Saturday, April 16, 2006

“Those money-grubbing fortune-tellers and their silly superstitions.”

Ok, there is no doubt that some of us who practice astrology are guilty of using bad astronomy to justify a particular conclusion about a chart. We talk about Pluto
conjuncting the Galactic Centre (26 degrees Sagittarius is deemed the current centre of our galaxy) and welcome the discovery of each new centaur/planet/planetoid with great enthusiasm for investigating their metaphysical meaning. We may be misguided, ill-informed, and ignorant, but dammit, at least we are interested in what astronomers are discovering.

The vast majority of people on this planet couldn't care less about what is going on Up There. Unless it pertains directly to them, the average person finds it hard to appreciate how much has been learned about the Universe in the last 20 years. As a group, astrologers pay attention to the celestial movements. This is why I find it strange that astronomers take such a harsh line toward those who practice astrology. We care, man. We really do.

This next part is for those who think they are going to sink into chaos if they look past the entertainment of Sun Signs to the serious heart of a God-given predictive system. 

According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (yes, that old saw), science cannot predict the actual position of an electron in an atom at any time. Science uses probabilities to predict. This is what we do in astrology. Based on our models we predict what is “likely” to happen.

Philosophy has value. Science has value. Religion has value. History has value. Astrology combines elements of all these and so has value. It is also a language which human beings can learn and use. Whether its correspondences make sense or not, the tendencies of one's life can be mapped out fairly accurately.

It is also a subject which can be studied over a lifetime without ever revealing the whole of its knowledge.

This is reasonable, given that its basis lies in the human experience of the cosmos. Not purely scientific interpretation, its observations are on quite a different branch than science. More like a whole fricking different tree. There really is no comparison.

Science cannot make a soul (or mind) visible, nor identify all their components. This is because science cannot speak the language. Astrology can speak this language of metaphors, and so can come closer to understanding what the soul is trying to communicate to us.

So go ahead. Call it a pseudoscience. Whatever. Over-enthusiasm for rationalism leads to scenarios like that described in “1984.” Or 2008. Do you like all those pretty little pictures of yourself showing on some CCTV somewhere? I hope so.  (Out of respect to Godwin's Law I won't mention the War)

I will always advocate balance for the good of society; I am willing to endure hysterical scientists (or those in their camp) who malign my chosen profession and accuse us astrologers of throwing our critical thinking out the window. But does anyone ever maintain 100% critical thinking mass? If they do----boring!!! ("touché!" ?...hmmm.).

So many people confuse critical thinking with just being critical.

A long time ago Jimi Hendrix asked--- Are You Experienced?  (not Hello, Do You Know the Answers to Everything ?)  Never mind what happened to him; his question was legitimate.

Do you really want to respond, er, no thanks to the numinous, but could you tell me about Scorpio's…?