Dio, I thought I covered this. The stars are entirely irrelevent to astrology (though there is a branch that considers individual stars as having influence. I don’t) Only those objects in our local neighborhood are of import, the stars and constellations are measuring points, nothing more. These days in fact, they aren’t even used for that, the zodiac begins at the Spring Equinox point, where the Sun crosses the equator. That is the zero point of Aries, and the rest follows.
Since I like you, you can continue to call me “Lucy”. But you better be smiling when you say that, pardner.
Well that isn’t completely true. My religion involves everything having a purpose be it man made or not. There really aren’t any higher deities out there other than archetypical images used to teach a point. Within my religion a tree, which is definately observable, holds as much to its religious nature as does a building. To everything a purpose. If you prefaced your talking to reflect mystical religions such as Christianity then it would be more correct.
Au contraire, si on est le roi de France, en 1555, c’est de riguer.
I’m no fatalist either, and I certainly wasn’t trying to claim theory and practice were anciently superior. Just different; reflective of the medieval worldview as modern theory and practice appear to have evolved to accommodate current worldviews. My point was that I think people tend to reject any value for astrology because they know the science was largely erroneous and they have misconceptions about what current practice is. They even have misconceptions about original practice, as both Diogenes’ question about “stars” and the red herring about precession show. I can appreciate (and share) your reticence in speaking of the subject, since I begin to wonder if we are all talking about the same thing.
As far as Henri II goes, d.o.b.: March 31, 1519, 10:28 am, St. Germain-en-Laye. Date of injury: June 30, 1559, date of death: July 10, 1559 (the king’s eyes were pierced by a splintered lance and it took the poor man ten days to die). Go for your life. But be advised that the chart you will pull up from the computer is different from the chart calculated by Luca Gauricus and not just because he only had the five visible planets. I can email you with details from the book, if you want. Or you can get the book. ISBN 0-87728-636-1
I haven’t a clue either, as I previously confessed. As much as I know is that it has been proven that particles do interact non-locally; that is, the “mechanism” of cause and effect apparently doesn’t always work the way we usually observe it to in the larger world. I imagine there are particle physicists who could explain why this has no bearing on any astrological theories, which would be fine with me, as long as they are objecting to what’s actually proposed and not some erroneous impression of their own.
My Hawklette is also a Taurus, five minutes into the arc. I was in labor for 23 hours and I’m sometimes tempted to think she deliberately delayed just so she wouldn’t have to be an Aries.
Dunno what you mean by “things Cosmic.” I’m not much informed on Blavatsky, Crowley, et al. I think there is a great deal of dreck out there perpetrated by deliberate charlatans and misguided oddballs (and I’m not just speaking of astrology). I also think there is enough interesting weirdness at the edges where what we know meets what we don’t know - but may someday - and I seem to have the capacity for collecting a lot of ideas simply for the purpose of inspecting them from all angles while witholding judgment.
But then, my Jupiter’s in Gemini.
And I’ll see your Taurus and raise you a sun-mercury-venus stellium in Capricorn. gasp You’re right! My horoscope is fascinating!
APB, I fully agree with you that half-assed assumptions based on vague and inaccurate information are not a very good foundation for argument. So, since my source is a book that I have read and you have obviously not, I will help you out.
Greene is a Jungian psychologist who, like Jung, believes the symbols and cycles of astrology have useful application in a psychological context. She mentions the Nostradamus prophecy, but what she is, of course, referring to is the Opera omnia of Luca Guarica, a three volume work on natal, horary and mundane astrology which includes King Henri’s chart, calculated and so designated with the specific warning about his demise, its timing and nature. This was published in 1555, four years before Henri’s death. A copy of the volume is available in the British Library and Greene neither invented nor credulously repeated information that was not available to her from an historical source. The Nostradamus ditty was extant the same year, which may account for a connection being made at the time between the specific and the non-specific predictions but she offers no documentation for that and we may be permitted to doubt. But the Guaricus is clear and Henri was aware of it.
And her point is not a wide-eyed and credulous “Oooo, astrology is true, you should believe it!” Her point is that Renaissance astrologists had a different approach to prediction and interpretation, which was based on current attitudes and beliefs. And that modern interpretations of aspects that Guaricus could only see portending a particular type of violent death would be very different.
In other words, I was trying to address the OP in terms of what “belief in astrology” consists of, since people end up objecting to something that often isn’t being done, to say nothing of gross misconceptions regarding what it actually consists of. There are enough problems and inaccuracies in astrology without inventing more. If people can’t get the facts right about what they’re arguing against, I tend to be very careful about accepting their arguments.
I wholeheartedly agree, Elucidator. As you point out, people are again judging a discipline by the ‘pop’ aspect that is most visible (and easy to attack). If everyone judged psychiatry or psychology by this week’s ‘dear abbey’ then they’d be making the same ignorant conclusions. How many of you astrology-bashers have actually had your chart read by an experienced astrologer? (note: reading out of a book does not count). I bet not too many of you have.
Like Elucidator stated, as far as ‘telling the future’ all astrology gives you is the general energy/feeling of a period of time. Be careful traveling. Be careful of new, intense relationships during this period, etc. How are these statements scientifically measured? They can’t be. As with many ‘extra-scientific’ disciplines, you can only truly believe once you have experienced. As with religion.
==>> One must be careful when describing something as science, and something else as magic or myth. Something is only magic until it is proven by science. How much of modern science was considered ‘magic’ 1,000 years ago? It is simply that science has not progressed to a point where it can explain a phenomena. We might as well talk about ‘rain spirits’ making it rain - until we ‘discovered’ the process - and ‘proved’ it. The same goes for astrology, homeopathy, acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, etc, etc… Our science simply isn’t advanced enough to explain these things. But some of them have been around for 1000’s of years. All that personal testimonial evidence, people lining up to tell you their personal story of success - somehow that doesn’t write up well in a JAMA paper. It seems almost every day, respectable science is ‘discovering’ something that used to be myth. Vitamin C is now good for the immune system because we proved it. Ask any naturopath, and they would have told you that 50 years ago - because they saw it work. Science is constantly finding proof that home-remedies or traditional medicine work. They simply need to have the technology to determine what the active ingredient is - and explain how it works. Somehow the ‘quacks’ have known about this stuff for years.
Maybe someday we’ll ‘discover’ that “oh yeah, we already knew that our bodies are electrical in nature, with an electric field. Now we can prove that gravitation effects energy fields - who would have guessed it???”
sorry for any confusion, I was responding to elucidator’s first post (at the bottom of page 1) - hadn’t viewed the 2nd page yet. Though I still think my points hold up.
In other words, the only evidence for astrology is subjective and vague. You shouldn’t have to “experience it yourself”; if it were valid, the objective data would support it. Those “readings” only seem to tell you anything because of confirmation bias; you notice if something the astrologer said happens to relate to you, but you ignore anything that doesn’t. It works the same way as so-called “psychics” work.
It’s not because it “doesn’t write up well”; it’s because anecdotal evidence is notoriously unreliable.
Can science disprove astrology? Not any more than it can disprove God.
Does this mean that these things are necessarily true? Of course not, it just means that there really isn’t any test to help us out.
People see what they want to see when faced with ambiguity. Do as much statistical analysis as you like but the opposition will be right there to point out the flaws in your methodology.
IMHO it is the depths of idiocy to start ascribing events in one’s life to the gravitational effects of large bodies of mass at great distances. Yet, despite this, being told that the position of a planet in the night sky has some bearing on my fate is still more interesting than a dry description of the mechanics involved in planetary orbits.
I dunno, I think the mechanics of planetary movement and gravitation is fascinating. Even more so when you start getting into the calculus that is used to chart their progress. {gets all excited and geeky}
Well, I know that elucidator already covered the matter of astrologer’s not using the stars in their analysis, but lets for a moment assume that they do.
Let’s also assume that astrology is scientifically verifiable.
How, then do the stars influence our lives? If it is through ANY physical medium, such as light or gravity, the FASTEST information can pass through space is the speed of light.
Therefore, if the stars influence by gravity or light, their apparent positions are indeed the ones that should be taken into account, rather than their “Actual” positions. Unless astrology is both true and works faster than c.
—But that’s ridiculous, Apos. I’m surprised to see the “if my grandma had balls” argument from you.—
I think you mischaracterize the argument. What’s going on with sun signs is dividing humanity up into 12 stereotypical personality types. Whether the divisions are done by birth month or race, it’s the same sort of nasty sentiment, because it’s arbitary in exactly the same sort of way: and given to the same sort of “explanations” for people’s motivations, characters, etc.
Sure, if astrology has any operational meaning at all. You can actually go check predictions to the facts, statistically, and this most certainly has been done.
Further, as has already been pointed out, even top astrologists have a correlation of about .01-.1 with each other’s predictions. You’d expect that even if astrology were wrong, it would at least be CONSISTENTLY wrong: that there would be some sort of reliable system. But that’s clearly not the case. Even graphologist do better than that. More importantly, people actually thinking about their own and other’s observed characters does WAY better than that, obviating any need for astrologists to help them gain self-insight.
ok, let’s just assume for a second that astrology does work… How do astrologers know the rules of astrology? The best I can come up with are as follows:
Divine inspiration: Some deity or another (insert alien/dolphin/etc civilization here) came down from the mountain with a list of rules… if so can we have a look at the original stone tablets? or at least a reasonable hand drawn fascimile
Astrologers are privy to some info concerning gravitational or other forces that these celestial bodies are emitting and have calculated their result on the human body. (from most astrologers I’ve known, they all claim that they don’t know why or how it works, just that it does)
Statistical analysis: Given a large enough data set, you could detect patterns and trace them back to causal or at least correlative inputs without needing to know the underlying mechanism behind the behaviour. ie. being born in X sign always seems to end up with Y characteristic 19 times out of 20, we don’t know why, we just know that it does… If this is the case then what data set was used for the original calculations?
Astrologers just make it up.
I’d like any astrologer to explain how astrology is theorised to work, before even assuming that it does work.
astrologers cannot even agree among themselves.
Sidereal or tropical?
I doubt it could be tested, at least without the multitude of excuses brought up by astrolgoers as to why it didn’t prove true(Mercury was retrograde!!)
