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waybread wrote: Hi Spock--

I appreciate your thoughts on my OP question #4. I guess it depends upon how one views the matter of explanation in astrology. Why do we do somthing this way and not that way? History gets at the "why" questions.
To an extent we can use the history of astrology to discern what astrologers have believed at various times. To a lesser extent we might be able to discern why they believed what they believed. But history per se cannot tell us what we should believe in the here and now. That is, it can't tell us if there really are correspondences between earth and the heavens, or if so which factors correspond to each other and in what ways ways they correspond. At best it gives us possibilities to check out, but if we check them out via the methods of our predecessors we'll get no further than they did in determining the reality and nature of "astrological effects." Knowledge progresses not merely by adding new facts to our existing "stockpile" but also by developing new and more sophisticated ways of determining facts. This is the sense in which astrology is backward compared to other established knowledge fields.
Article: After Symbolism

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Hi Spock-- history doesn't tell us what we "should believe." It can explain why we believe what we do.

What do you believe about the nature of the sun in the horoscope? Why do you believe that? Chances are you didn't invent your beliefs ex nihilo. Your beliefs will in part be based upon what you've read, and these readings will in part be based upon astrology's "deposit of faith."