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Hi Juan,
The real you today is ignored, and instead an indirect method is used in which the birth chart represents you today, even though the chart is actually a representation of something that happened a long time ago (birth).
(emphasized by me)

Sorry to interrupt the ongoing discussion, what should be the best way to match or correlate the current transits with a chart which represents ME? Should we match current transits with a progressed chart? Just want to know if you have any suggestions.
Regards

Morpheus

https://horusastropalmist.wordpress.com/

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Juan wrote: This is not what Im' saying by a long stretch, so let me try to clarify it, once more.
Ah perhaps I misunderstood or misread a point you had made, I had thought you made the analogy that transits do not represent anything astronomical - whilst I don't disagree with the conclusion that astrology is not a natural science I thought it a little vague to (as I understood it) make a criticism of astrologers who abstract their data. I've read this post and re-read the post where I felt that you were saying this and I can see where I may have made my misunderstanding.

However again you imply again here that astrologers are not using the 'real' coordinates of the planet, but again, I don't see why running a piece of data through a translation tool or a further abstraction is such a big deal that it need to be noteworthy - true astrologers often do not use declination but that's because the data is filtered in such a way so as to exclude it deliberately because they feel it is not always necessary. There are cases where they feel the data is necessary and they include it during those instances. For example it's not always necessary to know the depth of the oceans or the height of mountains if we just want to draw a map of a terrain - in this case we're excluding a z-axis of information. In other circumstances it may be more necessary, such as a topographic survey, and that information is included again. Of course this is all outside the argument of natural science - I'm not arguing against that - I'm just curious why it is so remarkable that astrologers do not use all axes of information at their disposal when so many other fields also do not? Yes, astrologers do not include a 'y axis' but what of it? Why is that relevant to anything? I don't understand.

Maybe you only made these points directly in relation to natural science etc. so okay fine, but otherwise I'm not really sure why it is worth focusing on. Sure we could do with including a better calibre of calculation etc of course.
Why? Because it is not meant to be (let alone be used as) a chart of the sky.
I think I agree with what you're saying, that the chart is not a diagram of the actual sky as seen from our location.
What Astrology does instead (in the case of transits) is refer the present positions to the chart of the instant of time when you were born, and assume that this is you. The real you today is ignored, and instead an indirect method is used in which the birth chart represents you today, even though the chart is actually a representation of something that happened a long time ago (birth). This can be possible only by way of metaphor, the relationship between you and the chart of the moment you were born is metaphorical, it can exist only in the imagination.
Actually I think what happens here is that fluctuating data is juxtaposed against static data for the purposes of comparison. I do not think astrologers look at the chart, any chart, and think "this is you", instead they think "this represents you or part of you in some way". Transits are the same. To keep an analogy, the business analyst will compare fluctuating profit margins against a static set of data, perhaps last year's quarter, and imply certain meanings from this fluctuation as it compares to that static data. Astrologers do the same, the compare fluctuating data (changing planets) against static data (natal chart) and suggest it implies something.
But this square is not happening in the sky right now (there are no 2 jupiters in the sky), it can happen only in the imagination.
But astrologers do not think it happens here and now with two jupiters, any more than business analysts think there are two '3rd quarters' in a year. In this case a square can be seen as a particular relationship between Data 1 and Data 2 - but why is this worth noting? A similar analogy may be that we go 'in the red' compared to last year - but there's no money out there that's actually red and we don't have two third quarters either. All we're doing is comparing and making note of what kind of comparison comes out of it and doing something or implying something as a result. If I compare Data 1 against Data 2 and Data 2 is in an adverse relationship to Data 1 (for example by being less than it) then we imply something - the company is not making as much profit. We do similar things with the relationship between Data 1 and Data 2 in astrology.
The birth chart in Astrology --regardless of what we believe-- is USED as a model, a tool to model the reality of the individual throughout all life and beyond, kind of a "forever" model of you, it is not and has never been used as a map of planetary or zodiacal influences at the moment of the first breadth.
Just for clarity, I don't disagree with any of this - astrology is a tool to model a variety of things, our own lives included.

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Horatio wrote:Sorry to interrupt the ongoing discussion, what should be the best way to match or correlate the current transits with a chart which represents ME? Should we match current transits with a progressed chart? Just want to know if you have any suggestions.
I think it is fine the way it is normally done (I personally never do trasits to a progression). The point is not that there is anything wrong with the way it is done, that's just the way Astrology works. The point is that the actual influence on your physical organism (your brain, your blood) is ignored by Astrology. We cannot chart what is unknown to us. Instead, we chart the interaction with a symbolical you (the birth chart) which represents you because of a cultural convention, a metaphor. No "celestial influence" is involved here, what we are charting is some specific conditions of your life at some specific moment of time, by means of celestial coordinates, but these coordinates --because of the way astrologers use them-- cannot represent celestial "influence".

Juan

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Paul wrote:I'm just curious why it is so remarkable that astrologers do not use all axes of information at their disposal when so many other fields also do not? Yes, astrologers do not include a 'y axis' but what of it? Why is that relevant to anything? I don't understand.
the relevance is in terms of what many astrologers believe. Astrology is essentially the manipulation and interpretion of analogically manipulated celestial coordinates in the context of human affairs. But when you interpret a Moon/Venus exact (partile) zodiacal conjunction by longitude in the 7th house, and, looking at the sky find out that the exact longitudinal conjunction happened 1-1/2 hours later in the 8th house, and their mutual distance was not 0 degrees as in the chart but 12 or 15 degrees, then you are not working with what is happening in the sky, but with is happening in the chart. The relationship with the sky becomes tenuous, indirect. Nothing wrong with that except believing that you are working directly with an event observable in the sky. In the sky there was no such event, like there are no transits, no progressions, directions, and so on.

I don't have time now for a full reply. In the threads I linked you can read how some other contributors explain it (it seems to me you haven't read #5304, I suggest you do). I would like to quote some of them briefly here:

Kenneth Irving, former editor of American Astrology:
"The meaning in a birth chart is really a set of mathematical and philosophical constructs mentally overlaid on a diagram that is a bare outline of what one might actually experience if watching, and experiencing, the changing panorama of the sky"
Ren? (3D) writes:
"I think we can put it in other words: the physical reality of the heaven is not reflected in a conventional ecliptic-projection based chart. It?s as simple as that.
Once we have recognised that, we can choose what the basis of our delineation is. If we accept that projections on a plane ? ecliptic, horizon, meridian, equator, prime vertical, or time based or spherical mundane relationships ? are effective, meaningful points, and we also accept geometrical relations (?aspects?) between them, then we already have a great choice of astrological techniques.
Intersections of planes, if accepted as effective points, give you the ASC, MC and the Nodes.
... We just have to be aware of what we are doing and why.
Marc Edmund Jones explains it this way (emphasis mine):
"What does not have general understanding however is the inescapable circumstance that as astrological techniques gain their effectiveness in an advanced refinement or specialization of meaning through the various forms of remove in relationship they depart increasingly from the foundational or literal realities of celestial mechanics. This shift to more and more symbolical designation is represented most familiarly from the very beginning by the distinctive specificities with which the significators are endowed when placed in a geocentric structure. The process continues as symbols are established in layer upon layer of particular and varying but logically ordered context, and while horoscopy in its illimitable range of analytical judgement is thus ever making use of the heavenly phenomena it actually comes to employ them only most incidentally in their original and material or least symbolical base.
my own summary back then:
"An astrological chart is made of superimposing semantic and classification structures modelled after the geometry of celestial mechanics, but these structures (signs, planets, houses...) are a reflection not of the heavens but of the analytic structure of the human mind. The standard astrological chart is designed not to represent the heavens but to be used as an analytical tool, and therefore it does not refer back to the heavens but to human experience and the human mind."
Juan

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Juan wrote: the relevance is in terms of what many astrologers believe.
Okay, if it's just a matter of correcting what flawed assumptions astrologers may have regarding their astronomy, then so be it. I don't have an issue with that. I was thinking more that you were criticising astrologers (generally, perhaps even yourself included) for not taking into account things like declination or suggesting that as a result of not doing so that we're not dealing with an astronomical reality - we still are, it's just that the data we work with is 'filtered' so as to only work with longitude (for whatever reason). The conjunction still happens 'in the sky' it's just that it only happens when projected onto one plane. What we work with is the manipulated data rather than the raw data - but then there's nothing noteworthy or unique about this to astrology. Of course if astrologers think a conjunction zodiacally infers a two planets occupying the same spot in the sky then yes, you're right to clarify.

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Juan wrote:
using lunar parallax is even more marginal. This affetcs significantly the timing of ingresses and returns, the timing of new and full moons, the timing of primary directions of the moon. The difference in the timing of lunar celestial events when parallax is considered is often more than 1 hour, but this effect is disregarded buy the grat majority.

Juan
hi juan,

i am not sure if you are familiar with the research on the parallax corrected moon position that was done by david cochrane.. cochrane is the founder of cosmic patterns software used by a number of astrologers. he went into this thinking that it would result in greater accuracy but was surprised to find that it didn't and that the traditionally calculated moon was more accurate. i don't know that his research is statistically verifiable, but it is interesting non the less. if you pick up his little book called 'astrolocality magic', he discusses this in chapter 6.. as the title of the book implies - the focus is on astrocartography, or relocation astrology, or locational astrology, for the most part and so the other idea you mention of what is often ignored by astrologers - paranatellontas, or the use of 'parans' is also a main feature of those who work with these type ideas.. perhaps you would enjoy working more time in that area of astrology, or perhaps you already do!

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Let's give consideration to the idea that the past is not dead, it is alive and constantly interacting with the present; this is a psychological truth but we may apply it to the earth too. The earth has a "memory", so that even if we don't see the past with our physical eyes, I think we can assume that it is still there, alive and moving. If we were able to see with our etheric body instead of our physical eyes, we would see the stream of time like a simultaneous tableau, time becomes fluid and the past, the present, and to some extent the future collide or coalesce in the river of time, all flowing in the creative movement of the moment.

When instead of our physical eyes we "see" with our etheric eyes, the world outside becomes something very different because we are inside the stream of time. Instead of the empty space of the sky we see the ecliptic as a path of light as if the Sun and the Moon, the full moons, were simultaneously at every single point of their yearly path. This yearly 12 folded tableau contains the earth memory of the seasons and lunations, it contains the accumulated experience of countless lunar and seasonal cycles of the earth repeated over and over. These cycles are not abstractions but a memory ("experience") of everything that is alive, that we can see projected unto the bidimensional flatness of the zodiacal band. The planets are no longer moving points of light along the zodiac, they are flowing luminous, living streams like drawings or writing in the sky, moving over the living memory of the earth.

Let's imagine that we go to the place where the Battle of Gettysburg took place. We stand at the exact spot where the main charges in battle occurred 150 years ago. These series of events still "exist" in the memory of the place and we interact with them, we let them affect us. This situation may be compared to a transit to a birth chart. As we return to the battlefield 150 years later, Jupiter returns to the place in the ecliptic that Mars occupied at the moment of birth. Birth "marked" this spot of the ecliptic in a "Mars in Gemini" way, so everytime Jupiter returns to this spot, it interacts with the Mars "mark" of the event in the past that is still moving, flowing, in constant dialog with the present and the future, dancing in the living stream of time.

Every human being contains a replica of this in his/her etheric body, at the level of the solar plexus. This inner sky or zodiac is marked by the most decisive moments or events of the individual's life (including obviously but not exclusively birth and conception), and it interacts with the "outer" zodiac, they are tied together, but the inner zodiac has a life of its own.

This to me is a "natural" reality, we don't see it but it happens nonetheless, and it affects or "influences" us. I think this is the natural, occult, spiritual basis of Astrology, which originated from ancient clairvoyance, but this is not the same as saying that the Astrology we practice today is the same thing. Our Greek horscopics is something entirely different, and the inability to see the difference is the source of great confusion.

So what is the difference?

Juan
Last edited by Juan on Sat Dec 01, 2012 10:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Paul wrote:However again you imply again here that astrologers are not using the 'real' coordinates of the planet
I never suggested that. I said they are using a discrete abstract coordinate as if it were the real planet, and this coordinate often does not reflect the position of the planet as can be observed in the sky. So astrologers work with the charting (the chart, the unidimensional coordinate), not with the planet.

One good example is the use of the 8 hypothetical planets in Uranian astrology, for which nothing real exists. Some people like to think that this is not astrology, but I think their effective successful use illustrates how and why astrology works, better than any other argument.
I don't see why running a piece of data through a translation tool or a further abstraction is such a big deal that it need to be noteworthy - true astrologers often do not use declination but that's because the data is filtered in such a way so as to exclude it deliberately because they feel it is not always necessary.
Nothing of this is "such a big deal" except when the coordinate is confused with the planet. There is nothing wrong with using discrete coordinates, this is astrology, but it is wrong when astrologers decieve themselves and think that what happens to that coordinate, the events they are interpreting, are always matched by what happens to the corresponding planet or point of light in the sky. The inclusion of declination (celestial latitide would be more correct) is added as a further qualifier to the position in longitude, so it doesn't change a thing.
I think what happens here is that fluctuating data is juxtaposed against static data for the purposes of comparison. I do not think astrologers look at the chart, any chart, and think "this is you", instead they think "this represents you or part of you in some way". Transits are the same.
This analogy cannot be applied to astrology unless the static data is that of an instant of time, as in a horoscope, not the processing of cummulative data from different moments, this is not astrology. Assuming it is, we agree as long as we understand what the "static data" represents. Comparing data of the past with data of the present is not the same thing as believing that the data of the present interacts organically with that of the past, and believing that this static data of the past represents an organic aspect of you in the present.

Celestial influence is a continuous organic and spiritual process, it cannot be modelled by means of an instantaneous chart of the past, this type of chart can only represent it by way of metaphor and convention. Your (bad) example demonstrates this point.
But astrologers do not think it happens here and now with two jupiters, any more than business analysts think there are two '3rd quarters' in a year. In this case a square can be seen as a particular relationship between Data 1 and Data 2 - but why is this worth noting?
You are using a really bad analogy because an astrological chart is not cumulative data, it is instantaneous data, and you are forgetting that what I'm criticizing is explaining astrology by means of celestial influence, not the use of transits by itself. It needs to be noted, and repeated as many times as necessary, that a common transit to a birth chart is not a phenomenon of nature, it is astronomically impossible, it is not an "external event" and parenthetically, can never be an example of "synchronicity" except at the moment of making an interpretation, the construction of meaning, which is a phenomenon of consciousness not of nature.
Okay, if it's just a matter of correcting what flawed assumptions astrologers may have regarding their astronomy, then so be it.
It is not the assumtpions regarding astronomy but the assumption regarding astrology due to flawed or insufficient astronomical knowledge.
I was thinking more that you were criticising astrologers (generally, perhaps even yourself included) for not taking into account things like declination or suggesting that as a result of not doing so that we're not dealing with an astronomical reality - we still are, it's just that the data we work with is 'filtered' so as to only work with longitude (for whatever reason).
I don't criticize or question the practice, it is the flawed assumptions, the misrepresentation of this practice that I criticize.
The conjunction still happens 'in the sky' it's just that it only happens when projected onto one plane.
So now you write "in the sky" in quotation marks. If the conjunction only happens when projected unto a geocentric flat plane, but not in the observed sky until 1 hour or so afterwards and only roughly approximate and in a different house, then it happens only in "the chart", in the charting, not in the sky, and the "correlation" with the experience of the sky or celestial phenomena that astrologers are said to work with is a misrepresentation, a myth, the correlation is with a chart for the astronomical reasons mentioned and also because about 90% of the chart does not correspond to anything that can be seen or thought to exist in the sky. Add to this that the chart usually is not of the present but of a long time ago (e.g. birth).

Juan
Last edited by Juan on Tue Dec 04, 2012 6:42 am, edited 8 times in total.

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james_m wrote:i am not sure if you are familiar with the research on the parallax corrected moon position that was done by david cochrane... he went into this thinking that it would result in greater accuracy but was surprised to find that it didn't and that the traditionally calculated moon was more accurate.
Was not aware of it, but knew about Alphee Lavoie's research that gave the opposite results. Personally I think this type of research is interesting and I would certainly enjoy it, but in practice I feel more inclined to use the geocentric moon, as is normally calculated. I feel it is more standard, more universal or "normalized", like I think all of astrology is. Remember I am not advocating that the way it is usually done is wrong or needs reform.

Juan