Just a few more comments on Hokulele's comments on the Tarnas video:
I have gotten through the first half of the interview, and these are my comments so far. The second half will have to wait until tomorrow or Friday, as I can't try to concentrate on this while my husband is watching TV.
But I will have to say, I am disappointed in that I am not impressed at all. It is the same errors and claims seen in many other videos and articles. Here are some specific comments on what I have seen thus far:
1) He is trying to have things both way. For example, he makes the statement that Saturn is about closing up, drawing in, contraction, etc. and Jupiter is about opening up, expanding, etc. So any conjunction will result in elements of both being present. Their elements contradict, but yet they can overlap. Um, if you take elements from the opposite ends of a spectrum, what exactly is left? This is often seen in cold readings where the psychic tries to cover all bases with a single statement such as, "You are generally a private person, but will share things with people when you feel you can trust them."
I did not like the way he expressed the combined effects of Jupiter and Saturn, and agree that it would provide an easy tool for "Barnum statements" like the one you mentioned. I would have said that Saturn
materializes Jupiter's influence of expansion, so we often see the conjunction in people who are teachers or have contributed something of worth to society. Galileo and Shakespeare both have it - both born in 1564.
2) He does reference Pluto. Why? It wasn't known historically, and has recently been demoted. Although I don't know what his answer would be, it would fit in with adding variables simply to increase the chances that something in someone's chart will match that he does elsewhere.
The outer planets (dwarf planets, whatever) still show correlation in charts for people born before 1781 (discovery of Uranus). The astrological "lore" about planet discoveries is that they are discovered when society is ready to understand and incorporate their meanings en masse. For example, Uranus was discovered at the height of the scientific revolution and beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, and became associated with technology. Individual people born before then still have Uranus in their horoscopes, indicating where they are "brilliant" or rebellious. Because the outer planets' movement is so slow, and whole generations have them in the same signs, the house position is more important than the sign position to indicate personal importance of that influence. Pluto was discovered in 1930, when fascism was coming to power in Europe and there was a depression in America and Europe. Astrologers decided to make it the ruler of Scorpio to replace Mars, which was sharing rulership with Aries. We can look at horoscopes from the 1500s and put Pluto in them to guess a person's sense of power, secrecy and control, even though people didn't begin to analyze these traits methodically until the invention of modern psychology in the 20th century.
3) He makes claims without providing evidence. For example, he claims that the 14-year cycle between conjunctions (I think he is referring to Jupiter/Saturn) coincides with cultural revolutions. Later on he provides one example, but one data point is useless in any kind of analysis.
Although I don't have the book with me right now, I'm pretty sure that he does give examples in it. Jupiter Saturn actually has a 20 year cycle and is more evident in teachers. The cultural revolution planets I think he is referring to are Uranus and Pluto Uranus, co-ruler of Aquarius, symbolizes rebellion, revolution, freedom and individuality (very prominent in the U.S.A. horoscope) and Pluto ruler of Scorpio symbolizes a complete death/rebirth, transformative process. He cites the mid 1960s as being the last time Uranus and Pluto conjuncted, and the time before that it was the 1850s, and both times were epitomized by large social revolutions and transformations.
This page gives a good synopsis of these periods:
http://www.astrologycom.com/uranuspluto.html
4) Gives himself wiggle room to increase the hits. I found three examples of this in the first half hour. The first is when he claims the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction is relevant to the birth of Christ. Ignoring the fact that we do not know when that happened, even if you use a Dec. 12, 6 BCE date, it doesn't match, and even he words it as "occurred very close to that time". If astrologers require birth times accurate to the minute, why does he get a pass on being several months off?
As mentioned before, when we're considering the conjunction cycle of two outer planets, timing does not have to be precisely accurate. Jupiter and Saturn stay within orb of being in major aspect for about 6 months It's not like setting up a horoscope (literally "hour" chart) with houses, where every minute counts.
The second place he does this is when he introduces a new term "diachrony". In other words, events develop over time, not immediately, so the actual event may happen earlier or later than the celestial event that precipitates that event.
The third place he does this is when he claims that a 15 degree "orb" for conjunctions/oppositions and a 10 degree "orb" for squares should be considered. This considerably widens the window in which any event can be considered relevant.
Accuracy and precision in dates and time have just been thrown out the ever-expanding window (Jupiter must be involved).
Even with this lack of precision, I think he makes a good case for there being something there, rather than nothing.
5) All of the social events he discusses happen in the very recent past and only in the US. All significant people discussed lived in the Western world. From this, we can assume that he either doesn't know much about world history, chose to ignore it for reasons of his own, or astrological events do not apply to Africa, Asia, India, South America, Pacifica ...
You are right that he does stick to America and Europe. He did write a book called "Passion of the
Western Mind", so maybe he's just sticking to what he knows best.
6) and 7) I addressed last post.
8) He uses waffly, sciencey language without defining terms or in an effort to clarify, but obfuscate. My favorite example was in the discussion of squares where he claims, "the energies are at a right angle." What does this mean? What energies? Why is a right angle significant? Does he knows what happens to orthogonal energy fields in physics?
I've noticed that people who have been studying astrology a long time use the language of astrology (energies, squares, signs etc) with one another knowing that the other person will understand. This interview was filmed
by an astrologer - Kelly Lee Phipps,
at an astrology conference and Tarnas is talking "astrologese" perhaps not realizing that the video is going to be posted to the general public.
I have sometimes heard the "energy" of a right angle in astrology compared to a diving board. It sort of gives a "spring" of power. You can see how astrology very much uses the imagination - which is why I think artists and musicians are attracted to its language of similes. What
does happen to orthogonal energy fields n physcis?
9) About where I had to stop watching for the evening, he made a stunningly false comment. The interviewer made the following comment:
Please see my previous posts.
Well, ignoring the appearance of projection for the time being, this is historically and philosophy laughable. It is only very recently that science and scientists have had a mechanistic world view, and yet astrology had been discarded as a science even before this happened. Why? Because there was no evidence it worked! Argh! Even in the era of natural philosophy (precursor to the modern scientific method that assumed everything in the natural world was synchronistic and a reflection of the mind of god), astrology and alchemy were seen as pseudo-science and were being moved to the side in favor of astronomy and chemistry.
They were "moved to the side" but not forgotten.
***
On a general note, Dr. Tarnas seems to be very impressed with Jung and the whole concept of archetypes. ...
Jung's
"Collective Unconscious" was popularized by astrologer Liz Greene in her book
The Outer Planets and Their Cycles , in which she also predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. Jung's idea of synchronicity is central to much of modern astrologers explanation of how the whole thing "works".
