Exegesis V2 Issue #5

	Exegesis Volume 2 Issue #5 Roger L. Satterlee -- Re: Exegesis Digest V2 #3 Aphrodette North -- Re: Exegesis Digest V2 #3 Joanna M. Ashmun -- Re: Exegesis Digest V2 #4 Joanna M. Ashmun -- Re: Exegesis Digest V2 #4
Exegesis Digest Tue, 11 Mar 1997

Summary: Astrology is purely symbolic and arrives in our collective unconscious as an art form...our perception are inherently individualistic at the level of mature patterns of apperception.

My first response to astrology, or almost everything, is that I cannot accept the conclusion of others at face value; this much we seem to agree upon, or similarly practice in our thinking, but to varying degrees of course.

Because I assume that I cannot 'know' what the symbols of astrology 'mean' by merely memorizing what others say about them, I further assume that I must continue to seek my independent experience of these hypothetical constructions in order to better appreciate the actual experiences, if any, in a first hand manner.

I assume that astrology is an attempt to symbolize the products of our naturally occuring mental activity of apperception--the ability to reconcile the apparent novelty or randomness of our accumulating experiences--the individual pursuit of *what-goes-with-what*. The patterns we perceive and retain seem inherently structured and important to our ability to thrive; so much so, that I sooner associate the artistically expressed organization of individual appercetion with the homeostasis of our psyche. I place less emphasis on the relatively more arbitary disciplines of coginitive reasoning; the products of any cognitive reasoning are subject to the ordering of experience by our more intuitively accessed apperception. That which resonates with the whole of our individually structured life impressions in aggregate appears less arbitrarilly contrived--seems more 'true' for us personally.

I assume that individuals exist. Though this seems silly to even mention, I realize that I did not respect the existence of individuals in many important ways; further, the temptation to dismiss the internal validity of others will remain a stumbling block to my attempts at extending the range of my ability to symbolize the individual patterns of another's experience of 'reality'.

I assume that all experiences have a measure of self-similar qualities, and that all person seeking to present their own existence through the use of symbols, i.e., language and so forth, will by necessity rely on the selection of self-similar things as the means to communcating their individuality--their own psychological existence. This 'presence' of the individual will quite naturally be the vehicle of social participation, and not the other way around--social and environmental influences cannot be said to create the existence the individual. It is as if we must be first be able to be a vessle of the proper size and shape to accomodate any particular idea which society would have us put into the "self" for storage. Rational ideas are relatively smaller and somehow more geometrically composed, like a typical six-sided box we can be the recepticle of these practically based essentials. However, the more organically composed larger ideas--the collected experiences of an individual are more like a tree in shape. We must find the capacity to shape our perception through self discovery (and not by attempts at self distortion). To accomodate the individual expression of others we must some how find in ourselves a pattern of own existence which can be like a container tailored to accept a whole tree with its uniquely situated branching which slides neatly into a snugly conforming package. By way of contrast, though we may put a tree in a large box, if we do so, it ceases to present the suggestion or image of a tree, let alone an individual one.

Though I cannot write further at this time about general assumptions without again becoming a little lost and meaningless, suffice it to say I wish to study astrology by observing what the native apparently presents as the individualized the role of the available symbols, say Mars in Freud, or whatever, but within the context of the whole of the individual--as evidenced by the expressions of that individual. (A sort of psychological application of a general relativity comes to mind.)

So, if astrology exists as a means to symbolize the organized ideas, impressions, perceptions, of an individual, then we should be able to recognize a persistent pattern of the individual as s/he expresses, communicates, the more individualistic forms of their psychological existence. We should accept the traditionalist's natal chart as an artform delivered to us by generations of similar attempts--as the pool of annecdotal observations and so forth being the basis of our own informal research of symbols and their possible significance.

Though, the obvious seemed to have escaped me as I read some of the literature of astrology, 'my' individual perceptions the topic seem to emerge as a study of my "self" when I noted my selective behavior concerning the mass of apparent ramblings of perhaps both sincere and insincere, or creative and dull-witted others. I choose to think it might be better start the study of astrology by recognizing that astrology is more simply the study of proposed diagrams. These crude maps of the sky probably have 'meaning' only in that they are in essence an artistic product, a senendipitously discovered, intuitive psychological response, which only incidentally occurs as an affective element of that particular graphic medium itself. Astrology is most likely an apperceptive experience which apparently occurs even during a cognitive execise which is intended only to be a simple recording of physical observations.

This leads to my interest in the use of imagery by writers. For often as not, the attempts at a desciption of observations no matter how journalistically or dryly conceived, seem to present me with patterns which reflect the individual presence of the writer. The more creative the writer, the more individualistic seems the pattern of their expression, but the critical value of an artwork seems a matter of how much the artist has rendered s/he's own organized experiences. From the uncounted stimuli of a given moment only some selected portions of 'reality' will be rendered by the "self" as artist. Here the study I must reluctantly call astrology is the search for the symbols in artistic expression which parallel the symbols found in the art of birth maps. Because these symbols are part of the collective unconscious activity of human beings, symbols which perhaps are exhibited at different levels of sophistication. To my eye, children project the pattern of their forming personalities, and they project some of the hypothetically posed 'astrological' symbols, but perhaps in the simplest (meaning the most raw) forms. The adult intellect, perhaps having grown in sophistication only, does little more than expand upon this organic seed pattern--the natal potential of individual--the archetype of the individual "self".

Rog
roger9@ix.netcom.com
11:53PM EDT 26Jul50 76W48 42N06
http://www.netcom.com/~roger9/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7406

Ascertaining a person's level of consciousness is best dome with a patient coming out of anesthesis !!! I try not to ascertain or define 'consciousness' within the individual as this is an extremely subjective space. Humankind falls short in credential to make this kind of judgement.

As an astrologer - i find some clients appreciate predictions and others appreciate the psychological impact of this fine art. In my readings, i usually include practical as well as spiritual and psychological helps as indicated by areas of stress and strength within the chart. I often find clients complain when readings are too theoretical and cannot be applied with practical guidelines.

Sun-sign astrology, just like armchair philosphy will probably not go out of style !! Educating the public at large is the best tact - and that is becoming more abundant all the time !! The New Age movemet is causing many to take a much longer look at the specifics of astrology and the fascination of it's many aspects.. (pun intended !)

For current information about what's going on in sun-sign work and discussion, I recommend two things on my Web pages (http://www.nwlink.com/~jmashmun/). I still have online a long (about 50K) article on the history of sun-sign columns by Geoffrey Dean and Arthur Mather. There's also my compilation of sun-sign URLs on the Web, including 1-900 lines with Web pages. Both are linked prominently from my front page.

I've read literally thousands of sun-sign readings on the WWW in the past six months. Aside from some obvious satire, everything I've seen seemed to have been written by an astrologer; it was identifiably astrology. What's on the Web varies a lot in quality, but none of it strikes me as a degradation of the art. Bear in mind that most of these readings are offered essentially as bait by astrologers wishing to sell their full services. For this reason, most sun-sign sites state very clearly that sun signs by themselves are not REAL astrology, and many sites have basic instruction free online in addition to order information. Surveying these sites has been pleasant because of the prevailing mood of good will, along with some beautiful graphics occasionally.

ISAR and the AFA both have sun-sign readings at their Web sites. More and more sun-sign columns that also appear in magazines are showing up on the Web. Time Warner has a big astrology section at Pathfinder, even though their magazines don't carry astrology (http://pathfinder.com/@@k94b8gKe5AMAQMSf/twep/astrology/). Helene Curtis Salon Selectives offers: "The planets' predictions for your (hair) future" foretells good and bad hair days along with a typical brief sun-sign forecast (http://www.yoursalon.com/salon/yourproblem/planet.html).

About the 1-900 lines. I have never called one, but I have Net friends who work on them. And they are fine astrologers. They do real astrology on the phone. A couple of the advantages they see are (1) that people don't have to wait weeks to get an appointment with an astrologer and (2) that people in outlying areas have access to astrological services.

I'd love to hear that it's different for you, but I am personally acquainted with exactly zero astrologers who make a living solely from private readings. All I know who support themselves by astrology are able to write and sell articles and books for the trade and, more important, for the general public; or they also deal in specialty books or software; or they work phone lines.

If Fran will post the URLs, you can get Web files by email by writing to w3mail@gmd.de. The following command will retrieve formatted text with full information on links:

It's also possible to retrieve HTML and graphics files by email from this server, so that you can -- if you have a suitable viewer (such as Netscape) -- reconstruct pages as they appear on the Web. For further instructions, write to w3mail@gmd.de with the command "help" in the body of the message.

This server is very fast. Even if you have a browser, if what you want is the text and the links information, this service is well worth trying.