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Waybread wrote:
Hmmph.

So don't bother voting, people. It will make no difference to an election outcome.

I wonder if her system "works" for other countries.

Oh, like China which changed leadership [sort of] around the same time.
I hardly expected you to be a fan as I know you gravitate very much to a strongly freewill view of astrology. Talking to Brady its true she does think the American system is so well attuned to the Venus cycle that results are strongly favouring one side or the other beforehand.

Its always a dilemma for astrologers that if things are so predetermined why bother? Reading Ptolemy he said it assists in providing us with equinamity in the knowledge of future events. Valens also seems to view astrology providing a kind inner peace in the knowledge we could not really control our fate but rather our reaction to it.

Equally, if everything is freewill why bother with astrology? I personally, think freewill is much more restricted on the collective level than the individual. However, to confirm that we need effective methods of prediction. That is why I think Brady's work is interesting.

I am not advocating social apathy. Just look at what the followers of Mahatma Gandhi, the Civil rights movement or the Anti-Apartheid movement achieved. Then there are campaigners like the Dalai Lama who struggle on against what seems implacable political opposition.

I really identify with the thoughts of EF Schumacher here:

'
We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure.''
- E.F. Schumacher, A Guide For the Perplexed
I suppose we need to balance such an individual outlook with the old saying that 'politics is the art of the possible'.

Moreover, as astrologers we do presumably all accept the power of astrological cycles in reflecting human affairs? If we cant agree on that this forum has no real purpose.

Moreover, you dont need to adopt Brady's outlook to benefit from her techniques. Brady has made quite a lot of successful mundane predictions so I think she is really on to something with this visual sky approach.

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Fri Nov 09, 2012 10:28 am, edited 5 times in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

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I actually think free will is restricted even on the individual level. I think we have a certain degree of free will, but similarly we also have a certain amount of things which are 'fated' for us - or are our destiny perhaps.

I don't necessarily see them as mutually exclusive, unless we think that to have free will it must be a totally unimpeded free will and nothing would seem to suggest (to me at least) that that's the case.

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Paul wrote:
I actually think free will is restricted even on the individual level. I think we have a certain degree of free will, but similarly we also have a certain amount of things which are 'fated' for us - or are our destiny perhaps.

I don't necessarily see them as mutually exclusive, unless we think that to have free will it must be a totally unimpeded free will and nothing would seem to suggest (to me at least) that that's the case.
I basically agree with all that. I possibly overemphasized the collective as especially predetermined vs the individual. I suppose what I meant is that one person can seek to change their life. I think we individually struggle with both our habitual tendencies and wider social or environmental factors outside our control. We can seek to change our habits and make the best of opportunities that present themselves. However, our environment and available choices are often restricted by factors outside our control. Of course if our character is indicated by horoscopy too we have the dilemma or somehow overcoming a limiting outlook too.

However, to change society in a fundamental way requires a significant number of people to act together or a small number of people to become extremely influential. Hence some individuals can have a disproportionate effect on the collective. This can be for good or ill. The Nazis being a classic example of the latter.

Even then we all have to work within the confines of our particular society. Like individuals with ingrained habits I think societies often have strong forces pulling in the direction of social inertia or status quo.

Ultimately, its difficult not to get into people's core religious and philosophical assumptions with such questions.

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Fri Nov 09, 2012 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

Ms Bernadette Brady, MA's, predictive system

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Good morning,

Our Moderator has given a short, succinct description of the captioned system, based on ancient Babylonian pre-horoscopic astrology with horizon coordinates, about the same way i have applied it. Used in advance to two German state elections and the Greek national elections, it has worked well for me to date but my sample is still much too small for any conclusions.

The system is convenient, understandable (there are, however, some shifts from Hellenistic astrology including Constellation - not sign! - symbols), has a reasonably limited symbol set (soothing for my limited cerebral resources) and encourages clear, unequivocal predictions.

Best regards,

lihin
Non esse nihil non est.

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Lithin wrote,
Our Moderator has given a short, succinct description of the captioned system, based on ancient Babylonian pre-horoscopic astrology with horizon coordinates, about the same way i have applied it. Used in advance to two German state elections and the Greek national elections, it has worked well for me to date but my sample is still much too small for any conclusions.
I would be very interested in seeing some of your work on those charts. Maybe we might open a thread specifically looking at The Visual Sky in Mundane astrology? I already have Brady's Starlight software and do use it for fixed stars.

Lithin wrote:
The system is convenient, understandable (there are, however, some shifts from Hellenistic astrology including Constellation - not sign! - symbols), has a reasonably limited symbol set (soothing for my limited cerebral resources) and encourages clear, unequivocal predictions.
Well that is what we all want isn't it? So if it really works as well as you describe there will be a long queque of astrologers looking to try this out. Like many I poured over lots of charts for the US election. However, one indicator is often cancelled out by another. In my opinion horoscopic techniques like ingress charts do not consistently produce a clear cut indication of how an election might proceed. I am frankly quite demoralised with their effectiveness in elections. In fairness though they were never developed to gauge the subtle intricacies of our modern democratic electoral systems.

Despite the astrological complexity of various horoscopic techniques all we usually want to know is will the incumbent party hold on or not? I plan to devote a lot more time to Brady's visual approach in my future studies.

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Fri Nov 09, 2012 1:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

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Mark wrote:Lithin wrote,
Our Moderator has given a short, succinct description of the captioned system, based on ancient Babylonian pre-horoscopic astrology with horizon coordinates, about the same way i have applied it. Used in advance to two German state elections and the Greek national elections, it has worked well for me to date but my sample is still much too small for any conclusions.
I would be very interested in seeing some of your work on those charts. Maybe we might open a thread specifically looking at The Visual Sky in Mundane astrology? I already have Brady's Starlight software and do use it for fixed stars.
Mark, lihin, please, don't forget to open this new thread! :' :D

Johannes

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Mark, an awful lot of the issues with astrology boil down to the "free will" vs. determinism/fatalism debate, and have done so for the past 2000 years. I am not a fan of the expression "free will" because it is always limited by various constraints of one sort or another. The terms I prefer are "moral choice" or "personal agency."

I don't see that leaning towards a free will/moral choice spectrum diminishes astrology. Rather, I would ask us to consider the areas of life in which personal autonomy is possible. Surely we can see from individual natal horoscopes what sort of person is likely to have a more fatalistic view of life, and who is likely to be more proactive.

All of us live within a legal and moral environment that is founded on the principles of choice. Otherwise, the next time one of us gets a speeding ticket, tell the police officer that you had no choice in the matter: your blasting along at high speeds was pre-destined.

Electional astrology (not meaning the mundane astrology of elections!) becomes meaningless if people are unable to alter inevitable fates.

Ptolemy (Tetrabiblos, 1:3, pp. 28-29 and 32-33 in Robbins transl.) addresses this very point. In strongly siding with fatalism, he notes that it is not absolute. The doctor can give a prognosis for an untreated disease. Yet by prescribing a cure, he can ward off the natural course of the illness.

According to Benjamin Dykes, Traditional Astrology for Today, pp. 101-3) "...traditional astrology is indeed compatible with meaningful choice...being accurate and specific is not the same thing as believing in universal fate or determinism.... Suppose I predict a more or less external event for a client, such as that she has enemies working against her. The client cannot control the existence of the enemies directly but she can choose to take actions that flush them out or avoid their full fury."

Lilly in Christian Astrology gives examples of advising clients on how to mitigate difficult circumstances. If astrology were truly fatalistic, what would be the point?

It would be fascinating to consider whether an opposition party could look at Brady's thesis and analyse, within a horoscope's constraints, how they could work with the system to tip the balance in their favour.

In terms of political mundane astrology there is also a Dark Side to a strongly fatalist perspective. It tends to reinforce the status quo, and that status quo will normally favour entrenched wealth and power, and disempower the ordinary person. Hegemony is the political art of getting ordinary people to support the rhetoric of their own lesser status.

We also have to assume that the astrologer himself has some sort of personal agency to interpret a horoscope. The exact same moment could be a chart for a nativity, a horary question, or a political election. As Liz Greene put it, in viewing a "blind" horoscope we don't know if it is for a person or a chicken. In viewing a blind chart we don't know whether Venus represents voting behaviour or chocolate. The astrologer brings some personal agency to the interpretation.

So let me ask the fatalists out there. When you read a horoscope, are you simply some sort of pre-programmed robot or mechanical wind-up doll (think Energizer Bunny), producing an analysis that was long ago predestined by the stars?

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bradys approach seems simple enough.. planetary phase of venus essentially as i understand it and which i believe marhgerita the poster here focuses on and which deb the host is in the process of writing a book on.. as i recall just the other day from reading here someone mentioned it would have been wrong twice for the usa election results in the past century which is pretty good but not perfect.. nothing wrong with a simple system as i see it and i love the fact it was wrong twice out of however many times to leave open the idea that something else is also at work.. astrologers get no free lunch to 100% accurate predictions.. something else is always at work..

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Lee Lehman put it quite nicely (somewhere in "Martial Art of Horary Astrology) when she said that the chart shows what will happen if you are too lazy to use your free will or abrogate your free will.

But I think it can be argued that astrology does reduce your free will. Consider: You are hiking in the mountains and you come to a fork in the path through the forest. The map does not show a fork and so you can assume that this is just an alternate route and the two tracks will join up sometime later. But, is there a second track because one of them is blocked? Is one of them shorter than the other? Is one of them safer than the other?

You have no information on which to base a decision on which path to take, so you have complete freedom of choice in the matter. There is nothing to stop you going down which ever route takes your fancy for whatever reason.

But now suppose you take out your mobile phone and call the park ranger to ask him about the fork in the path. He tells you the path on the left was cut because the path on the right has been victim to a land slide and there is now a section which is only six inches wide with a sheer drop of a thousand feet to the valley bottom. You can go that way if you want, but it is very dangerous.

Now you have some information about the two routes. A reasonable, sane and sensible person will take the path to the left. Your choice in the matter has been reduced and even removed by the knowledge you now have. No sane and sensible person would take the unnecessary risk of taking the right hand path.

So. We are now left with an aphorism: The more information you have about a given situation, the better your ability to make a sane and sensible decision on how to proceed. Acting in a sane and sensible manner always restricts your freedom of choice to that which is most sane and sensible. Only the totally insane have true free will or freedom of choice!

Since astrology acts to give us more information about a given situation, it always acts to limit the freedom of choice for a sane and sensible person.

Geoffrey

160
Geoffrey, I like your hiking analogy. I would definitely take the safer route (Saturn opposite Mars) but then I'm not an Aries-Capricorn sort of hiker.

I think in the "forewarned is forearmed" take on astrology, people have the choice to be proactive in more daring sorts of ways. Just to give a personal example: I took a very early retirement about 5 years ago, based upon (a) my desires to do additional things with my life, (b) serious personal finance number-crunching, and (c) the observation that my upcoming transits looked like some really rough sledding for the next few years.

My husband and I fixed up our house, sold it, I retired from my job, we moved across the country, bought a new house in a place where we didn't know anybody, and began a serious gardening project; all of which were in keeping with the transits of the time. Things worked out really well.

If I had a fatalistic view of astrology I would have thought, "Hunker down where you are, doing what you have been doing, and be stoic about feeling stressed. With any luck you'll survive this misery for the next few years. Then maybe your transits will get better."

I think astrological foreknowledge should help people to identify where and how they can be more courageous, more risk-taking, and have more freedom in their lives.

More on-topic, one of the difficulties I have with seemingly infallible yet simple astrological presidential predictions is how much they seem to divorce astrology from ordinary mundane events.

I mean, take horary astrology. I don't practice it, but if I ask _Paul_ the Astrologer what happened to my missing documents, he can analyse a chart for my question in terms of feasible locations and actions. If I analyse a birth chart, I can describe the individual's personality and life-issues in terms that make sense in terms of how one usually would describe another person and her anticipated behaviours. With electional astrology, I could analyse somebody's business decision or surgery options and then recommend a date and time based on everyday observable relevant events.

Voting behaviour and polling are now exact sciences. (They're wrong occasionally but so is any predictive social science.) We know that "the people" (as symbolized in mundane astrology by the moon) are not some kind of unified undifferentiated entity, but are typically highly segmented. We know what basic issues motivate people to vote, and so on.

If we look at mundane astrology of voting behaviour as reducable to a simple Venus cycle or moon above/below the horizon and that's that, there is a big disconnect between the heavens and some fairly complex human behaviours. The very simplicity of pinning election outcomes on one or two simple variables, indeed, disconnects mundane astrology from the other branches of the field.

Mind you, I'm not saying that Brady misinterpreted a century of election results. But then Paul the Octopus had a pretty solid record, also.

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waybread

to the first part of your post -'know thyself' has to be central.. without this a person is bound to lead a more fated experience.

to the 2nd part, it is interesting and one of the many factors that astrologers pointed to an obama win - moon which connects to the general public - in obamas sun sign which always highlights the persons sun in a more favourable manner, unless the sun position is problematic in itself.. mundane astro 101 i think..

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I hesitated to post this in a mundane thread but as some have ventured into a discussion of free will I think this information is pertinent.

The birth charts of Samantha Bissett and Robert Napper would have been virtually identical save for the angles and the Moon's position (and if one were born within 2 hours before or after the other even the Moon's would have had nearly the same position).

On November 3, 1993, Napper murdered Bissett in Plumstead, southeast London. Except for aspects to the angles and probably the Moon they would have had the same aspects between planets in their birth charts and from transits or progressions.

Who could determine astrologically which one was the perpetrator and which one the victim if not given gender identity? Were both, either, or neither expressing their free will?
Image
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