Exegesis Volume 5 Issue #39


From: Armando Rey
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V5 #38


From: Juan Revilla
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V5 #38


Exegesis Digest Mon, 17 Jul 2000


Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 19:25:08 -0700
From: Armando Rey
To: Exegesis
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V5 #38
 


 > Apparently, current thinking has it that astrology really has nothing to do
 > with the Solar System in particular, or the celestial sphere in general, or
 > so I gather from this discussion. Are we to presume, then, that the
 > ephemeris and the table of Houses, the data of time and place of event
 > (birth, in this case), are merely conventional devices that might indeed be
 > treated as ancillary and perhaps even dispensable? Is the notion that the
 > word 'astrology' means "the study of the stars" now considered irrelevant or
 > perhaps even erroneous?
 >
 > It has been my understanding that, by and large, our astrology rests on the
 > ancient Greek philosophical practices of the same name, where they regarded
 > the movements of the celestial sphere as the source of time and our own
 > handy-dandy window to the existence of perfection. In contrast, they
 > thought that the affairs of our terrestrial realm, inasmuch as they existed
 > within the sphere of human influence, were essentially corrupted thereby.
 > The intuitively obvious assumption appears to have been that if one wished
 > to understand the essential reality of things, one consulted the movements
 > of the heavens rather than the machinations of earthly existence. Am I
 > mistaken in this regard?
 >
 > Please continue. I stand prepared to be instructed.
 >
 > wtallman

Hi wtallman

I am convinced that astrological knowledge does not come from convention.

The position of stars are indispensable to correlate them with earthly affairs.

"The study of the stars" is a proposition that does not say much, because astronomy and physic , as you know, also study it.

Astrology does not rests only on the greek tradition, because there are other astrologies that belong to other cultural traditions. Imho, the aim of astrological inquiry is not to understand the essential reality of things ,as you say, but to grasp the essential meaning of the terrestrial phenomena (including the so called inner and outer experiences and events) as presented to our counciousness in the frame of our destiny.

IOW, Infinite (or the Sprit, or God) talks to us. It is a very personel talk and yet vey universal at the same time. It talks through the Celestial Sphere as concretised in a Natal Chart and manifested in the continuum of space time that our counciousness is attached to..that we call it destiny.

very cordially, Armando

PS. If there is any further interest in discussing this topic let me tell you that I will be out for three weeks, I am going to visit the tarahumara indians in northern mexico.


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Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 12:02:02 -0600
From: Juan Revilla
To: Exegesis
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V5 #38
 


 > Apparently, current thinking has it that astrology really has nothing to do
 > with the Solar System in particular, or the celestial sphere in general, or
 > so I gather from this discussion. Are we to presume, then, that the
 > ephemeris and the table of Houses, the data of time and place of event
 > (birth, in this case), are merely conventional devices that might indeed be
 > treated as ancillary and perhaps even dispensable? Is the notion that the
 > word 'astrology' means "the study of the stars" now considered irrelevant or
 > perhaps even erroneous?

My answer to your last question is "Yes". Generally speaking, astrology is not the "study of the stars" but of their motions and positions relative to the observer or --today-- to the center of the Earth. We don't "study" the planets or the stars but their geocentric interactions among themselves and with the Earth, which are given a "meaning" according to certain interpretational codes which are a human or cultural product, such as, for example, metaphorical thinking.

The astrologer does not deal with the stars per se, but with their conventional representations in maps or models which consist of discrete and conventional coordinates. It is the coordinates which are given a meaning and the "stuff" with which the astrologer works, not the physical points in "outer" space themselves, *and*, normally (with very few exceptions such as mundane astrology), the astrologer does not work with the flux or movement of the heavens being modelled *in real time* but with a frozen "skeleton" called a "radical", which is an abstraction of an instant of time that happened long ago. So, in essence, the way I see it, the astrologer does not deal with the "real" or physical stars or planets in space except very indirectly, at the time of building the charts and calculating the coordinates. Once that is done, he or she deals only with the coordinates themselves and their multiple interactions, interpreting events happening to those coordinates (such as aspects) which only seldom correspond to real events in the sky and to real time.

I like to compare it with a clock; we normally relate to the clock, to the model, and not directly to the flow of nature or the becoming. In addition, the clock used by astrology very seldom is related to real physical time, since it involves a completely symbolical non-natural manipulation of cycles and of time (progressions, directions, transits) as they relate to a radical chart, a model of something that happened in the past and does not exist in nature any more.

We use the solar system as a way of modelling the order of the universe. The object of study is not the solar system itself, but what it is modelling, i.e., the flow of time.


 > It has been my understanding that, by and large, our astrology rests on the
 > ancient Greek philosophical practices of the same name, where they regarded
 > the movements of the celestial sphere as the source of time and our own
 > handy-dandy window to the existence of perfection. In contrast, they
 > thought that the affairs of our terrestrial realm, inasmuch as they existed
 > within the sphere of human influence, were essentially corrupted thereby.
 > The intuitively obvious assumption appears to have been that if one wished
 > to understand the essential reality of things, one consulted the movements
 > of the heavens rather than the machinations of earthly existence.

Perhaps it is useful to make a difference between what the ancient Greeks thought, and what they did, as we are able to interpret their approach to astrology with modern tools of thinking, and in a historical and cultural perspective. What they really did in their (and our) astrology, as opposed to what they thought or said they did, and as opposed to the Babylonian approach?

For example: the tropical zodiac, as representative of the seasonal cycle is related exclusively to the Sun. When we convert a time-cycle into simultaneous sections of space in the sky, each with different "seasonal qualities", we are transposing the real experience of time and the physical characteristics of the seasonal cycle into a symbolic matrix in space with which we give qualities to the planets, which have nothing to do with the seasons. The different *seasonal* characteristics, physically speaking, apply exclusively to the Sun. Any other use is symbolical, and comes from a transposition of time into space, which can be done only through abstraction and symbolization (metaphor and/or analogy).

This can be seen in the calendar, where discrete units of time become temporal distances or spatial "cells", and this reflects a change of consciousness from the "real experience out there" of Babylonian culture to the abstraction and pure geometry of the Greeks.

In Babylonia the measurements of time are provided by planetary motions, or, in Greek astronomy, by the Sun (a very important cultural difference!). Planetary motions are "trajectories" ("orbits") which, unlike the Babylonians, the Greeks figured abstractly (geometrically) as distances in space. This is what I feel the coordinates of an astrological chart measure, these one-dimensional distances in a flat geometrical space which allow the trajectories to intersect, even though they never intersect in the real world. Like the cycles in a calendar, the intersections happen only in the abstract model. Whether they really happen or not in the heavens out there ***and in real time*** or not, with few exceptions, is of no concern to the astrologer, who works with symbolically manipulated time units and with discrete coordinates and abstract trajectories, never with real physical objects in the sky.

Juan


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End of Exegesis Digest Volume 5 Issue 39

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