As the centuries went on it seems that different things were added to address what wasn't understood by those practicing "astrology". Doesn't it strike anyone that it is all overly complex? I'm not saying that anyone walking up to astrology can learn the glyphs and start spouting wisdom. It isn't that simple. But once you have studied all of the complexity, you can make it simple. When you reach that point you can be an astrologer.
The problem lies in the number of times Western Astrology needed 'resuscitating' The separation of Hellenistic Astrology from its powerhouse of Alexandria around the end of the fourth and early fifth centuries AD. Much of the knowledge was lost at that time through deliberate acts of destruction.
The attempt to pick up the threads by Persian and later Arabic Astrologers was on the basis of only a limited number of texts available. So, yes, they had to 'invent' somethings to fill in the gaps and their resulting system in the late Medieval period is certainly highly structured and very arguably over complicated. Attempts by Morin and Lilly (in different ways) to simplify and put Astrology on a firm footing were unsuccessful in the long term and only partially successful in the short term. Both had very limited knowledge of what the original system of Astrology was like (much less than our current knowledge of it, and that is only partial).
The 'Enlightenment' ended Western Astrology as a recognised branch of knowledge and left it in the hands of willing amateurs who tried to use Lilly as their source. Two hundred years after Lilly they were going through the motions without any real 'professionals' able to provide guidance. Nevertheless there is a recognisable connection between their Astrology and the original system.
The real problem comes with the Theosophists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who remodeled Astrology to fit what the say as a 'New Age'. They threw out much that was in the original core and turned the science into one of personality assessment alone. Fifty years on and Jungian psychologists adapted it still further because they could see a value to it in their work. So Astrology was made to fit a psychological model, rather an attempt to restore it to a science in its own right. (I use science in its original meaning of a structured body of knowledge and method of applying it).
Although in recent years there has been an attempt to 'recover' what was lost. We have only a fraction of what existed, especially in the case of Hellenistic Astrology, which came into being as a full theoretical construct and system. It didn't just grow. Exactly what that system is we don't fully know and may never know. But we do know enough to reveal it as something radically different from what is practiced now, even though it uses (and invented) much of the language and concepts of a modern chart.
Dadsnook2000 said:
You and the practice of astrology have to be melded. How you do it, once you can do it, is different from how I would do it. That is what is amazing about it all. But, you can't break the basic rules. And you can't just read the basic rules. They are discovered for the most part.
I would make a slight difference in emphasis. You can read and apply the basic rules, or at least those that we are very certain of. But there are still gaps in our knowledge of exactly how those rules originated and were applied. I was reading a short answer to a question by Chris Brennan on the use of Reception in Hellenistic Astrology. This is a small extract stating the problem.
This issue is a bit complicated and murky though, and there is a lot of disagreement about it between different astrologers in modern times who are trying to figure out how things were done in the Hellenistic and Medieval traditions. As a result of this some of the terminology isn't very well worked out yet, partially because people disagree about what constitutes reception, and which cases should be included or excluded from that consideration.
Whilst he goes on to argue a case as to why he attributes Reception to Hellenistic Astrologers, it is heavily based on implications rather than explicit quotes. There are no explicit quotes that we have but there are descriptions that match something like Reception and it's known that later writers who did explicitly define Reception, after the Hellenistic period did read texts from the end of that period. So it looks like they picked up the idea and developed it.
My point is that what I've just said isn't certain it's speculation though based on circumstantial evidence but it's subject to dispute. It is also entirely possible that we discover more texts which show that we've interpreted those rules incorrectly or that they are only part of a section of rules. So we don't know exactly how the rules were applied and Dave is right that we end up making discoveries (or remain in the dark).
First off, thanks Mindewiz. So you feel that modern astrology can be TMI at times? I understand and that's why you don't use asteroids either. Something in me actually likes all that extra info. Sometimes, when dealing with my own chart, I find it enlightening, at others, it's flat out wrong and I can feel free to disregard it as such. In interpeting my own chart, I like to look for positives in an otherwise abysmal chart. It gives me the feeling of having options and therefore control. So my fate isn't sealed by the positions of celestial bodies when I was born.
I think
some Modern Astrology works, but not all of it. Dave shows that it can work in a structured way and he gets good results. But he does have a structure and system and it's not based entirely or even mainly on psychology.
What might be an 'abysmal' chart by modern standards doesn't have to be 'abysmal' by all standards. Very, very few charts contain only bad things most have a mixture of both the good and the bad. The challenge is to make the most of what you have to negotiate life. Fate doesn't seal anything, what it does is constrain your range of actions. If you're born with serious leg problems, it is highly probable you're not going to become a marathon runner, but, of itself, it's not going to stop you competing in a wheelchair marathon or representing your country at the Paralympics (providing you reach the entry standards)
Don't assume that Jungian Psychology is the only acceptable form. Indeed most current psychology departments treat Jung with suspicion (partly because of his interest in Astrology and other 'occult' practices).
A few years before I retired, somewhere around 2007/2008 I attended a Higher Education staff development session on how students learn and setting up learning strategies to meet their personalities.
I attended with a colleague who had a history degree. At the end of the session we both asked the same question 'what did you think of that' and both gave the same answer - it was based on the medieval concepts of Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholic and Phlegmatic personalities. Of course it didn't use those terms but the personality descriptors matched them almost exactly. We even mentioned that to the session leader, who seemed most disconcerted that current academic research seemed to support a medieval theory that lies behind the assessment of temperament in Medieval and seventeenth century Astrology.
It's not a matter of Psychology or Traditional Astrology, you can have both. In the seventeenth century, doctors had to be trained astrologers and one of the reasons that Astrology survived through the medieval period was the link between Astrology and medicine. The 'judicial' side (making predictions about life that was beyond medicine) was frowned on by the authorities, as it was in the Roman Empire and as it still is today by the scientific establishment.