posted April 16, 2012 07:09 PM            

Like so many people whose only exposure to astrology was in newspapers and magazines, I wasn’t really interested until I learned how complex it actually is. Many ancient religions, myths, and belief systems- share the common narrative of some sort of god or savior who dies, and is resurrected 3 days later, which just happens to be during the winter solstice. Basically, an in-ignorable large number of religions have been based on, well, astrology. This really hit home when I was in France with family, and we visited a very Old Catholic cathedral that had carvings of all the signs, a sun dial, and other things explicitly centered on astrology all around. I was amazed at how all the people there (my Christian family included) seemed to not even notice or care that their very rigid definition of faith may actually have originated from a “pagan religion” of astrology, and worship of the stars.

Anyway, the deeper I’ve delved into astrology, the more I’ve learned to just accept it as a very real and influential part of life. My analytical mind has loved peeling back the layers and learning the details of the signs, houses, aspects, etc. I think I have a firm grasp of the planets, and the energies they represent, and the ways the effect us individually and the world as a whole. I guess what I haven’t been able to grasp is the deeper meaning of it all…. Why and how does Saturn, or Pluto, or Jupiter, etc. contain these different energies? If it “just is”, and originated in ways we can’t understand, what is it that we should be trying to understand? Are all the lessons these planets teach us for our own enlightenment, or is there some sort of higher purpose or goal humans are striving for?

Also, just as astrology teaches us that as humans we are a very minute part of a much bigger picture, what about the bigger picture of our solar system itself? We focus on these 9 (or 10 including the moon) planets, but there is potentially an infinite number of galaxies and solar systems in the universe… Someone I’m interested opened my mind to the idea that there’s no way for us to know if there is life outside of our planet, it would actually be amazing if there was no other life outside of our solar system. What is the significance of astrology as we understand it in this context?

posted April 16, 2012 10:12 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by FireMoon:
Sorry to throw out some really abstract questions, but these are just some things I’ve been thinking about lately. I grew up in a very conservative, strictly Christian family (although somehow they’ve changed dramatically since I was young). After really contemplating all the contradictions in this religion, I decided at a pretty young age I couldn’t subscribe to such a black and white viewpoint on the world. I consider myself agnostic, but this does not mean that I need to see scientific evidence of something to believe in it, I think there is so much out there that we cannot possibly understand or know about for sure.

Like so many people whose only exposure to astrology was in newspapers and magazines, I wasn’t really interested until I learned how complex it actually is. Many ancient religions, myths, and belief systems- share the common narrative of some sort of god or savior who dies, and is resurrected 3 days later, which just happens to be during the winter solstice. Basically, an in-ignorable large number of religions have been based on, well, astrology. This really hit home when I was in France with family, and we visited a very Old Catholic cathedral that had carvings of all the signs, a sun dial, and other things explicitly centered on astrology all around. I was amazed at how all the people there (my Christian family included) seemed to not even notice or care that their very rigid definition of faith may actually have originated from a “pagan religion” of astrology, and worship of the stars.

Anyway, the deeper I’ve delved into astrology, the more I’ve learned to just accept it as a very real and influential part of life. My analytical mind has loved peeling back the layers and learning the details of the signs, houses, aspects, etc. I think I have a firm grasp of the planets, and the energies they represent, and the ways the effect us individually and the world as a whole. I guess what I haven’t been able to grasp is the deeper meaning of it all…. Why and how does Saturn, or Pluto, or Jupiter, etc. contain these different energies? If it “just is”, and originated in ways we can’t understand, what is it that we should be trying to understand? Are all the lessons these planets teach us for our own enlightenment, or is there some sort of higher purpose or goal humans are striving for?

Also, just as astrology teaches us that as humans we are a very minute part of a much bigger picture, what about the bigger picture of our solar system itself? We focus on these 9 (or 10 including the moon) planets, but there is potentially an infinite number of galaxies and solar systems in the universe… Someone I’m interested opened my mind to the idea that there’s no way for us to know if there is life outside of our planet, it would actually be amazing if there was no other life outside of our solar system. What is the significance of astrology as we understand it in this context?

Anyway, sorry if this is all really out there, I’ve just been thinking about these things, and would love to hear any and all opinions people have on any of this

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I am Born Again Christian. I believe God gave us the chart as a blueprint of ourselves. It is so like God to do that

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 16, 2012 10:35 PM            

One theory (maybe "guess" is a better word) I thought about is that we're plugged into a cosmic consciousness and thus our collective beliefs shape psychic forces that make astrology real. That is, by thinking of a constellation as Sag we imbued psychic energies into those on this world born under the sign (and planets within the sign), for example, or planets that we've come to associate with certain deities cause those energies (that is, Martian energies for Mars, Venusian energies for Venus) we project to affect those and the world around us (or put another way, the planets and stars reflect our psychic energy back at us, and given how we're all connected to each other in a psychic ocean it still affects those who are ignorant of or even disbelieving of astrology). That is to say if the planets had been named after completely different deities then they could have had completely different effects on us and our lives (though I vaguely recall reading that they got named because we subconsciously recognized them for what they are, that is we recognized them at some spiritual level of ourselves and named them accordingly rather than my musings on our having named them which in turn created their effects on us).

posted April 17, 2012 12:47 PM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
To me, Astrology is just a mirror of the collective unconscious. That's why I am warming up to Asteroids, because they are very Jungian.

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Very much so, Randall. Have you ever heard of Clarissa Pincola Estes?

She is a Jungian therapist and she tells stories. I had all her CD's at one point. She is totally magical.

Caroline Myss, a medical intuitive, wrote about archetypes, too. They are so fascinating.

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 17, 2012 10:40 PM            

RegardesPlatero, Thank you, I would love to hear your opinions/experiences as well!

quote:

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Originally posted by Ami Anne:

I am Born Again Christian. I believe God gave us the chart as a blueprint of ourselves. It is so like God to do that

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PixieJane- that actually makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing that! I think there’s definitely something to be said about the collective unconscious and the reflection of “spiritual vibrations”. Just as the total amount of physical energy in the world never changes, it merely changes forms, and manifests in different ways that we can measure through various techniques, astrology may work in similar ways.

Randal-thanks for your reply, I honestly don’t know much about Jungian theories but I will have to do some research on it

Anyway, I can’t spend much time online right now, but I may come back to write more later!

posted April 18, 2012 02:49 PM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
Haven't heard of her.

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Yes, Clarissa has a cult like following. You can check her out on Amazon as well as can check out Caroline Myss who works with an MD and is a medical intuitive. She is a fascinating woman.

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted April 18, 2012 08:23 PM            

I believe personally that God created the systems that bring some order into our chaotic lives. I believe that astrology is one of those such systems. I don't see astrology and religion as mutually exclusive or incompatible. I believe that God controls all of the systems that God created, and that the existence of such systems doesn't put God out of control. In a way, another way of saying this would be to say that systems are like middle management of sorts, but God is always the CEO.

I believe that astrology offers us one way to understand ourselves and others, which can help us to become more patient, compassionate, forgiving, and sympathetic. It can be used in conjunction with other systems, like the enneagram or Myers-Briggs. We have a lot of volumes in our library, ranging from science to spirituality to art to literature to philosophy to psychology and everything in-between, to offer us lessons in ourselves and each other. Moreover, I would say that no one "sub-section" of this library satisfies our curiosity, not alone: thus, it's good to read books from many different sections. That is, it's good to draw on astrology and science, religion and art, etc., and not just one one section, to absorb these lessons.

posted June 19, 2012 10:29 PM            

I used to think more like Platero. I think it says outright in the Bible, that God created the heavens for a sign. Just like we have the weather and the lunar cycle, the planets affect the quality of time, the kinds of things happening because of how natural things are interacting.

quote:

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One theory (maybe "guess" is a better word) I thought about is that we're plugged into a cosmic consciousness and thus our collective beliefs shape psychic forces that make astrology real.

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I have wondered the same thing. Like, we all agree on the meanings, so that projects something outward which is reliably mirrored back.

I said on another thread that I don't understand the point of existence, but I do think that love is central to everything...I speculate that it is somehow the cohesive force holding things together, it is heat, it is the building block for life, it is a portal to another dimension, it is "home" or the light some people find at the finish line.