Exegesis V07 Issue 016

Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #016

In This Issue:

From: "Roger L. Satterlee"
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #15

Exegesis Digest Sat, 02 Feb 2002

From: "Roger L. Satterlee"
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #15
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 07:33:26 -0500

Dennis wrote: "[..] Who says any source is reliable? That is merely subjective judgment. Roger's theories may seem like clouds to you, and even to me, but that is simply because he has chosen not to specify them to the list. His style is subjective, but I suspect his theories are similar to mainstream astrology. Perhaps even identical. I agree he tends not to provide evidence in a specific sense, yet he provides hints and clues to accompany his chart illustrations. In this respect, he does all that any academic literary critic ever does. His work is consistent with that tradition of analytical commentary.

> >>Roger seems to believe that the literary work exhibits the style of an
> >>individual that correlates with certain astrological features he has cited.
> >>Such advocacy suffers from the assumption that subjective correlations will
> >>be shared by others.
> > [..]"

My "theory" of astrology is a lot like Hans Vahinger's "As if" philosophy. It is *as if* the planets were some how causal agents. But, I believe that the entire system of mainstream astrology is a psychological phenomenon...one which enables the intuition by linking it to the unconscious mind--the resevoir of collected personal and inherited impersonal human consciousness, for lack of another word at the moment. I believe the psyche takes over the "thinking" process once the intellect is disengaged from the restrictions of linguistic conventions and the counter-intuitive influence of logical conventions. Like Vahinger, I see creative fiction at work in the formation of one's sense of identity, and autobiographical drives in the creation of one philosophy. I call my astrology, Horoscopic Expressionism--people's personalities and biographies as being their own non-objective abstract works of art...fictions. This seems true to me no matter how objective one's work may actually be in terms of Science, Politics, Economics, whatever one's scale of "real" may be. Here are some quotes I like very much:

From: "Roger L. Satterlee"
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #15
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 15:29:39 -0500

Dennis wrote: "[..] Roger seems to believe that the literary work exhibits the style of an individual that correlates with certain astrological features he has cited. Such advocacy suffers from the assumption that subjective correlations will be shared by others. [..]"

In my rush to vacate the computer this morning I forgot to address this point concerning "subjectivity". I have always been bothered by how much of astrology seems too subjective for me--a guy who hates to accept a spoon-fed traditional meanings for symbols, etc.. So, I did actively look for some means to test whether astrology was simply a politically motivated "invention" or actually more of a human discovery of some kind, but I remained clue-less as to how to find some measure of objectivity for about 20 years. My life experiences seemed to fail me until after having been the house person and child rearing parent for a few years. After I had a chance to see my two children develop, and to notice their apparently inherent differences becoming their demonstrable individuality, it was their spontaneous drawings which first caught my eye as possibly being a somewhat tangible evidence of their projected individuality. I owe my current perception of astrology, and its charts, to the experience of my dreamy stepson's spontaneous abstract drawing. Quite simply, it seemed to me that he had managed to project a kind of symbolic parallel of his natal chart:

OK, so it takes a little imagination, but: Natal Mars is a big ol' fang of some sort (the presence of little teeth reinforce the fang idea). Jupiter in Gemini is the flexed "arm" muscles. Venus looks like a Celtic vulva/fertility symbol. Mercury has a little antenna/horn look. The Moon has it's own shape as it ascends. Pluto looks like a serpent. The Sun was crossed out and moved to a new location as the drawing developed and the intellect started to form a more conventional depiction .

My version of the Mars effect says that people draw pointy-looking things in the direction of natal Mars, as if they were projecting themselves in the form of a psyche-drafted natal chart equivalent. Like the title of Neil's drawing, "Sneeze", there seems some sort of Freudian parapraxis afoot..:)

Or, people adopt images they find which *feel* self-similar; like this poster compared to the natal chart of the person who "just had to have it!" : http://www.geocities.com/pedantus/ash_01a.gif