perhaps not everything is lost for astrology

[Hokulele]

Firstly, thank you Hokulele for the treatise on natural philosophy. Personally, I still like to believe in a creator, and the language of astrology, and especially the kabalistic tree of life, is the best thing that I have to try to understand that concept, although I doubt that I will ever understand it completely.

This implies that you will never be able to look at information objectively, as it would conflict with what you personally believe. Sad to say, but the universe does not work according to rules you would like to believe.

You assume that I am blaming past events on the planets or stars, but as I tried to explain above, fate is not karma. What happened in the past, say as result of one person's action, was a combination of the karma accrued by that person from even further back action, and the action done by that person at that moment with their "free will". Every time we do something with our free-will, we change our previous karma and accrue new karma. So that ultimately, we cannot blame anyone for the past but ourselves.

Once we understand this concept of karma and free-will, we can hopefully see how life has a purpose - it is a test of a sort, or an obstacle course if you like, to see how well we can meet the blueprint of our birthchart, use the good stuff (talents, abundance, intelligence) and not waste it, and overcome the more difficult stuff through wise application of universal principles, which are themselves represented by astrology.

There is no karma, there is no free will, and there is no purpose to life. Self-delusion is what keeps the purveyors of woo in business.

Folks, there is nothing you can do when someone refuses to apply critical thinking to their cherished beliefs. If there are any more technical questions about any of this, let me know, but I have no interest in these fuzzy topics. Have fun.

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Hokolulu shaid :

Sad to say, but the universe does work according to rules you would like to believe.

Shorely shome mishtake ?

 

[Hokulele]

Yup, fixed.

 

[Aquila]

Um, from the Ceres web page you pointed us to:
That's a (set of vague) predictions.
You appear to be implying that all statements about astrology making predictions are false. What does astrology do then? Please clarify.

Astrology says, look, you have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The transit does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "energy" of the transit to produce the result that you want.

I think what happened formerly, in the days before psychological astrology, a long time ago, for example with people like Nostradamus, was that no one understood this principle of free -will/karma. Astrology was really nothing more than a sort of voodoo, superstition and very unethical. For example, suppose Nostradamus predicted that a king would die in battle, or in a duel. How do you think that negative prediction affected the poor king? This was nothing short of black magic! If people are scared by the perceived power of astrologers, then they are going to override thier self-conscious free will and cause their own downfall by negative imagery.

Perhaps Stevie Wonder said it best: "when you believe in things you don't understand, you suffer, superstition"

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Hokolulu shaid :

Shorely shome mishtake ?

Damn! I was about to give up my tag line.

 

[Janot]

Astrology says, look, you have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The transit does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "energy" of the transit to produce the result that you want.

So you apply astrology to achieve your chosen result? Can you explain the nature of the "energy" which has such intriguing quotation marks?

 

[Aquila]

So you apply astrology to achieve your chosen result? Can you explain the nature of the "energy" which has such intriguing quotation marks?

OK, take out the word energy and use the word symbolism.

Sorry folks, but I do not have any more time to devote to this thread.
If you have any more questions about astrology then I suggest you go and visit one of the internet's astrology forums, for example www.astro.com

or maybe someone else can take over explaining astrology on this one.

I'm taking a break from the forum over Thanksgiving but look forward to seeing some of you again on other threads in the future.

 

[nathan]

Astrology says, look, you have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The transit does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "energy" of the transit to produce the result that you want.

You've later replaced 'energy' with 'symbolism'. So basically what you're saying is 'astrology says stuff. You can decide whether you want to do things that make that stuff come about, or you can decide to do things that make other stuff happen'.

a) for stuff that is under one's control, how is that different from 'you can decide what you want to do'? Why the astrology stuff in the first place?
b) for stuff that is not under one's control, what does it mean? Or does astrology only talk about stuff that is under one's control?

 

[Gnu Ordure]

hi Hokulele,

btw, sorry, I wasn't being a grammar nazi there, I saw you were on-line and I guessed you'd want to make the edit while you still could...

I'm curious about something else you said :

there is no free will.

I'm just surprised that you make that statement so definitely.

I don't want to discuss the issue here; I'm only interested in how you can justify saying there is no free will as if it were a statement of fact, as undisputed as the world being round.

As far as I know, philosophers have been arguing about free will since the beginning of philosophy - and they still are. Unless I missed an announcement, the issue is still open.


Gnu.

 

[Janot]

OK, take out the word energy and use the word symbolism.

Sorry folks, but I do not have any more time to devote to this thread.

.

So, you can't explain, so you run off. That says it all really, doesn't it?

 

[ben m]

OK, take out the word energy and use the word symbolism.

Yay symbolism! Since it's come around again, I will again refer readers to my Shakespeare post.

I just realized: you know what is most like astrology? Refrigerator poetry magnets. You've got a collection of random words available: for fridge poetry the words are "love", "regret", "accordion", "walk", "if" and so on. For a natal chart, the symbols available are "mars in ares", "saturn square aquarius", and so on.

Some random toy-designer decides, without knowing you, which words will end up in your poetry-box. Your birthday decides, without knowing anything, which symbols end up in your astrology-box.

Thereafter, "reading" a natal chart is exactly the same process as writing with fridge poetry. You can always find something to say if you look hard enough; with enough practice, you can find something meaningful-sounding. You can't say totally arbitrary things, though, since the library is restricted, so you might feel like the message is restricted---"wow, this fridge poetry set is really forcing me to write nature poems[/I]"---and perhaps this tricks you into looking for meaning.

But there is no reason to believe that one person is a "better fit" to one poetry-box than to another; there is no evidence (and Aquila never attempted to provide any) that your chart is a better fit to you than any other chart.

It's just, as Aquila says, "symbolism".

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

OK, take out the word energy and use the word symbolism.

Sorry folks, but I do not have any more time to devote to this thread.
If you have any more questions about astrology then I suggest you go and visit one of the internet's astrology forums, for example www.astro.com

or maybe someone else can take over explaining astrology on this one.

I'm taking a break from the forum over Thanksgiving but look forward to seeing some of you again on other threads in the future.

Sorry to see you go.

"or maybe someone else can take over explaining astrology". I was waiting for someone to start. Maybe I can help -- it doesn't work -- there.

 

[PixyMisa]

There are three things we know for sure about astrology:

1. It can't possibly work.
2. It doesn't work.
3. People believe in it anyway.

 

[Hokulele]

hi Hokulele,

btw, sorry, I wasn't being a grammar nazi there, I saw you were on-line and I guessed you'd want to make the edit while you still could...

Sorry, I saw a comment that was simply a nitpick (although a valid one) combined with what appeared to be a deliberate mangling of my screen name and reacted based on that. My screen nick is a bit much, but it has been abused in the past, which makes me a little wary when people start out that way.

I'm curious about something else you said :

I'm just surprised that you make that statement so definitely.

I don't want to discuss the issue here; I'm only interested in how you can justify saying there is no free will as if it were a statement of fact, as undisputed as the world being round.

As far as I know, philosophers have been arguing about free will since the beginning of philosophy - and they still are. Unless I missed an announcement, the issue is still open.


Gnu.

Compatibilist or Libertarian? Aquila seems to think that people are can take charge of their future regardless of what astrology tells them which implies libertarian free will. Since Aquila does not seem interested in pursuing this, and rather than derail this thread, I strongly recommend you use the Tag Searching and look up the very large numbers of threads dedicated to this topic over in R&P.

 

[Gnu Ordure]

Sorry, I saw a comment that was simply a nitpick (although a valid one) combined with what appeared to be a deliberate mangling of my screen name and reacted based on that...

Heh-heh.

Sorry again, Hokulele - I am too subtle sometimes...

... or, now I think about it, this is possibly a cultural misunderstanding, as the phrase "Shorely shome mishtake", which I believe originated in the English satirical magazine Private Eye, won't necessarily be recognized everywhere.

Anyway, Hokulele, just as all three words of the original phrase are deliberately mangled in order to imply extreme inebriation, I likewise deliberately mangled your moniker for comedic effect.

Possibly very little effect, I now concede.

... sigh ...

Compatibilist or Libertarian? Aquila seems to think that people are can take charge of their future regardless of what astrology tells them which implies libertarian free will. Since Aquila does not seem interested in pursuing this, and rather than derail this thread, I strongly recommend you use the Tag Searching and look up the very large numbers of threads dedicated to this topic over in R&P.

You're missing my point, Hokulele.

As you say, the problem of free will is a topic of intense contemporary debate, as it has always been.

And as I said, my understanding is that this debate is still unresolved.

So my question to you is, how you can state to Aquila as a fact , with no qualification, that "there is no free will" ?


Gnu.

 

[Hokulele]

Heh-heh.

Sorry again, Hokulele - I am too subtle sometimes...

... or, now I think about it, this is possibly a cultural misunderstanding, as the phrase "Shorely shome mishtake", which I believe originated in the English satirical magazine Private Eye, won't necessarily be recognized everywhere.

Anyway, Hokulele, just as all three words of the original phrase are deliberately mangled in order to imply extreme inebriation, I likewise deliberately mangled your moniker for comedic effect.

Possibly very little effect, I now concede.

... sigh ...

No worries. I am not familiar with English (British?) publications, and so reacted based on what I read, rather than what was implied. Happens to the best of us.

You're missing my point, Hokulele.

As you say, the problem of free will is a topic of intense contemporary debate, as it has always been.

And as I said, my understanding is that this debate is still unresolved.

So my question to you is, how you can state to Aquila as a fact , with no qualification, that "there is no free will" ?


Gnu.

Again, if you are truly interested in the topic, please review the various threads in R&P on this topic.

 

[Cuddles]

You assume that I am blaming past events on the planets or stars, but as I tried to explain above, fate is not karma. What happened in the past, say as result of one person's action, was a combination of the karma accrued by that person from even further back action, and the action done by that person at that moment with their "free will". Every time we do something with our free-will, we change our previous karma and accrue new karma. So that ultimately, we cannot blame anyone for the past but ourselves.

OK, so we've established that astrology can't say anything about the future. Now you say that astrology can't tell us anything about the past or present. What exactly is it that astrology can do?

 

[steenkh]

The stars open up pathways that we can fill with our "free will". If we do so, astrology is vindicated. If we do not do so, it is our own fault, and astrology is also vindicated: This is proof that astrology really works!

 

[NobbyNobbs]

Hokulele - It is true that the terminology used by astrologers is confusing. The original meaning of planet is 'wanderer', and, I think that since the Sun and Moon were seen to wonder along the ecliptic every day and night, they were called planets by astrologers. Although Ceres is now termed a dwarf planet it has been known as an asteoid for many years.

As for questioning whether my mother's heart disease was linked to diesel fumes, I have heard several medical professionals speculate the same thing.



Maybe you could tell me since you know about alchemy.

Sigh. Ok, Aquila, here's my limited but probably more accurate knowledge as far as this goes.

The ancients (Greeks, in particular) noticed that some stars acted differently than others. These "wanderers" didn't cross the sky the same way the rest of the stars did, but in all other aspects they appeared the same.

To the best of my knowledge, the ancients actually noticed a real difference between the stars, the sun, and the moon. I highly doubt that at any time they referred to these last two as "planets".

Astrology says, look, you have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The transit does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "energy" of the transit to produce the result that you want.

If you come back, please explain how what you've written here is any different than the following:

"Look, you have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The does not predict anything and is completely meaningless. You have the opportunity to use your free will to produce the result that you want, regardless of whether the transit would have ever happened or not, since that's really what free will means anyway."

 

[ben m]

Aquila says:

Astrology says, look, you have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The transit does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "energy" of the transit to produce the result that you want.

NobbyNobbs asks how this is different than:

"Look, you have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The does not predict anything and is completely meaningless. You have the opportunity to use your free will to produce the result that you want, regardless of whether the transit would have ever happened or not, since that's really what free will means anyway."

Or, I might add, how is it different from:

look, you do not have this transit coming up to your birthchart. The lack of the transit does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "gap" of the missing transit to produce the result that you want.

look, you have this transit coming up in your city councilperson's birthchart. The transit does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "energy" of the transit to produce the result that you want.

look, you have this rhinoceros coming up in the zoo. The rhinoceros does not predict anything. You have the opportunity to use your free will to use the "energy" of the rhinoceros to produce the result that you want.

look. You have energy and free will. You have the opportunity to use your free will to produce the result that you want.

Again, Aquila---what's different with the "energy of the transit" and without it? Transit or no transit, conjunction or no conjunction, the result is that you use free will to do whatever you want.