16
Hello jazztaprazzta and others,

In regards to a large people dying in a given location and chances are that not all of them will have indications of death in their natal charts, this is explainable through Mundane Astrology. I recommend that you check Ibn Ezra's 8 rules where mundane judgments take precedence over natal charts.

I used to work with someone who visited the twin towers in New York either 1 day or 2 days before they were destroyed. He was keeping the receipt or ticket he was given for his visit.

In a book on Chinese Astrology (Four Pillars of Destiny) by Raymond Lo he gives actor Jet Li's natal chart. Jet Li miraculously escaped the tsunami in South Asia in December 2004. The author shows that Jet Li had 3 very auspicious and protective stars at that period (The Yang Nobleman, The Yin Nobleman and Heavenly Virtune stars for those that understand)

Vettius Valens (Book VII) gives an example of 6 people who survived shipwreck and pirates. All of them had the relevant planets busy at that time. (the Moon, Ares and Kronos). He did that to show that fate controls everything (his view).

Thank you for the topic. :)
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17
Sorry for the offtopic... I hope science starts looking into astrology.. I am in a desperate need of some rational explanation about all these 'coincidences'.

My maternal grandfather died yesterday. I had my solar return for this year (7 feb 2017, although my birthday is on 8 feb) placing Saturn exact conj. IC. I guess that's also why most of my philosophical inclinations for the last month or two are in the "life vs death" domain (as I said I usually feel my next year's solar return chart kicking in a month before my actual birthday).

The only 2 other times that I had Saturn placed near IC on a solar return were in 1999, when my paternal grandfather died, and in 2008 when I moved to a different city and physically 'cut off' from my parental family (nobody died that year fortunately!). Btw. noticed that in my solar return charts Saturn is near IC every 9 years..

edit: The above observation is not true. My paternal grandather died in 1997, not in 1999.

btw. I am using precessed solar return charts (with the Fagan/Bradley ayanamsa), as this is the only thing that gives consistent results for me.

Are we 'living' in a simulation??????
The sky gods already know everything, but we're the ones who experience it in reality. How fair is that???? The suffering is real for us, for them it's nothing :(


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on topic
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In regards to a large people dying in a given location and chances are that not all of them will have indications of death in their natal charts, this is explainable through Mundane Astrology. I recommend that you check Ibn Ezra's 8 rules where mundane judgments take precedence over natal charts.
But this is not useful for prediction, since until the mundane event happens, we don't know its chart, right? So what's the use? Is it just for proving that astrology works? There's no need for more proofs, we need to understand how it works and to alleviate the suffering.

Vettius Valens (Book VII) gives an example of 6 people who survived shipwreck and pirates. All of them had the relevant planets busy at that time. (the Moon, Ares and Kronos). He did that to show that fate controls everything (his view).
Do you share his view? DO you think we're the planets' toy things? I don't want to believe that, but it seems so :(((

19
My view is this:

Astrological influences are of an archetypal nature. Archetypes have no fixed form themselves, but find expression on many levels and in many forms.

So there are always numerous possibilities - or probabilities, in the language of quantum physics. Free will becomes a factor. Making exact predictions is hard for the best of astrologers.

In retrospect, it's always easier to see (some of) the connections though. The ones that actually manifested themselves, that is. ;)
_________________

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20
Fleur wrote:Vettius Valens' philosophy is interesting and so different from the rubbish that calls itself new age "thought", that the majority of people just accept as true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vettius_Valens
"Knowing that everything was already predetermined gave one a sense of freedom from anxiety and a sense of salvation".
This is what physics and philosophy call superdeterminism and it is practically untestable and thus, unprovable. It's a possibility of course, but it wouldn't matter...

Michael Sternbach wrote: Astrological influences are of an archetypal nature. Archetypes have no fixed form themselves, but find expression on many levels and in many forms.
This is my opinion lately as well. Somehow quantum mechanics (which are not predetermined) and classical mechanics (which are predetermined because they obey predictable laws) combine and create discrete superpositions of possibilities.

Unfortunately sometimes the archetypal influence may be too, say, strong and strict and thus, unavoidable.

21
Interesting concepts.

My study of astrology and its apparent evidence of predestination has led me to the inescapable conclusion that an amoral intelligence and consciousness governs this world and the universe.

I can understand Michael's viewpoint about certain connections not manifesting but surely he would also have to allow for the possibility of our lack of prognosticative skill as another explanation for that.

I agree with Manilius who wrote:-

"Fate rules the world, all things stand fixed by its immutable laws and the long ages are assigned a predestined course of events. At birth our death is sealed and our end consequent upon our beginning."

If we take his assessment at apparent face value (although I would allow for quantum physics to play a part) we then come up against the thorny issue of suffering in the material realm which, in whatever way you choose to cut it, still brings us to the concept of amorality, something I think was alluded to by Charles Carter when he said in relation to Hitler's chart :-

" it would seem to work out some cosmic purpose beyond our ken and sometimes involving the cruellest sufferings in its unfoldment."

The only other more palatable explanation which is not really evident in astrology but possibly in mythology (Isis/Osiris) is the Gnostic explanation of this world being a "mistake" (Gospel of Philip- Nag Hammadi) put in this way by Marguerite Yourcenar :-

"It is possible that our tribulations are nothing but an infinitesimal exception in the universal pattern and this would explain the indifference of that immutable substance we piously call God"

22
Hi Vicki,

I agree. it seems the universe is absolutely neutral and absolutely doesn't care about morality. I don't think the idea of karmic rebirth from Hinduism and Buddhism is correct either. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what we do, as we all end as dead meat. But it seems that even what we do is predetermined (not only astrologically, but also in our DNA and inherited behavior).

I'm starting to see the universe as a dream. A dream is acausal (has no cause but just appears, out of nothing) and while we're 'in' the dream, we don't understand that we're dreaming. It seems the universe is not much different... It's acausal (something real can not come out of nothing) and we fully identify with a particular body-mind while we're awake.

The Universe doesn't care about our suffering. IT doesn't care when we die, it doesn't care when others die, it doesn't care when we cry. It's a meaningless universe. It's a dream that ends and then there's no more. It's absolutely terrifying how meaningless everything is.

23
Hello Jazztaprazzta

Yes we're "dead meat" physically when we're done here, but I know we live on in spirit form. We go back home :-
"Our home lies elsewhere" Wordsworth.

Jacob Boehme a 16th/17th century Gnostic mystic described us as being prisoners of the planets here in the material realm.

John Webster in "The Duchess of Malfi" wrote "We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them."

Astrology demonstrates this (or so I think).

Thank you again for your interesting threads.

24
Socrates - Pluto in Scorpio generation - have made his way with "thou you suspect of everything!" motto.
Plato - Pluto in Aquarius, whose sons are going to come back to earth soon - wrote a quite inspiring philosophy. I would call it happy. Astonishing and happy.

The thing is that, although he was quite acquainted with astrology, most greeks of the time still weren't... So, he perhaps didn't have to handle the difficult paradoxes of fate-freedom so often, and had his written more wings to fly high.

In the times of Aristotle - Pluto in Pisces trining Neptune in Cancer, but specially, Uranus in Virgo -, the infamous Alexander - Pluto in Aries - dismantled the Persian Empire. And greeks were already being astrologically aware, faster than ourselves in the 70's, faster than europeans have been in Al-Andaluz...

Aristotle had this big issue Plato didn't, and he finally cleverly wrote "Gods can't see the particulars".

Always stepping a little bit on each side - he was a defensor of both democracy and slavery... - he ended mixing the all-determination of Stoicism, and the all-chaos of Epicurism.
The stars would determinate what concerns the "form", but there's "matter" in this world, and matter is undetermined... So, in being partially a fail, partially a "mistake", we would be partially free.

Would it be a more reasonable and soothing theory?

Omar Khayam didn't think so. Some say he writes about Epicurism, but his frequently mocks about astrology seems that he perhaps did believe quite well in the harmony of the heavens. It didn't made his poems less astonishing saddening.

Horace, much before, had already his "Scire nefas" - "To know is nefarious". Could we conclude then, that to live is not? If this doesn't invite us enough to "carpe diem", it does open, however, the gates for Neoplatonism and St Augustin state that "Evil is the absense of good".

And in quoting Plotinus - Pluto in Cancer -, we have an interesting description:

"His act is, therefore, an act of artist, comparable to the movement of the dancer; Which proceeds with art; The art of dance directs its movements; Life acts similarly to the living."

But he also said:

"Because in all the circumstances of real life, it is not the soul within us, but its shadows, the outer man, who laughs, groans, whines and plays all the roles in this theather of multiple stages, which is the whole earth."

I have to mention those two quotes are from Guimar?es Rosa, by the famous Emile Brehier translations. He also quotes passages of Ruysbroeck, which I never enough understood.

I rise from this that there was in this foggy Age of Pisces quite a bliss, quite a hope. From the seven tyrants of the sky - hermetic expression - could we escape. There was something more that could take us above all the vicissitudes. Was that cause they didn't know yet that their bliss was a fruit of Neptune? I wouldn't go that far.

This belief - and that is said by Brehier against so much Ethnocentrism - goes far back to the Upanishads, and from there to a timeless history of Jainism. Somehow someone in India thought that if we weren't free, perhaps the Gods weren't also. And if they weren't, didn't they want to be? And if we weren't too, could we not be, even if they weren't? And there comes the myths where those weird people that not harvesting, not fighting, but not eating nor dancing either, but being restless still in the middle of the desert - in the most unnatural and akward human behaviour, that we are so familiar now called "meditation"- were actually being tempted by Gods, with envy that those tiny humans could become free, while They weren't.
Some say those myths were only propaganda to instigate and guarantee the religion and philosophy of a minority in the middle of the more numerous indo-europeans polytheists, some say they were not.

I would take us with that to Espinosa materialistic-pantheism. If it's a system of different beings that is this world, why should we say that a "higher" being is more free than a "lower" one? Couldn't it be that all parts of the system can equally be free and equally not, and every part actually is free, now and then? "Happiness we find in some little hours of carelessness" - could we quote.

When we do reach the far meanders of the sky, in order to calculate an influence of Aldebaran, Regulus, Formahault... Aren't we already instigating to us an influence of "Out of the System"? After all, the Solar System is the Organism where Venus loves and Jupiter grows... And Pluto, in the shadows, opens the door to other stars. When we talk about these "Fixed Stars" influences, aren't we already escaping our faith?

If we say that we are only moving to a wider organism fate - the Via Lactea - or the Entire Universe (even that our so developed astrology can't reach to see what that means, if it really means something), than we already are stating, that these our Gods can perhaps not feel always so free, being part of an immense organism, just as we are.
And then we can imagine the milk of the Lacteous Way being spilled by giant aquarian-like Gods, not less concerned than ourselves with their freedom, with their fate.

For this, perhaps, we should remember the Motto of Socrates. We should be suspicious of things in life. But perhaps we just shouldn't stop being suspicious while entering the realms of mystery. Did any chart did really predicted anything? Ask Venus, and she might say, in sweet voice, just as she used to speak to Sappho: in the start I did only a breeze... When I came, you did called myself...

ps: I find this theme one of the more interesting aspects of astrology, if not the most, so I tried to resume my views about it.
Specially, because understanding the "metaphysics" of astrology is a way to connect it to other esoterisms and mysteries unveils...

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cielounar.com , astrology blog
Last edited by Zozimos on Fri Apr 14, 2017 1:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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A discussion of predestination needs to address the issue of identity because if one is one with the stars, then it's motions are merely the choice to move one's self. If the boundary to your identity ends with your skin, then freedom is curtailed because you will not perceive much choice. Decartes is responsible in part for this idea (aka mechanistic materialism) in which inanimate objects could not act of their own volition, borrowing from earlier ideas of the prime mover (what moves the unmoved?). When one has the view that all objects in the concrete particular have consciousness, freedom of choice becomes perceptible. The mere fact that their motions are regular cannot be made as an assumption that predictability = fatedness. When consciousness exists, then you have to ask the entity if they perceive control.

It is perhaps good that our control is limited, because if we had too much freedom we would very likely, with our lack of consciousness, hang ourselves with it. But in becoming aware of something outside ourself (which Buddists say is nothing more than a changing collection of attributes over time bound together in an idea of what one is supposed to be) we might realize that a part of ourself is split off to prevent this "hanging" by a superior power (or perhaps the higher self).
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