My job as an astrologer is to help other people understand themselves more clearly. I don’t know what the balance is between fate and freewill any more than anyone else does. But the birth chart or horoscope suggests strongly that we come into this world, not as tabulae rasae (blank slates) but with certain characters on the stage poised to live out a complex drama as the process of our life unfolds from birth to death.What astrologers cannot do is describe the whole range of possibilities of expression which arise from each core character on the stage. There appears to be a dynamic relationship between what you have been given through family physical and psychological inheritance (the Old Norse word for fate also means genitals!), location, social status and your own choices in what you do with those givens. I think that effective astrologers in consultation are poised on the interface between fate and freewill – on the one hand helping clients to confirm who they are, which they probably already know if they are honest with themselves; but on the other hand, helping them to see, and to broaden, the range of possible expression of the energies with which they have been born.