Skyscript Astrology Forum

What-ho chums,

I've just posted a new paper on my website, the title of which is above.

It was written for an academic conference, and is eventually destined for academic publication, so it suffers a bit from the rather tedious writing style that is de rigeur in those quarters. It does raise some interesting issues though, I think.

It's a huge, sprawling subject to set out to write about (I blame Mercury in Sag) and I have a niggling sense that the paper could be sharpened up, without quite knowing what exactly needs sharpening, so if anyone has feedback that I can incorporate before it's published I'd really appreciate it.

It's here:

http://www.astrozero.co.uk/articles/theravada.htm

Hello Gary,

Bravo for your excellent article on an important (and difficult) topic - I will be reading this one a few more times. Keep on keepin' on

Best regards,
Alex

Hi Garry,

I have just had a chance to read your article, which I found very interesting. I don?t know a great deal about Buddhism. What I do know mostly derives from reading people like Tenzin Palmo (I would love to have her birth data) and Sogyal Rinpoche. I have been fortunate enough to attend talks by both of them on their visits to Australia and have occasionally attended the Theravadan Buddhist Centre. Still, I am fairly ignorant of the deeper beliefs that you have set out in your paper. I don?t have any suggestions for you, just lots of questions. What I am interested in from my own personal point of view is seeking the correlations between these beliefs and those of other cultures of the same time. You mention the Achaemenid occupation of northern India as bringing a raft of Babylonian divinatory practices, which the Buddha rejected. The question that came to mind when reading this is who took part in these practices? For example, in the Roman Republic, which started very close to the time that the Buddha lived, there was a very clear demarcation of who was able to interpret these divine messages. What is the case in the Roman Republic is that they were particular positions especially designated as part of the Senate. They were as much political as they were divinatory. Was there a system whereby only certain people could partake of these practices? When you speak of the Buddha abstaining from these practices and making the point that it is wrong for a recluse to practise, is this in terms of not engaging in these sorts of exchanges with others, that is either providing divinatory readings or seeking them from others or is he referring more to the idea that individuals should not seek answers of a personal nature by engaging in these practices? If I understand you correctly, the Buddha was not dismissing the legitimacy of these forms of divination but rather saying that they were not appropriate for those who wish to follow his path. How does this accord with what David Pingree says in his article you referenced (which I read and found very interesting) about the Buddhists being instrumental in the spread of certain types of astrology? Was astrology acceptable in a way that other divinatory practices were not? And at the early stages of Buddhism immediately following the earthly death of the Buddha, how divergent were the various schools of Buddhism? When Pingree is referring to the involvement of Buddhists in the transferece of astrological knowledge would he be referring necessarily to Theravadan Buddhism?

In regard to the four devas who came to protect the Buddha from the four quarters, Ernst Cassirer argues that there may be no cosmology, however primitive, in which the four main directions does not emerge in some way. Directions, according to Cassirer are independent entities that are each endowed with a life of their own. This would perhaps correlate well with the idea that each of the four devas has a specific realm of a quarter that it identifies with its own. In Etruscan divination, for example, it was Jupiter who held the northern quarter, which was the luckiest quarter of all for the Etruscans and Romans. I would be interested to learn more about the idea of the devas and the four quarters.

Another thing I find interesting is the frequency of the six directions. You mention that the Buddha explains the ritual of genuflecting to the six directions. Native Americans also have the six directions predominantly in their tradition as do the Christians with their six directions taken from the symbol of the Chi Rho, which was designed by Constantine after his vision. I read one article that said that this six fold direction was one of the most startling and revealing aspects of the Bible. Of course, this idea of the six directions was also posited by such people as Aristotle and many of the Roman writers such as Pliny and Livy. But from what I understand, although the Buddhist six directions is based on the cardinal points along with above and below, it involves something slightly different in that it relates to the ritual of paying homage to the six types of human relationships. My knowledge of this is very sketchy so please correct me if I have it wrong.

There?s a couple of other things I would like to mention but since this post is getting a bit too long and I have already bombarded you with questions (sorry about that ), I will leave it for another time. One issue I have in mind involves the idea of divination being concerned with a spiritual framework. I am inclined to disagree with Maggie?s quote on the surface of it, particularly historically, but I will raise this in another post.

Btw, does this paper stem from your research for your PhD or is it something separate from it?

Hi Sue,

And thanks for the feedback. Here goes...

I'm no authority on the history of that period. Or any period, come to think of it. So far as I know there isn't a whole lot in the way of sources to tell us what was going on in Babylon & India 2,500 years ago. Anyone with any suggestions please feel free to join in. The Pali Canon isn't particularly reliable as a source of historical information I think, which it was never intended to be of course. So far as who was doing the divining - well, the description of ways of divining in Digha Nikaya make it sound as if it's something everyone would get up to, and certainly if the Buddha's recluses had to be warned off divining this would seem to be the case, since they were a pretty mixed bunch. Having said this, the commentaries apparently identify the 5 (or astrologers who predicted the Buddha's future as having been court astrologers. Whilst I wouldn't want to take this as definitive it seems to point to the existence of some high-ranking positions for astrologers. I ought to mention the court astrologer business in the paper. The astrologers were also the Buddha's first students, I definitely should mention that.

I don't remember the bit you mention where Pingree talks about Buddhism spreading forms of astrology, what page is that on? I imagine what he has in mind would be that Buddhism spread around a lot, and that astrology piggy-backed this transmission of ideas. Rather than the astrology actually being in the Buddhism, if you see what i mean.

The Buddhist 'six directions' thing isn't really Buddhist per se, it's just something the Buddha made up for one person, I don't think it's heard of aside from that one instance. The six directions idea would, presumably, be found in the folk-culture of his time.

The Maggie idea - that doing divination tends to develop a moral sense - is something I was going to go into a bit more, and probably will. In fact shortly after I'd posted the paper I started remembering things I'd intended to put in but hadn't got round to, so version 2 is well on the way and should be posted within the next week. I think it's about 4000 words longer at the moment...

Hi Garry,

Having said this, the commentaries apparently identify the 5 (or astrologers who predicted the Buddha's future as having been court astrologers. Whilst I wouldn't want to take this as definitive it seems to point to the existence of some high-ranking positions for astrologers. I ought to mention the court astrologer business in the paper. The astrologers were also the Buddha's first students, I definitely should mention that.

I think what you say here makes sense. The position of astrologer, and other diviners for that matter, were highly favoured positions in most cultures at that time. Certainly in China it was the court astrologers who were the only ones allowed to practise. And, as I mentioned, the position of augur in the Roman Senate, Cicero being one of the most well known, was a highly respected position.

It is interesting that you mention astrologers as being the Buddha's first students.

I don't remember the bit you mention where Pingree talks about Buddhism spreading forms of astrology, what page is that on? I imagine what he has in mind would be that Buddhism spread around a lot, and that astrology piggy-backed this transmission of ideas. Rather than the astrology actually being in the Buddhism, if you see what i mean.

When I wrote my post I wasn't really suggesting that this astrology was part of Buddhist tradition or the philosophy of Buddhism. As I said, I know almost nothing about it. However, having another read of the article, I am not so sure that Buddhists had little influence. On page 240, Pingree mentions that Buddhists introduced naksatra astrology into Iran and Central Asia. So, if this was true, they certainly practised it extensively. He says that this is a previously mentioned fact but I am not sure whether he means that he has mentioned it elsewhere in the article or at another time. I could not find where he mentions it for the first time. On the following page, he is talking about naksatra astrology and says that to reach these places (Iran and Central Asia) the texts

most probably passed through Buddhist communities in the eastern provinces of the Sasanian Empire; and one finds the remains of this Buddhist influence in the second chapter of the Bundahishn, where the twenty-eight naksatras are listed with Persian names.

So, he seems to be saying that Buddhists did have some sort of astrological influence although how much is hard to gauge. According to one thing I read, the word naksatra is originally Tibetan.

I just read another article by Pingree 'Classical and Byzantine Astrology in Sassanian Persia.' It is a very interesting article but he does not mention Buddhism at all. I enjoy Pingree's works and he has done some fascinating studies but I think that he, like so many other scholars, exagerates the influence of the Greeks in every aspect of history. As Westerners we are conditioned to think that we owe our entire heritage to the Greeks when I do not think this is true. What is true is that they had an enormous impact on history but not an exclusive one. An example of this can be seen in the arguments about the origins of Indian astrology. There are two extremes, i.e. one side arguing that all Indian astrology came from the Greeks, while the other side argues that none of it did. The truth is somewhere in the middle. I believe that Pingree does recognise this but he still sees the Greeks as the major influence. I seem to recall Rob Hand commenting on Pingree's study on the Yavanajataka, where he compared the Greek influence with this Hindu astrology that even he (David Pingree) had to admit that there are many differences. However, as Hand pointed out, differences do not preclude the same origin.

I would just like to make a quick point about one of the quotes from Iamblichus that you mentioned. Iamblichus gives me a headache at times but then it could be due to the fact that the only translation I have is that of Thomas Taylor who is notoriously difficult. But where would we be without him? He was the first person to translate the complete works of Plato and Aristotle into English in the eighteenth century.

Whenever it is necessary for the soul to exercise virtue, and ignorance of the future contributes to this, the Gods conceal the things that will happen in order to make the soul better.

You ask why they might not also use misdirection or even misinformation. I think there is a very big difference between withholding information and misguiding someone. We can perhaps see examples of this in the sense of horary when charts are unable to be read due to such things as an early ascendant or voc Moon, etc. The information will not be incorrect or misleading, it will simply not be forthcoming for some reason. In contemporary astrology we often view this in more of a technical fashion. That is, we see the chart as technically unable to be read rather than seeing it as a divinatory response. Albertus Magnus said something quite similar about God withholding information.

When the signifiers are equal in good fortune and evil, the counsel of the profession of the stars is to abandon the interrogation since God wished to keep it hidden from us.

Which is almost identical to something Lilly says about waiting for a better time. Further to what you quoted, Iamblichus goes on to say that when ignorance of the future does not contribute to virtue then foreknowledge will be forthcoming.

But when the ignorance of what is future does not at all contribute to this, and foreknowledge is advantageous to souls for the sake fo their salvation and reascent [to divinity], then the gods insert the foreknowledge which pertains to divination in the penetralia of the essences of souls.

What I read from this is that there are only certain occasions when answers of a divinatory nature are not forthcoming and that it is because it is better for the soul's development if the answer is not available at that point in time. I cannot see that there would be any occasion where answers are deliberately misleading. Certainly there are plenty of cases when the diviners themselves were deliberately misleading for various reasons, such as political expediency. This happened often in the times of the Roman Republic. And, of course, if your suggestion that it may be possible that they would use misdirection, this raises the very interesting issue of differentiating when such a thing may be virtuous and when it would be less than honourable. You mentioned the story of the two monks meditating when two yakkhas passed by, the point being that we are continually interacting with beings from other worlds and that the quality of the interactions is not always benevolent. So how might one differentiate between the genuine divinatory messages and ones that are not so divine if it is possible that divine messages can be misleading 'for our own good?' Some would argue (you mention Augustine) that none of it is to be trusted. I am just thinking out loud here and my questioning is mostly rhetorical but it is interesting to contemplate. I agree that it may be a mistake to expect divinatory information to be simply factual and that astrology readings should deliver straightforward and accurate information. This is why I like the rich symbolism of horary astrology.

As for the Maggie idea, I look forward to the update and will wait until then to comment.

Hi Sue,

To answer the question from your first post that I didn't before, no, this isn't related to my PhD. It's something that seemed like it would be suitable for a particular conference, and it also seemed like it would give me an opportunity to figure out how my two major interests - Buddhism and astrology - get on with one another. It's proving to take rather more figuring out than I'd originally intended! But on the plus side, it's starting to get into areas which might make it into my thesis after all.

Thanks for reminding me of your Albertus Magnus article & that quote, which I think I need to include. The step from saying that the gods withhold info, to saying that they might deliberately mislead *for the individual's own good* isn't something I can remember coming across in western astrology, it's an attempt to extrapolate an implication of what 'skilful means' might mean in a divinatory context. I probably need to signal the extrapolation rather more. Though it does sit rather well with the idea of Hermes, ruler of astrology, as the trickster god.

I guess you've got access to JSTOR or something like it? 'The Origin of the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions' by Philip Yampolsky might be worth a look - at p.72 he mentions King Asoka sending missionaries off to Greece, China and so on and (presumably) taking the naksatras with them, maybe this is what Pingree had in mind. Also I wonder if you've come across 'The Shape of Ancient Thought' by Thomas McEvilley which is all about the influence of Indian thought on Greek & vice-versa. It looks very good though I've never done more than pick at it, it's a huge piece of work.

Version 2 is now in place on my site.

That took a lot longer than I thought, and - be warned - the thing's getting on for twice as long now. I think it's better though. For those of you who read version 1, you'll find most of the new stuff in the second half of the paper.

As before, any feedback very welcome.