Astrology

[Sunya]

[Sloppy Zhang]

Unless they're the type of astrologer that can actually perceive energies and things like that... it's probably going to be some generic life advice.

 

"Hi, I'd like to find a new job."

"Well let me ask you a bit about your situation.... when was your last job?"

"I got laid off about 6 months ago."

"Been trying to find a job between then?"

"Yes, but I haven't been able to find a job."

"That's tough. Anything else?"

"Well since it's been hard to put together the money for rent, so I'm thinking about moving back in with my parents, or my brother, but I don't really like that."

"Okay, hold on a second." *pours over natal chart*

 

"I see from this that you are a naturally independent and fiery person. You like to be in charge of your own life. But lately you have been on the receiving end of tough times. This has challenged you, and knocked you off the proverbial horse. Subsequently, this is putting you into contact with people and issues from the past. This makes you uneasy, as you are a person who likes to move forward with your life. You don't want to go back to the person you were, but you can't seem to get back onto the horse.

 

"You need to understand that just as you cannot go back to the person you once were in family matters, you can't go back to the person you once were in business. Find a new horse. Start small. Use your head strong attitude and take on small, manageable challenges. Build upon them. Establish a new identity.

 

"Yet your soul, your true self, has manifested this scenario in your life for a reason. It is telling you that you need to resolve past issues. So as you establish a new business identity, try and address the issues with your family. Get in contact with your parents and sibling, and try to forge a new relationship. This will allay your fears as you become a new person through and through."

 

In summation- you're probably better off doing it yourself. Unless, since you're the friend of a friend, he could give you a reading for free, in which case, hey, why not. Or unless he's demonstrated that he's got some genuine perception, in which case it might be valuable.

 

Otherwise.... in my experience, it's not worth the money.

[henro]

I once heard a visiting Swami at my yoga school say that astrology is basically just math, and the outcome is only as accurate as the mathematician. I kind of like that explanation.

[ben]

[三江源]

Well, alchemy is about overcoming your astrology, so for practitioners it may be that you find what I find, which is that the 'map' that astrology gives is outmoded: it shows what you came in with, but given the level of transformation one can effect, it seems fairly redundant information, depending on your level of self awareness and development, I guess. It may be more of interest to non self transformational types.

 

 

I used to study western astrology and in particular psychological astrology a la Liz Green, the Jungian analyst. People found it helpful in just the way that you are describing: to show them the archetypes that they are working with.

 

 

The predictive astrology will show planetary movements and trends coming up and how they relate to your particular chart aspects. So again, you need to be able to interpret the 'lay persons' reading, so that it applies to you personally, bearing in mind what evolution you have effected.

 

(I have had a few taoist/chinese charts done and found the same thing applies.)

 

But yes, as Sloppy says, if he's doing it for free or not a lot of $, then give it a look, it may throw up a pointer or two.

 

And so would the I Ching, or your dreams..

[mYTHmAKER]

My favorite astrologer

http://starkarma9.com/

[Taomeow]

I've discerned four ways people look at astrology...

 

1. The traditional way. This is based on the conviction that knowledge decreases and not increases in the human society, i.e. that it's only the illusion of an increase of knowledge we're dished out in modern times, not the actuality. The illusion is created and perpetuated by the technology-obsessed overlords so we are conditioned to believe that because we watch TV and talk to recorded voices on answering machines, we are more intelligent and know more about the world than our ancestors who watched the movement of the stars and talked to the gods. The traditionalist doesn't buy it and looks to ancient knowledge for real understanding, ignoring the overlords' and the conditioned masses' opinion. I am in this category vis a vis astrology. I know a guy who has made it a lifelong quest to collect documentation pertaining to Destroyed Libraries -- there's been hundreds of thousands throughout human history -- I'm a bit like him in that I look to knowledge they eliminated on purpose, not to the kind they propagated instead. Astrology related knowledge was being forbidden and destroyed throughout centuries. Possessing taoist astrology books was punishable by death during the rule of several dynasties. To me it always means the best recommendation of the study material anyone can offer.

 

2. The new age way. This is based on the conviction that knowledge accumulated by humanity is nothing much compared to what I, personally, can accomplish. Astrology may be right and good, but it's minor compared to what I, personally, can do to overrule it. I am so amazing, so wonderful, so superior to everything that went before that there's no reason for me to pay heed to any ancient knowledge -- I can outknow and outperform it all anytime. All you need is love, tralalalala, all you need is love, trululululu, all you need is love, love, love is all you need. Not that they love their neighbor any more than the average Joe does, but they use this (or some such) approach to establish their superiority to anyone bothering with anything in order to understand anything. Why bother? All you need is... fill in the blank... all you need is to be me, or someone singing my tune, and you've arrived.

 

3. The dismissive stance. The self-proclaimed "scientific method" aficionados, followers of the doctrine of Biomechanical Fundamentalism, have been told it's all bunk, and won't investigate, because the people who told them so hold degrees. They operate on the assumption that the academia somehow generates the truth. That they themselves may be in it for salaries and positions and tenures and sabbaticals and perks, but certain abstract "scientists" are in it for the truth, that they go to college and then do research and studies and so on in order to produce it, not in order to make a living and hopefully a career. These are perhaps the most idealistic people of them all, for they believe that others ("scientists") are better than they themselves are -- more honest, more courageous, more intelligent -- and so they take their word for anything they will declare about astrology and carry the message to the world for free. They are the overlords' dream come true: they police others and themselves for the sanctioned/prescribed knowledge (minus all the burned libraries and all the burned astrologers) to remain the only kind without being prompted any further -- initial conditioning is enough, they will "maintain" for the rest of their lives.

 

4. The bogus-astrology way. You know, all those "your horoscope for the month of July" columns published in general circulation magazines, and all those dabblers who write books about "your Sun sign" or "your Animal sign" and the countless websites whose source of study is those very books, and all the rest of it. This is not astrology, of course, but 99% of all consumers have been exposed to exactly this kind and told that that's what asrology is. Some bogus-astrology practitioners are in it for the business only and know it (e.g. the ones who write the columns) while others, having learned a lil' bit, feel equipped and empowered to "really" do it and so deceive honestly, i.e. they deceive themselves first and only then the recipient.

[henro]

Great post !!!!!

 

Especially this bit:

 

 

I'm a bit like him in that I look to knowledge they eliminated on purpose, not to the kind they propagated instead. Astrology related knowledge was being forbidden and destroyed throughout centuries. Possessing taoist astrology books was punishable by death during the rule of several dynasties. To me it always means the best recommendation of the study material anyone can offer.

Edited January 6, 2011 by robmix

[Taomeow]

Thank you, robmix! Glad you liked it!

[ben]

[Sunya]

Thanks for the response guys! Yeah I'm probably not going to see this guy. I am open to astrology though and would love to see a real astrologer. I just doubt the new age astrologies.

 

I've discerned four ways people look at astrology...

 

Thanks for your post. Really interesting, and I do agree with you. I myself am going down a path of science (psychologist), but I really only want to use the skills I gain there as supplementary skills along with those gained through meditation and energy work, the ancient way of healing. I also have a problem with people who claim the modern way as the best way, and I often get in arguments with dogmatic skeptics.

Edited January 7, 2011 by Sunya

[Sunya]

Well, alchemy is about overcoming your astrology, so for practitioners it may be that you find what I find, which is that the 'map' that astrology gives is outmoded: it shows what you came in with, but given the level of transformation one can effect, it seems fairly redundant information, depending on your level of self awareness and development, I guess. It may be more of interest to non self transformational types.

 

 

I used to study western astrology and in particular psychological astrology a la Liz Green, the Jungian analyst. People found it helpful in just the way that you are describing: to show them the archetypes that they are working with.

 

 

The predictive astrology will show planetary movements and trends coming up and how they relate to your particular chart aspects. So again, you need to be able to interpret the 'lay persons' reading, so that it applies to you personally, bearing in mind what evolution you have effected.

 

Yeah that makes a lot of sense to me that it may not apply if you're into self-transformation, but I'm still fairly young, almost 25, so I'm probably still dealing with a lot of past karma. Haven't fulled transformed it all yet. I do rather find it interesting how taking somebody's birth time can give you information about them. I don't really understand how that works. Wouldn't that mean that those born at the same time as you would have the same archetypes to deal with? I view karma as personal, though of course are interconnected to the universe at large. I'm just trying to figure out how the stars play into it.

[Birch]

It's a great topic! And it reminds me of "genetics" and the various theories around that. How not all environments will lead to the expression of a given "gene."

 

There's a idea such that whatever the stars' configuration, it reflects a set of circumstances on Earth and in a person as the latter is dependent on the Earth's environment and whatever influences that's under. So it's about things being "simultaneous." The prediction comes because we can predict the stars' positions and so read the "simultaneity" ahead.

 

Why this would have more influence at birth (I wonder why the entire conception to birth period isn't mentioned, or maybe it is in some applications but they don't explain it?) would seem to me to be because it's during that time that your environment actually shapes your nervous system and physical body more than any other time in your life.

 

So if you are born in a dark winter, you'll have a different amount of daylight to nourish you, you may be wrapped up tightly so you can't move and your mother may have been eating different foods (perhaps richer, more sugary) than someone born midsummer so what you eat will be different too.

 

Of course, with artificial lighting and heating and air con, canned baby milk and food and all that stuff, I wonder...

[Taomeow]

It's a great topic! And it reminds me of "genetics" and the various theories around that. How not all environments will lead to the expression of a given "gene."

 

There's a idea such that whatever the stars' configuration, it reflects a set of circumstances on Earth and in a person as the latter is dependent on the Earth's environment and whatever influences that's under. So it's about things being "simultaneous." The prediction comes because we can predict the stars' positions and so read the "simultaneity" ahead.

 

Why this would have more influence at birth (I wonder why the entire conception to birth period isn't mentioned, or maybe it is in some applications but they don't explain it?) would seem to me to be because it's during that time that your environment actually shapes your nervous system and physical body more than any other time in your life.

 

So if you are born in a dark winter, you'll have a different amount of daylight to nourish you, you may be wrapped up tightly so you can't move and your mother may have been eating different foods (perhaps richer, more sugary) than someone born midsummer so what you eat will be different too.

 

Of course, with artificial lighting and heating and air con, canned baby milk and food and all that stuff, I wonder...

 

Yeah, conception to birth is the most crucial time. (I don't usually analyze this period because I'm after practical applicability of the reading to real-life situations and decisions, and this part is of little pragmatic value post factum -- but I do dream of the day when a couple just planning to conceive a child would ask me about the best moment to do it. Traditional bazi readers in China were consulted in this preemptive manner for hundreds if not thousands of years -- which may be one reason why the Chinese are by far the most populous nation on earth today.)

 

In our species, since about the last third of the 20th century, nine out of ten pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion within days of conception (too early for the woman to know, in most cases. Source of info: Encyclopedia Britannica.) This is usually characteristic of a very unwell species and doesn't happen in healthy populations. So this fact alone can illustrate how much is decided long before one can take charge of one's own life -- the life itself, vs. death, for starters. To say nothing of, e.g., little things like your gender.

 

Birth is the next weightiest event -- the transition from one world, a water world with dual controls (self and mom, where too much intervention from extraneous controlling forces will result in self bailing out) to a dry land world with multiple controls (self, mom, dad, doctors, nurses, siblings, the government -- which decides what substances to inject into your bloodstream and how much to tell your mom about what's good for you -- she no longer knows, because her mom was also told by the government officials, and her mom before her). Infancy is the next transition -- from no neocortex to a developed one, i.e. from a "feeling baby" to a "thinking baby." Early childhood, next -- from "thinking baby" to "thinking-twice" child who learns how to feel one thing, think another, and say yet another, in an attempt to please everybody involved (self, mom, dad, the government, etc.). Every step of the way, the role of self is minimal in this process until much later -- when it is much too late. By the time you get any say in it for the first time, you are 95% complete -- of which 40% to 80% is irreversible. You are already the final product when you just start thinking of shaping yourself into something else for the first time. If you're thinking of shaping yourself into something else, that's part of what "the final product" is like: someone not satisfied with how he or she has come out. The imperative toward perfecting oneself is part of the "I'm a work in progress" mentality characteristic of this particular "final product," and can last till the end of one's life -- without having actually changed anything significant about 95% of what you were shaped into to begin with. (The sculpture is not aware of the chisel... or, rather, until the sculpture becomes aware of the chisel, it will never know what it is and how it came to be what it is -- much less change it. Now a sculpture laying its hands on the chisel... that's astrology!)

 

But the stars and moon and sky are earlier still... and therefore they determine things way before, and way ahead, of your "personal decisions," your "genetics," or your "social environment." Of course there's this new age idea that it's all our own doing, that we "choose" our parents, "choose" our circumstances in advance, and are born into this or that set-up as an act of free will. Doesn't account for 9 out of 10 spontaneous abortions of course, but new age paradigms are seldom bothered by facts.

 

Knowing astrology is knowing the mind of tao. The mind of tao is the kind that never forgets. What went before your birth is something it never forgot, never made irrelevant. It knows that if you plant an acorn, you are going to reap an oak tree, not a carrot. And vice versa. Astrology (Chinese, at least -- I don't know much about Western) figures out how to help the carrot grow into a healthy plant, and sometimes it involves irrigation, and at other times, drainage, and so on. It doesn't facilitate ego trips whereby carrots fancy themselves oak trees. Which may be the reason carrots who fancy themselves oak trees don't like it. Or the reason carrots who are happy being carrots all the way like it. Or the reason oak trees hoping to live to their natural lifespan of over a thousand years like the idea of trying to avoid that lightning which can strike them down while they are still very immature and very vulnerable. Let it strike four hundred years later -- but let's figure out how to grow till then so as not to attract it...

 

...anyway, I'm rambling... over and out.

[Taomeow]

Great post!

 

Wow,' punishable by death' must have made the methods very accurate but I don't doubt this at all. Qi Mun Dun Jia was used very successfully in war and I believe some dynasties owed their existence to Taoist astrological knowledge. When you get to the top you guard the Way there - makes me wonder about today's elite but I digress.

Further proof of the potency of Chinese Astrology can be found in how sophisticated their Astronomical instruments were, modern astronomical observatories derive from Chinese equatorial method and the importance of the pole star- now every one say a big thank you to shamanism.

 

Any culture that had such advanced knowledge new how to embody the stars, I know this from direct experience.

 

Very true... and if you feel like sharing that direct experience, I'm all ears!

[Birch]

Yeah, conception to birth is the most crucial time. (I don't usually analyze this period because I'm after practical applicability of the reading to real-life situations and decisions, and this part is of little pragmatic value post factum -- but I do dream of the day when a couple just planning to conceive a child would ask me about the best moment to do it. Traditional bazi readers in China were consulted in this preemptive manner for hundreds if not thousands of years -- which may be one reason why the Chinese are by far the most populous nation on earth today.)

 

In our species, since about the last third of the 20th century, nine out of ten pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion within days of conception (too early for the woman to know, in most cases. Source of info: Encyclopedia Britannica.) This is usually characteristic of a very unwell species and doesn't happen in healthy populations. So this fact alone can illustrate how much is decided long before one can take charge of one's own life -- the life itself, vs. death, for starters. To say nothing of, e.g., little things like your gender.

 

Birth is the next weightiest event -- the transition from one world, a water world with dual controls (self and mom, where too much intervention from extraneous controlling forces will result in self bailing out) to a dry land world with multiple controls (self, mom, dad, doctors, nurses, siblings, the government -- which decides what substances to inject into your bloodstream and how much to tell your mom about what's good for you -- she no longer knows, because her mom was also told by the government officials, and her mom before her). Infancy is the next transition -- from no neocortex to a developed one, i.e. from a "feeling baby" to a "thinking baby." Early childhood, next -- from "thinking baby" to "thinking-twice" child who learns how to feel one thing, think another, and say yet another, in an attempt to please everybody involved (self, mom, dad, the government, etc.). Every step of the way, the role of self is minimal in this process until much later -- when it is much too late. By the time you get any say in it for the first time, you are 95% complete -- of which 40% to 80% is irreversible. You are already the final product when you just start thinking of shaping yourself into something else for the first time. If you're thinking of shaping yourself into something else, that's part of what "the final product" is like: someone not satisfied with how he or she has come out. The imperative toward perfecting oneself is part of the "I'm a work in progress" mentality characteristic of this particular "final product," and can last till the end of one's life -- without having actually changed anything significant about 95% of what you were shaped into to begin with. (The sculpture is not aware of the chisel... or, rather, until the sculpture becomes aware of the chisel, it will never know what it is and how it came to be what it is -- much less change it. Now a sculpture laying its hands on the chisel... that's astrology!)

 

But the stars and moon and sky are earlier still... and therefore they determine things way before, and way ahead, of your "personal decisions," your "genetics," or your "social environment." Of course there's this new age idea that it's all our own doing, that we "choose" our parents, "choose" our circumstances in advance, and are born into this or that set-up as an act of free will. Doesn't account for 9 out of 10 spontaneous abortions of course, but new age paradigms are seldom bothered by facts.

 

Knowing astrology is knowing the mind of tao. The mind of tao is the kind that never forgets. What went before your birth is something it never forgot, never made irrelevant. It knows that if you plant an acorn, you are going to reap an oak tree, not a carrot. And vice versa. Astrology (Chinese, at least -- I don't know much about Western) figures out how to help the carrot grow into a healthy plant, and sometimes it involves irrigation, and at other times, drainage, and so on. It doesn't facilitate ego trips whereby carrots fancy themselves oak trees. Which may be the reason carrots who fancy themselves oak trees don't like it. Or the reason carrots who are happy being carrots all the way like it. Or the reason oak trees hoping to live to their natural lifespan of over a thousand years like the idea of trying to avoid that lightning which can strike them down while they are still very immature and very vulnerable. Let it strike four hundred years later -- but let's figure out how to grow till then so as not to attract it...

 

...anyway, I'm rambling... over and out.

 

Great post. And I especially liked this part.

 

"Of course there's this new age idea that it's all our own doing, that we "choose" our parents, "choose" our circumstances in advance, and are born into this or that set-up as an act of free will. Doesn't account for 9 out of 10 spontaneous abortions of course, but new age paradigms are seldom bothered by facts."

[Ninpo-me-this-ninjutsu-me-that]

 

Traditional bazi readers in China were consulted in this preemptive manner for hundreds if not thousands of years -- which may be one reason why the Chinese are by far the most populous nation on earth today.)

 

 

No, that would be because they can't control their ejaculations and consider women to be used somewhat akin to cattle, and have little concern for the females sexual health...or pleasure for that matter.

[TheJourney]

in my experience, astrology is accurate.

[metal dog]

I like...

 

Chinese astrology.

The Indian Sidereal system, which is quite exotic.

And the Western system (I believe best developed by the Greeks).

 

These are quite different in many respects from one another.

I truly do value archetypal astrology taken from all three of these.

I am not so good with the "predictive" aspects of astrology...as I have not taken the time to know it well.

 

The Western system of astrology is a "sister" divination art with Tarot, Numerology and Kabbalah. They are to be used together.

 

I am also of the opinion that Kabbalah existed long before the modern "Jews" possessed it and claimed it for themselves.

It is not a Jewish creation, but much older. And much of the real deal is held and sequestered by the highest of the Rabbis.

 

I say this to mean that the modern term "Jew" used to mean something else than what it means today or even over the last couple thousand years. The term was not limited to an ethnicity, race or religion of any kind.

The term "Jew" was used metaphorically to describe someone who would be considered a learned and developed soul...a sage...no matter the race, country of origin, ethnicity or their religion.

The Jew was not defined by the dogma and edicts of a phallo-centric monotheistic religion claiming God's Chosen were the Jews of today. This is really no different than the idea of the "Master Race".

The Jew was superior, ethically superior by right thought and action...it is this that made him one of the "Chosen" or at least on a path toward that ideal.

 

It is for these reasons that I gravitate toward the Hermetic Qabbalah (which still undoubtedly comes from Jewish Kabbalah..as they had long since sequestered it before the Golden Dawn which was expounded upon greatly and does not hold such an elitist perspective concerning divinity.

 

A primary concern of Hermetic Qabalah is the nature of divinity, its conception of which is quite markedly different from that presented in monotheistic religions; in particular there is not the strict separation between divinity and man which is seen in monotheisms.[2] Hermetic Qabalah holds to the neoplatonic conception that the manifest universe, of which material creation is a part, arose as a series of emanations from the godhead.