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Star-crossed conversations

LAST WEEK, LINDA JOYCE, astrological counsellor and past-life reader, paid a visit to Hong Kong in order, as she put it, 'to make connections for the future'. Joyce lives in New York, and is well-versed in the arcane ways of Western astrology and, indeed, Western publicity: her best-selling book, The Day You Were Born, led to televised appearances with chat-show hosts Howard Stern and David Letterman.

All her friends told her she was ill-advised to contemplate being interviewed by the notoriously aggressive and aptly named Stern (who, unexpectedly, turned out to have been a harem girl in a previous life) but Joyce had a plan. 'If I'd defended my position, I'd have been eaten up alive,' she explained. 'If I don't have a position, you can't attack it. So I had a position, but it wasn't fixed.' From which you can deduce that Joyce wasn't the Arizona State Fencing Champion three years in a row (in her current incarnation) for nothing.

As it happened, Joyce's visit overlapped with that of Drew Lawrence. One hesitates to describe Lawrence as a Vedic astrologer because, as he pointed out - with prescient accuracy - to this writer, 'You're going to present me as a Vedic astrologer, aren't you? Astrology does not define me. I'm an author, I'm a musician, I was a Hollywood writer of animation, I was a sound editor, I also write a lot of short stories, poetry and speak seven languages.'

Nevertheless, for the purposes of this feature, Lawrence is, indeed, a Vedic astrologer, who spent years studying Sanskrit and translating Vedic texts and is theoretically at odds with the system of Western astrology as espoused by Joyce. Putting them together in a back room of the New Age Shop for the entertainment of this newspaper's readers was supposed to lead to a form of star wars; psychic Missile Defence Systems would surely be deployed. Alas, it didn't quite work out that way because 'our moons are the same sign', observed Joyce, beaming over at Lawrence, who beamed right back. The force was evidently already with them and they'd only met once, briefly, the previous day. So which shared sign would that happen to be?

'Depends,' said Lawrence. 'In Western astrology, it's Aries. In Vedic, it's Pisces. See, zero degrees Aries begins the zodiac - we're agreed on that. How to determine where that takes place is where the systems differ. The Western system is moveable, it works out the sun's position in relation to the Earth, but because the Earth spins and has a slight wobble, there's a discrepancy. The Vedic system is fixed, it uses the constellations of the stars. So the zodiac goes out of whack 52 seconds a year, and right now we're 23 degrees recessed.'

Vedic astrology, therefore, subtracts those 23 degrees from Western signs. Not everybody likes this form of astral mathematics. Lawrence, who now lives in Seattle, was a Los Angeleno for 22 years. 'Los Angeles is a pretty hip place, people are pretty open, but in the 70s, nobody had heard of Vedic astrology. A lot of people define themselves by their sign. If they say they're Taurus and you say they're Aries, it upsets people deeply, they could pull out a knife.'

Joyce, listening intently, nodded and murmured, 'They just want the information.'

'Right!' said Lawrence. 'I'd never tell them their signs and positions on the charts, I'd do the reading and they'd say 'That's really accurate' and then I'd say - you're not Taurus! You're Aries!'

Vedic astrology is at least 7,000 years old. 'It stems from 5000BC and that's just when it was written down,' explained Lawrence. 'The Vedas deal with karma, yoga, reincarnation, self-realisation . . . and they migrated West, with the spice trade. Then the Greeks got hold of it. They were like sponges, they absorbed it, but things got lost in translation and the Vedic tradition was, I like to say, watered down.'

'That doesn't mean it hasn't evolved, that it hasn't remained stuck in the past,' put in Joyce, gamely, but she rather ruined this daring thrust by immediately collapsing into laughter.

Lawrence grinned at her amiably. 'That doesn't mean someone with insight and perception can't see the deeper truths,' he said. 'Like you. I have no problem with Western astrology if it's somebody like you.'

'Vedic astrology is very predictive, isn't it?' continued Joyce. 'What I'd like to ask is about fatalism. That's where we could butt heads.'

'That's generally the argument other Western astrologers put forth against Vedic, but I don't believe it's etched in stone,' replied Lawrence. 'I am predictive but, see, I'll tell you what I don't like - on Tuesday, this is going to happen, in May this'll happen. I want to know why, I want empowerment. This is your old pattern, to break that pattern, do that . . . I don't really care about methodology. If you can throw sticks on the ground and tell me something meaningful, toss away.'

Joyce laughed again, as did Lawrence, whereupon one of the New Age Shop acupuncturists, who was working on a client in a room nearby, came out and asked everyone to please be a little quieter. Have they witnessed each other's readings?

'No, we don't know how we differ,' whispered Lawrence. 'My guess is not much.'

'It's like different religions,' mused Joyce and then, perhaps thinking of other gladiatorial encounters, added, 'All paths lead to Rome, right? It depends how they ride the chariot.'

'What I'm seeing is that Linda uses her set of tools and I mine,' Lawrence went on. 'We could have sat and bickered but we're arriving at truths and perceptions of truths. Ultimately what we try to do is contribute to greater understanding for our clients.'

'I've had a dominatrix,' announced Joyce, unexpectedly.

'Oh, I've had a few of those,' purred Lawrence. 'One of them said to me, 'So - want to do a trade?''

'I didn't get that offer,' cried Joyce. (Obviously this highlights one crucial difference: Vedic astrologers who happen to be male stand a better chance with the ancient Silk Road system of barter than Western astrologers who happen to be female.)

Speaking of trade . . . would it be possible for Joyce and Lawrence to demonstrate their respective skills in front of a writer? Vedic and Western philosophies, thousands of years and some constellations apart, spoke as one on this point - that is to say, they declined.

'Whenever I've done readings for interview purposes, it backfires every time,' said Lawrence. 'It's not sincere - you're not charging them. When people pay money, it becomes something of value. That's the way the psyche works.'

This writer's psyche was working out the cost of a full reading ($2,000 with Lawrence who is in Hong Kong until the middle of June, plus an unknown quantity for Joyce who has yet to do readings here but would like to return) and decided she didn't need to know the future that badly. What about the past, and, in particular, the lives previously led by Joyce and Lawrence?

'Because I was a fencer, surprise, surprise, I've been a swordsman, and I've been a samurai before,' said Joyce.

'I think,' began Lawrence, wobbling his head in a droll fashion and adopting a subcontinental accent, 'I've been Indian more than once. I don't like to do charts for Indian people because they want to know what's going to happen tomorrow. If I have to do fortune-telling, I'm not interested. But astrology - I tell you, I took to it immediately.'

Joyce interjected, with excitement, 'And it was never like studying, it's like remembering!'

'Exactly,' said Lawrence. A thoughtful shade passed over his face. 'But I don't know if I'll be doing astrology that much longer. I'm completing a 10-year moon cycle in November, I know there's a big shift coming.'

Which seemed a perfect opportunity for Joyce to demonstrate some of her Western astrological skills.

'Let me think,' she said, sitting forward and contemplating Lawrence through her dark glasses. Years ago, Joyce used to forecast the weather on Arizona television, and she surely applied the same intent glamour to her meteorological charts in those days as she did to Lawrence's cherubic features last week. 'I'm thinking intuitively . . . He needs a greater challenge is the problem. Nothing to do with astrology, something else,' Joyce said. 'If somebody said to me tomorrow, 'You'll not do astrology anymore', I'd say that's cool, on to the next thing,' remarked Lawrence.

As for any lingering philosophical schism between the two: 'We are unfettered and untrammelled thinkers,' said Lawrence. ('God, you're all so articulate!' cried Joyce's sister, Paula, who happened to walk into the room to hear that profession.) 'There're big differences but there's harmony,' said Joyce.

Lawrence, however, had an age-old, written-in-the-heavens, karmic distinction fully tapped. 'The biggest difference between us,' he said, 'is that Linda's a woman and I'm a man.'

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