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mystichorary wrote:
1. Astrology is LOA in action

We aren't the way we are because of our birth data. Turn it around. We are born at a particular time because of who we are. We don't come here with a clean slate. We have core values, beliefs, .

Example: Accomplishment isn't one of my core values because I was born with 3 planets in the 10th house. I was born with three planets in the 10th house because one of my core values is accomplishment.
This assumes that your "soul", with its core values, existed before your physical body, which is an idea belonging to myths made up before modern (empirical) science told us otherwise. The modern rational view is that consciousness as we know it derives from complexity of organisms.

This is not to say that the whole universe is not consciousness, of a sort, but certainly not of the complexity of a human being.

And we still don't really know if Ariens act as leaders because of any astrological or seasonal influence, or because they have been told by their mothers, friends and astrology books that this is what they are supposed to do. ie, prognostication as magic. To find out we'd have to look at people brought up totally without astrology.

Personally I think that astrology was meant to be all about the Law Of Attraction and magic. The kabbalistic Tree Of Life, for example, which was derived from Egyptian and Babylonion wisdom before the OT, uses the planets an inner symbols of consciousness, not outer, fatalistic pushers of destiny. The idea was that through understanding how our own consciousness works, we could understand the Mind Of God.

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There are two views.

One regards the planets in the zodiac and houses essentially as a cosmic clockwork. In this view, the celestial bodies don't cause anything to happen more than the hands on the clock in your kitchen do. However, the "planet hands" don't show only the quantity of time (chronos but also its quality (kairos). This view is also in line in with C. G. Jung's theory of synchronicity.

There is another view of great antiquity, that was, with some variations, universally accepted before the Copernican revolution. It was the one that Astrologers, Hermeticists, neo-Platonists, Kabbalists, Astral Magicians and Alchemists once all employed.

Here the Universe is seen as having a body (Earth), a soul (the planets), a mind (the stars) and a spirit (the Prime mover; Plotin speaks of this level as "the One"). The Divine Light constantly emanated from the One gets transmitted and transformed by the celestial body on its way to the Earth plane.

An individual is a representation of this Universe on a microcosmic scale yet remains connected to it - as it exists in the omnipresent world soul (Anima Mundi), or a sea of "energy" (Ether, Prana, Ch'i).

In more modern times, Theosophists like Bailey and Rudhyar adopted a variation of this idea. Here, especially the chakras are the links between the individual and the Cosmos.

Currently, many Astrologers abandoned the theory of celestial influences, however - in a useless attempt to make Astrology more "acceptable" to modern science. This may have been hastily as, for example, the experiments of Anthroposophists like the Koliskos seem to demonstrate the direct influence of the planets on the behaviour of metals in solution, as well as on plant growth.

It should further be noted that modern science's understanding of nature turns out to be still very limited as i.e. science still doesn't have a clue what well over 90% of the Universe consists of, and its expedient "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy" concepts may be a modern version of the ancient Ether concept in disguise.

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I should add that the Dark Matter/Dark Energy concepts link to the discovery of the Vacuum by modern physics as an omnipresent influence of the physical world. Further, David Bohm's research strongly suggests that there is a hidden structure ("implicit order") underlying the apparently chaotic Vacuum.

Moreover, the Vacuum has been theorized and partially demonstrated to have direct effects not least on biological organisms (Hameroff, Tiller, Bischof, Bearden).

Add 1 + 1...

However, none of this is to suggest that Jung's acausal synchronicity model isn't equally valid as an explanation of how Astrology functions. In my opinion, the two models (may I call them "temporal" and "spatial", respectively) rather supplement than contradict each other.

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What it boils down to, Barbara:

I totally agree with you that Astrology should be reconciled with science. I have in fact dedicated most of my available time to this end during the last 20 odd years.

But please, don't limit your definition and understanding of science to the obsolete models of the late 19th century that did not take into account relativity and quantum mechanics and their implications for consciousness.

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Michael Sternbach wrote:What it boils down to, Barbara:

I totally agree with you that Astrology should be reconciled with science. I have in fact dedicated most of my available time to this end during the last 20 odd years.

But please, don't limit your definition and understanding of science to the obsolete models of the late 19th century that did not take into account relativity and quantum mechanics and their implications for consciousness.
Thanks for your overview of some esoteric theories - I'm most familiar with the kabbalistic Tree Of Life representation. And I like to see the solar system as a clock, with planetary cycles having a resonance with human psychological and biological cycles. There is a psychologist named Daniel Levinson who has done research into these stages of mental and emotional growth which vaguely correspond to Jupiter, Saturn and fractions of the Outer planets.

I do think that quantum mechanics and the exploration of Dark Matter could be important, and I'm a big fan of physicist Lawrence Krauss. I've already penciled in dark matter to the sphere called Binah on the Tree Of Life, represented by Saturn, or the contracting energy of the universe.

As far as the Law Of Attraction goes, each and every one of our own individual portion of dark matter could be what contracts light and thought onto the screen of imagination, but I think we'll have to wait a long time for physicists to even think of applying what they learn from the large Hadron collider to consciousness.

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Barbara wrote:Thanks for your overview of some esoteric theories -
If only super-concisely! Of course, I can specify and elaborate on any of the aspects that I have touched upon, on request.
I'm most familiar with the kabbalistic Tree Of Life representation.
Connecting the ToL (actually, its Middle Pillar) with Plotin's aforementioned neo-Platonic model of the Universe may be done in this fashion:

The One = Kether
World Mind = Tiphareth
World Soul = Yesod
World Body = Malkuth
And I like to see the solar system as a clock, with planetary cycles having a resonance with human psychological and biological cycles. There is a psychologist named Daniel Levinson who has done research into these stages of mental and emotional growth which vaguely correspond to Jupiter, Saturn and fractions of the Outer planets.
Thanks, I will google him up.

Another pretty obvious example is the proven sensitivity of the pineal gland to the Sun. Surely, this will be interpreted materialistically in modern neuroscience, but it is by no means coincidental that the pineal gland is traditionally seen as connected to the Crown Chakra, which itself corresponds with the Sun according to some Vedic Astrologers, and whose function is to connect as to the Universe at large.
I do think that quantum mechanics and the exploration of Dark Matter could be important, and I'm a big fan of physicist Lawrence Krauss. I've already penciled in dark matter to the sphere called Binah on the Tree Of Life, represented by Saturn, or the contracting energy of the universe.
Interesting view. We could then consider Dark Energy as belonging to Chockmah which is the original masculine expanding force, just like Binah is feminine and receptive. Let's not forget that Dark Energy is thought of as a force that leads to an ever accelerating expansion of the Universe, according to modern Cosmology.
As far as the Law Of Attraction goes, each and every one of our own individual portion of dark matter could be what contracts light and thought onto the screen of imagination, but I think we'll have to wait a long time for physicists to even think of applying what they learn from the large Hadron collider to consciousness.
But we can try it! ;)