“There is always a ’cause’ and a ‘because’ for every event. Nothing ever ‘happens’ without a cause, or rather a chain of causes. There is a continuity between all events precedent, consequent and subsequent. There is a relation existing between everything that has gone before, and everything that follows.”
– from The Kybalion by “Three Initiates”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In Chapter XII, Causation, of the esoteric book of Hermetic philosophy quoted above, the authors (in illustrating the principle of cause-and-effect with a brief mention of free will) described a situation in which a large rock dislodges from a mountainside and crashes through the roof of a cottage in the valley below.

Considerable attention was paid to explaining what brought the two together at that particular place and moment of time in a way that could not be dismissed as mere “chance,” including a variety of long-term environmental conditions: sun, rain, heat, cold, even the seismic forces that shaped the mountain, as far back as the mind can reach, and intervening human factors that caused the cottage to be built at that specific location. These amounted to the “pre-conditioning” and “pre-positioning” of my title, without which the boulder would have stayed put or plunged down a different fall-line and the homeowner would have remained in the city.

My favorite example of this train of thought is the tarot reading that includes the Tower and the reversed Chariot, with the implication that the querent’s unavoidable need to go downtown the next day could result in being run over by a speeding, out-of-control vehicle. The obvious advice would be to take extra care when moving about, but a more helpful way to put it, once he or she arrives, would be to walk slowly, remain vigilant and look both ways before stepping off the curb because a runaway bus might be rounding the corner, thus allowing time to move out of harm’s way. Even a brief pause en route could allow the critical instant to pass uneventfully.

This brings up the question of free will. Being made aware of this risk, could the querent have simply begged off and stayed home after being warned, consequently avoiding the potential encounter? There is another quote from The Kybalion that speaks to this point:

“The further the creation is from the center, the more it is bound; the nearer the center it reaches, the nearer free it is.”

The wheels for this unfolding scenario were already set in motion by the querent being committed to make the trip, so – barring a last-minute cancellation – the question of free will would not come up until he or she was placed at the center of the event and in an exposed position that required dodging the hazard. Everything up to that point would have gone according to plan, so the reading was looking past that preparatory phase.

If the querent had stayed home, the instance of cause-and-effect suggested by the cards would still be operative, just re-targeted, so another misfortune of an equally harmful nature could sneak up and blindside the individual who, feeling safe, happens to be looking in the opposite direction. The “being-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time” stipulations of pre-conditioning and pre-positioning would have been met by failing to stay in bed behind a locked door and hide under the covers.

Of course, a reckless driver could still run into the house or a hurtling object might crash through the roof, so all bets are off. If wary seekers won’t go to the mountain, the mountain can always come to them.