Fitting Astrology into Current Science Thinking.
Author: Marjorie Orr. Date: 25 Jan 2007
Some time, somewhere, someone will fit astrology into scientific theory. It won’t affect the practise of astrology which has rolled on regardless of the lack of any rational explanation for several thousand years. Statistical studies proving astrology, while useful, will not crack the problem. As in the past, they will be discounted by the sceptics. Astrology needs an explanation that fits into accepted mainstream thinking. This is not so much as argument about whether astrology is a science or an art, it is a philosophical and theoretical question. Psycho-analysis and indeed Aesthetics are accepted by the mainstream.
Overcoming the credibility gap is less to do with evidence, more the lack of any explanation as to why calculations based on planetary movements should produce any useful information. Having no theory of astrology, no known model which it fits, creates a crucial intellectual stumbling block. Since science cannot tolerate what it cannot understand, it writes off astrology as mumbo-jumbo, superstition and meta-twaddle. The vast resources of serious astrology, generating information not readily available elsewhere, lies largely unused.
WHAT IS ASTROLOGY?
Astrology freeze-frames time. The moment and geographical location of birth sets a pattern for the ensuing life. That sliver of time sets the individual human into a specific mathematical relationship to the rest of the solar system. Although that particular mathematical pattern at the time of an individual birth will never repeat ever again, it is, very mysteriously, itself sensitive in years to come, to the movements of the planets - or to some other underlying physical manifestations to which the planetary movements are themselves subject.
The birth chart is the digital time-code - one moment translated into a complex series of numbers which are the planetary relationships. In these specific moments in time appear to be encoded a huge amount of information about past and future potential. This fits nothing that common conscensus thinking can grasp. But it appears to be so.
The birth chart of one individual can be matched to another, the mid-points between planets plotted, and the nature of the relationship can be described from that composite chart. The relationship chart, though using planetary names, is not a plan of astronomical positions, but an 'abstract' chart, calculated from the original number matrices of the individual charts. Present planetary movements plotted on that 'abstract' chart will reflect clearly high points and times of stress in the relationship.
Major historical events are accompanied by major astrological/atronomical aspects. Similar aspects sometimes several hundreds of years apart ‘produce’ similar events, whether wars, mass migrations of people, the rise and fall of dynasties and empires, revolts by the underdogs in society, periods of artistic creativity, religiosity and scientific inspiration.
Theory of sympathetic numbers or digital attraction
When the particular mathematical pattern that is the birth chart is replicated, even in a single element, by present movements of planets, which are themselves reducible to a mathematical code, then those elements of the birth chart are 'activated' - and changes in behaviour and life circumstances ensue. Any variation or combination of the mathematical pattern of the birth chart also reveals accurate information. The mid-point between the Sun and Moon at the moment of birth, a specific mathematical number, anywhere from 0 to 365 on the zodiac belt but not a planetary position, is a key indicator when activated of major marital changes in an individual life.
Tentative toe in the water of scientific explanation
The great scientists of the 20th century have consistently pointed to a reality underlying solid matter. Quantum physicist Einstein first described the atomic and subatomic world which lies beyoatically verifiable and predictable. Robert Hand, the American philosopher-astrologer argues that a planetless astrology is conceivable. The planets are merely the outermost manifestation of an unknowable inner order. Outer is measureable - in four dimensions; inner is not.
Astrology developed with left brain dominance
Astrology is a persistent connection to a lost way of knowing an underlying reality, which post-Einsteinian science has proved exists. Before the development of language, and consciousness as we know it, four thousand years ago, ancient man had an intuitive 'knowing' about the connections in the universe between the rhythms of the earth, the cycles of the seasons, the mysterious earth-solar-lunar energy patterns in the standing stone circles 'transmitted' through the molecular structure of the stone itself.
As language developed along with left brain dominance so was astrology formalised away from an intuitive knowing to the beginnings of the mathematical system we use today. The first literate culture, the Sumerians brought writing and astrology with them from Oman (or the Indus) to Babylonia and the Chaldean civilization. At every step of the way, the key figures who advanced astrology were the mathematicians first in Greece, then in the Arab Civilization after Rome fell, in Hindu mathematics in India, and latterly in Renaissance Europe.
PSYCHOLOGY
Physicists study the inner, underlying reality of matter. Psycho-analysts study the inner, underlying reality of the individual human mind and its effect on outer behaviour. Common sense used to tell us that mind had no effect on matter or body; that the intangible was ineffectual or delusionary. Modern understanding says the truth is counter-intuitive - that physical illness does have a psychological cause/parallel; that the patterns of an individual life, seemingly outwith the control of the person, repeat again and again, pointing to a link between temperament, inherited characteristics, family dynamics and the outer life. As Bohm’s explicate outer universe unfolds from the unsee-able implicate order, so does a human life unfold from their unconscious sub-strata.
The birth chart describes the potential of a human being, which can be lived fully, in part or very little. It reflects Einstein’s view that “ things have tendencies to exist or occur. Life even at a material level is about probabilities.“ Gauquelin concluded that successful people in whatever sphere were the ones who lived out their charts most fully. Astrology offers a range of interpretive meanings to specific astrological aspects to a birth chart. It reflects the range of possibilities on offer as the individual struggles to make manifest what is being triggered at a deeper, more intangible level. Thus heavy transitting aspects to the Moon (body, home, childhood, connection to mother) in different people will have different effects within this spectrum. One may somatise the influences and become ill; for others, defects in their house require practical attention; some will have intense encounters with significant women in their lives on whom the mother is projected; others will find their childhood memories and issues re-surfacing.
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Some time, somewhere, someone will fit astrology into scientific theory. It won’t affect the practise of astrology which has rolled on regardless of the lack of any rational explanation for several thousand years. Statistical studies proving astrology, while useful, will not crack the problem. As in the past, they will be discounted by the sceptics. Astrology needs an explanation that fits into accepted mainstream thinking. This is not so much as argument about whether astrology is a science or an art, it is a philosophical and theoretical question. Psycho-analysis and indeed Aesthetics are accepted by the mainstream.
Overcoming the credibility gap is less to do with evidence, more the lack of any explanation as to why calculations based on planetary movements should produce any useful information. Having no theory of astrology, no known model which it fits, creates a crucial intellectual stumbling block. Since science cannot tolerate what it cannot understand, it writes off astrology as mumbo-jumbo, superstition and meta-twaddle. The vast resources of serious astrology, generating information not readily available elsewhere, lies largely unused.
WHAT IS ASTROLOGY?
Astrology freeze-frames time. The moment and geographical location of birth sets a pattern for the ensuing life. That sliver of time sets the individual human into a specific mathematical relationship to the rest of the solar system. Although that particular mathematical pattern at the time of an individual birth will never repeat ever again, it is, very mysteriously, itself sensitive in years to come, to the movements of the planets - or to some other underlying physical manifestations to which the planetary movements are themselves subject.
The birth chart is the digital time-code - one moment translated into a complex series of numbers which are the planetary relationships. In these specific moments in time appear to be encoded a huge amount of information about past and future potential. This fits nothing that common conscensus thinking can grasp. But it appears to be so.
The birth chart of one individual can be matched to another, the mid-points between planets plotted, and the nature of the relationship can be described from that composite chart. The relationship chart, though using planetary names, is not a plan of astronomical positions, but an 'abstract' chart, calculated from the original number matrices of the individual charts. Present planetary movements plotted on that 'abstract' chart will reflect clearly high points and times of stress in the relationship.
Major historical events are accompanied by major astrological/atronomical aspects. Similar aspects sometimes several hundreds of years apart ‘produce’ similar events, whether wars, mass migrations of people, the rise and fall of dynasties and empires, revolts by the underdogs in society, periods of artistic creativity, religiosity and scientific inspiration.
Theory of sympathetic numbers or digital attraction
When the particular mathematical pattern that is the birth chart is replicated, even in a single element, by present movements of planets, which are themselves reducible to a mathematical code, then those elements of the birth chart are 'activated' - and changes in behaviour and life circumstances ensue. Any variation or combination of the mathematical pattern of the birth chart also reveals accurate information. The mid-point between the Sun and Moon at the moment of birth, a specific mathematical number, anywhere from 0 to 365 on the zodiac belt but not a planetary position, is a key indicator when activated of major marital changes in an individual life.
Tentative toe in the water of scientific explanation
The great scientists of the 20th century have consistently pointed to a reality underlying solid matter. Quantum physicist Einstein first described the atomic and subatomic world which lies beyoatically verifiable and predictable. Robert Hand, the American philosopher-astrologer argues that a planetless astrology is conceivable. The planets are merely the outermost manifestation of an unknowable inner order. Outer is measureable - in four dimensions; inner is not.
Astrology developed with left brain dominance
Astrology is a persistent connection to a lost way of knowing an underlying reality, which post-Einsteinian science has proved exists. Before the development of language, and consciousness as we know it, four thousand years ago, ancient man had an intuitive 'knowing' about the connections in the universe between the rhythms of the earth, the cycles of the seasons, the mysterious earth-solar-lunar energy patterns in the standing stone circles 'transmitted' through the molecular structure of the stone itself.
As language developed along with left brain dominance so was astrology formalised away from an intuitive knowing to the beginnings of the mathematical system we use today. The first literate culture, the Sumerians brought writing and astrology with them from Oman (or the Indus) to Babylonia and the Chaldean civilization. At every step of the way, the key figures who advanced astrology were the mathematicians first in Greece, then in the Arab Civilization after Rome fell, in Hindu mathematics in India, and latterly in Renaissance Europe.
PSYCHOLOGY
Physicists study the inner, underlying reality of matter. Psycho-analysts study the inner, underlying reality of the individual human mind and its effect on outer behaviour. Common sense used to tell us that mind had no effect on matter or body; that the intangible was ineffectual or delusionary. Modern understanding says the truth is counter-intuitive - that physical illness does have a psychological cause/parallel; that the patterns of an individual life, seemingly outwith the control of the person, repeat again and again, pointing to a link between temperament, inherited characteristics, family dynamics and the outer life. As Bohm’s explicate outer universe unfolds from the unsee-able implicate order, so does a human life unfold from their unconscious sub-strata.
The birth chart describes the potential of a human being, which can be lived fully, in part or very little. It reflects Einstein’s view that “ things have tendencies to exist or occur. Life even at a material level is about probabilities.“ Gauquelin concluded that successful people in whatever sphere were the ones who lived out their charts most fully. Astrology offers a range of interpretive meanings to specific astrological aspects to a birth chart. It reflects the range of possibilities on offer as the individual struggles to make manifest what is being triggered at a deeper, more intangible level. Thus heavy transitting aspects to the Moon (body, home, childhood, connection to mother) in different people will have different effects within this spectrum. One may somatise the influences and become ill; for others, defects in their house require practical attention; some will have intense encounters with significant women in their lives on whom the mother is projected; others will find their childhood memories and issues re-surfacing.
hide Marjorie's posts
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