other Astrology traditions?

Minderwiz

Ravenest,

I don't want you to go away and I fully accept your right to be different and ask questions. My issue is that you don't supply much information to support your views. The Calendar quote and assertions about what 'most people' think and 'definitions you have read' provide little substance.

For the record the 'astra' from which Astrology derives are the wandering stars - the planets - as Lilly said 'the first thing you must know is that there are seven planets'.

Given your non-standard views you might be interested in reading 'Astrology, Science and Culture' by Roy Willis and Patrick Curry. It is hard going as an academic book but you might find a lot of material to which you would be sympathetic, especially as it draws on many traditions.
 

ravenest

Minderwiz said:
Ravenest,

I don't want you to go away and I fully accept your right to be different and ask questions. My issue is that you don't supply much information to support your views. The Calendar quote and assertions about what 'most people' think and 'definitions you have read' provide little substance.
I posted a whole list of definitions in another thread, I could cut and paste here I suppose, but is it necassary? I believe you already read that thread?

I suppose I could post a poll here to get what most people think, but that wouldnt be representative of the general population. The reason I say this is that so many times people have asserted this belief to me, and when I tell them that their astrological chart sun or planets position is not a representation of the constellations and stars (that you can see in the sky with your physical eyes), they dispute, question and dont believe that their tropical chart shows signs that represent degrees from the spring equinoctal point and does not relate to the stars themselves. Also that very same question keeps popping up here. I fail to see the weakness of the calendar quote? Its a very direct reference in THAT system of how it works. Also I thought the quote about the moon being in different constellations for different times as the constellations are of different lengths was very relevent, its a clear indication that actual constellations are being used and not the 30 degree equal segments of the sidereal or tropical systems.

Wasn't that relevent, wasn't it clear? Why does it have little substance? I'm still confused about all the adverse reactions to this. What harm does it do to acknowledge that this system works the way the people who follow it says it does?
Minderwiz said:
For the record the 'astra' from which Astrology derives are the wandering stars - the planets - .
Interesting, I always thought it meant both, the fixed and wandering stars. But are you not 'guilty' of what you accuse me of above? Can you supply information to support that view? I can supply info to support my popular deffinition of astrology. I just cut and paste from dictionary, etc.
Minderwiz said:
Given your non-standard views you might be interested in reading 'Astrology, Science and Culture' by Roy Willis and Patrick Curry. It is hard going as an academic book but you might find a lot of material to which you would be sympathetic, especially as it draws on many traditions.
Sounds interesting, thanks for the reference. I'll try and track one down.
 

Minderwiz

ravenest said:
But are you not 'guilty' of what you accuse me of above? Can you supply information to support that view? I can supply info to support my popular deffinition of astrology. I just cut and paste from dictionary, etc.

I thought I had - the William Lilly quote is the opening of his book Christian Astrology. He mentions planets and signs and later on uses some (around 50) fixed stars but he doesn't use constellations.

I could add in writers from Dorotheus of Sidon who starts with 'knowledge of the seven and the triplicities of the signs and their lords' (Carmen Astrologicum), through Ibn Ezra 'The wheel is divided into 360 even parts...the names of the signs are Aries....and then goes on to talk about the planets. (The beginning of Wisdom)




Alan Leo in describing his system uses planets and signs, not constellations

Now like Lilly Dorotheus and Ezra make use of certain fixed stars, mainly through their influence on the planets and they use the then common method of locating stars - the constellations.

I could list many more but obviously all this shows is that the idea that the constellations are important in Wester Astrology is a small minority view and has been for the last two thousand years or so.

The Keats quote shows that he suffers from some confusion - he explcitly defines his sidereal zodiac as having twelve equal parts (which he calls constellations) - but the physical constellations are not equal sized and have gaps between them. If we accept his definition of 12 equal sized parts then he is talking about signs not constellations. If he wants to use constellations then he can't have 12 equal sized parts.

Even somebody who actually does use unequal sized partitions, Maria Thun, then claims that these partition can be divided into Fire, Earth, Air, Water - characteristics of signs, not constellations.

I certainly recognise that the use of a sidereal zodiac may well be beneficial for some astrological analysis and the agricultural examples look interesting but what seems to be used here are signs, not constellations - though we could well end up with the Queen of Hearts defence - 'A thing is what I say it is, no more, no less'.

In short, I don't seen any evidence that the constellations play a role here - other than as a reference system at most and a confused version of signs at least.

And a point perhaps worthy of some exploration, is Astrology concerned with divination and is the use of stars to chart seasons and indeed planting cycles part of the divination process or is it akin to weather forecasting?

I think we might get more out of that
 

ravenest

Minderwiz said:
I thought I had - the William Lilly quote is the opening of his book Christian Astrology. He mentions planets and signs and later on uses some (around 50) fixed stars but he doesn't use constellations.
Sorry, I must not have been clear. I meant the reference to the root asta meaning wandering stars and not fixed stars. I did quote your statement above my comment ... more confusion :( ...why?)
Minderwiz said:
And a point perhaps worthy of some exploration, is Astrology concerned with divination and is the use of stars to chart seasons and indeed planting cycles part of the divination process or is it akin to weather forecasting?
I think we might get more out of that
yes, that's an interesting point. It does relate to weather forecasting, but also a lot more, the development of the different parts of the plants and other things.
I guess it all depends on which one of the 'Queen of Hearts' is talking. The whole system is based on Steiners teaching, and his astrological system .... well, we better not go there - here! :laugh: It is very different from what seems to be the dominant western astrological paradigm.

What should we call it? Astronomy? I noticed the chapter heading in Thun's book is 'Astronomy', but constantly the word astrology is used.

I suppose I will just have to realise that my deffinition of what constitutes astrology is vastly different from most people, and again different from western astrolgers (okay, okay, including Vedantic astrology as well) AND different from all the dictionaries and other sources (except here) I have looked up.

But this thread was supposed to be about OTHER astrological traditions.
(and I'd still like to see the etemology of astra relating ONLY to wandering stars.)
 

blue_fusion

another follow-up on chinese astrology. would the signs under each element's "mansions" have any divinatory meaning? i mean, which can be translated into, say, cartomantic format?
 

Minderwiz

Ravenest

I seem to have created more confusion! I was referring specifically to Astrology, when I referred to 'astra' I was stating that Astrology was concerned primarily with the wandering stars, not the fixed stars. The Greeks did not distinguish between stars and planets as we do, 'planet' for them being originally an adjective describing the type of star - i.e. a wandering star. So yes the 'astro' root does refer to both planets and fixed stars.

Now if you read the texts of early Greek Astrologers, such as Dorotheus of Sidon (probably first century AD) It is clear that their Astrology is planet based - they begin asserting the need to know and understand the seven (planets) and to know and understand the 12 signs. Fixed stars are mentioned much later, and constellations have very peripheral mentions (if at all, unless the text is also concerned with what we would now call Astronomy).

Greek texts formed the foundation for Arabic Astrologers and in turn their texts became the foundation of sixteenth and seventeenth century European Astrologers. Now you might argue that this tradition missed out an important element in largely ignoring the constellations but there is still very significant use of certain fixed stars (and their relation to planets or horoscope points).

Sadly the use of fixed stars has tended to fall by the wayside over the last century but there are a couple of good books by Vivian Robson and more recently by Bernadette Brady.