Exegesis Volume 3 Issue #8 From: Matthew Wilson Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #6 From: "Joanna M. Ashmun" Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #7
Exegesis Digest Wed, 28 Jan 1998

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 19:08:20 -0000
From: Matthew Wilson
To: Exegesis
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #6
 

2) It cannot explain itself. It cannot define and
 > describe its own basis. So it had, and still has, no defense against
 > those would-be dictators who claim without refutation that
 > the basic tenets of astrology are illusory and invalid. With no
 > defense, those who would develop it stepped away, leaving it to
 > charlatans and tricksters.
 >

The problem seems to be that every astrologer acts in an almost unique way and no two astrologers will come up with the same reading from the same chart. Whilst charlatans and tricksters certainly abound, astrology has often relied on the religious or philosophical system of its practioner to provide it shelter: thus Mesopotamian astrology was bound up with the cult of Inanna, Valens and Ptolemy with Platonism and the pantheism of ancient Greece, Jyotish with Vedantism, and even early Western astrology with Gnosticism, Hermeticism or the Catholic Church. Today Osho followers have their own astrology, Maharishi or TM followers have theirs, Mandaeans (whose astrologer priests must be the longest practised tradition still alive in the world today) whilst in the West we seem to have alligned with the cult of Jung !! The fact is that as a supernatural phenomena astrology seems to require a spiritual home to align itself to.

 >
 > There are other reasons, but these two are primary.
 >
 > Now, the possibility that astrology can align itself with a socially
 > acceptable paradigm is apparently a prospect that cannot be refused
 > by those who require social acceptance. It doesn't matter whether
 > the ancient practices worked or not, they have no apparent basis in
 > reality as we perceive it.... ie, the ancient practices have no
 > intuitively obvious foundation. It appears that it is not
 > truthfulness, effectiveness, or any other practical concern, but the
 > perception of appearance, that matters.
 >

The interest in Project Hindsight without a corresponding move to Platonic Pantheism or an interest in Jyotish without becoming Hindu seems to suggest otherwise.

 > The saddest part about this is that it's just this sort of behavior
 > by professionals that serves to discredit astrology so thoroughly in
 > the eyes of all who have fought with uncompromizing integrity to
 > develop the understanding of their own disciplines. It is those
 > people who have earned the trust of their fellows, and rightly so, I
 > think.
 >
 > Modern astrology text center on psychological and scientific
 > evaluation of the chart, while the concepts that proved eminently
 > useful over thousands of years get tossed aside. Concepts like
 > void-of-course-moons, the via-combusta, etc. are treated almost like
 > some superstition to be ashamed of and forgotten.
 >

Project Hindsight suggests that this is as the result of mistranslation and repression meaning that we are reduced to the realm of psychological rather than preidictive because we have lost the techniques. Interestingly this seems borne out by the fact that Jyotish remains predominantly predictive.

 > None of those concepts find a place of correspondence in the current
 > psychological constructs, so they are ignored as irrelevant. Notice
 > that science has nothing to do with this; there is no investigation,
 > simply rejection. There is no scientific evaluation in astrology,
 > and none of the current texts invite it, much less require it. You
 > will find no comparison of modern and ancient techniques: no
 > comparison of findings, no support or refutation using relevant
 > evidence, nothing.
 >

There has been significant scientific evaluation both of the astrologers and of astrology (note the distinction) see Cornelius 'Moment of Astrology' for more on this. The problem is that the results have not been of any sensational significance to be of interest to any but the theorists of which I include myself.

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 98 13:45:16 -0800
From: "Joanna M. Ashmun"
To: Exegesis
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #7
 

Greetings to you long-winded sons-of-guns!

If sloth had been the original sin we'd still be in paradise.

I would like to see reviews of books and articles. On anything relevant and anything that can be made relevant.

Does anybody happen to know anything about stochastic resonance? As I understand it, animals can sense weak signals that ought to be masked by ambient noise. What happens is that synchronizations of random noise amplify the weak signals enough to make them perceptible. There are thousands of Web pages on stochastic resonance, and Amazon has something like 600 titles, mostly breathtakingly pricy academic publications -- feel like a US$310 paperback?

Regards,

Joanna

End of Exegesis Digest Volume 3 Issue 8

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