RohanMenon
I was reading Joseph Crane's book on Hellenistic astrology, in which he examines many natal charts and fits the features of a celebrity's life to his/her charts. Fair enough, as a teaching device.
Then it struck me that almost any event can be matched to any chart by picking and choosing appropriate astrological symbolism.
Surely it would be much more impressive if astrologers actually predicted (and taught their students to predict) such events - Clinton's philandering or 9/11 or whatever *before* it happened - vs looking back at them?
*After* the event happens, many astrologers write of how well astrology fits the event. But surely the point of astrology is to predict *before* the event happens?
If, in a textbook written today, the writer were to predict a USA-China war(say) in 2018, or with a person's chart, that they would have their first child in 2019, and these predictions came true, that would be much more impressive than 'reverse fitting' *past* events into a symbolic framework.
This approach would be great in filtering wheat from chaff, and settling various controversies as to which zodiac/house system/prediction method etc is better. If someone consistently predicts events (even abstractly - (in 1995, predict " In 2001 a terrorism incident causes the USA to enter a war which drags on a decade" - with no mention of Afghanistan or Osama ) *then* his methods need to be looked at, and perhaps emulated, whether he uses Hellenistic or Fagan Sidereal or . Vedic or whatever.
Right now, there is just argument back and forth, because , as I said above, anything can be explained away *in retrospect* with any system of astrology with enough word jugglery and selective choosing of factors.
e.g: If McCain had Saturn as Lord of the Year when he lost the electionI('m just making this up for illustrative purposes), that was Saturn being malefic. If he had won, that would have been Saturn giving him the discipline and drive to run a successful campaign. In *retrospect* anything can be explained.
Note that this is a perfectly ok to *formulate* a theory or to illustrate a principle. But once that is done, it must also be used to make verifiable predictions. Otherwise how does one know the formulated principle or theory is valid and workable?
Predict. Verify. Teach others how to do so. Shouldn't this be what astrology textbooks are about? Are there any textbooks which take this approach, written by people who make predictions about the future using their system?
What am I missing?
Then it struck me that almost any event can be matched to any chart by picking and choosing appropriate astrological symbolism.
Surely it would be much more impressive if astrologers actually predicted (and taught their students to predict) such events - Clinton's philandering or 9/11 or whatever *before* it happened - vs looking back at them?
*After* the event happens, many astrologers write of how well astrology fits the event. But surely the point of astrology is to predict *before* the event happens?
If, in a textbook written today, the writer were to predict a USA-China war(say) in 2018, or with a person's chart, that they would have their first child in 2019, and these predictions came true, that would be much more impressive than 'reverse fitting' *past* events into a symbolic framework.
This approach would be great in filtering wheat from chaff, and settling various controversies as to which zodiac/house system/prediction method etc is better. If someone consistently predicts events (even abstractly - (in 1995, predict " In 2001 a terrorism incident causes the USA to enter a war which drags on a decade" - with no mention of Afghanistan or Osama ) *then* his methods need to be looked at, and perhaps emulated, whether he uses Hellenistic or Fagan Sidereal or . Vedic or whatever.
Right now, there is just argument back and forth, because , as I said above, anything can be explained away *in retrospect* with any system of astrology with enough word jugglery and selective choosing of factors.
e.g: If McCain had Saturn as Lord of the Year when he lost the electionI('m just making this up for illustrative purposes), that was Saturn being malefic. If he had won, that would have been Saturn giving him the discipline and drive to run a successful campaign. In *retrospect* anything can be explained.
Note that this is a perfectly ok to *formulate* a theory or to illustrate a principle. But once that is done, it must also be used to make verifiable predictions. Otherwise how does one know the formulated principle or theory is valid and workable?
Predict. Verify. Teach others how to do so. Shouldn't this be what astrology textbooks are about? Are there any textbooks which take this approach, written by people who make predictions about the future using their system?
What am I missing?