Author: Vitusha Oberoi
Publication: Sunday
Mid-Day
Date: December 3, 2000
Nobody shall harm me
before my time comes, and nobody shall save me when my time does come."
says astrologer Marjorie Orr, her mauve stain shirt flapping in the wind
as she balances herself on a deceptively narrow ledge at the top of Jantar
Mantar's spiralling steps.
Time may wait for several
decades before reaching out for Orr, because the stars say she is destined
to live to be 96. And Orr has never known the stars to go wrong.
This November 16, when
she saw the Mars-Jupiter trine up in the heavens, she knew something great
was going to happen to her, a Virgo. It did. Within two weeks,
she had packed her bags at her London home and left for India, her first
trip to the country where she has been the guiding star for millions of
avid readers who swear by her astrological predictions.
It was a spiritual homecoming
of sorts for Orr when she visited Jantar Mantar, India's ancient tribute
to the heavenly bodies, on her first day out in Delhi. The mysterious
stone work at the monument, a replica of the nakshatras, speaks a language
few understand. It is a language Orr first became acquainted with
24 years ago' She was then a television producer and had made a documentary
series on paranormal experiences.
"While making this documentary,
I met an astrologer who told me all about my past. It was amazing.
I had led a very full life and travelled several different routes.
That's why it was all the more astounding that he could tell me what I
had been through," Orr says. The experience spurred her on to take
up astrology for formal study. Soon, she had left her earlier vocation
to devote herself to her newfound passion.
These last 24 years have
seen Orr emerge as a leading astrologer with several books to her credit,
columns in reputed journals across the world and a website of her own.
"Astrology is useful
in that it tells you who you are and what you are," Orr says as she recalls
that one incident which had a deep impact on her and made her determined
to know what life had in store for her and the choices she could exercise.
"When my father died,
his last words were that he regretted his life. I thought how could
anyone say that? That he regretted his entire life?" she recalls.
It is precisely such a situation that astrology is supposed to help avert,
because it allows a person see his own potential.
But doesn't astrology
uphold the preordination of life, a confirmation of the belief that it's
all there in the stars, everything cut and dried in advance?
"No, everything is not
preordained. The stars tell us of patterns. These patterns
offer choices. Astrology helps you see these patterns and it is for
you to make the choices. Most people don't make choices all their
lives," she says.
"Women in particular
hang back from doing what they should be doing. They do what is expected
of them and that is how they miss out on so much in life," she says.
"Mind you, if women actually did what they thought they should be doing,
there would be no marriages left," Orr says, her eyes twinkling.
While stars will finally have their way, Orr is totally against people
making relationship decisions on the basis of astrology. "Two people
who love each other will marry or have a relationship, no matter what the
stars have to say. Ultimately, you have to go after your own heart
and do the things you have to do," she says.
However, the warning
signals are always there, as happened in the case of a friend of Orr's
who was in a "horrific" relationship. "I always told him there would
be major trouble for him, but he didn't listen, until one day his lady
friend attacked him with a knife," she says.
Orr says that while she
is not a huge believer in using astrology for starting relationships, the
science can be extremely useful for sorting out tangles within them.
"It can help open up a dialogue," she says. It is especially useful
in dating services. "The stars won't tell you who the love of your
life is, but they can definitely tell you who are the kind of people you
should be seeing." Astrologers, Orr says, are people far more worried than
the rest, because they know what is going to happen maybe 10 years from
now. Consequently, they also feel responsible towards those whose
futures they are predicting. Orr has trained in psychology, which
she uses extensively while making her predictions.
"I know that I am writing
for some actually fragile people. I can't be harsh. There is
always a way of making a person tide over a bad patch. For instance,
a bad phase can be projected as a challenge, and the end of it can be simultaneously
predicted to show that it will not last forever," she says. Orr believes
in the healing principle. Things such as crystals, which are a non-verbal
way of shifting energies, do help correct the imbalance of forces.
There is a lot of hypocrisy
in the West over astrology.
"The West is strange.
It believes in astrology, but it won't admit it. It is confined to
the closet. People in India are more honest," she says. However,
like their Indian counterparts, politicians of the West have come to have
faith in astrological predictions. They use astrologers to fix electoral
dates.
It is Orr's aim to finally
try and make astrology less embarrassing, to give it a more scientific
structure so that it is accepted openly in the West as well.
"Nowadays, physics is
so way out that it will not be difficult to get astrology to look more
scientific," she says, admitting that though she works on computers, she
does have a crystal ball into which she gazes occasionally. "The
crystal ball actually reflects the images within my mind. But it
gives me a headache," she says.
Often, people come up
to Orr and ask when their luck is going to change. "They think luck
is something which will fall out of the heavens, like manna. They
have to learn to make choices in life. Astrology can only tell you
the pattern. It is for you to then choose," she says.
