An hour before arriv­ing, he calls me, excit­ed, to let me know that he’s run­ning late. He explains that he got caught up in the cal­cu­la­tions for my natal chart. Out of the hun­dreds of read­ings he’s done, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, he has­n’t seen a chart like mine. It’s described as a bun­dle, where all ten plan­ets are con­tained with­in 1/3 of the 360° chart. This means that my ener­gy is con­cen­trat­ed, focused, self-dri­ven.

The read­ing takes four hours of cal­cu­la­tions and prepa­ra­tion, with an hour-and-a-half ses­sion of thor­ough expla­na­tion. After help­ing him with his new com­put­er last month, a triv­ial favour for me but a big one to him and his fam­i­ly, he offered a read­ing in return. I hap­pi­ly accept­ed, nev­er being one to dis­miss such a unique offer. He swore me to secre­cy because he’s retired, and will only do this ser­vice as a spe­cial favour.

Before he begins explain­ing though, he tells me that I can take the infor­ma­tion he gives me for what it’s worth. He does­n’t tell for­tunes, he sim­ply sees pat­terns in the num­bers. It’s up to us, our per­son­al­i­ty, our deci­sions, to deter­mine our fate. “Character is des­tiny”, he says.

There’s too much to him. Too many facets, too deep a per­son­al­i­ty. He’s a book unto him­self. I could explain as much as I could about him, and one would still have no idea what to expect when meet­ing him. Even today, he sur­pris­es me every time I see him. I tell peo­ple that he’s a stay-at-home dad, an ath­lete, a writer, an astrol­o­gist, but I haven’t real­ly described him at all.

The chart offers a sub­tle glimpse. The stokes are wide, large, and deep with con­vic­tion. It’s a mix of cur­sive and print­ing, a gen­er­al insight­ing into his flex­i­bil­i­ty. His notes are messy, cor­rect­ed. He prides him­self on being accu­rate, not vague like the far­ci­cal dai­ly horo­scopes, and it’s for this rea­son that I start to believe him. There are things that he describes to me — my penchent for revenge, my philo­soph­i­cal pur­suits, my affin­i­ty for cer­tain sports — that slow­ly bring my ever-present, skep­ti­cal guard down. He says that I have a nat­ur­al cre­ativ­i­ty, that I’m visu­al­ly artis­tic, that I see colours dif­fer­ent­ly from oth­er peo­ple. Because of this, he encour­ages me to start mak­ing mon­ey off my art with­in the next 15 years, or I’ll have missed a good oppor­tu­ni­ty. Sometimes it goes over my head; the posi­tions of my plan­ets, my hous­es, my sagit­tar­ius ascen­dant. He goes into so much detail about my career, romance, sports, trav­el, and friends that I can’t begin to list it all.

Although there are a few points of inac­cu­ra­cy, I have trust in what he tells me. Ceasar said “men will­ing­ly believe what they wish”, and per­haps I’m sim­ply one of these men. So will this change me? Will I act on these new insights and become a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy? Will I dis­card them, and end up with the same fate? Maybe it’s wrong alto­geth­er, some sooth­ing snake-oil, although I don’t think this is true for rea­sons I can’t explain. It’s too soon for me to tell just yet.

All I know is that I’d like to be like this man. I’d like to be as com­plex, as inde­scrib­able as he is.

Maybe one day, if des­tiny is char­ac­ter.