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Tom writes:
Skippy writes:
It is virtually impossible not to root anything in philosophy.
Probably, so a little explanation is in order. An idaea, any idea or set of ideas has to be rooted in something otherwise it is religious
"root" is too figurative for the task in hand (pun not intended). If X is rooted in Y, then it would seem also that Y stems from X - which is perhaps a way of saying that Y derives from X, that Y follows from X. Is this "following" logical, in the sense that something having 3 sides logically follows from its being a triangle? Or is the following chronological and genetic, in the sense that adulthood follows childhood? All ideas or sets of ideas have to be rooted in some social and cultural context (at least until machines start to think :)) , but the question is whether there are sound reasons for accepting them or rejecting them. When Hand asks for "philosophical foundations" for modern astrology I think he means logical foundations, rather than foundation in a cultural and social context which is not amenable to astrology (i.e. New Age "irrationality", held to follow from its rejection of the scientistic conception of rationality, and the common view that astrology is part and parcel of this). In that sense also, depth psychology and theosophy have logical foundations, some of which may be consistent with astrology, some not.

To label all ideas which seem on thorough inspection to be fundamental, not deriving from anything else, as "religious" is just an attempt terminate the argument without reaching a reasoned conclusion. It entails, among other things, that natural science, insofar as it is based on the idea that some things happen because of other things (i.e. they are "caused"), is a religion - albeit one with just a different ontology.

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this was an interesting thread to read! i particularly liked this quote from mark : "I feel you are setting up a Kangaroo court for modern astrology here."

i noticed the thread went dead shortly thereafter.. perhaps the moderators had to clean up the aftermath that resulted from that quote! i am still new around here and haven't got a complete feel and perspective on the way things unfold here at skyscript..

i think it is tough to try to lump all modern astrology together in one big pile and then proceed to dismiss it.. ebertin represents some of the best of what modern astrology has to offer and i am glad that some of his work was mentioned in the thread.. i don't think it is as easy to dismiss the work of ebertin as it might be to some of the others who have taken up with jungian psychology..

i was thinking of starting a thread on art verses science in relation to how we approach astrology.. to approach astrology as an art would seem to allow for wider variety of approaches, as opposed to attitudes that seem to suggest 'there is only one correct way to do astrology'... i will see about committing to this sooner then later hopefully...

Hand's Talk also an essay

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Hi.
Forgive me if this was already mentioned- Robert Hand's talk in polished essay form is available in the excellent anthology 'The Future of Astrology', which was edited by AT Mann [yes, back in print]. There's also Addy's excellent standby 'Astrology Reborn' included in this collection and almost every thing else, none of which I can remember at the moment (but of course) , is interesting and worth a close look.

self-realisation; Heathen cultural origins of astrology

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Good day,

When asked by one of his students, "What is self-realisation?", an Advaita Vedanta master replied, "Self-realisation is awareness that there is no self to realise."

Since the advent and success of belief systems, mainly the Abrahamic proselyting mass religions Christianity and Islam, requiring immortality of the individual souls (otherwise neither individual post mortem guilt nor redemption / salvation possible), the human individual has been assigned much greater cultural importance whilst concurrently becoming epidemically more numerous.

To lump pre-'Neptunian' astrologies into one group, e. g. 'classical' or 'traditional' seems inadequate and improper, as there are important differences amongst Indian, Hellenistic, Mediaeval and Renaissance astrologies, not only technical (e. g. Stoic vs. Aristotelian elements) but in the entire cultural underpinnings. The former two are Heathen, the latter two monotheistic. This is an essential difference affecting for example astrologers' possible understandings of and relationships to planets.

Best regards,

lihin
Non esse nihil non est.

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To lump pre-'Neptunian' astrologies into one group, e. g. 'classical' or 'traditional' seems inadequate and improper
This is a group established to discuss what is commonly accepted as traditional astrology. It is NOT appropriate to discuss your value judgments of what we do. This is a discussion group not a group dedicated to debating the merits traditional astrology versus other beliefs. I don't know how to make it more clear than that.

The guidelines state:

I do not believe this is an appropriate place for, ?which one is better traditional or modern? debates.
At the time they were written, 6 years ago, this was the major concern. But it now apparently has to be expanded to include a lot more in order to avoid what I believe this post is intended to do.

So I'm locking the thread and asking that we all follow the established rules for this forum. Also I'm not going to debate what I just wrote or discuss the parsing of words that have appeared previously.

Tom

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I need to apologize. I went from my e-mail to the post and assumed I was on the traditional forum. I was wrong and didn't notice it until someone sent me a Private message. The thread is unlocked with my apologies. I was wrong.

Re: self-realisation; Heathen cultural origins of astrology

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lihin wrote: To lump pre-'Neptunian' astrologies into one group, e. g. 'classical' or 'traditional' seems inadequate and improper, as there are important differences amongst Indian, Hellenistic, Mediaeval and Renaissance astrologies, not only technical (e. g. Stoic vs. Aristotelian elements) but in the entire cultural underpinnings. The former two are Heathen, the latter two monotheistic. This is an essential difference affecting for example astrologers' possible understandings of and relationships to planets.
I think you're right, although at the same time we might look at it the other way around as well and say we shouldn't lump 'post-Neptunian' astrology into the category of 'modern' as there are important differences and approaches here too. Modern astrology can include anything from the use of hypothetical planets to a strictly psychological paradigm to a focus upon reincarnation.

Really I think that ultimately these are all relative terms. I think ultimately if we see these categorisations of traditional or modern as being the start of our categorisations, rather than the end, I think we're probably going to run into fewer problems. The Uranian school of astrology is a modern school of astrology. The work of Valens is a Stoic approach to Hellenistic astrology within the tradition. But ultimately we'd agree that Uranian astrology is modern and Valens is traditional. We can make further categorisations if we want to, but we may as well begin with loose categories like 'traditional' and 'modern'.

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I think it is unfortunate that Hand used the term "post-modern" because it was already taken by philosophers and humanities authors like Michel Foucault. Essentially it was a way of looking at society after the modernity movement, as a kind of reaction against the worldview according to science and technology. It sees most statements about "reality" as constructed or invented, not as the result of objective observation.

In the way in which "post-modern" is normally used, I don't think there is really a post-modern astrology, either before or after ca. 1990. We would have to consider that all of the things astrologers say about people, based on their horoscopes, are the result of layers of astrologers' inventions and in-group agreement, not on what is objectively real. In fact a lot of post-modern analysis concerns the deconstruction of cultural constructs, generally to expose their inherent contraditions.

I don't think either the traditional or modern astrologers could live with post-modernism!

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waybread wrote:
In the way in which "post-modern" is normally used, I don't think there is really a post-modern astrology, either before or after ca. 1990. We would have to consider that all of the things astrologers say about people, based on their horoscopes, are the result of layers of astrologers' inventions and in-group agreement, not on what is objectively real. In fact a lot of post-modern analysis concerns the deconstruction of cultural constructs, generally to expose their inherent contraditions.

I don't think either the traditional or modern astrologers could live with post-modernism!
I would classify Juan Revilla, Bill Sheeran, Bill Tallman (if still around), Michelle Jacobs, myself and a few others as post-modern astrologers in more or less the usual sense of the label.

- Ed

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How so, Ed? I am familiar with some of these astrologers' work, and think it makes a good start at deconstructing some of the taken-for-granted views of astrology, but if taken to its logical conclusion, there wouldn't be much left for astrology to stand on.

I mean, we'd have to accept that (for example) the interpretation that Mars is domiciled in Aries, conventionally indicating a propensity for aggression or athleticism, is created, not objectively observed; albeit with the deposit of history behind it.

Ironically a really post-modern approach to astrology would make astrologers join hands with the scientists and debunkers who dispute evidence that astrology is based upon objectively meaningful criteria.

One of the problems, too, is that we would deconstruct not only heavenly bodies as depicted in a horoscope, but we would also have to unpack astrologers' delineations of human personalities and mundane events as products of our own cultural biases.

Revilla is good at deconstructing astrology's norms and truisms, but then he proposes his own in some of his articles. Chaos theory is still a theory, with its own narratives and tropes.

I was thinking of authors like Michel Foucault, Jacque Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigary, Jacques Lacan, and so on. A purist would divide their work into further categories, but they are kind of in the same camp.

I guess we could start with the assumptions about 12 (count 'em) signs and houses....

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Well, perhaps I misunderstand my Derrida, but after deconstructing, one still cobbles together (likely multiple) "partial" ways forward that admit the whole truth cannot be revealed at once, but which can provide an analogy of stereoscopic vision.