it's been a real pleasure to read this thread but it will never make sense to me to use the Lord of Death, Darkness, and the Underworld as the ruler of a spring sign that stands for new beginnings, action and energy

As for the Eris square with Pluto that Waybread mentioned -- with Pluto and Aries linked to sexuality, I've been thinking this might be the indicator of the whole explosion of (trans)gender issues and the debates going together with it.

Also, when Mars joined Eris in the square in August 2020, the huge California fires started -- and the Belarus riots (I actually had been dreading a nuclear war)

waybread wrote:Michael, on why astrology is not a science or pseudo science-- and unlikely to become a science.
http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8963

Waybread,

I do have that thread, and especially our discussion there, in vivid memory.

A lot of the modern astrology you've mentioned is what I call the poetics of astrology. Or maybe the imagery of astrology. It tells a nice story. The language evokes mental pictures and allusions. A lot of it is based on theosophy. reaching astrology by way of Dane Rudhyar.

I don't have any problem with that. In fact, Dane Rudhyar was a major influence on my formation as an astrologer. And theosophy, albeit a bit outdated in some of its views and terminology today, was at least an attempt to recapture Hermetic philosophy in a framework suitable for its time. On top of that, its essentially syncretistic view on various religions and sciences continues to be groundbreaking.

But darned if I know how one would read a chart that way. For example, when the querent asks, why doesn't that man who seems so fascinated by her in their Internet exchanges actually want to meet her in person. Why is the horoscope native ("owner" in German") still unemployed and when is he going to get a new job?

Let alone, how any of this higher-octave, new-domicile material would work in horary astrology.

With mythology-- and I mean the ancient authors in translation, or actual scholarship-- at least I can get at key words and meanings that explain something about a planet's qualities. Planet Venus rules romantic and sexual relationships, for example, because we can point to all kinds of myths where this was the goddess Venus's nature.

I don't see any contradiction between those "different" approaches, though. Mythology with its archetypal language remains one of psychological astrology's foundations in my view as well.

On the warrior vs. lover nature of Venus anciently, it took star-gazers a long time to recognize that the same planet appeared as the morning and evening star.

Are you suggesting that one of these was regarded as being of more of a war like nature?

In fact, Venus was in part associated with war and destruction in Meso-American societies, although it should be considered that there may have been a socio-political background to that.

In Hindu (jyotish) astrology the planet Venus is represented by a male god, Shukra.

The god Pluto was preceded by the Sumerian Erishkegal

Erishkegal was in fact seen as the queen of the underworld[/quote] and sometimes as the abovementioned Nergal's wife - strangely reminiscent of Persephone/Proserpina and Hades/Pluto.

and Greek Hekate, both female. In Malta archaeological evidence points to the goddess who was both "womb and tomb."

So it might be worthwhile expanding our understandings of the planetary gods.

I certainly agree with you on that!

waybread wrote:That's great, Michael.

But how would you read a horoscope for someone using that stuff?

I read charts for people on Astrodienst and Astrologers Community. Very rarely have I found any querents who are interested in esoteric or evolutionary astrology solutions to their relationship or financial problems.

Let's get real?

If what one is after is a life philosophy or spiritual pathway, I think we can do so much better than the esoteric astrologers. The great philosophers on ordinary lives like Epicurus, or the great world religions, are so much deeper and more thoughtful than the kind of "cotton candy for the soul" that passes for theosophy or evolutionary astrology.

Why does it have to be one or the other? In order to give your clients something actually useful for dealing better with their daily issues, you do need to throw in what understanding of applicable philosophy you have!

Talking about the great world religions, they traditionally don't teach very much beyond moral codes of behaviour and putting faith in external saviours (talk about "cotton candy for the soul"!) - unless you dig down to their esoteric foundations!

Astrology in my understanding lives and breathes in the greater context of Hermetic philosophy - which I consider uniquely geared towards the needs of modern humanity, as it inherently connects metaphysics with an essentially scientific outlook on the world.

Astrology is my passion but, to be brutally honest, it has not attracted the best minds. (Present company excepted.)

Thank you! However, I will be more than content to consider myself in the company of minds like Johannes Kepler and Giordano Bruno.

waybread wrote:Hi, Michael-- There is a lot in your latest post, so I hope I catch most of it.

I think evolutionary astrologers (and possibly German astrologers, with their culture's love of order??) are dealing with an esthetic or design problem, not a chart interpretation problem, in wanting to assign new sign rulers.

Just for the record, I am not a German (no disrespect towards my German friends intended, of course). Also I don't look at what you call a problem here the same way - simply as a deep inclination towards an old-fashioned harmonious Pythagorean/Platonic outlook on the world. (My strongly emphasized Jupiter in Libra must have a say in this, of course.)

...the classical exaltation scheme *calls for* extension, IMO, because as we know it, it looks kind of unfinished.

I mean, a lot of us are OK with a "messy" or asymmetrical horoscope set of domiciles and dignities. It is what it is. The question is whether assigning a new ruler (or in the case of Pluto, assigning an older modern ruler differently) helps is to a better job of assessing problems that real people actually care about in their real lives.

If your objective is not helping real people with real problems in real time, then your more elegant design solution risks making astrology irrelevant.

You see, in my view, astrology (just like so many other knowledge based fields) needs both basic research and the applied art.

Take Ptolemy for example... We are not even sure that he was a practising astrologer at all! However, the compendium he created - integrating astrology with a comprehensive Aristotelian model of the cosmos - paved the way for so much of the astrological practice to follow!

(As an aside for Anna: I have the asteroid Ptolemy conjunct my Sun, and Aristotle conjunct my Moon. )

I can honestly say that I have a foot in both worlds - the theory and the practice. I could state that Pluto must be the Lord of Aries, simply based on abstract astro-logical considerations. However, scientific rigour (my own version thereof alright) demands that I try and support that view with mythological and empirical evidence.

That's why I started this topic. And I won't waste any time and energy further vindicating it. Take it or leave it!

Seriously. I read charts for people who ask about how their synastry with their new live-in partner looks, whether her husband is going to jail, or whether she has incurable cancer. Please explain how a more elegant-looking chart would help me to give them more accurate answers.

Perhaps because your answers might be based on a more complete and accurate body of knowledge then?

We've all dealt with the "spiritual seekers," but in my experience there are relatively few of them compared with people with truly pressing practical problems. [A lot of my chart-reading is on the Astrodienst English language boards.] Then I think astrology needs to be more universal than simply targeting a few "trans-personal" souls.

Now I wonder, did you really attentively read that post of mine you said you are hoping to fully address? I thought I made it clear that, besides "spiritual seekers", I have been counselling lots of people with psychological problems as serious as you can imagine in the past!

[I am speaking as someone with Pluto conjunct and parallel my moon, Uranus conjunct MC trine sun, and Neptune in the first house, incidentally.]

Well noted.

Further, Liz Greene apparently was able to practice as a consulting psychologist back-in-the-day when no one questioned her degree from a long-defunct L. A. diploma mill. She went on to acquire a credential from a Jungian institute, not from a comprehensive university psychology department. When she finally got a Ph. D. in 2010 from an accredited British university (Bristol) later in life, she got it from the history department, not in psychology. Psychology today is not such a branch of the humanities.

See David Roell's biographical piece at http://www.astroamerica.com/greenebio2.html

This is not to take away from Liz Greene's considerable publication record-- or from your achievements-- but just to say that astrologers often mean something different by "psychology" than licensed psychologists do.

Well, I have been dealing with a lot of licensed psychologists, and quite frankly, I was not always impressed. Nor were all of their patients when they came to me. It seems like it takes more than a university degree in order to find resonance with people seeking advice and support with their pressing issues.

And yes, in the holistic therapeutic centre I mentioned, we were all licensed health-care practitioners of various kinds, with an open minded psychiatrist as well as some licensed psychologists on board.

Talking about academic psychology itself, it and astrology can only learn from one another, in my opinion. The Jungians are on the right track, overall.

Michael, I realize that the term "science" has a secondary meaning of simply a body of knowledge. But the primary meaning of "science" includes physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy biology, &c, and their integrative fields like molecular biology, geophysics, and biochemistry. Currently these fields operate at a level that the typical astrologer cannot imagine.

Darn, Waybread! For decades, I must have been filling more book shelves than I could count off the top of my head with specialist books about every single one of the disciplines you mentioned in vain! All of my reading about natural science - pretty much from the day I learned how to read at all - must have completely bypassed me!



That's an image of some undressed piles of my books taken just now, randomly reflecting my widely varied fields of interest. Just to give you an inkling where I come from.

If you disbelieve me, please phone up your nearest university and ask for a professor of one of those fields who is willing to give you a departmental tour and explain to you what their research is all about. Take her out to lunch and interview her about how her scientific field operates today.

As much as I would enjoy the company of a charming and intelligent lady, current pandemic restrictions are making the thing you are suggesting hardly feasible.

Fortunately, it is not entirely necessary, as I have academic scientists among my closest relatives and friends that I am often having rewarding conversations about their respective fields of interest with.

Maybe you mean social science? Behavioral science? Again, interview a professor in your nearest university department of psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, or whatever.

This isn't about dismissing "positivism." It is about intellectual rigor. Something that astrology and anthroposophy are not particularly known for.

Exactly right! And introducing a more rigorous foundation to them is the very reason why I am researching astrology and its related arts/sciences the way I do. A meeting ground, if you will!

If you don't mind, could we go back to talking about mythology now please, dear Professor?

annadeer wrote:it's been a real pleasure to read this thread but it will never make sense to me to use the Lord of Death, Darkness, and the Underworld as the ruler of a spring sign that stands for new beginnings, action and energy

As for the Eris square with Pluto that Waybread mentioned -- with Pluto and Aries linked to sexuality, I've been thinking this might be the indicator of the whole explosion of (trans)gender issues and the debates going together with it.

Also, when Mars joined Eris in the square in August 2020, the huge California fires started -- and the Belarus riots (I actually had been dreading a nuclear war)

Hi Anna

Glad to hear that you are enjoying this thread.

See, I am not here to impose my views on anyone. Mostly just to expand my own knowledge by taking the input from others into account. If you or anyone else can get something worthwhile out of it, that's great!

Michael

Michael, I will try to get back to your posts tomorrow.

Let me just say that a problem of a lot of psychological astrology (as with psychoanalysis) is that it started out with medical doctors (Freud, Jung) and practicing psychologists (Greene) who were basically consulting with troubled individuals.

So there is sort of a built in bias to think that anyone seeking a chart reading has some kind of underlying psychological wound in need of a cure.

In contrast, a lot of what we deal with in chart reading does not concern clients who somehow need psychotherapy. They may be unhappy about something, but they do not need to be in therapy. There isn't some kind of pathology or mental health syndrome at the root of their problems.

"Does he love me?" "Are we compatible?" "Will I find my missing dog?" "What is my best career?"

These are common questions that do not require some kind of psychologizing.

It's delightful and instructive to read your exchange of ideas. Civilized communication between people with differing opinions may be one of the things the world needs most now. And if we all had the same opinions and viewpoints half of us would be superfluous (paraphrasing Carlo Rovelli here).

Michael, nice library — and nice companions from the sky you have!
I have Astrowizard and Paracelsus conjunct the Ascendant, Heraklitos conjunct my Sun.

Waybread, I am a psychological (and mundane) astrologer myself, but I choose to hang out on this forum because I consider traditional astrologers as the most knowledgable and best trained ones. In defence of Liz Greene and Dane Rudhyar, I want to say that over 30 years ago, it’s their books that gave me the key to understanding myself and to live happily ever after, something that none of the psychologists and psychiatrists I had been consulting before ever came close to. Now maybe it’s because i have a mutable grand cross involving Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Asc, POF, & nodes that for me the Greene and Rudhyar approach was more useful than for someone with more innate harmony. Anyway, I think there’s a place for all schools and approaches, it all depends on the individual person’s needs.

Sending health, joy, and everything you wish for in 2022!

Michael Sternbach wrote: Why does it have to be one or the other? In order to give your clients something actually useful for dealing better with their daily issues, you do need to throw in what understanding of applicable philosophy you have!

Which in the matter of horoscope interpretation for real people in real time with real problems I would probably attribute to pragmatism or instrumentalism. I am an amateur. I don't have clients. I interact with fellow members of astrology forums.

Talking about the great world religions, they traditionally don't teach very much beyond moral codes of behaviour and putting faith in external saviours (talk about "cotton candy for the soul"!) - unless you dig down to their esoteric foundations!

I disagree, Michael. The world's great religions have far deeper thinkers than the best that modern astrology can come up with. Dane Rudhyar? Give me a break. Yes, I read his books, too, near the beginning of my astrological studies. Unfortunately the goal of a lot of theosophists and their heirs seemed to end with some kind of personal enlightenment.

In contrast, I see astrology as a 6th house matter: we do it out of service to other people. Enlightenment is ultimately selfish if it remains with the individual. Ethics is central to being a good human being, which is the best that most of us can aspire to.

Theosophy is about nowhere today. In contrast, the world's great religions still carry meaning for billions of people. Consider the ethical teachings of Lao Tsu, Buddha, Jesus, Rabbi Hillel; or the great philosophers like Epicurus. Many of whose adherents are about as smart as you and me.

Astrology in my understanding lives and breathes in the greater context of Hermetic philosophy - which I consider uniquely geared towards the needs of modern humanity, as it inherently connects metaphysics with an essentially scientific outlook on the world.

What could possibly be scientific (in a modern sense) about Hermeticism? Let's think about what goes on in a modern university chemistry lab, for example. Is it Hermeticism the source of compassion that encourages you to contribute to your local food bank or donate to a scholarship fund at your alma mater?

Thank you! However, I will be more than content to consider myself in the company of minds like Johannes Kepler and Giordano Bruno.

And good company it is, indeed. But if you want to be out there in the transpersonal ether, it is important to reach out to other people. Which I think you're doing. But I don't think that impulse comes from Hermeticism.

I am not a Christian, but I think this passage from Matthew 25:35-40 is diagnostic:

"For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you visited Me.’…Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink?…When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You?……And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’…"

Or from the Hindu scriptures: "When I don't know who I am, I serve you. When I know who I am, I am you."

I didn't get this level of compassion or any social justice considerations out of reading Dane Rudhyar or the Emerald Tablets.

Michael Sternbach wrote:

Perhaps because your answers might be based on a more complete and accurate body of knowledge then?

If your desire is to base rulerships on some kind of pre-determined order or symmetry, then it's not based on evidence.

Now I wonder, did you really attentively read that post of mine you said you are hoping to fully address? I thought I made it clear that, besides "spiritual seekers", I have been counselling lots of people with psychological problems as serious as you can imagine in the past!

Got it, Michael. I actually do not know what are your credentials in clinical psychology or counseling. But as I pointed out, most people who come to astrology forums for answers do not actually need or require psychological counseling. They may be unhappy but they don't need a shrink. (To put it crassly.) Unfortunately, given Jungian astrology's roots in medicine and psychoanalysis, there is a tendency to pathologize modern astrology.

I prefer to think of what I do as dispensing kitchen-table advice.

Well, I have been dealing with a lot of licensed psychologists, and quite frankly, I was not always impressed. Nor were all of their patients when they came to me. It seems like it takes more than a university degree in order to find resonance with people seeking advice and support with their pressing issues.

Of course, you're right; but there are a lot of ignorant astrologers out there, as well. Some astrologers make a bad situation worse.

I've been in marriage counseling 3x with licensed therapists and once met on my own account with a good but then little-known Ph. D. clinical psychologist who later went on to write best-selling books. My impression is that some of these people are not helpful, but if you find a good one, s/he is invaluable.

Michael, I don't mean to be rude, but a lot of us have large messy bookshelves full of important books.

Exactly right! And introducing a more rigorous foundation to them is the very reason why I am researching astrology and its related arts/sciences the way I do. A meeting ground, if you will!

If you don't mind, could we go back to talking about mythology now please, dear Professor?

Sure. Your call.

Annadeer, please join in the conversation.

Michael is probably getting exhausted by my posts!

(Asteroid Nemesis conjunct Mercury here.)

haha, thank you for the invitation Waybread but i don't have time at this point. Btw, did you check asteroid Skepticus in your chart?

Hi Waybread

What you wrote is all valid and true on some level. At first, I meant to address your statements one by one. But then I decided it might be more worthwhile to tell you a story. You could call it the story of my inner life.

My parents were devout Christians. I sympathized with the strength they obviously drew from their faith, however, from a rather early age on, I stopped sharing their beliefs as I considered the latter to be naive and restrictive. And those moralistic ferry tales I was indoctrinated with in religion class put me over the edge!

The interest that singularly dominated my early days was natural science in all its forms. While my age-mates were climbing up trees or playing soccer, I was reading books generally considered much too advanced for my age, or gazing through a microscope or a telescope, or investigating chemical phenomena in my little home lab. Insofar you found me out there in nature, it was for discovering minerals and fossils. Everybody around me believed I was going to be an academic scientist of renown one day. However, my mind was one-sidedly analytical and so overactive that it almost drove me insane at times. Something was profound was missing in my life.

The martial arts practice I took up at age 13 helped me feeling physically grounded, while it also led me to meditation and Eastern philosophy. I would absorb the teachings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, familiarize myself with the I-ching, and sit in zazen for countless hours together with practising Buddhists, first in my home country and later in Japan.

At some stage, my interest in my own culture's metaphysical heritage awoke. I would learn about Tarot, Bach Flower therapy, astrology, Jungian psychology, Silva mind control, the Seth literature and so on. All of this helped me gradually figure out my complex psyche and find a degree of inner peace. Not least, my studies made me revisit the Christian ideas I was taught in my childhood from a new perspective as I learned about gnostics, apocrypha and the many metaphysical truths contained in the good old Bible.

With all of this, I never abandoned my interest in science. I learned about its historical development and understood that with the Scientific Revolution, something fundamental had gone down the drain.

The cosmos of the ancients was an integrated whole uniting the physical with the metaphysical in a singular coherent system. The natural sciences (in their early form), the occult sciences, philosophy, mysticism - they all had found their place in the Pythagorean/Platonic/Aristotelian/Hermetic world view of the day.

All of which changed with the arrival of the materialistic and mechanistic world view, starting with Copernicus. Yes, our knowledge in certain fields grew immensely, and its technological application opened up countless pathways hitherto undreamt of. Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad - in many ways, we are far better off than our ancestors! And yet we are faced with issues like environmental destruction and digitalized enslavement on a global level - the results of an applied science that had lost its soul. Certainly the increasingly popular philosophy of "transhumanism" is the epitome of that.

I concluded that what was needed was a return to the natural philosophy of yore - however, on a new level that would integrate all our modern knowledge. If my own story in some ways microcosmically reflected the story of my kind, then that was the way to go.

So here you have my message in a nutshell. That's what I am trying to support and take part in - to whatever degree I am priviledged to do so.

That's the inner story of my life.

What is yours?