Exegesis V07 Issue 086

Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #086

In This Issue:

From: Dale Huckeby
Subject: [e] Re: dialogue & trialogue

From: Dale Huckeby
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #85

Exegesis Digest Tue, 22 Oct 2002

Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 12:23:47 -0500 (CDT)
From: Dale Huckeby
Subject: [e] Re: dialogue & trialogue

> >From: "Dennis Frank"
> >Subject: dialogue & trialogue
> >Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 22:30:44 +1300
> >
> >Nice to see issues of substance once again being addressed here. Here's
> >some commentary on excerpts from the dialogue of Dale & Patrice.
> >
> >Patrice wrote:
> >
> >. . .
> >
> >>Point 1 means a cellular, nervous, integration, synchronization (not
> >>synchronicity) of planetary rhythms. So it's a temporal adaptation..

and Dennis replied:
> >Yes. An evolved adaption. A product of evolution; pan-species. My
> >usual quibble about synchronicity (Patrice & I have differing views):
> >synchronicity is a momentary glimpse at an illuminating instance of the
> >synchronization. Like a dramatic high-speed photo that seems to freeze
> >the participants in a dance, or race, or fight, or any type of group
> >process. . . .

Dennis and I, too, differ about synchronicity. I think those who use it tend to perceive it as an explanation when actually it's a request for an explanation - these two things go together but we don't know why. The drama in Dennis's metaphorical high-speed photo is the sense of aptness, but I think this sense of aptness is misleading, that a better guide to whether or not a celestial factor and a terrestrial factor go together is that they be observed to do so (regardless of whether or not we think they should) over and over again.

I said:
> >>I agree that a physical foundation is necessary. I think at least
> >>the outline of such a foundation is provided in the pieces I cited.

Dennis respoded:
> >Well, I will go look & try to provide constructive feedback eventually.
> >The obvious physical foundation is a biological clock with more than just
> >3 hands.

> >"the organism must have a way of knowing what's going on in the sky."
> >
> >Such knowing is mostly tacit, so maybe not the right word. We don't know
> >how we co-evolve with our cosmic environment. We do know some of how we
> >coordinate our lives with respect to sun, earth, moon. We know how to use
> >clocks & calendars to remain in synch.

I agree that it's tacit, in fact would suggest that it's totally so as far as the timing of our internal clocks is concerned. It's difficult to know what to use in place of "know", without writing several sentences or even paragraphs in its place, so I often use scare quotes to alert the reader not to assume a self-conscious, aware knowing.

> >Regarding point 2: "motivational pattern" is my equivalent of what you're
> >talking about. It's the organic regularity that corresponds to the
> >celestial regularity.
> >
> >I agree that is a suitable way of describing it. Perhaps somewhat
> >minimalist, inasmuch as it leaves recognition of the archetypes tacit.
> >In my theory, the archetypes `cause' those inner promptings. . . .

I'm a minimalist kind of guy. If you're using "archetype" as Anthony Stevens uses it in *Archetypes*, perhaps. In his account babies have an evolved capacity to respond to and flourish in the presence of a certain set of behaviors or type of being. That's the mother archetype. In an orphanage he describes early in the book, each baby fixated on a particular caretaker and wanted to be handled, fed, and loved by that person (who almost invariably reciprocated). He described it, more or less literally, as falling in love. If you want to call whatever the baby has been genetically programmed (via evolution) to look for and be receptive to "the mother archetype", I have no problem with that.

> >If you liken your `motivational pattern' to a web of simultaneous inner
> >promptings, only some of which enter into consciousness at any moment, then
> >each node or nexus in that web represents each astrological archetype (in
> >respect to how it is operating in the context of that time & place).

The pattern in motivational pattern doesn't refer to different transit rhythms but to the (possible) complexities of a single one. That is, I would refer to the motivational pattern of Saturn transiting hard-angle Mercury as a single conceptual entity. Naturally, it won't occur by itself, and if you consider where Saturn is in relation to each of the natal planets, where Mars is in relation to each of the natal planets, etc., all at the same time, then each motivational pattern can be seen as a node or nexus in a web. Again, I have no problem with you referring to that as an archetype, although I have no such urge myself.

> >>Regarding point 3: This remains obscure to me even after reading the
> >>above link, and after reading (several months ago) various versions of
> >>your *Manifesto*. To me astrological symbols are part of a way of
> >>reasoning that enables us to seem valid to ourselves even though
> >>presentday astrology has very little empirical content. It's a game
> >>we learn to play through exposure to astrology's paradigms."
> >
> >I empathise & agree. The obscurity has clarified considerably for me,
> >however. I told Patrice that I would give him substantive feedback when he
> >first made his thesis available. Two years later, and I still haven't done
> >so. But the time of contemplation has become productive, and I believe I
> >see the functional relations implied in point 3. Clearly enough to spell
> >out? Not sure. The semiotic perspective turned out to be a requisite
> >acquisition (thanks, Cynthia, if you are reading this). The symbol
> >functions to induce the same meaning in each viewer. It is a medium for
> >sharing communal meaning. Expert opinions seem to differ on whether the
> >sign is functionally equivalent to the symbol. From where I stand, the
> >bipolar relation between symbol & archetype is the main item of structural
> >significance in the psyche.

I think we can go in intricate circles discussing what symbols are, when the relevant question for me is how they function in astrological usage. I think they mislead the astrologer and subvert empiricism.

> >Signs are cultural artifacts that represent symbols, I think. However, it
> >is true that some symbols are equated with their signs. Example: Saturn,
> >the archetype, is recognised intuitively once one learns the signs that
> >signal its manifestation in particular circumstances. Crystal, wall, bones,
> >etc. . . .

This is where the problem arises for me. I DON'T think Saturn stands for, in any valid and useful sense, crystal, wall, and bones. I prefer to observe what typically happens at 6-7 and 28-29, for instance, and infer what motivational force is consistent with those developments, rather than employ a scattershot of words and images that supposedly equal Saturn in some sense. The latter can be and typically are used to account for a wide range of events that are otherwise unrelated, not part of a natural order.

> >>Organic nervous systems have evolved inner clocks that correspond to the
> >>external clocks by which they regularly reset themselves. Is that what
> >>you're saying? Regardless, it's what I'M saying.
> >
> >Me too.
> >
> >>I'm not sure what you mean by "translation".
> >
> >The symbol translates the individual experience of the archetype into
> >communal code. It is a vehicle for sharing meaning.

This is what YOU mean, and my problem with it is that I don't think astrological symbolism is valid. I still don't know what Patrice means, though.

> >>I don't think a phsyics compatible with astrology needs to be discovered.
> >>I think existing physics, perhaps with some changes, will do. (I'm not
> >>one of those astrologers who thinks that the validation of astrology will
> >>revolutionize physics. I don't think the tail wags the dog.)
> >
> >The metaphor seems invalid to me. I can't see that the tail connects to
> >the dog. The authority of physics is historical, and applies less to our
> >culture in each year that passes. Thank pluralism & postmodernism for that.
> >Physics limits itself to the manipulation of matter. You could even say it
> >merely glorified technology. Meanings derived from physics assume import
> >only via metaphysics, often with more limited validity than writers &
> >readers presume to be the case.

Postmodernism as I've seen it is an intellectual fad, not a rigorous discipline. The authority of physics is hardly historical, since it has changed and continues to change over historical time. It's authority is that it works. More to the point, physics is part of the conceptual web called modern science that has been remarkably successful in not only describing the phenomenal world but in making predictions that actually work out. Quantum physics, despite violating our intuitive sense of how things are, has been hugely successful in precisely this sense. If we say that we are right in that astrology works, and that therefore this entire web of highly successful understandings of nature is wrong and must be redone (fat chance!), that in my mind is the tail (one particular knowledge-seeking field) wagging the dog (all of the other knowledge-seeking fields whose ideas fit together). I'd rather say that it is astrology that needs to change to fit the rest of the world, rather than that the rest of the world must change to fit astrology.

> >It seems to me that the scope of astrology vastly transcends the scope
> >of physics. That's how I see it, from the vantage point of having both
> >graduated in physics & become an astrologer in the distant past. But,
> >of course, my comprehension of astrology differs from the general public's,
> >the general astrologers' understanding, and that of yourself & Patrice.
> >To me the scope of astrology looms in approximate inverse proportion to
> >the current capacity of most astrologers to grasp it. People have no
> >other way to explain their unique nature, and few other ways to learn to
> >use time in an evolutionary sense.

I don't think it transcends the scope of the entire intellectual edifice of which physics is but a part. I'm pretty much a proponent of novelty and newness, but I don't carry it to the point of thinking New Age razzle- dazzle is superior to existing science and deserves to overthrow it. It seems to me the bottom line is how we _do_ astrology, not the intellectual pyrotechnics we produce when we discuss it, and in that sense, as in your earlier Hiroshima example, you seem to me to be defending rather than transcending astrology's _ancien regime_ paradigm. You've offered some nice thoughts about biological clocks in some of your previous posts, but I don't see those insights affecting how you actually _do_ astrology. How we do astrology as a result of our philosophical analyses is what I'm interested in.

Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 12:45:32 -0500 (CDT)
From: Dale Huckeby
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #85

> >Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 16:53:45 +0200
> >From: Patrice Guinard
> >Subject: [e] Re: Physics, Biology & Astrology
> >
> >>Regarding point 3: This remains obscure to me even after reading the above
> >>link, and after reading (several months ago) various versions of your
> >>*Manifesto*. To me astrological symbols are part of a way of reasoning
> >>that enables us to seem valid to ourselves even though presentday astrology
> >>has very little empirical content. It's a game we learn to play through
> >>exposure to astrology's paradigms."
> >
> >Sorry to disagree. When you are interpreting a chart, you use these symbols
> >& you're playing that game you have learned to play. OK. But precisely,
> >for me, it's not a good game. I prefer to play "Puerto Rico", "Euphrat &
> >Tigris" or "Go"!

Are you sure we disagree? I didn't say it was a good game, just that it IS the game astrologers play. In fact, having learned to play that game by assimilating astrology's paradigms is in my mind what makes it so hard for astrologers to truly be empirical and practice an astrology that's consistent with physics rather than magic.

> >The only astrological reality & fact are these endogenous impressionals,
> >& they organized themselves, in "patterns", thanks to the evolution of
> >human psychism & its adaptation to the planetary rhythms.

> >The planetary rhythms have become endogenous. More they compel the psychic
> >system to organize itself "astrologically", ie as planetary forces (energy),
> >zodiacal forms (structure)... This is a meaning of "matrix". And this is
> >the PARACELSIAN theory.

This is the only (minor) point on which we differ. I don't think the planets have compelled this organization, rather that life has _used_ the planets to organize itself.

> >It means that the internal organization has several poles of
> >differentiation, and when it comes a planetary transit, lived as
> >"impressional", just an effect of the astronomical signal on the living,
> >psychic, matter, the representation mind of the astrologer interprets
> >or translates it as a certain meaning.

I would say it's the internal clock that has an effect, that the planet merely resets it and originally existed as a periodicity that life was able to use as a "temporal template".

> >I will take an example: We could imagine that the Mesopotamians were
> >feeling a sensation of vigour, strengh, even agressivity when they note
> >some positions of Mars in the sky: So they rely it with their god Nergal
> >(sumer. NE.ERI.GAL), as a "symbol" of the planet Mars.
> >
> >But Nergal doesn't mean the planet Mars, nor anything else. There are no
> >meanings at all: just differential qualities of energy.
> >So the astrologers are generally "translating" too much...

Yes, we should differentiate between the effect as such, whether due to the planet per se or the clock (as I prefer), and the explanation a given culture offers for it, which may or may not be accurate, and which in any case is not the thing itself.

> >Finally, just to return to point 3
> >"The astrological symbol is the psycho-mental and cultural translation of
> >that impressional"
> >
> >I mean that the ASTRAL reality is the impressionals & their mode of
> >organization in the psychic apparatus. All the structures (planets, zodiacs,
> >houses...) are the ASTROLOGICAL knowledge of this organization, a knowledge
> >changing with cultural contexts. Charts interpretation, just an application,
> >without interest, except if the interpreter can SEE other thing in the
> >chart that is not known by historians and other specialists.

Okay, I see now. You're contrasting the natural phenomena itself with our knowledge of that phenomena.

> >But commonly, astrologers are not even able to see what these others,
> >without astrological knowledge, can easily see...

How true. It's due to how paradigms affect what we CAN see, which has both positive and negative consequences.