Astrology

But folks believe it religiously...

People believe the planets, stars and constellations locations have control over their lives....no?

Religion...the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
 
What I know about astrology is that it is a set of ideas and knowledge, but it is not enough to be a religion or way of life onto itself. But it is very easy to incorporate into most religions. I've never dipped my toe into it myself but I can see the appeal, it is a way to make sense of the world, cause and effect. And it relies on more or less complicated patters which the human mind loves! "If all the planets align it must mean something!"
 
If folks think the alignment of lights in the heavens control their lives...that the time and place if your birth accompanying a star chart creates an effect in your life....

Astronomy is a science... What is astrology? Religion, mythology? (Isn't mythology simply a religion which we don't believe in?)
 
"Is astrology a religion?"

--> What is your definition of religion?

Astrology is a way of organizing the good and bad karma a person will experience in this lifetime.
 
"How does the location of stars and planets organize my karma?"

--> I don't know exactly how the system works. But, according to the theory, people decide before they are born how, when, and how much karma they will deal with in the ensuing reincarnation, and this is then reflected in the astrological birth chart.
 
So....some signs are karmically negative? And others positive?

Is this in theosophy?

Are their different astrilogiez devsmoped from different sources?

Chinese signs? Year of...
 
wil said:
If folks think the alignment of lights in the heavens control their lives...
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Well in 'natural' societies, they do ... the ancients lived in harmony with nature, or at least holistically ... el nino is affecting our lives quite drastically!

wil said:
... that the time and place if your birth accompanying a star chart creates an effect in your life...
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Well much as I don't hold with astrology ... but I can see that holistic living is a dialogue with one's environment. I've known mystics who read nature all the time. Of course you end up with 'spooky coincidences' that are in fact mathematical probabilities, and nothing 'spooky' at all, but if one doesn't have that objectivity, it's easy to read 'signs' in nature, and the next step is to look for them and, of course, the next step is to start inventing constructs ...

... then again, I've met and know of others 'in tune' with nature to a degree which some might declare paranormal.

wil said:
Astronomy is a science...
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Yep.

wil said:
What is astrology?
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A science. Different axioms.

wil said:
Religion, mythology?
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Neither. It's a system within religions and mythologies, but not necessarily a religion in its own right.

wil said:
(Isn't mythology simply a religion which we don't believe in?)
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Too general. You'd have to look at particulars in context. Some mythologies are as old as man, but were never religions. Everyone has their mythologies, even contemporary secular societies – there's been studies done to show old myths re-emerging according to cultural context.

Myths are often quite profound in their essence, but the essence of a myth is not necessarily religious, and the essence of a religion is not necessarily mythological.
 
Seems to me the choice of the family, and country you are born in will determine your struggles more than the stars...

There kids born the same second in Syria, Sweden, Afghanistan, and Martinique...will all lead pretty different lives...
 
Astrology is a science???
Thomas said:
Well much as I don't hold with astrology ... but I can see that holistic living is a dialogue with one's environment. I've known mystics who read nature all the time.
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. Using the stars for navigation, seasons, times, location, direction....all well and good....who we should have relations with, do business with, sorry skeptic here.
 
wil said:
Seems to me the choice of the family, and country you are born in will determine your struggles more than the stars...
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Nature and nurture ... the constant to-and-fro ...

wil said:
There kids born the same second in Syria, Sweden, Afghanistan, and Martinique...will all lead pretty different lives...
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Well contingent circumstance may will be different, but the personas a could be very much the same.

As I've said, I don't hold with astrology, but I've known some serious astrologers, and have had some gob-smacking insights into myself through them. Discerning the distinctions between the outer and the inner is necessary, but one can't push astrology and ignore DNA, the local environments, etc.

There may well be a science which empirical science has yet to discover.

Frankly I don't buy it. The zodiacal signs, for example, are formed by stars who appear in a pattern from a 2D view of the stars in the sky, but if one looks into the 3D relation of the distances between the stars that make up the pattern, then the thing really falls apart, surely? There must be stars in different zodiacal signs that are actually closer to each other than they are too the other stars that make up their own sign?

So assuming its not some kind of 'wave' or 'gravity' from that segment of the zodiac that shapes him like this and her like that ... or maybe there is, maybe it's all some Quantum fuzziness ... what the heck is it? I can't see anything at all ...

wil said:
Are you saying el nino is caused/affected by the stars?
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LOL, no! I'm saying el nino is a force of nature that impacts on our lives. The sun impacts out lives. The moon impacts on our lives ... I'm not saying the moon is the cause of lunacy, but it is the cause of tides, and the tidal pull of the moon can be measured in a tea-cup! So what effect does shifting gravitational effects have on the human person? especially when molluscs are sensitive to the moon.

Mind you, I read a lot of that New Age Sheldrake stuff when I was a young man, talking to plants and all that! Were those experiments actually done, I wonder, or were they just making shit up? The one that springs to mind is clams, or something, taken from the sea and shipped inland, then it was noted that the opened and closed in their tank in the lab according to high tide at their location ... and now we know birds utilise geomagnetism to navigate, but scientists cannot fathom what bit of the brain is the compass ...

My dad had a home garden, and was trying to propagate something, but with no success. At another attempt, I said, "You have to talk to them, dad."
So he walks out into the conservatory. "OK," he says to his seeds, "You've got till Tuesday." It worked. "Less of the mafia manners, next time," I said.
 
wil said:
Astrology is a science???. Using the stars for navigation, seasons, times, location, direction....all well and good....who we should have relations with, do business with, sorry skeptic here.
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Agreed.

But how do you account for those who can tell a person's astrological sign with way-above-average accuracy? I'm not arguing for, I'm just referring to the anomalies ...
 
I dont know how it works, but its accuracy is more than just chance. Its not exactly scientific, but pretty evidence based. Indian astrology works more accurately than western one. They have written thousands and thousands of pages thousand years ago on this topic.

You dont have to be a "religiolus believer", find a jyotishi and work on your own natal chart. You will find online free computer generated natal chrat reports too.
 
There are two major components to astrology that I perceive. The macro astrological calendar, and the micro. The micro is the month to month, year to year stuff we use to find out what our signs are, what are horoscope says, etc. All of which I believe is bogus.

The macro cycle though, which is the amount of time it takes to make one complete turn through the entire zodiac has some potentially interesting relevance that might be in alignment (no pun intended) with astronomy. The time to take one turn through the entire zodiac is 25,920 years. Now this is an interesting number. Cause the geological timeline of the planet has shown that every 25 to 28,000 years we see a sudden appearance of major cometary bodies coming into the inner solar system. From way, way out beyond. Some of the extinction events might be related to this cometary bombardment cycle. The regularity of the cycle is there in the geographical record of the planet.

Coincidence? Certainly possible. Does give one pause for thought though.
 
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