Exegesis V07 Issue 002

Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #002

In This Issue:

From: "Lois Cruz"
Subject: [exegesis] Re: Astrology seems a matter of relating

From: "JG or DF"
Subject: [exegesis] some feedback

Exegesis Digest Sat, 19 Jan 2002

From: "Lois Cruz"
Subject: [exegesis] Re: Astrology seems a matter of relating verbs to one anoth
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 10:23:31 -0500

Before the real discussions resume I want to say thank you, Fran, for hosting this list from which I am learning so much, and for allowing this lurking student back :) As I sit here snowbound in West Virginia, I've been considering Roger's email and just wanted to share a couple of thoughts.

> >Nouns like "technician" of course occurred to me while looking at the natal
> >Sun opposite Uranus...but that's because I was once a Navy radar tech. It
> >seems that looking like an astrological wizard is always just a gamble--the
> >rolling of spheroid dice with nouns written upon their innumerable facets.

That is the way it has always seemed to me, too, and so the quest to validate astrology through statistical methods seems like a red herring to me. (But then I have far less experience with charts than most of you, I'm sure) For what it's worth, I have personally found less value in astrology as a means of predicting future action, and more value in its ability to point toward meaning in the present moment by illuminating the past. The whole symbol system can really mean anything you want it to mean, and maybe that's the whole point of it--investing meaning in creation by using a set of symbol cues. If I put this in terms of teaching/learning models, I would be an advocate of "top-down" astrology, where getting a sense of the big picture is of paramount importance and the rest are minor details. :)

> >My conclusion, if there is one here, is that persons do seem to seek a sense
> >of unity in life by finding their own "likeness" in the world of things and
> >ideas. And, in all of this, the nouns of life are not the primary targets of
> >their search. The patterns of interrelated actions and feelings, as
> >communicated to the intuitively guided and filtered senses, signal both "like
> >me" and "unlike" many times during all novel experiences. The search for
> >novel experience does turn out to be a search for one's self...or one's
> >feeling of being integral and represented, occasionally reflected, by various
> >items and situations throughout the fabric of one's life.

Roger, your whole email is remarkably fascinating to me because it "feels" so "true". The reasons why this should be so are pretty well explained in your final paragraph, I think! Anyway, it was enough to overcome the utter lack of confidence that has kept me silent in this forum until now. Thanks very much for the food for thought, and I'll be following this topic with great interest.

From: "JG or DF"
Subject: [exegesis] some feedback
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 12:22:27 +1300

I recall a theme of Roger's as being that people tend to personify their natal charts, or perhaps even to perform them. It's easy to agree that they do indeed. For example, his provision of colourful pictures of horoscopes seems a suitable performance by his 5th house Leo planets. That aside, it certainly is helpful in facilitating discussion. I continue to live in hope that one day I may upskill to that level!

Just on the radio tech person's chart, the signature of a capable craftsman appears as that Mars in the 6th trine Saturn, both in earth. Plus the Virgo Moon/Pluto conjunction in the 3rd suggests a need for satisfaction in the details and precision of information systems. Mercury in the 10th, most elevated, suggests communication as a career, and Saturn also there confers extra authority. I've no idea if Roger's analysis ran along these lines, my point is simply to demonstrate that application of astrological logic as an interpretive language identifies archetypal potentials that `explain' the current career situation.

No way on this basis I could guess the actual career! I'm not that kind of astrologer, but likewise Roger made no specific guess either. I agree with him that "there does seem to be some kind of pattern to planets in the role of verbs which are qualified by Zodiac signs, aspects and, perhaps, by natal angles and houses as well. All of which seems to *do* no more than to help one tap into one's life-long store of intuitively derived conclusions as to *what goes with what and why*." If verbs seem to feature more in a reading, Roger, than nouns, I'd say that's a reflection of our contemporary style of astrology. A century ago it was the other way around. In those slow-moving days being was vastly more important than becoming, which, if considered at all, was probably viewed as rather undignified. Nowadays people who are simply being and not trying to evolve get rapidly left behind by the rest of the world.

Roger's concluding observation was food for thought. I considered how it applied to myself and felt inclined to agree that people "seem to seek a sense of unity in life by finding their own "likeness" in the world of things and ideas. And, in all of this, the nouns of life are not the primary targets of their search." Produced by our trash capitalist society, we are all cultivated to be narcissists. They make ideal consumers of trash products. The verbs are embedded in television advertising, and we act accordingly. Even when we out-grow television, culture still constrains our lifestyle options. One can develop one's natal Uranus until deviation from norm into eccentricity becomes extreme, but style of performance still seeks to exhibit prior models.

"The patterns of interrelated actions and feelings, as communicated to the intuitively guided and filtered senses, signal both "like me" and "unlike" many times during all novel experiences. The search for novel experience does turn out to be a search for one's self...or one's feeling of being integral and represented, occasionally reflected, by various items and situations throughout the fabric of one's life." This indeed seems so. We try things, discard what doesn't work for us. We stick with things that feel right for us. Our sense of self is composed of the sum total of all that adheres to us in an ongoing sense. As Rudhyar put it, we are self-created, but our natal chart provides the template. What suits us does so, in theory, on that basis. In practice, after more than 20 years gauging the correspondence between theory and actual outcome, I'm just as inclined as I originally was to agree that it is so.

Some residual questions remain. One, for me, is the astrology of the collective. This is usually known by that most inadequate label `mundane astrology'. Since Pluto entered Sagittarius I've been assessing its effects. I suspect that outer planet archetypes manifest differently according to the culture. For a primitive culture, Pluto is likely to be seen in mass destruction of some kind. For us it could be just ethnicities in the flux of globalising culture. Compulsion of behaviour on a mass scale is what to look for, but I guess that's a topic for another day. It does seem to me, a keen student of life and culture for nigh-on half a century, that the correlation between the outer planetary sign transits and social trends is nowadays less evident than it used to be.

In recent years I have been considering the possibility that the planets shape social process more obviously in smaller societies. In the past decade nations have seen their sovereignty subverted by the globalising of the economy, and it looks like social structure is trending similarly, and the planetary archetypes are operating differently in this emerging global structure of civilisation. I mean Jupiter through to Pluto only, of course. Jupiter & Saturn, the social planets, provide the boom and bust cycles of the economy and in any year the signs they are in indicate the focus and style of growth (Jupiter) and the constraints of the current reality (Saturn). Uranus provides innovating if not electrifying novelty, Neptune inspires with glamour and illusion, but each works through the cultural processes of particular social systems, manifesting in different ways in each.

The area of interest for me is the emerging whole. The future of humanity is indicated by pragmatic notice of global symptoms at any one time. The internet, for instance, began much earlier, but only achieved rapidly escalating global coverage as Pluto entered Sagittarius and Uranus entered Aquarius. On a less superficial level, the hormone-mimicking plastics that are altering the biological functions of numerous (if not all) species world-wide have been reducing the human male sperm count for several decades (currently down 30-50% depending on locality), but the fact has only been discovered and acknowledged by scientists in the past decade. The subject remains too sensitive for mass media coverage, looming larger than global warming, nuclear war or over-population as a threat to survival. Transformation of the global food-chain is clearly a consequence of Pluto in Sagittarius.

Enough for now, lest the subject of intervention by extraterrestrials crosses my mind! Hope Exegesis prospers in the new format, and it seems most auspicious that our valiant moderator has persevered to achieve it prior to the Mercury station...