Jupiter & Uranus in 4th house

dadsnook2000

Strongly agree

Minderwiz's statement that modern astrology is a mess is a statement that I can totally agree with. So much of what is included in current astrological practice does not consist of a integrated approach with each part being a clear component of a conceptual system.

As the centuries went on it seems that different things were added to address what wasn't understood by those practicing "astrology". Doesn't it strike anyone that it is all overly complex? I'm not saying that anyone walking up to astrology can learn the glyphs and start spouting wisdom. It isn't that simple. But once you have studied all of the complexity, you can make it simple. When you reach that point you can be an astrologer.

You and the practice of astrology have to be melded. How you do it, once you can do it, is different from how I would do it. That is what is amazing about it all. But, you can't break the basic rules. And you can't just read the basic rules. They are discovered for the most part.
 

Haley

Minderwiz's statement that modern astrology is a mess is a statement that I can totally agree with. So much of what is included in current astrological practice does not consist of a integrated approach with each part being a clear component of a conceptual system.

As the centuries went on it seems that different things were added to address what wasn't understood by those practicing "astrology". Doesn't it strike anyone that it is all overly complex? I'm not saying that anyone walking up to astrology can learn the glyphs and start spouting wisdom. It isn't that simple. But once you have studied all of the complexity, you can make it simple. When you reach that point you can be an astrologer.

You and the practice of astrology have to be melded. How you do it, once you can do it, is different from how I would do it. That is what is amazing about it all. But, you can't break the basic rules. And you can't just read the basic rules. They are discovered for the most part.

First off, thanks Mindewiz. So you feel that modern astrology can be TMI at times? I understand and that's why you don't use asteroids either. Something in me actually likes all that extra info. Sometimes, when dealing with my own chart, I find it enlightening, at others, it's flat out wrong and I can feel free to disregard it as such. In interpeting my own chart, I like to look for positives in an otherwise abysmal chart. It gives me the feeling of having options and therefore control. So my fate isn't sealed by the positions of celestial bodies when I was born.

I'll have to read more about Jung and metaphysics. I knew he was a proponent.

Thanks also dadsnook. I do believe one has to meld with metaphysics to derive benefits from it. Breaking it all down to simplicity is a challenge for me because I thrive on complexity but also understanding the complexities if that makes any sense.
 

Minderwiz

As the centuries went on it seems that different things were added to address what wasn't understood by those practicing "astrology". Doesn't it strike anyone that it is all overly complex? I'm not saying that anyone walking up to astrology can learn the glyphs and start spouting wisdom. It isn't that simple. But once you have studied all of the complexity, you can make it simple. When you reach that point you can be an astrologer.

The problem lies in the number of times Western Astrology needed 'resuscitating' The separation of Hellenistic Astrology from its powerhouse of Alexandria around the end of the fourth and early fifth centuries AD. Much of the knowledge was lost at that time through deliberate acts of destruction.

The attempt to pick up the threads by Persian and later Arabic Astrologers was on the basis of only a limited number of texts available. So, yes, they had to 'invent' somethings to fill in the gaps and their resulting system in the late Medieval period is certainly highly structured and very arguably over complicated. Attempts by Morin and Lilly (in different ways) to simplify and put Astrology on a firm footing were unsuccessful in the long term and only partially successful in the short term. Both had very limited knowledge of what the original system of Astrology was like (much less than our current knowledge of it, and that is only partial).

The 'Enlightenment' ended Western Astrology as a recognised branch of knowledge and left it in the hands of willing amateurs who tried to use Lilly as their source. Two hundred years after Lilly they were going through the motions without any real 'professionals' able to provide guidance. Nevertheless there is a recognisable connection between their Astrology and the original system.

The real problem comes with the Theosophists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who remodeled Astrology to fit what the say as a 'New Age'. They threw out much that was in the original core and turned the science into one of personality assessment alone. Fifty years on and Jungian psychologists adapted it still further because they could see a value to it in their work. So Astrology was made to fit a psychological model, rather an attempt to restore it to a science in its own right. (I use science in its original meaning of a structured body of knowledge and method of applying it).

Although in recent years there has been an attempt to 'recover' what was lost. We have only a fraction of what existed, especially in the case of Hellenistic Astrology, which came into being as a full theoretical construct and system. It didn't just grow. Exactly what that system is we don't fully know and may never know. But we do know enough to reveal it as something radically different from what is practiced now, even though it uses (and invented) much of the language and concepts of a modern chart.

Dadsnook2000 said:
You and the practice of astrology have to be melded. How you do it, once you can do it, is different from how I would do it. That is what is amazing about it all. But, you can't break the basic rules. And you can't just read the basic rules. They are discovered for the most part.

I would make a slight difference in emphasis. You can read and apply the basic rules, or at least those that we are very certain of. But there are still gaps in our knowledge of exactly how those rules originated and were applied. I was reading a short answer to a question by Chris Brennan on the use of Reception in Hellenistic Astrology. This is a small extract stating the problem.

This issue is a bit complicated and murky though, and there is a lot of disagreement about it between different astrologers in modern times who are trying to figure out how things were done in the Hellenistic and Medieval traditions. As a result of this some of the terminology isn't very well worked out yet, partially because people disagree about what constitutes reception, and which cases should be included or excluded from that consideration.

Whilst he goes on to argue a case as to why he attributes Reception to Hellenistic Astrologers, it is heavily based on implications rather than explicit quotes. There are no explicit quotes that we have but there are descriptions that match something like Reception and it's known that later writers who did explicitly define Reception, after the Hellenistic period did read texts from the end of that period. So it looks like they picked up the idea and developed it.

My point is that what I've just said isn't certain it's speculation though based on circumstantial evidence but it's subject to dispute. It is also entirely possible that we discover more texts which show that we've interpreted those rules incorrectly or that they are only part of a section of rules. So we don't know exactly how the rules were applied and Dave is right that we end up making discoveries (or remain in the dark).


First off, thanks Mindewiz. So you feel that modern astrology can be TMI at times? I understand and that's why you don't use asteroids either. Something in me actually likes all that extra info. Sometimes, when dealing with my own chart, I find it enlightening, at others, it's flat out wrong and I can feel free to disregard it as such. In interpeting my own chart, I like to look for positives in an otherwise abysmal chart. It gives me the feeling of having options and therefore control. So my fate isn't sealed by the positions of celestial bodies when I was born.

I think some Modern Astrology works, but not all of it. Dave shows that it can work in a structured way and he gets good results. But he does have a structure and system and it's not based entirely or even mainly on psychology.

What might be an 'abysmal' chart by modern standards doesn't have to be 'abysmal' by all standards. Very, very few charts contain only bad things most have a mixture of both the good and the bad. The challenge is to make the most of what you have to negotiate life. Fate doesn't seal anything, what it does is constrain your range of actions. If you're born with serious leg problems, it is highly probable you're not going to become a marathon runner, but, of itself, it's not going to stop you competing in a wheelchair marathon or representing your country at the Paralympics (providing you reach the entry standards)

Don't assume that Jungian Psychology is the only acceptable form. Indeed most current psychology departments treat Jung with suspicion (partly because of his interest in Astrology and other 'occult' practices).

A few years before I retired, somewhere around 2007/2008 I attended a Higher Education staff development session on how students learn and setting up learning strategies to meet their personalities.

I attended with a colleague who had a history degree. At the end of the session we both asked the same question 'what did you think of that' and both gave the same answer - it was based on the medieval concepts of Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholic and Phlegmatic personalities. Of course it didn't use those terms but the personality descriptors matched them almost exactly. We even mentioned that to the session leader, who seemed most disconcerted that current academic research seemed to support a medieval theory that lies behind the assessment of temperament in Medieval and seventeenth century Astrology.

It's not a matter of Psychology or Traditional Astrology, you can have both. In the seventeenth century, doctors had to be trained astrologers and one of the reasons that Astrology survived through the medieval period was the link between Astrology and medicine. The 'judicial' side (making predictions about life that was beyond medicine) was frowned on by the authorities, as it was in the Roman Empire and as it still is today by the scientific establishment.
 

Barleywine

That's how I started!! Your point about putting it together in a lucid way is what you should be aiming at. The trouble with Modern Astrology is that it makes that very difficult. There's a welter of bodies, aspects, hypothetical points and no really organised structure for managing it. What you find is personal approaches to this. The tradition is much more structured in putting the information together and initially, there's less of it because there are only seven planets to deal with. There are more things that you can add in. The Lots (Arabic Parts) conjunctions with stars, eclipses and a whole lot more. But it's clear that the planets come first and that's what you address. The others are secondary (though there's a strong argument that the Lot of Fortune is very important) and are added in once the basic picture is established.

The dissatisfaction with the psychological approach has led Astrologers to try a variety of alternatives. Dave, who commented earlier, is one who has his own distinct approach with a systematic structure.

This is an excellent, wide-ranging discussion. I just wanted to pipe in and say that the coherent structure is what attracted me to traditional astrology. Also, the "humours" are really almost all you need to sort out human psychology at the "ground level" (where it matters most to most people). I came to astrology during the height of its New Age re-emergence, when it was propelled by the Jungian "flowering" (or "hijacking," depending on your perspective). At the time, Rob Hand was one of the pre-eminent authorities on the "modern" approach, but even he has done a U-turn into the tradition. While still giving a slight nod to the outer bodies (no rulerships, though, and definitely no "travelling gravel," as Hand memorably called the more insignificant asteroids), I'm perfectly content with the "old ways" at this point. But I'm not doing much natal astrology any more, mostly horary.
 

Smiling

Without engaging in an ongoing debate about which is better, I would simply and respectfully agree to disagree. :)

I think that balance is the key here, as there is much to be gained from both traditional and modern astrology. Our knowledge of the universe is ever-expanding, so it seems logical that the science of astrology would expand with it.
 

Barleywine

My personal feeling is that humanity at large has entered a state of devolution. But then, I'm a student of human nature, so naturally I'm a cynic :)
 

Minderwiz

My personal feeling is that humanity at large has entered a state of devolution. But then, I'm a student of human nature, so naturally I'm a cynic :)

I was reading the Gary Phillipson's interview with Robert Zoller. He asked Zoller what his model of human evolution was, to which Zoller replied:

I doubt that there is human evolution, first of all. As a practising astrologer, I see clients coming back to me at twenty years old, looking for the ideal partner; thirty years old, the same person will still be looking for the ideal partner; forty years old, fifty years old, sixty years old… with the same problems as to why they cannot find the ideal partner. I observe my own behaviour and find myself making the same kinds of silly mistakes all the time, having the same sorts of addictions - fortunately no drug addictions or anything like that, but in terms of leaning towards certain kinds of social interaction, or to a certain intellectual efforts and interests, things of that sort - there's a consistency in who and what I am, and that makes me recognisable, both to myself and to people around me. So I'm personally of the opinion (as opposed to the knowledge) that God has given man free will, but man doesn't seem to want to use it much. That's my opinion.


The questions I get asked in the horary thread are exactly the same sort of questions Lilly got asked 400 years ago. I actually find that comforting. Human nature is much as it always was. There are 'saints' and 'sinners', the only problem with the present is that the 'sinners' have access to more terrifying devices than they had in the past.


Without engaging in an ongoing debate about which is better, I would simply and respectfully agree to disagree. :)

I think that balance is the key here, as there is much to be gained from both traditional and modern astrology. Our knowledge of the universe is ever-expanding, so it seems logical that the science of astrology would expand with it.

That's a good point. My personal view is that far from expanding Astrology has degenerated over the last 150 years and especially over the last 60 or 70, despite some attempts to 'save' it.

But, more relevant to your statement is a question that it begs, What is the purpose of Astrology?

Is it to mirror and make sense of the space junk that we're now acquiring or is it to help answer questions about the human condition? Astrology always was concerned with the latter and helping people deal with the issues of life here on Earth. Learning about black holes, rather than black moons doesn't help pay the mortgage, or find a job or search for meaning in our lives.

To be able to answer these question, or perhaps in a more humble way, help people find the right direction is what Astrology has always been for.

I think Dave and I would both agree on that and I think we both agree that much of Modern Astrology offers little of real substance at a time when people need it. Trying to put a proper developed structure in place that provides the substance is the aim. For Dave that substance can be dredged from the dross of current Astrology, rather like panning for gold. For me, it's a case of recognising that such systems used to exist and worked a lot better than the current mess does. The problem is retrieving them.