His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote somewhere that he isn’t too keen on astrology. Apparently, HHDL prefers the advice of oracles. He did mention that astrology is important culturally for Tibetans. So he isn’t knocking it altogether. He’s so darned fair.

Well, I won’t speculate as to HHDL’s reasons for preferring oracles, but I certainly agree with him. And, as I just started offering the daily reading of the Panchangam, I think it’s appropriate to say a little bit about divination.

I was held to the fire and forced to examine my relationship to astrology last year when it turned out that my beloved Daoist chart was based on the wrong birth hour. Everything had to go: The fab image of myself as the most powerful she-yogi in the fem lineup. The figure of the most accomplished teacher as my guru. Even my inner element, that source of deepest patterning and inspiration. All gone. All gone in an instant of miscalculation.

Equally as instantaneous, once I got the phone call informing me of the error, was my recognition of how attached I had become to the Story of Me that the chart represented. A terrible two-year old in me howled: I want my chart back!

Kali was laughing my head off for sure.

One of the powers of self image is that, like oyster spit, it can harden around anything. In Tantra, we call this self-making capacity ahamkara. Ahamkara is so determined, it can even construct a fixed self-image around a spiritual practice that teaches you to let go of fixed self image. Ahamkara isn’t inherently evil. It just tends to get stuck on needy, greedy, weepy second chakra stuff and forget that Self includes all.

Most of us know someone who explains everything with, or blames everything on, their astrology chart. I’ve noticed there’s a special kind of tone that accompanies this activity. Kind of a fond, self-indulgent all-knowingness. We chuckle affectionately at our foibles or stand aghast at our supposed fixed karmas—those nasty habits our chart tells us we can’t do anything about. Oh, alas.

Here’s what happens. We get hooked up with an astrologer. The astrologer tells us stories about us. We love hearing stories about us We take notes. We record the session. We go home with everything. Then we keep that reading around. Forever.

Oracles, on the other hand, are bubbles in the wind. When consulting an oracle, it’s hard to escape the recognition that whatever we get out of it only pertains to a very circumscribed slice of time and space. Also, oracles are often, well, oracular. The language is a bit, or a lot, strange. There might be pictures and words. Or funny symbols. Or pages of rich mythic story with which we have to interact.

Clearly, oracles are not about the transmission of discrete information from point A to point B. When consulting an oracle, we become acutely aware of what is always true: Any reading of anything is a complex, risky affair. The reading of an oracle explicitly exists in the zone between reader, oracle, the masters of the oracle, ancestors, teachers, your dog, and the entire cosmic situation.

Of course, the same is true of the reading of astrology charts. Sadly, for ahamkara, our charts seem to represent a field day for fixation. It’s simply harder to build a self-image around an oracle reading. And this is a good thing.

An astrologer with true spiritual accomplishment will always pay homage to the fact that, despite our most entrenched patterns, reality is a wild card. Life is up for grabs, and you can’t really grab onto anything for long. Some rare astrologers don’t even use a chart. You are time. You are the planets and stars. For those siddhas, who needs a chart?

The Panchagam is based on Vedic astrology, but it shows us the whole picture changing every day, and even hour by hour. It’s got an extra-loud and large-type message for us about flux.

Consulting the Panchagam, oracles, and spiritually accomplished astrologers is vital to living la vida Tantra. We must learn to harmonize with the hours, days, and seasons. Without knowledge of how to time the events of our lives, without keying into the directional flow of each day, we are like salmon swimming up stream. We get born. We screw. We swim hard. Then we die all ripped apart and exhausted from fighting the current.

Tantra is about going with the current. It is about adaptability, conserving energy, living a life unconditioned by tension and struggle, and dying juicy and relaxed, all ready for the next part of the trip.

I can tell you from personal experience that you don’t need to be hugely accomplished to start feeling the daily current on your own. Every day, before I open my eyes, I do just that: Open my heart and crown and feel for the current. I can’t explain exactly how to do this. You just have to start experimenting. It’s great to check your “daily feel” against the Panchangam.

Maintaining correct View with respect to the use of divinatory tools is crucial. Be vigilant against any grasping or fixation. If read correctly, every divination speaks directly to our transient, ever-becoming world.

OM Shanti, Shambhavi

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