Skyscript Astrology Forum

The discussion in this thread has become very wide-ranging.....not that that's a bad thing....but may I be so bold as to return to Deb's original thread topic? She posed the question: "Is the traditional approach too fatalistic?" (I for one was quite enjoying the discussion, and did not see it as yet another tired debate about fate vs free will)

It's not surprising that an accusation of "fatalism" might be levelled at traditional astrology. That is because traditional predictions tend to be more concrete and specific - so of course they will appear to be more "fatalistic!"

But my more immediate response to the "accusation" that traditional astrology is too fatalistic, is....so what?

Astrologers shouldn't HAVE to feel uncomfortable about making predictions, putting certain things down to fate or destiny, or accepting that certain matters are pre-determined or pre-destined....is this not the very basis of astrology??

Of course we want our clients to assume responsibility for their lives, assert their control, do everything they can to fulfil their potential, blah blah blah. But I am an astrologer for crissake! Not a motivational inspirational new-age life-coach! There's plenty of those out there, who will be more than happy to tell anyone who walks through their door "they can be anything they want to be." And a whole heap of self-help books that will do the same!

Imagine I have the charts of two new-born babies before me. One is full of nice easy trines and flowing aspects; there are no challenging aspects to the inner planets; there are no difficult house placements. In the other, every inner planet is squared by Saturn or Pluto; there are no easy aspects; and there are many difficult house placements. Well I as an astrologer can unequivocally say, with 100% certainty, which child will have the better, easier life; and which one will have the more painful life, with more suffering. Is this an unfair, "fatalistic" prediction?? Or just the truth?! Of course, the question of how I put it across, or how much I sugar-coat it, is an entirely separate issue.

If a doctor tells a paraplegic in a wheel-chair that he/she will never walk again, people don't say he is being too "fatalistic." He is just saying things as they really are! (In his professional judgment, of course). Why is it that we can so easily accept physical limitations, on the physical plane...yet we have great trouble accepting that their might be equally "real" limitations on the spiritual plane?? As astrologers, it is sometimes our job to point out these limitations, even if we are accused of being "fatalistic."

End of rant!

But we all know, kurgal, that sometimes the trine people end up alcoholics, drugadicts or something worse, like Paris Hilton
Just a funny though, I have never seen her chart, but I bet there are too many trines over there
But to tell the truth I am not really sure that "squares make character"

Y

But my more immediate response to the "accusation" that traditional astrology is too fatalistic, is....so what?

So what? These are things we are obligated to think about, not shrug our shoulders at. Some sucker will pay for our services. So what?

Astrologers shouldn't HAVE to feel uncomfortable about making predictions, putting certain things down to fate or destiny, or accepting that certain matters are pre-determined or pre-destined....is this not the very basis of astrology??

Then what should astrologers HAVE to do? Just charge for their services and make a profit? It sounds like astrologers shouldn?t have to give much thought to what they are doing. Looks good to me.

Of course we want our clients to assume responsibility for their lives, assert their control, do everything they can to fulfil their potential, blah blah blah.

Yes, their lives are a lot of blah, blah, blah, aren?t they? Too bad we want their money.

But I am an astrologer for crissake!

No responsibility for what you do? It?s their fault for expecting too much of you? ?But I?m just an astrologer...? I would feel more pride in being one who reflects, ponders, thinks, and is aware of the importance of what he does. A lot of responsibility, and often not a lot of fun.

But we all know, kurgal, that sometimes the trine people end up alcoholics, drugadicts or something worse, like Paris Hilton
Just a funny though, I have never seen her chart, but I bet there are too many trines over there

Some of us Trinies don?t need breasts, but they might help. I hear there is a good clinic in Switzerland.

Kirk, you seem to have missed the point of my post entirely. Where did I suggest that an astrologer should not care about his/her client, or should not take responsibility for their client? Where did I imply that myself or other astrologers are primarily profit-driven? How did the topic of money enter this debate at all? You seem to have certain assumptions about the position that I was taking.

The simple point I was making: we shouldn't have to be so wishy-washy, and water things down to such an extent, that we feel guilty about making firm predictions, or accepting that certain things are fated or unchangeable.

kurgal wrote:Astrologers shouldn't HAVE to feel uncomfortable about making predictions, putting certain things down to fate or destiny, or accepting that certain matters are pre-determined or pre-destined....is this not the very basis of astrology??

THAT was the simple thesis of my argument; which supported my response of "so what?" to the allegation that traditional astrology is "too fatalistic."

I wasn't saying "so what?" about the issue of fatalism, astrology in general, clients, or anything else.

Imagine I have the charts of two new-born babies before me. One is full of nice easy trines and flowing aspects; there are no challenging aspects to the inner planets; there are no difficult house placements. In the other, every inner planet is squared by Saturn or Pluto; there are no easy aspects; and there are many difficult house placements. Well I as an astrologer can unequivocally say, with 100% certainty, which child will have the better, easier life; and which one will have the more painful life, with more suffering.

I read recently that a person with many trines in their chart has them because they didn?t learn their lessons in a previous life so this time the lessons had to be ?dumbed down?. Must be why I have no squares or oppositions. I take your point kurgal but I don?t really agree that a person with an ?easy? chart will necessarily have an easier life than someone who has a ?difficult? chart. A person who has many difficult aspects may have many challenges but it depends a lot on how these challenges are met. A person with easy aspects might feel that life isn?t worth living when their favourite football team loses or they run out of their favourite toothpaste at the supermarket and is therefore confronted with difficulties continually. Trines can often mean a lack of motivation and squares present challenges to be met. We might find that the person confronted with more challenges becomes more successful than someone who takes the easy way out. I know you are not suggesting that it is that simplistic but I don't think it is that easy to judge how a person will respond to life by looking at how stressful or easy the natal chart appears to be.

I have to wonder if there is a generally agreed definition of fate/fatalism and whether we are all debating this topic with the same definition in mind. It seems that the concept of fate has become one of predetermination and that destiny is one of self determination. Fate has taken on negative connotations to the point where many of us cannot hear the word in any other way. The concept of fate is very much a Stoic concept. The latin word in the singular is fatum, which means a prophetic declaration. To predict just means to say before. We all do this regardless of whether we practice traditional or modern astrology. How many times have we been to astrology conferences and heard the lunchtime talk about who has what transit coming up and whether it might be a good thing (usually Jupiter) or a bad thing (usually Saturn)? I think the idea that traditional astrology is fatalistic and modern astrology isn't come from the modern psychological concept of if you can't say anything positive don't say anything at all. There is nothing wrong with being positive but try to tell someone who has dogged by a difficult Saturn aspect in their natal chart that there is an upside to this and they will probably hit you. Why not just tell them it is crap and explain why it is crap instead of pretending it isn't? I'd rather see this as realistic than fatalistic - which is what I understand kurgal to be saying.

The cosmology of the Stoics was tied into the belief in the concept of macrocosm/microcosm. They believed in living virtuously and living according to nature. This is where the concept of fate comes in. Fate is not bad. It is not punishment. It is about accepting that one?s fate and the fate of the world comes directly from the divine intelligence which makes the world the best that is possible. To live according to our fate means to live an exemplarary life. The more modern concept of fate is that we have no choice and that our future has been predetermined. This suggests that we have no active role to play. But even the Stoics accepted that there is some choice to be made, even if it just meant accepting what the gods had decreed. They accepted this because they believed that the gods knew better than they did. Marcus Aurelius, one of the more well-known of the Stoics says, "If you are distressed by any external thing, it is not this thing which disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now."


I wonder if it is possible to accept the philosophy of ?as above so below, as below so above? without accepting at least some element of fate.

Sue said: "I read recently that a person with many trines in their chart has them because they didn?t learn their lessons in a previous life so this time the lessons had to be ?dumbed down?."

That's a fascinating idea that I hadn't come across before.

Sue: "I take your point kurgal but I don?t really agree that a person with an ?easy? chart will necessarily have an easier life than someone who has a ?difficult? chart."

Yes, I am definitely guilty of over-simplification here. And trines and squares can not be dealt with in the generalised way that I have done here. I was trying to come up with a very "black/white" example of two nativities, which is possibly not a good idea to do in the abstract.

Sue: "I have to wonder if there is a generally agreed definition of fate/fatalism and whether we are all debating this topic with the same definition in mind."

Good point Sue. I don't think we are. I was going to make a semantic point about this earlier. This debate does depend to a great extent on how widely or narrowly we define "fatalism" and "fate."

Sue: "To predict just means to say before. We all do this regardless of whether we practice traditional or modern astrology."

Yes, this was a point I was trying to make in an earlier post, but perhaps was not expressing very well.

Since posting the above I have read John Frawley?s interview and Dennis Elwell?s article that started all of this ?Fate, And How to Aviod It.? I probably should have read the article by Dennis before I posted but didn't notice it until afterwards. So here are some further thoughts based on the reading of the article.

Dennis talks about the argument astrologers have going between fate and freewill, suggesting that the real contest is between fate and destiny. He says that destiny is something for which we must strive and that fate is something that happens to us if we don?t. John in his interview with Garry Philipson comments that free will is to do joyfully what God wills for you, which to me is precicely what the Stoics call fate.

So is everyone saying the same thing but using different and words ways of saying it? I agree in principle with much of what Dennis is saying (although not all of it) but I guess some of my difficulty lies in the semantics. I don?t see the clear differentiation that he gives between fate and destiny. I agree that we seem to have adopted these definitions in the way that Dennis describes but I see the concept as more of a continuum of the same thing. Is fate simply destiny gone wrong as Dennis appears to be saying or are they entirely opposite concepts? If they are different expressions of the same thing then can traditional astrology really be accused of being fatalistic? This would suggest that traditional astrology only operates at the negative end of this continuum. I would disagree with that strongly. As we have been discussing in the horary forum, if used wisely, it can be a powerful tool for giving guidance for future action. This can hardly be seen as fatalistic. If fatalistic means telling it as it is then I?m in agreement with kurgal. Horary astrologers who advocate that horary should only ever be used for yes/no answers are inhibiting the true value of astrology, and that is to assist us to make the best possible choices that will resonate with our fate or destiny or the will of the gods ?whatever you want to call it.

Kurgal,

I'm sorry. I misunderstood you.

Kirk

Interesting posts.
My initial point wasn?t so much about whether it was ?right? for traditional astrology to be fatalistic, but whether great astrologers in the past, such as Lilly, were ever actually as fatalistic as we assume. Most of his charts seem to be about discovering areas of possible difficulty and then discovering how best to avoid or overcome those problems.

In response to these last few posts; I really like a comment that Garry Phillipson made in an interview ? his own interview! ? published in the Mountain Astrologer a few months ago. He talked about his experiences of being a Buddhist monk and his appreciation of the Serenity Prayer: ?God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.?

He says:

"I think there?s an enormous amount of practical wisdom in it. So, for example, I?ve tried, over the years, to change ? to be better able to just read the chart without being influenced by the desires of the client. But there?s no point in pretending that I?ve become a different person. That desire to please is still there, so another part of the equation is recognizing that ? but I don?t have to act on it.
When it comes to the work of interpretation, again, this prayer is a useful dictum to bear in mind, because I think there are two distinct things that an astrologer needs to do: One is to acquaint people with the possibilities for changing and growing ? how to make the most creative use of upcoming transits and progressions. But equally important is to make clients aware that they aren?t going to escape from all of the things that they don?t like and that they need to learn how to accept and cope with those things. I guess that means I believe in Fate ? if Fate means that we can?t become whatever we want to be in this life."

-------------------

This might be the most respectful and sensible way I?ve heard this expressed. A succinct reminder that this doesn?t just concern the client?s responsibilities, we also need to be very aware of our own. Lilly walked away from his teacher when he saw him twisting his astrology into judgements that would please his client ? because that is the way to make more money and live an ?easy? life, but it?s not a responsible employment of astrology.

I have had several clients who could not, or would not, (but eventually did), accept a judgement that, say, the lover who departed from the scene years ago was not the so-called ?soul-mate? they viewed them as, and should no longer be the basis of their life-decisions. One woman?s attempt to persuade me to change my judgement involved tears, tantrums and threats of suicide. She also claimed that for five years every other psychic and tarot card reader she had visited assured her that she should keep waiting for her soul-mate?s return ? they were buckling under her pressure and feeding her exactly what she wanted to hear. It?s not easy to stand firm against that sort of pressure, even when the astrology is very clear. (Though six months later, a very healthy, happy woman in a new relationship called to thank me for breaking her out of her illusions and keeping her real interests at heart.)

Sometimes working with a ?less flexible? approach is very hard and I think that Garry?s attitude, expressed above, is the only thing that will get anyone through it. I certainly don?t believe that anyone motivated by money or comfort will develop clarity in their astrology because, surely, they will lack the faith or motivation to test it and will be too easily persuaded towards keeping judgements non-specific or non-offensive to the client.
Deb


PS - Kirk, when you hear us moaning about ?pandering to the whims of the client? bear in mind that we are being partly flippant in the way we express our pent up stresses; (we need flippancy on this board sometimes, we really do!), but also, it is underlined by a deeper concern that some astrologers might be ?bucking out? of the harder responsibilities that come with being an astrologer.

Also - I might need the address for that clinic in Switzerland soon ? can you send it along ?

Sue wrote:Dennis talks about the argument astrologers have going between fate and freewill, suggesting that the real contest is between fate and destiny. He says that destiny is something for which we must strive and that fate is something that happens to us if we don?t. John in his interview with Garry Philipson comments that free will is to do joyfully what God wills for you, which to me is precicely what the Stoics call fate.

So is everyone saying the same thing but using different and words ways of saying it?

This is interesting. I read too the new articles and I would say that these two points of view are quite at odds. I think David Pingree has explained this dichotomy well in his essay about history of astrology http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local ... ?id=dv1-20 (thank you Andrew for the hint). He writes:

Among the intellectuals the conflict over the validity of astrology revolved around two main points: free will and the uniqueness and accuracy of any horoscopic diagram. (...) The other argument, that concerning free will, derives from the necessity of ethics. Astrology could not be allowed to relieve man of his responsibility for his own actions. The astrologer could make two replies to such an attack if he did not choose to assert that ethics are superfluous. He could claim that the human soul, insofar as it is divine, is not subject to astral influences and can resist them; or he could claim that astrology is only an attempt to interpret the divine will, which is manifested by God in the heavens.

The first reply seems to be somewhat in accord with Dennis Elwell?s way of seeing things, the second with John Frawley?s. Pingree writes also:

Evidently it was first in Hermeticism that the position of the planets as intermediaries between the One and the sublunar world, which man inhabits, was established; they operate in the celestial spheres as manifestations of the divine will, and the demons act on their behalf below the sphere of the Moon. With this conception begins the long tradition of approaching the One through the planets or the demons, a tradition whose most common manifestation is in the talismans of the theurgists.

This is the Chaldean/Neo-Platonistic view which John Frawley as a practicing catholic (as he says in the interview) shares.

Pingree goes on:

In many Gnostic sects the position of the planets as subordinate to the supreme deity disappears, though their astrological powers remain an integral part of the cosmological system. They become the instruments of the Spirit of Evil's plans, however, a part of the vast machinery of the physical world devised by Satan or his equivalent to serve as the prison of the captivated portion of the Good which is shared by the souls of men. The planets, then, are not gods to be praised and propitiated, but demons to be overcome by the superior power of the soul cleansed of the impurities of the elementary world.

This is the Gnostic point of view, which for example Gurdjieff adopted later. Gurdjieff taught that the world and the great majority of people on it are just machines, thinking proudly that they possess free will but in fact reacting blindly and automatically to external influences (including the movements of Sun, Moon and the planets). The life on earth is in fact just ?food of the Moon?, that the Moon needs it for it?s supplement. The task for his students was to become conscious of this automatisation and to get free from it.

Your horoscope would therefore not be a statement of God?s/Gods? will for you, but it would tell about your typical machinations and automatic reactions and you should move, not towards it, but away from it.

I don?t think that Elwell is going exactly that far, but one can see that he indeed has studied Gurdjieff, as is mentioned in the end of his article. I personally prefer the Neo-Platonistic/Chaldean/Frawleyan view. Sue put it beautifully when she wrote earlier:

The cosmology of the Stoics was tied into the belief in the concept of macrocosm/microcosm. They believed in living virtuously and living according to nature. This is where the concept of fate comes in. Fate is not bad. It is not punishment. It is about accepting that one?s fate and the fate of the world comes directly from the divine intelligence which makes the world the best that is possible. To live according to our fate means to live an exemplarary life. The more modern concept of fate is that we have no choice and that our future has been predetermined. This suggests that we have no active role to play. But even the Stoics accepted that there is some choice to be made, even if it just meant accepting what the gods had decreed. They accepted this because they believed that the gods knew better than they did.

So, the main question is: is there God/Gods who know better than we do? Or is the physical world just series of machinations and it's actually us who are the divine ones and should get over it, sometimes even to learn to command it by our will ("you can draw all the happiness and abundance you want to you if you only remove away the blocks in your brains")? It's interesting to see that the latter is a view behind much of the modern New Age philosophy.

Sari

Papretis wrote:This is the Chaldean/Neo-Platonistic view which John Frawley as a practicing catholic (as he says in the interview) shares.

One can also find this view exemplified in the emanationist cosmology of the Sufi Muslim Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi or in the Paracelsist mysticism of the Lutheran Christian Valentine Weigelius.

The planets, then, are not gods to be praised and propitiated, but demons to be overcome by the superior power of the soul cleansed of the impurities of the elementary world.

This was (and apparently still remains) the view of the patristic, conciliar (i.e., Orthodox, Catholic) church: yes, astrological influences are real, and yes, astrology works, but it does so through the agency of demons:

http://www.catholic.com/library/astrology.asp

It was in fact Aristotelian philosophy that reigned during the Middle Ages, a mode of thinking that sought Truth through reasoning, i.e., inference from pre-existing premises, rather than Facts from hypotheses based on observed phenomena. Fortunately Lilly did not tie himself to orthodox Christian doctrine.