Exegesis V3 Issue #41

Exegesis Volume 3 Issue #41

From: "William D. Tallman"
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #38

From: mary downing
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #39

From: "William D. Tallman"
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #37

Exegesis Digest Fri, 08 May 1998

Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 01:05:26 +0000
From: "William D. Tallman"
To: exegesis
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #38

> In my opinion, a marriage must exist between astrology and
> psychology (or psychiatry or sociology or any other human study)
> because that's the whole point of astrology -- to explain us and our
> environment to ourselves in order to give us the greatest amount of
> freedom to achieve our goals. What else?

May we infer that you consider human psychology as the only venue capable of providing these insights? The implication here is that the only aspect of the environment you consider significant is other people, individually and collectively. I suggest there is more to our environment that astrology can address than humanity.

> Mary, you said, " astrology deals with everything that exists in [snip]
> You may be perfectly right about that, but why do we want to know
> about weather patterns, the mass psyche, sun spots, and crop cycles?
> Because they are what enable human beings to live on this planet in
> some kind of harmony and safety. Why do we study horary and mundane
> astrology and business cycles? Because human beings want the
> answers to their every day dilemmas. Why else?

> To assume that astrology exists by itself and is waiting for us to
> discover its secrets, to me, is too mystical and takes away some of
> the possibility that we have control over our own actions.

This is a quite articulate statement of a commonly held view, I suspect. It seems to me that there are two assumptions here that need closer inspection: 1) that the essence of astrology is beyond comprehension and 2) that astrology necessarily implies fate against which no human action can prevail.

It is well understood, I think, that one of the phenomenon resulting from the human quest for knowledge and understanding is that any given generation's well-understood technology is surely some previous generation's magic. At any given time, we can imagine that there exists a border between what is a matter of science and what is a matter of magic, given the following definition: the difference between magic and science is that the mechanisms at work in the process are known and understood in the latter but not in the former. The process itself doesn't change, only our perception of it.

It has not been that long ago when we didn't have the tools to investigate the functions of the brain, or the functions of the deep micro environment, and we could not see the mechanism involved and so answer the questions of "how" that provide assurance that we in fact are seeing what we think we see. I cite these examples because they are appropriate in general and they are relevant to the present discussion. When we didn't have these tools, we couldn't see how to proceed to investigate the phenomena observed therein, and for those for whom some answer is better than no answer, it seemed appropriate to suggest that understanding of these things was not possible.... perhaps even inappropriate. We all recall the old dictum that there are somethings that mankind was (is?) never meant to know; the question is, do we still believe this to be true?

I don't think so, and I hope most of you people agree, lest we give over all responsibility to those who would preach that doctrine.

It is probably not appropriate to get into a discussion of fate versus free will in this post. Suffice it to say that astrology provides a rather marvelous balance between these two apparently mutually exclusive modalities. To say that the Signs represent what is provided for us and thus fate, and that the Houses represent those arenas of life in which we have the ability to respond and thus free will, is unacceptably simplistic; it will have to do, however. In my view, the study of astrology can provide some rather deep insights into how "fate" and "free will" are actually intertwined in our lives. I recommend this study.

> ...............................................................................................Rather,
> I would say that we create the symbolism of astrology as one of our
> means of delving into our own humanity, wherever we live and whoever
> we are, to help us understand our world. We create astrology as a
> language in the same way that we create language -- as a
> representation of our intent, desires, and wishes. And all of this
> we do because we are human beings and we want to know about
> ourselves and our world. That's why we have to know about human
> functioning, as you have said, and that's why we continue to look
> for all kinds of symbol sets to help us learn that, including
> astrology, psychology, mythology, and even some of the new age
> goodies. It's all a search and we're all in it together.

This is a very nice statement of the purpose of astrology, with some exceptions, I think. Astrology is, as you point out, a human invention; our current practice is a variant of the Greek horoscope and the Greeks, if nothing else, provided us with the methodology to invent and create structural (and so conceptual) artifice. Yet that is not all there is to astrology; it is *not* simply a reflection of human intent, desire, and wishes. The astrological construct is designed to *interpret* that reflection in those contexts, but the reflection itself is of what we have called the "astrological effect".

Our interest is the discovery of what we may of that effect, so that we might determine the accuracy of the reflection. The validity of any interpretation of that reflection must ultimately rest on the accuracy of the reflection itself. In short, we really don't know what is actually happening when we erect and interpret a horoscope.

> Nothing can be done, certainly, until we have some idea what it is we're actually studying. Time itself? The shared energy soup of the universe?
>
> What difference does it make if we know about time or the shared
> energy soup of the universe or not? The only difference it makes is
> to us as human beings and how we will live our lives as a result of
> it or how those cycles help us to explain our own cycles and,
> therefore, predict what is likely to occur in the future.

> .......................................................................................For that
> reason, we, as astrologers had better pay lots of attention to
> learning about how humans operate, be that through psychology,
> psychiatry, sociology, etc., etc.

But none of these studies have anything to do with astrology! We are able to couch our astrological interpretations in terms and concepts relevant to those other studies, but that does *not* imply that there is a direct and necessary connection between astrology and these, or any other, studies. Astrology is the study of the stars, not of the human psyche, or social structure or anything else, and we fail to honor our practice to the extent we forget this.

> You're right, Mary. All we really need to care about is if
> astrology works, but it will work best the more we understand about
> its main object of examination -- ourselves.

I think we must infer that this statement defines the study of human beings as primary to the writer's interests, and that astrology itself is only an adjunct to that primacy. I have no quarrel with this, nor can I see how any could reasonably exist; but astrology is not the study of humanity, it is the study of the stars, and that is the subject of discussion on this list.

There is a great deal we don't know about astrology. Some of what we lack was known in the past, though how well understood, we don't know. I think we must presume that there is more we have never known. If we wish to be astrologers, rather than users of astrology for some specific purpose, then I think we need to look at these issues. I would suggest that astrology is very likely to have some real surprises for us as we come to understand what the astrological effect actually is, and for astrologers, I think those surprises are worth the effort to discover them.

I think we also need to understand that there are people who practice astrology, and who call themselves astrologers therefore, who are *not* astrologers but devotees and advocates of another discipline, and who have found astrology to provide a useful tool. For those people, I suggest that some acceptance of their individual reality in these regards will serve to clear the air surrounding the discussions of the matters at hand.

Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 16:08:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: mary downing
To: Exegesis
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V3 #39

Sorry, simply referring (rather cryptically I'm afraid) to Gauquelin sectors. His research showed planets populating specific sectors of the chart in relationship to the horizon rather than longitude.

Certain sector placements, roughly equal to twelfth, 9th house, and 5th house; were statistically significant in people who achieved acclaim in sports, the law, medicine, journalism, etc. Different planets and slightly different patterns of placement. Mars rising in sportsmen is popularly referred to as the "Gauquelin effect" and was by far the most significant. Not all planets had an effect.

There are, if memory serves me, 36 Gauquelin sectors and they are calculated in Right Ascension.