But, some may say, if all is thus fore-shown  it argues an inexorable destiny decreed by divine caprice; what use is there then of striving, or knowing; let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

If we were born into this life on earth for the first and only time, to live here for a while and then pass away from this sphere never to return, fate and favoritism independent of justice would seem to rule. Such cannot be the case; in a world where everything else is governed by law, human existence must also be reducible to a system, and we hold that a reasonable solution of the mystery of life is given by the Twin Laws of Being, the Law of Rebirth and the Law of Causation.

  That which has a beginning must have an end, and conversely, that which is without ending can never have had a beginning. If the human spirit is immortal and cannot die, neither can it be born; if it will live to all eternity, it must have lived from eternity, there is no escape from this truth; pre-existence must be accepted if immortality is a fact in nature.

  In this world there is no law more plainly observable than the law of alternating cycles, which decrees succession of ebb and flow, day and night, summer and winter, waking and sleeping. Under the same law man’s life is lived alternatively in the physical world where he sows seeds of action and gains experiences according to his horoscope. These, the fruits of existence here, are later assimilated as soul powers in the spiritual world,; birth and death are thus nothing more than gateways from one phase of man’s life to another, and the life we now live is but one of a series. The differences of character, nobility or brutality, moral strength or weakness, possession of high ideals or low instincts, etc., are certain signatures of soul power or soul poverty. Finer faculties are the glorious garments of gentle souls wrought through many lives in the crucible of concrete existence by trial and temptation. They shine with a luster which illuminates the way and makes it easier for others to follow. Coarseness of caliber proclaims the young in Life’s School, but repeated existences here will in due time smooth the rough corners, mellow and makes them soulful also.

  The horoscope shows this difference in the texture of the soul and the aspects indicate how the soul is ripened by the kaleidoscopic configurations of planets in progression, which fan the fires in the furnace of affliction to cleanse and purify the soul of blemish, or brighten the crown of virtue when victory is won, but though the planets show the tendencies most accurately there is one indeterminable factor which is not shown, a veritable astrological “x,”—the will power of the Man, and upon that rock astrological predictions are ever liable to founder; that, at times, is the Waterloo of even the most careful and competent astrologer, yet the very failure of well-founded predictions is the blessed assurance that we are not fated to do thus and so because our horoscope shows that at a certain time the stellar rays impel us in a given direction. In the final analysis we are the arbiters of our destiny, and it is significant, that while it is possible to predict for the great majority of mankind with absolute certainty that the prediction will be vindicated, because they drift along the sea of life directed by the current of circumstance, predictions fro the striving idealist fail in proportion to this spiritual attainment of will power which rouses him to self assertion and resistance of wrong.

 A beautiful little poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox gives the idea in a most pleasing form:

“One ship sails East and another sails West,
With the selfsame winds that blow;
‘Tis the set of the sail
And not the gale
That determines the way they go.
“Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through Life;
‘Tis the act of the soul
That determines the goal’
And not the calm or the strife.”

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