Heartsong (Logan 2)

"I don't know where that is exactly," I said. "I know it's in New York City."

"Yes. It's where a lot of artists and writers, folk singers and musicians live. I have a shop there on Christopher Street. I do readings, sell candles and crystals."

"Readings?"

"Astrology," she said. "Personal horoscopes."

"Oh. My uncle Jacob thinks it's mumbo jumbo, even heathen. He's always bawling out my aunt Sara for reading her horoscope in the paper, but she does it anyway."

"It's not mumbo jumbo," she said softly. "Astrology was studied among the ancient Egyptians, Hindus, Chinese, Etruscans, and the Chaldeans of Babylonia. It all started with the Chaldeans about three thousand sc. It was very logical to them. When they noticed how the sun and the heavenly bodies affected seasons, crops, they just assumed it all affected human life as well."

"I don't really know all that much about it," I said. "Just that it's like fortune telling."

"Yes, in a way. Your destiny is dependent upon the sign of the zodiac under which you were born and the relationship of the planets at the time and throughout your life, but more depends upon the position and power of the sun and the moon at birth than upon all the planets of our solar system combined. The sun and the moon are the transmitters of the stellar forces. I make charts on a horoscope, working out the location of the sun, the moon, and the planets within the twelve segments of the zodiac known as houses," she continued. "Each house is named for a constellation and each takes up thirty degrees of space, the whole making the three hundred sixty degrees of a circle. That's why the number three hundred sixty is the symbol of completion," she lectured.

"It all sounds silly," I said. Why would Kenneth like someone who believed in these things? I wondered.

"Oh, but it's not. It's all logical. Listen," she insisted. "We all have five positive points of projection and four positive centers of energy. Four plus five makes up the mystical nine, the symbol of deity. The head, hands, and feet are the five points of projection from which streams and streams of vital force are constantly radiating. We symbolize that with the fivepointed star," she added and showed me her wrist where she had a five-pointed star tattooed.

"The positive centers of energy are the brain, the spleen, the heart, and the generative organs, while the great center of reception is the solar plexus." She held her hand against her stomach. "Just think about it. When trouble or anxiety crosses our path, the first place we feel it is here, right? Usually we have no appetite. We have butterflies."

I nodded. That did make sense.

"Mental and psychic goodness depend upon the perfect freedom of the body. Anything that cramps, binds, or twists us out of natural proportion is fatal to real spiritual progress. That's why people in India, Chaldea, and Egypt wore loose-flowing robes and why the high priests did the same. It's why I dress like this, too," she explained. "Does that help you understand it a little better?"

I nodded:

"I can do a chart for you while I'm here, if you want."

I didn't reply. In a real sense I was afraid of knowing what was in store for me. The future seemed far more terrifying than the present, and I was also afraid that if she told me good things, it would only give me false hopes. I had had enough of that.

"Aunt Sara is impressed with the fact that my twin cousins were born under the sign of Gemini," I revealed.

"Yes. Castor and Pollux represent the twin souls. See?"

"No," I said sharply.

"I can explain it," she said.

"I'm not interested."

She just smiled.

r /> "Well, if you change your mind, I'll be here."

"Who's watching your store while you're here?" I asked.

"A friend of mine, Billy Maxwell. He's paralyzed from the waist down, the result of a bullet wound he got when he was fleeing from a mugger. The mugger shot him in the back," she said without sadness or tragic overtones. "Billy's a poet so it didn't stop him from doing what he loves to do."

"Isn't he still bitter and unhappy?" I asked.

"He was in the beginning, but I helped him find a new wavelength, a new highway to travel

spiritually, and he's become a happier, more beautiful person."

"Was he your boyfriend?"

"We loved each other, but it wasn't boyfriendgirlfriend in the way you mean."