See, that’s my issue with the whole thing. I am a mathematician, and it’s been my experience that almost no one has any intuitive grasp of probability. And even if someone did, they’d need a better notion of what a hit is to guess how likely it is.
No argument. Problem is, everything about this is, by its very nature, bound to be subjective. I make no pretense of offering “evidence”, nor am I trying to convince anyone of anything. I am simply relating my experience.
For instance: there is a branch of astrology called “horary”, which is the most akin to divination. The idea is that you are presented with a question, and cast a chart relative to the moment the question is asked, and try to answer the question accordingly. I don’t have much truck with it, myself, but the skill set (if you will) is identical but what the heck, right?
In astrology, hidden or lost objects (the nature of the question was a piece of lost jewelry, sentimental) falls under the sway of Neptune. Casting for the time of the question, Neptune is in the house associated with children. So, of course, I said “Check the children’s room.” The daughter had innocently purloined the piece in question for “dress up”. Hit? No hit? What’s the math here? How in the world would you examine the probability?
So what do I tell you? It “worked”? Well, yeah, sorta kinda. But the “house” in question also relates to gambling, I might as easily have asked “Have you been to a casino?”. (If you don’t see the natural association between kids and gambling, you don’t have any…)
Intuition, I think, is the key here, and we understand very little about it. I suggest that a trained intuition may have access to better acuity, but I haven’t the slightest idea how to construct a statistical study to prove that. Frankly, I doubt that it is even possible. For myself, that presents no problem, I am willing to shrug and say “Maybe”, I have no need to insist.
There’s something going on, and I don’t know what it is. And, after all, isn’t what you don’t know more interesting than what you do?
I am not going to get into a discussion of astrology, but from a purely historical standpoint I consider not a word of this to be true. The Babylonians believed nothing of the sort. Their gods were aligned differently (the moon was father to the sun, e.g.) and their main gods were not even sky gods. This all sounds like later traditions trying to invent as long and as illustrious a history as possible.
Yes and no. It is characteristic of paganism (especially Graeco-Roman paganism) to play mix-and-match with gods.
Hey elucidator. “Respectful” is too strong. Say simply “polite.” But thank you for your reply.
The primary limitation being that it’s a lot harder to get BS out of them.
You sure you know anything about astrology? Neptune stays in the same house for nearly fourteen years at a time. So does this imply that whenever anyone loses anything over a period of a decade and a half, that it’s probably in the children’s room, or at the casino, or whatever else is associated with that house? And that after it moves to a different house, all of a sudden the preponderance of lost things is associated with something else?
Pretty sure. Know enough not to confuse “house” with “sign”.
A “house” is a section of the chart determined by time of day. Just before sunrise, for instance, the sun is said to be in the “first house”. Just before sunrise, the sun is always in the first house, regardless of its sign placement.
Note to PBear42: politeness is repectful, in mine own eyes. I didn’t mean to imply that your mind was so hopelessly open that you might give a *respectful * consideration to one, such as myself, who presents you with an opinion so clearly at odds with conventional wisdom. If I have overestimated your tolerance and civility, I apologize. I suppose.
Elucidator, at a guess, it’s petty put-downs like that which have created the air of derision about which you complained in your first post. Open to what? You pointedly refuse to prove anything, then get on a high horse about open minds? I don’t know who you think this argument persuades. Not me.
Getting back to the OP, the problem with this hypothesis is that the seasons are not constant throughout the Earth. They’re reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres, so growing seasons are reversed as well. Plus, even within one hemisphere there can be considerable variation in food scarcity depening on local conditions, weather, etc. I can’t see any reasonable way to correlate all those variations to the movement of the planets, which do not depend in any way on Earth’s seasons.