Skyscript Astrology Forum

Skippy writes:

It is virtually impossible not to root anything in philosophy.

Probably, so a little explanation is in order. An idaea, any idea or set of ideas has to be rooted in something otherwise it is religiousi.e., rooted in faith or useless, . I don't have the time and probably not the expertise to go into much depth on this subject, but I can give an example. J.B. Morin based his astrology in natural philosophy. Astrology wokred the way it did because of the natural movements of the planets and the cosmological order. Everything he wrote about astrology had to fit into his model. Whether he suceedd or not is a different subject.

If we say, as Stephen Arroyo did in his book Astrology, Karma, and Reincarnation, that he studied all forms of astrology and decided none of them worked so he developed his own, then we are away from philosophy and into melgolomania or maybe religious belief. Briefly, this is what I mean by being rooted in philosophy and what I mean when I refer to things that are not rooted in philosophy. Obviously Arroyo didn't invent astrology (despite his claims), so there is some philosophical underpinnings, but he seems to regard them as a nuisance.

Coder writes:

I wrote:

modern astrology derives in a large part from two different but interwoven strands of thought - theosophy and depth psychology?
Terminological clarification follows.

I meant "depth psychology" as an umbrella term to cover the whole area of psychology from Freud, Jung, Adler, thru to TA. logotherapy, etc. This area can be distinguished as different from "experimental psychology" (e.g.

And followed with:

So, previous posts believe that the bath-water is somewhat turbid, but is there any way to keep Hand's baby ("enlightenment, self-realization, self-actualization and consciousness") while throwing out modern psychology and/or theosophy? (And presumably as more than epiphenomena of the mylar sheaths of brain cells?).

Modern astology claims to be psychological or associated with in some way or another, Feud, Jung et al. A claim is not a fact. If we're going to claim that this is the baby that we don't want tossed out with the bathwater, I suggest we look to see if there is a baby in the bathwater in the first place. If there isn't, and I suspect there isn't, what is in that bath water that is worth saving? It is more likely that names like Freud and Jung are tossed around to legitimize what we're doing, than there is any serious successful work blending the work of those gentlemen and astrology.

To be fair I do not expect that anyone can, in a forum adequately refute my observation, and I admit that doesn't mean it is irrefutable. We have limits here and most of what we do is opinion with supporting quotes. I'm throwing mine out there. Modern astrology talks a good game of intellecutual respectability, but do they play one?

Sorry to hit and run but I'll be out of the country on business for a few days and may or may not be able to continue this until Friday or Saturday of next week.

Tom

Tom quoting Stephen Arryo as being representative of the whole of the Modern Astrology canon is akin to Bob Monkhouse lack of funny jokes represents all 20th century comedians. Stephen Arryo and Dane Rudhyar were both very accomplished astrologers before they started to go beyond what was already on offer. Many people have used their methods and swear by them so as much as you would like a Bliztkreig on their offerings you ain't gonna get one.

(And presumably as more than epiphenomena of the mylar sheaths of brain cells?).

Or the concomitant spark between synapses and turncoats?

Hello Tom,

You state:

Modern astology claims to be psychological or associated with in some way or another, Feud, Jung et al. A claim is not a fact. If we're going to claim that this is the baby that we don't want tossed out with the bathwater, I suggest we look to see if there is a baby in the bathwater in the first place. If there isn't, and I suspect there isn't, what is in that bath water that is worth saving? It is more likely that names like Freud and Jung are tossed around to legitimize what we're doing, than there is any serious successful work blending the work of those gentlemen and astrology.

If I am correct in understanding you here you seem to be suggesting that modern astrologers are only half hearted when they call themselves 'psychological'. Its simply a label to allow all manner of nonsense to be justified by their 'astro-babble'.

This may indeed be true of some practitioners. Equally, some practitioners only seem to be using psychological terms without really integrating this fully into their approach. For example, Noel Tyl claims to be 'psychological' in his technique but to my knowledge he has no formal training in this area. He has adopted the language of therapy but many of his directive methods seem to fundamentally contradict this approach.

I note all the examples of 'Modern astrology' you use are North American i.e Rudhyar ( by adoption) and Arroyo. What about casting your net over the Atlantic?

Here in Europe there do seem to have been genuine, significant attempts to fuse modern psychotherapy with astrology. This has generated success in its own terms ie the development of a what some call 'Astro-Therapy'. Leading exponents of this approach include Liz Greene and Karen Hamaker-Zondag. Both these astrologers are qualified Jungian therapists and have attempted to link this training into their astrological work. The Centre for Psychological Astrology (CPA) founded by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas in London require all prospective students to undergo personal therapy while studying there. The Prospectus states:

In order to complete the In-Depth Professional Training, the Centre asks that all students, for a minimum of one year of study, be involved in a recognised form of depth psychotherapy with a therapist, analyst or counsellor of his or her choice. The fee for the Centre?s training does not include the cost of this therapy, which must be borne by the student himself/herself.

In central Europe in Switzerland another attempt to integrate psychotherapy and astrology has come with the work of Bruno and Louise Huber. Both these astrologers studied personally with the founder of Psychosynthesis Roberto Assagioli. Huber astrology therefore incorporates Psychosynthesis in its approach to astrological work with clients.

I feel you are setting up a Kangaroo court for modern astrology here. Even if these astrologers make the case successfully that they have integrated a fully psychological approach into their work you have made it crystal clear you are then going to argue against the validity of psychotherapy anyway. However, I trust you agree the issue of whether psychotherapy is a valid pursuit is a matter well beyond the scope or competence of this website.

I also don't think its fair to start lumping all modern astrologers together as if they are form one undifferentiated blob.

Generalisations of astrology into 'camps' have their uses but inevitably create oversimplification and blur actual common ground. For example, traditionalists are often complaining about Modern astrology abandoning the traditional rulerships. This is generally true but this assumption can create more of a division than sometimes exists. For example, I understand Huber Astrology uses traditional domicile rulerships and excludes outer planets from rulerships.

I also noticed recently that that the modern American Astrologer Robert P. Blaschke comes out in favour of traditional rulerships in his recent book on Secondary, Tertiary and Minor progressions. Not through love of tradition but just observation of charts Blaschke finds the traditional rulership of signs works best. If I recall correctly Stephen Arroyo also gives primary consideration to traditional rulers too.

I have noticed that the most passionate critics of modern astrology resent its frequent monistic/eastern flavour and nostalgically look back to the days when astrology in the west was underpinned by monotheistic religion. As such the disagreement with Modern Astrology is as much a philosophical one as an issue of the basis of its technique.

Thats a fair enough position to have. I just think people should be open and acknowledge where they are coming from philosophically. To their credit Robert Zoller and John Frawley are very candid in acknowledging a personal Christian belief underpins their approach to astrology.

In my case as a Buddhist by outlook and a traditionalist by technique I have time for both perspectives.

I will now be away for about a week. I look forward to returning to this stimulating thread when I get back.

Mark

Tom writes:

Skippy writes:

It is virtually impossible not to root anything in philosophy.

Probably, so a little explanation is in order. An idaea, any idea or set of ideas has to be rooted in something otherwise it is religious

"root" is too figurative for the task in hand (pun not intended). If X is rooted in Y, then it would seem also that Y stems from X - which is perhaps a way of saying that Y derives from X, that Y follows from X. Is this "following" logical, in the sense that something having 3 sides logically follows from its being a triangle? Or is the following chronological and genetic, in the sense that adulthood follows childhood? All ideas or sets of ideas have to be rooted in some social and cultural context (at least until machines start to think ) , but the question is whether there are sound reasons for accepting them or rejecting them. When Hand asks for "philosophical foundations" for modern astrology I think he means logical foundations, rather than foundation in a cultural and social context which is not amenable to astrology (i.e. New Age "irrationality", held to follow from its rejection of the scientistic conception of rationality, and the common view that astrology is part and parcel of this). In that sense also, depth psychology and theosophy have logical foundations, some of which may be consistent with astrology, some not.

To label all ideas which seem on thorough inspection to be fundamental, not deriving from anything else, as "religious" is just an attempt terminate the argument without reaching a reasoned conclusion. It entails, among other things, that natural science, insofar as it is based on the idea that some things happen because of other things (i.e. they are "caused"), is a religion - albeit one with just a different ontology.

this was an interesting thread to read! i particularly liked this quote from mark : "I feel you are setting up a Kangaroo court for modern astrology here."

i noticed the thread went dead shortly thereafter.. perhaps the moderators had to clean up the aftermath that resulted from that quote! i am still new around here and haven't got a complete feel and perspective on the way things unfold here at skyscript..

i think it is tough to try to lump all modern astrology together in one big pile and then proceed to dismiss it.. ebertin represents some of the best of what modern astrology has to offer and i am glad that some of his work was mentioned in the thread.. i don't think it is as easy to dismiss the work of ebertin as it might be to some of the others who have taken up with jungian psychology..

i was thinking of starting a thread on art verses science in relation to how we approach astrology.. to approach astrology as an art would seem to allow for wider variety of approaches, as opposed to attitudes that seem to suggest 'there is only one correct way to do astrology'... i will see about committing to this sooner then later hopefully...

Hi.
Forgive me if this was already mentioned- Robert Hand's talk in polished essay form is available in the excellent anthology 'The Future of Astrology', which was edited by AT Mann [yes, back in print]. There's also Addy's excellent standby 'Astrology Reborn' included in this collection and almost every thing else, none of which I can remember at the moment (but of course) , is interesting and worth a close look.

Good day,

When asked by one of his students, "What is self-realisation?", an Advaita Vedanta master replied, "Self-realisation is awareness that there is no self to realise."

Since the advent and success of belief systems, mainly the Abrahamic proselyting mass religions Christianity and Islam, requiring immortality of the individual souls (otherwise neither individual post mortem guilt nor redemption / salvation possible), the human individual has been assigned much greater cultural importance whilst concurrently becoming epidemically more numerous.

To lump pre-'Neptunian' astrologies into one group, e. g. 'classical' or 'traditional' seems inadequate and improper, as there are important differences amongst Indian, Hellenistic, Mediaeval and Renaissance astrologies, not only technical (e. g. Stoic vs. Aristotelian elements) but in the entire cultural underpinnings. The former two are Heathen, the latter two monotheistic. This is an essential difference affecting for example astrologers' possible understandings of and relationships to planets.

Best regards,

lihin

To lump pre-'Neptunian' astrologies into one group, e. g. 'classical' or 'traditional' seems inadequate and improper

This is a group established to discuss what is commonly accepted as traditional astrology. It is NOT appropriate to discuss your value judgments of what we do. This is a discussion group not a group dedicated to debating the merits traditional astrology versus other beliefs. I don't know how to make it more clear than that.

The guidelines state:

I do not believe this is an appropriate place for, ?which one is better traditional or modern? debates.

At the time they were written, 6 years ago, this was the major concern. But it now apparently has to be expanded to include a lot more in order to avoid what I believe this post is intended to do.

So I'm locking the thread and asking that we all follow the established rules for this forum. Also I'm not going to debate what I just wrote or discuss the parsing of words that have appeared previously.

Tom

lihin wrote: To lump pre-'Neptunian' astrologies into one group, e. g. 'classical' or 'traditional' seems inadequate and improper, as there are important differences amongst Indian, Hellenistic, Mediaeval and Renaissance astrologies, not only technical (e. g. Stoic vs. Aristotelian elements) but in the entire cultural underpinnings. The former two are Heathen, the latter two monotheistic. This is an essential difference affecting for example astrologers' possible understandings of and relationships to planets.

I think you're right, although at the same time we might look at it the other way around as well and say we shouldn't lump 'post-Neptunian' astrology into the category of 'modern' as there are important differences and approaches here too. Modern astrology can include anything from the use of hypothetical planets to a strictly psychological paradigm to a focus upon reincarnation.

Really I think that ultimately these are all relative terms. I think ultimately if we see these categorisations of traditional or modern as being the start of our categorisations, rather than the end, I think we're probably going to run into fewer problems. The Uranian school of astrology is a modern school of astrology. The work of Valens is a Stoic approach to Hellenistic astrology within the tradition. But ultimately we'd agree that Uranian astrology is modern and Valens is traditional. We can make further categorisations if we want to, but we may as well begin with loose categories like 'traditional' and 'modern'.

I think it is unfortunate that Hand used the term "post-modern" because it was already taken by philosophers and humanities authors like Michel Foucault. Essentially it was a way of looking at society after the modernity movement, as a kind of reaction against the worldview according to science and technology. It sees most statements about "reality" as constructed or invented, not as the result of objective observation.

In the way in which "post-modern" is normally used, I don't think there is really a post-modern astrology, either before or after ca. 1990. We would have to consider that all of the things astrologers say about people, based on their horoscopes, are the result of layers of astrologers' inventions and in-group agreement, not on what is objectively real. In fact a lot of post-modern analysis concerns the deconstruction of cultural constructs, generally to expose their inherent contraditions.

I don't think either the traditional or modern astrologers could live with post-modernism!

waybread wrote:
In the way in which "post-modern" is normally used, I don't think there is really a post-modern astrology, either before or after ca. 1990. We would have to consider that all of the things astrologers say about people, based on their horoscopes, are the result of layers of astrologers' inventions and in-group agreement, not on what is objectively real. In fact a lot of post-modern analysis concerns the deconstruction of cultural constructs, generally to expose their inherent contraditions.

I don't think either the traditional or modern astrologers could live with post-modernism!

I would classify Juan Revilla, Bill Sheeran, Bill Tallman (if still around), Michelle Jacobs, myself and a few others as post-modern astrologers in more or less the usual sense of the label.

- Ed