Exegesis V07 Issue 101

Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #101

In This Issue:

From: Dale Huckeby
Subject: [e] Electional Astrology, etc.

Exegesis Digest Thu, 07 Nov 2002

Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 13:11:29 -0600 (CST)
From: Dale Huckeby
Subject: [e] Electional Astrology, etc.

In Exegesis 7:93, in response to my comment:
> >When a MOMENT is examined it's because we already know what the event
> >is and when it happened, otherwise we wouldn't know which moment to
> >examine.

Dennis wrote:
> >Hey, not so fast. What about electional astrology? I look at future
> >moments frequently, sometimes a number every day. That's the beauty of an
> >astroclock, you can scan and assess entire periods and look at their best
> >moments in a couple of minutes of real time max. . . .

Your interpretation of the Exegesis chart, your Uranus/MC/Hiroshima interpretion and any other Uranus/MC/major-event interpretation(s) that you've done were all after the fact. This is the norm when astrology is being validated/justified rather than used. Electional is, at least, an attempt to use rather than just glorify astrology, but it, too, raises some thorny issues. One is that we have no basis for comparison. However well something turns out, we can't know how well it would have turned out if started at a different time. Elections are laudable as an attempted USE of astrology, but they cannot in principle validate it. The principles have to be established by some other means prior to such usage. Also, the basic use of electional, trying to find a good time to start something, is problematic because the very process of trying to find a good time implies that we've ALREADY made the our mind to do it, and the decision or commitment, in my opinion, IS the start. Is it really plausible that we can decide when to decide?

> >>description of both the event and the symbolism (which means they can't
> >>help fitting each other if the astrologer is reasonably imaginative), we
> >>stack the deck in favor of the appearance of validity. Before the fact,
> >>however, that particular moment and that particular event DON'T stand
> >>out. All moments seem significant and all events can be made to fit the
> >
> >For you this may be true, but wrong to generalise accordingly. Selection
> >of auspicious moments and weighing their merits is the whole point of
> >electing a good time to do things. That too is traditional, of course.
> >Alexander the Great founded several cities on that basis.

You haven't offered examples of elections that I've seen, and if you had (or have) they'd suffer from an inability to know if the times chosen were actually better than the times not chosen. A good outcome proves nothing, because for all we know other times, assuming for arguments sake that we can actually decide to decide, anyway, might have worked out as well or better. My analysis of after-the-fact validation fits all of the examples I've actually seen you offer, at any rate.

An additional point I overlooked in my initial response:
> >>This rhythmicity, this wavelength, is what differentiates one structure
> >>of the psyche from another, for instance the ego from the id, or Maslow's
> >>esteem needs (7 1/3 year rhythm) from other need-structures. But the
> >
> >You mean you still take Freud seriously??

At least as seriously as I take Jung. He was a much more disciplined thinker than the latter, and less prone to believe what he wanted to believe. Freud said some silly things, especially when he ventured into anthropology, but the psychic structures he postulated, id, ego, and super-ego, have fared relatively well. We don't have to take as gospel everything Freud said about the ego, for instance, but I think we can reasonably infer that there's SOMETHING there that he was seeing, however unclearly, and that Maslow's esteem needs and Jung's persona (less sure about this) are also glimpses, form different perspectives, of the same thing. I think astrology, with its time-dynamic perspective, might well be capable of unifying their differing insights into what I think is the "Saturn" rhythm.