--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "hugheshugo" > <richardhughes103@> wrote: > > > > The idea that planets can go "retrograde" is all due to the > > ludicrous maths involved in making the earth appear to be > > the centre of the solar system, it really isn't. > > It sounds a lot like the math involved in saying > that one's spiritual teacher is "the best," or > that one's spiritual path is "the best." Those > beliefs are based on the person who thinks that > appearing to be at the center of the universe, > too. :-)
For the record, since the time of Copernicus (1473-1543), astrologers have known that retrograde motion is only apparent. Sorry, but they don't "believe" that planets actually turn around and move backward. They're also well aware that the earth revolves around the sun. And retrograde motion never did have anything to do with "maths." You don't need "maths" to detect retrograde motion, just careful observation of the night sky. > Personally I think that astrology is hogwash, > *except* as tricksterism. That is, some people > whose intuition and "seeing" skills are present > but latent can *trick* themselves into utilizing > their latent ability to "see" by gazing a chart > of the position of the planets. > > For other people, it's tarot cards. For still > others, reading tea leaves. Interesting. Here's what I said back in May of last year (I'm sure Barry didn't, you know, read it or anything): "My guess: Any sufficiently complex system of correspondences, such as astrology (any flavor), works as a tool for focusing the intuition-- i.e., collecting and integrating all one's little intuitional inputs into a coherent whole so that a prediction can be generated from it. The system's correspondences themselves don't 'mean' anything at all, they're just a framework to hang the intuition on and organize what the intuition knows. "Tea leaves, in other words, could work just as well as astrology for anyone with a highly developed intuition." Oh, heck. As long as I'm quoting myself... I had a vague memory of a post I'd made years ago on alt.m.t on astrology and went looking for it. It was in response to someone (not Barry) who was dissing astrology as primitive superstitious nonsense: Consider the magnitude of the realization, way back in prehistory, that while the pattern of the stars overhead changed from month to month, they always came back to the *same* positions at harvest time each year; they were always in the same positions at planting time. What a stunning discovery, that their positions were correlated with the seasons! And then there were the "wandering" stars--their positions were not at first at all predictable. Why should a few of the stars not follow the pattern? Think also about how significant the stars must have seemed to primitive humans. We take them for granted, but just imagine what a hunter camping on the plain must have thought as he looked at the night sky. The stars were a much more major feature of the environment than they are to us, and infinitely more mysterious and awe-inspiring. It's not at all surprising they were thought to be divine. So when humankind had progressed to the point where it could accurately chart the stars' motions, it was natural to assume they were a guidance system given to humans by the gods. The "wanderers" took on special significance, because they moved through the "fixed" constellations and were constantly forming different patterns with them. But even *their* motions, although much more complex, were regular and could be predicted. And obviously the sun and moon were the overlords of the heavens, playing different but complementary roles. What gives me the shivers is that if you wanted to *design* a system for divination for human beings on earth, you could hardly do better than the sun, the moon, and the planets in the constellations. The system seems tailor-made for that purpose. It's also no surprise that astrology was the earliest "pure" science, in the sense of observing and charting nature's regularities just for the joy of ferreting out her secrets. What a magnificent vehicle the night sky is for inspiring scientific curiosity! We tend to look down our noses at these primitive, superstitious magi who spent all their time gazing at the heavens, but that's totally unwarranted. The impulse that motivated them to wrest regularity from an otherwise chaotic environment over which they had little control was precisely the same as the one that motivates modern scientists, and it took just as much energy and intellect and sophistication. The first ephemeris was as much of an accomplishment as the Human Genome Project.
