.