I would like to open a thread on the general system of astrology as it relates to our modern understanding of psychology. There is a lot to consider when considering "astrology" as a topic, and by astrology I woudl like to differentiate between the multi million $$ industry of pop literature for 14 year olds.
Generally, although my understanding of the topic from a magickal and scientific perspective of astrology is thin - I have an understanding of the fundamentals. I would like to open this thread to consider the system of astology as both a tool for understanding the human psyche and perhaps as a divintory tool . Please post your thoughts.
Rules of the thread. 1) Be precise in your comments 2) Attempt to be "scientific" - describe real events and thoughts from the 3d physical world 3) Be respectful
"...the general system of astrology as it relates to our modern understanding of psychology"
It might help to define your terms, because modern psychology is multifarious and has mutated considerably since the speculations of Freud and Jung.
Opening declaration of bias: I'm inclinded toward traditional astrology, although I'm not a purist about it and so I do use the outer planets (unlike authentic Indian astrologers, who are an entirely different species from the fashionable "Vedic" Western astrologers of the past 20 years or so.) But I'm semi-allergic to using fashionable rocks like Chiron, and unscientific methods like the Sabean Symbols give me vertigo.
In my estimation, the kind of pop psychology represented by Oprah and her legions of "New Thought"/New Age charlatans, is equally as irrational and unscientific as much (but not all) of what passes even for "serious" professional astrology.
In contrast, traditional astrology was literally the First Science. Even the Catholic St Thomas Aquinas acknowledge it; he said "The stars incline but they do not compel". In that sense, Aquinas and his contemporary "Medieval" astrologes were actually hundreds of years AHEAD of the Late Modern "scientific" (or rather, scientistic) belief in determinism, both material and psychological.
But furthermore, just to help you get started with some observable examples of correlations between transits and real-world phenomena, they're most observable when the inner planets (Mercury and Venus and Mars) turn retrograde.
For example, currently Venus is retrograde. Retrogradation indicates "re"-doing something, including retiring, rearranging, rediscovering, and restoring. And Venus rules music. Today in my local Borders bookstore, all of the music CDs had been taken off of the shelves, for rearrangement.
But Mercury retrogrades are the most vivid examples. The American Presidential election of 2000, requiring a recount, was on a Mercury Retrograde. So was the most recent Australian election which resulted in a delay in forming a Government until the Labor Party negotiated with minority parties.
And the USA (I use the Sibly chart) was "born" with Mercury Retrograde in 1776. Consequently, the written national essence of the USA was literally "revised" in the Constution, which in turn has been amended 26 times, far more revisions than most constitutions ever undergo. Furthermore, America's natal Mercury Rx was also expressed in 1861 when the states went to war about a disagreement about the interpretation of the Constitution.
Something I've been noticing in myself of late is how people operate from a default place in their lives, and how the astrology of having a Gemini sun with Leo Rising, for example, can manifest in someone who errs in communication a lot, but makes the other person feel like they're the one with the problem. I myself, as Pisces with Taurus Rising, Cancer Moon, have fallen into a default mode of being codependent without knowing it, and it took my relationship falling apart (interestingly when the Sun was at around 13-14 deg Leo, squaring my ascendant), for me to begin to put the pieces of my shattered self and address the destructive aspects of my ego's attempts to control my reality in a very difficult moment of surrender.
I've begun to discern that astrology "works" best when it tells a native what the default mode is and how that's going to go, and to what extent the person can affect an outcome by altering their default viewpoint and M.O.
FYI, my astrological approach is poetic-scientific. Or trans-rational if you would rather, including the rational but transcending it. I believe in astrology just like I believe in English, oder ich glaube auf Deutsch, n'est-ce pas? Believing in can not only be a substance but a mode. I look at astrology the same way as I do writing a play. There are rules to the craft of playwriting to make a script stage worthy. There is an art to making a play sing as well. Art and science in collision, the divine twins producing the Pea**** Angel. Same with astrology. There is the need to craft the starworthy vehicle, and the decoding thereof has a praxis and an aesthis as well.
Not either or. It's Aries and Taurus and Saturn and 4th House and ... so on and so on... selecting the details to make the play/chart mean something holds the challenge.
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"Come, Come, Whoever You Are! Wanderer, Worshipper, Lover of Leaving! Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come!" - Rumi
Cobalt, I agree with you insofar as Science is also poetic and intuitive. In fact, ALL science stems originally from intuition and induction based on personal experience.
But Science has boundaries and discipline, and so does realistic, practical astrology.
Science is not a free-for-all, and neither is Astrology, the First Science.
Ah, Reactionaryanal Aquarian... Please, please, please don't see conflict where there is none. I implore you. Work against the Default Aquarian mode of always feeling the need to be disagreeable. All you want is to be loved! My brother, sister and former partner are all Aquarians, and I luvz dem to pieces I duz, but this element drives me atzel-batzel! Make it stop.
I didn't say anything about astrology being a free for all. There's enough reality TV and beauty contest-elections for that sort of mishagoss. Btw, ever try to write a play? Even Waiting for Godot has structure, m'friend. Plays that are free-for-alls are either bad performance art, or willful mental masturbation. Yich.
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"Come, Come, Whoever You Are! Wanderer, Worshipper, Lover of Leaving! Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come!" - Rumi
Adrian Ross Duncan is one author who goes into this a lot in his books. Projection, repression, oedipal complexes, etc. and how/where they show up in the charts.
Ah, Reactionaryanal Aquarian... Please, please, please don't see conflict where there is none. I implore you. Work against the Default Aquarian mode of always feeling the need to be disagreeable. All you want is to be loved! My brother, sister and former partner are all Aquarians, and I luvz dem to pieces I duz, but this element drives me atzel-batzel! Make it stop.
I didn't say anything about astrology being a free for all. There's enough reality TV and beauty contest-elections for that sort of mishagoss. Btw, ever try to write a play? Even Waiting for Godot has structure, m'friend. Plays that are free-for-alls are either bad performance art, or willful mental masturbation. Yich.
Fair enough, although it's more than my Aquarian default mode; it's that one combined with another reasonable default mode, based on years of experience, of weary awareness that the majority of putative astrologers have made a mockery of our science by confusing it with solipsistic "spirituality".
And then there are the overlapping cohort of pseudo "Buddhists" who have taken up the current upper-middle-class fashion of avoiding what they call "divisive speech" - meaning any speech that does not accord with current fashions - so much so that they enforce it divisively. Cf South Park's "Death Camp of Tolerance".
Ah, Reactionaryanal Aquarian... Please, please, please don't see conflict where there is none. I implore you. Work against the Default Aquarian mode of always feeling the need to be disagreeable. All you want is to be loved! My brother, sister and former partner are all Aquarians, and I luvz dem to pieces I duz, but this element drives me atzel-batzel! Make it stop.
I didn't say anything about astrology being a free for all. There's enough reality TV and beauty contest-elections for that sort of mishagoss. Btw, ever try to write a play? Even Waiting for Godot has structure, m'friend. Plays that are free-for-alls are either bad performance art, or willful mental masturbation. Yich.
Fair enough, although it's more than my Aquarian default mode; it's that one combined with another reasonable default mode, based on years of experience, of weary awareness that the majority of putative astrologers have made a mockery of our science by confusing it with solipsistic "spirituality".
And then there are the overlapping cohort of pseudo "Buddhists" who have taken up the current upper-middle-class fashion of avoiding what they call "divisive speech" - meaning any speech that does not accord with current fashions - so much so that they enforce it divisively. Cf South Park's "Death Camp of Tolerance".
But I do think Rumi is cool.
It's a good practice to listen to the hyperventilations out there and say "that's your stuff, not mine." I heard Dmitry Orlov say at a talk recently that Sarah Palin was an advertiser's dream b/c she's an empty shell and can therefore mean whatever a person wants her to mean. Much of this I regard as hoo-hah anyway. While I'm a gay fellow myself, I have always seen the marriage issue as a tchotchke of poltiical creation to be tossed around willy-nilly by the troglodytes and the tolerance-fascists as you would probably call them. There is so much sleight-of-hand and distraction taking place, I have pretty much said "see ya" to all that mishagoss. My time and energies are better utilized elsewhere.
Within astrology circles, I have to confess that the solipsism does get to be too much. I'm on the same page as you there. I get sick and tired of the crystal suckers. But, as with theater, there are some quite damaged souls who find their way into the bazaar, and one just has to pause and work some Al-Anon and disentangle as quickly as possible.
Rumi is cool, and thanks for your personal message. No one ever PM's me!
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"Come, Come, Whoever You Are! Wanderer, Worshipper, Lover of Leaving! Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come!" - Rumi
cobaltblue wrote:While I'm a gay fellow myself, I have always seen the marriage issue as a tchotchke of poltiical creation to be tossed around willy-nilly by the troglodytes and the tolerance-fascists as you would probably call them.
Please don't put words in my mouth; I don't call "them" anything, whoever "they" are.
But aside from all that, Cobalt, I'm very impressed by your above comment. You're an openly self-defined homosexual (sorry but I disagree with calling homosexuals "gay", whereby a fine old word's meaning has been changed), but you are not arrogant about it and you don't demand public approval!
In my opinion that's cool, very cool, meaning honourable as a matter of integrity, as well as authentically polite.
Personally - and no this is NOT equivalent to saying "some of my best friends are (insert persecuted minority here) - the simple fact is that some of my heroes engaged in homosexual conduct at some time in their lives. Among them were:
1. Oscar Wilde (who reputedly converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, but at any rate he was very sympathetic to Christianity, and in my opinion his essay "De Profundis" was very Christian in spirit);
2. Julius Caesar;
3. PROBABLY Walt Whitman although there is no proof of his sexual acts of any kind and he seems to have been sexually inactive for most of his life, kind of like the minority of Catholic Priests
4. Sir Ian McKellen who played "Gandalf" in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
To which I might add, speculatively, Sesame Street's Ernie and Bert: http://www.bertisevil.tv/
Anyway, Cobalt, I thank you with an Australian "Good On Ya" for your chivalrous (as well as intelligent and logical) response to me!
PS, Cobalt, you wrote: "No one ever PM's me!" And no one else ever will, unless some GOOD astrologers like you and me collaborate to make this forum an interesting and attractive one.
-- Edited by Reactionary_Aquarian on Wednesday 27th of October 2010 10:03:34 AM
-- Edited by Reactionary_Aquarian on Wednesday 27th of October 2010 10:04:16 AM
