Bee, I hear you... and I'm glad you weren't offended. It's always nice to meet another person who doesn't think work and study are bad... and who likes asking hard questions.
Teheuti said:
You are generalizing to the point of ridiculousness, equating Linda Goodman's sun-sign material with Liz Greene's work. Have you even read Greene books on Neptune, Mars or the Inner Planets or Fate? Greene has her specialty area - psychological analysis of the horoscope - but she's not trying to keep anyone from reading Lilly. If Lilly was the ideal source for psychological analysis of the chart then she would teach him.
Yes, Mary. I have. Why would I mention them if I hadn't? What a weird question. I read a lot, as you know. And while I may be generalizing, the question was a general one. I wasn't writing an article for peer review and I'll happily stand by my point. The great irony is that I was lambasting books which are themselves generic and generalized treatments of a traditon that thrives on specifics. In any case, the issue is worldview, which is at core a question of individual generalizations.
I know that you are a proud defender and proponent of the psychological tradition of the 70s and all its voices. I wouldn't dream of telling anyone they shouldn't read Liz Greene's books. I probably would warn them away from Goodman, but in both cases they are the product of a worldview, as are we all. Unfortunately, the glut of New Age publishing that puddled at their ankles has left a vast, echoing chasm in people's understanding of the subject. And while neither of them is prohibiting reading Lilly, they aren't encouraging it in the slightest. The mere fact of their books, the tottering mountains of piffle churned out for credulous dilettantes makes learning Lilly's
name an unlikely prospect at best.
Sunsign astrologers tend to quote and reference only other sunsign astrologys in a closet circuit. They may proudly proclaim teh millenial character of their subject, but they're woefully quiet on the actual details or antecedents. In fact, mostly I've heard new age astrologer gripe (in print and in person) about how "hard" and all that old stuff is, and how much it expects you to sort through contradiction. No easy formulas there and so much math! So much simpler to have a handy color coded chart where all the asnwers appear in E-Z tables.
Teheuti said:
There are astrology books for the general public - of about the same depth as most mass-market books, and then there are astrology books for the professional astrologer and there is a big difference between these - which I don't hear you acknowledging.
Besides the (obvious to the point of aburdity) gap between professional texts and books intended for a wide audience, I'm talking about a perspective, a worldview that underlies both, intentionally or no. The intellectual substratum is consistent. In my opinion, modern sunsign books for the professional and modern sunsign books for the casual twit completely sidestep the basic tenets that hold Astrology together as a system. The differences between them seem cosmetic because at core they perpetuate a single revisionist repackaging of one of the oldest forms of human investigation and faith.
Now... because the modern mangling of Astrology wasn't particularly conscious or purposive, a lot of silly contradictions and muddles wound up in the soup. Because the unstrained soup of 19th century esotericism crested the banks and slopped over to become the New Age, the 20th century didn't do very well by Astrology. It doesn't matter which "level" of book we're discussing... Whether I read a $300 book on Transits for Investors or a $2 book on finding the man of my dreams, if that worldview is absent then they are dead blind things in my view, empty and rotting. Divinatory roadkill. Of course, everyone finds life where they will, so I can only speak for myself there. Maybe L:inda Goodman has paved the path to Zodiacal Satori, but not on my watch. The FACT of worldview remains, and it it is a brutal, stark distinction.
Project Hindsight and ARHAT are near and dear to me. I'm a subscriber to their various sites and publications and I communicate with several of the authors intermittently. In many ways they were and continue to be a vehement and visceral reaction to the goofy New Age publishing I'm generalizing about. The same is true for traditonalist ceremonial magicians, who've also gained ground and begun to machete their way throught he jungle of "Call Your Archangel in 7 Steps" bullshit offered by Llewellyn. None of the scholars and authors working in that quarter agree with each other on particulars, but all of them agree in fundament. The passionate push back that has made its presence felt in astrology and other less-materialist subjects seems almost the woozy morning-after shame of people noticing that they'd almost drunk the New Age Kool-Aid and thumped the patent-pending McShaman's drum.
I take Kwaw's point about sunsigns, but if you hold a modern new age text on the zodiac next to any material before the 17th century, there's a difference in worldview... a fundamental grasp of astrological mechanics missing from modern material. It isn't just the narrowness of the information in modern sunsign books, but rather the caul of facile, self-empowering pop-psych that I think we can trace back to Alan Leo. It's part of the afterbirth of mass media, puddled on the gurney as it were.
No Art or Science exists in stasis. I don't believe that to be a traditionalist that you have to freeze and reify creativity and growth... but then none of those old dead guys would have suggested that either. It's a bit like kids arguing they don't need to learn how to spell cause spellcheckers "do it for you." Uhh, no. This is why we have a nation of people who work in retail but can't do basic arithmetic: what's the point? And we don't memorize the periodic table because we all need to know it, but because the memorization itself is an educational act. Discipline, Rigor. Scope. Precision. Curiosity. Attention. The easy, passive way is almost always the lazy, stupid way.
Teheuti said:
Are you saying that every surgeon should stick with the techniques of Galen?
You know I'm not.
I realize this was included for sarcastic effect, but it's only half-pointed. I'd rather surgeons study nothing but Galen than do a phlebotomy using the carving instructions on a Butterball turkey... which would actually be the syllogistic equivalent. And if anyone thinks I'm crazy, go look at the way in which experienced astrologers as a whole respect their roots... going to the source, looking to their roots, studying the Masters on their own as they make discoveries and add to the tradition. Not so the Aquarian age marketwhores.
Kwaw said:
In applying astrological conventions to popular forms of divination such as tarot, or to use a popular medieval example geomancy*, it really supplies little more than some handy ready made conventions, and I don't think it matters in divination techniques such as geomancy or tarot whether the ready made set of conventions is 'modern' or 'traditional'.
I don't think I agree, Kwaw. Or at least, if I believe that astrology works (which I do) I don't believe that any rule is as valid as any other: Chaos Astrology, I guess you'd call it. I do think that any system can be used to provide divination. I also think that some systems provide better information. The Golden Dawn certainly did. And the Renaissance Italians. We
all do, otherwise we wouldn't be here, right? Why Thoth and not TdM? Why Tarot at all? Why cartomancy and not Walletmancy or Shampoomancy or Dildomancy? Why any divination instead of staggering from accidental event to accidental event?
I believe there is a difference in results and even Chaos Magick makes results fundamental.
Still, I feel like we're talking about a perspective... either the old traditions worked for a reason or they were just a system, and therefore better than NO system. "As Above, So Below" or "every spirit for itself," take your pick... Which is probably the root of my tradtionalist streak. We live in passive times. Geomancy is fundamentally astrological, and not becase it borrowed the symbols. The way I see it, arguing that the dots are random is like saying Jupiter is just a gas giant. In astrological terms, Jupiter is that gas giant, but also all jovial qualities and things including gluttony, generosity, sanguines, priests, plurisy and eagles. It's not that the gas giant "controls" those things, or veaen forbid) vice versa.. but they are inextricably linked. In that worldview, randomness cannot exist. The dots in the sand are stars in the same way Jupiter is all churches
and the 5th orbiter of Sol.
This is where most modern sunsign books are so insidious. This is why (Mary's protestations aside) they are effectively stopping people from reading Lilly or even more substantive modern authors! They use
just enough legitimate material to cohere, and then wander off into the dark by the light of their inventions and mistakes. Some smarter, some dumber, some skilled, some hacks, ... but fundamentally joined by a mutilated sense of astrology.
Caveat lector. So to me most modern sunsign books (massmarket or specialist) seem like different brands of pushup bra: real enough to resemble, fake enough to fool. And comparable only for someone who'd never seen or touched or had a real breast.
For me, the question comes down to
worldview. This thread in fact was begun because of this basic fact: the worldview of astrology, of the Golden Dawn in fact, was fundamentally different from ours. The first thing we learn from history is that looking at the past with the eyes of the present is next to pointless. Context and perspective are everything. Hindsight is always 20/20 but change is the only constant, right? Science and Art are both ways of seeing the world... so when we consider something that has been abandoned and brutalized like astrological tradition, it makes sense to me to try and restore it to what it was in the hopes THAT will help me understand what it could be.
S
