From Tamil Nadu in India comes this sad tale of astrology gone wrong:

A blind faith in astrology has led to a man killing his own son. The bizarre incident occurred at Veerappanchatram here recently.

Murugesan (40), working as a watchman in a private firm at Pallipalayam, killed his son Sadurshan (9) by pushing him into the Cauvery river after he was told by an astrologer that his son’s birth timing was the cause for all his sufferings. . . .

The police on suspicion interrogated Murugesan who confessed to have committed the murder. “I sacrificed my son for the welfare of my family,” he told the police. Murugesan was arrested.

Vedic astrology (from India) tends to be more oriented towards predicting the future than Western astrology which typically takes a more humanist or psychological perspective. Because astrology is so much more widely accepted in India there are many more astrologers serving the population, and therefore we tend to see more of these stories coming from India. Still, bad astrology is bad astrology.

Perhaps this man’s son was a difficult or even impossible behavioral case. I heard a story on NPR today about bipolar children in families and the toll they took on the healthy children in the family that started my mind wandering. I believe that difficult children are likely the more sensitive in the family who absorb the hidden dynamics of the other family members. Hidden stress, rage, sadness – all these emotions erupt from the soul of the sensitive child into the family arena where they can be seen by all. A friend of mine who worked at a training (reform) school told me years ago that when the “bad seed” enters the training school, one of the other children in the family suddenly turns bad. I always found that very interesting because I myself was the bad seed in my family, and also, I believe, the most sensitive.

But back to astrology…I believe that no fate is set in stone, else what would be the point of human existence?? One chart can reflect a saint or a sinner; a failure or a massive success. We are given the tools, and we choose how to wield them. Any astrologer or forecaster of any kind who attempts to predict an ironclad future for an individual is serving no one, in my opinion, but himself.