posted July 26, 2010 07:56 PM
"Glaucus,how does the interpretation of an asteroid differ from the interpretation of another astronomical object, except for the underlying mythology?"
Their orbital characteristics,symbolism.
I went over this before in other threads.
Nessus was actually named Nessus because of its orbit - how it links the orbits of Saturn and Pluto. It was astrologers that came up with that name,and it was based on the consideration of its orbital features. These are the astronomically oriented astrologers.
the following is from Juan Revilla.
ORBITAL SYMBOLISM IN ASTROLOGY
I. INTRODUCTION
Trying to discover the astrological meaning of new planetary objects is not a simple question of playing with a name, beginning with the fact that many of them do not have a name yet Their orbital dynamics, the place they occupy in the structure of the solar system, their physical characteristics, they all establish a framework, a "niche" where they belong, a "gesture", a way of acting. Then the astrologer fills this form with his observations.
The most elemental principle of astrology is the foundation of this approach: "as above, so below", except that the "above" is the abstract, heliocentric perspective, not directly observable. The whole of modern Astrology is based on this abstract and non-observable world of "above", closer to mathematics than to what is physically experienced with the senses.
There is nothing "magical" in this. It is a reason that follows its own logic based on concordances and different from the logic of mechanics and of "cause and effect". This doesn't make it "irrational" in any way. It is just more analogical and metaphorical.
All observations must be interpreted and given a meaning. To do this, the scientist uses paradigms and builds explanations based on premises and certain cultural assumptions about the nature of the object under observation and about the nature of "reality". The astrologer doesn't make anything different. He also follows paradigms. Symbolical association and metaphorical thinking is one of these paradigms, one upon which rests the whole corpus of classical astrology.
When we apply orbital dynamics to the study of centaurs, one thing that becomes clear is that they tend to be very dramatic. They speak stronger and with more poignancy to the imagination than ordinary, almost circular orbits. It is just a question of getting used to their orbital language and gestures, a language that springs from the "orbital paradigm", which we can define as follows: the shape, place, and velocity of an orbit, the "orbital gesture", corresponds to similar gestures --psychologically or in external circumstances-- in the lives of people.
The distance ranges outlined here numerically, describing orbits that intercalate across the regions of the slow-moving planets of the solar system, establish the main framework on which their orbital symbolism is based, defining unambiguously some basic dynamic characteristics. They provide the information necessary to establish the foundation of this symbolism, to which is added information furnished by the orbital periods and mutual recurrences, the angle of crossing, and the orbital inclinations and latitudes.
For example, all centaurs share certain characteristics derived from the orbits that define them as a group. They all can be included in at least 3 basic categories:
1- Their sphere of action. They all work at the level of Saturn through Pluto; therefore their sphere of action is very different from the level at which the regular asteroids of the main belt between Mars and Jupiter work, much faster and closer to Earth. Their slow motion means that their transits can be used to map the great breakthroughs in the life of a person as we are used in the case of the planets from Saturn onwards. They are "visitors" from the trans-Neptunian, Plutonian world, which through them becomes more human, more compassionate, closer to us.
2- Their marginality. They are a clear minority among minor planets, less in number than all the other dynamical asteroid groups, and --because of their large orbital eccentricity-- they are "marginal", i.e., "do not belong" to a specific place but "wander" through the space dominated by the giant planets of the outer solar system, in many cases more or less aggressively crossing their orbits or "invading" their spheres. They are "renegades" that do not belong to an established, institutionalized world, which in turn they "intercept" or "break", carrying a symbolism very similar to that of Cain in the Genesis story.
3- Their instability. The orbits of centaurs, because of the way they intercept the distance range of the giant planets, are subject to very strong gravitational attractions or perturbations that make them unstable and "precarious", with a tendency to become chaotic or unpredictable in a few thousand years only. They are "crude" and "wild", with a tendency to be aggressive, but --unlike Pluto-- their orbits are "sick" and "tremble", destined to be transformed or die as a result of their crossing the paths of the giant planets. They are therefore related to pain and to death, but also to rapture, unconditioning, and freedom.
As a well-established orbit-crossing category, centaurs tend to be dynamically unique, strongly differentiated astronomically from the world of the main-belt asteroids. They separate from the others by breaking the image of "a ring" or "a belt" usually associated with asteroids, to follow their own excentric path. This singularity makes them "special", and experience shows that they are intense and powerful, in concordance with the large sweep of their slow motion and high eccentricity, in a way almost inversely proportional to their small size.
In practical terms, as part of the mathematical-astronomical model, we use celestial mechanics (orbital behavior), as a metaphor that models or "screens" the astrological characteristics of the centaurs, so we concentrate on the orbits, which are perceived as an interplay ("music") making the particular characteristics evident by differentiation or contrast in their movement, like a dance. I like to use the words "orbital gesture", and compare it with the movement of the hands and arms when someone is speaking. It is not conceptual, but similar to listening to music. From the effect the music produces on you, you "know" without knowing what it is. As I imagine this "orbital gesture", a moving, living image appears in my mind which "whispers" to me. Then, it becomes a matter of identifying in the specific event or experience or feeling being charted that same quality that the music or movement or gesture is producing in my imagination.
An example is the image of wings and of light that I often get from Pholus. It comes from its orbital behavior, the way I perceive it, and also from the sound qualities of its name, joined to my subjective perception of some of the people who have it focal. The centaur-myth is not in this picture. It is true that apparently, the "regular" orbits --rounder-- would appear as "mute", but this doesn't happen when seen in comparison, in the interplay. It is a question of images: you can imagine the massive giants being crossed and "ringed" by the smaller and unstable asteroids, and this puts in evidence the characteristics of both. In other words, it is an imaginative language, like that of mythology.
As an illustration, let's consider, imaginatively, the main-belt asteroid named "Nemesis" (#128):
"Nemesis": one utters the word and listens to it... a fast sound; a cycle of nearly 4 years and an orbit or way of moving , of acting, a physical gesture, that is wholly conventional, placid, circumscribed, with no highs or lows. Circumscribed to what? To one aspect of Nemesis, one "face" of the archetype which is necessarily limited by the particular nature of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Which face of the archetype? What is the nature of the asteroid belt compared with Uranus and with Pluto? What aspect of the archetype cannot be expressed in the asteroid belt and needs other bodies to do that?
If we listen, for example, to the apocalyptic gesture of an object like TL66, with a period of 800 years (200 times slooooooowwwwwwer), going away from the solar system until it disappears in the remote darkness of the unknown, and coming again centuries later, travelling 7 or 8 times faster than when it is far away, breaking through the orbital realm of Pluto until it "kisses" that of Neptune, like the visitation of a dark giant comet, only to go away again and disappear soon after that, then we say:
"N E E E E E E E M M M M E E E E S S I I I I I S S S S S S S S!"
... and the sound of a cosmic "N" and a cosmic "M" stays sizzling ("S") and resonating ("M"), like the effects of a terrific wind that has just passed.
II. THE ORBITAL PARADIGM
From a primal astrological perspective, and since the most ancient times, planets are essentially points of light that move orderly and predictably against the background of the fixed stars. Movement is therefore part of their essence, and their symbolical attributions in classical Astrology are a reflection of the particular characteristics of their motion as seen from a geocentric point of view.
For example, Saturn's very slow motion placed it at the edge of the known world, as the last of the concentric heavenly spheres next to the inmortal world of the fixed stars, and from which came the symbolical associations with earthly wisdom and with old age.
From the observed planetary motions, the ancients derived abstract/geometric representations aimed at modelling and predicting each planet's position at any moment of time, the so-called "epicycles" of the Ptolemaic system, which were later refined after Copernicus and Kepler and became the heliocentric orbits with which we are familiar today.
Each orbit contains the essence of the planet's astrological characteristics, putting in evidence what we may call "the orbital paradigm", which implies that orbital characteristics are the mental model or the point of reference that we use for the elaboration of the different analogies and metaphorical associations that constitute planetary symbolism.
One of the best examples of the central role of the orbital paradigm in Astrology can be seen in the astrological attributions of the planet Uranus. At the core of its characteristics is always the fact that Uranus "breaks" the ancient order signified by Saturn and opens the door to the new, challenging conventions and emphasizing individuality against the orthodox rules of Saturn. These characteristics are based on the position its orbit has in the solar system, one step beyond Saturn.
Orbital symbolism was used --for example-- by Marc Edmund Jones exclusively to explain all the astrological characteristics of the principal planets in his "Astrology How and Why It Works" (1943), and also by Dane Rudhyar, who explains it in "The Practice of Astrology" (1969) and who used it very extensively throughout all his works. It is the basis of the humanistic understanding of the roles of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in modern Astrology.
This emphasis on orbital symbolism has also been present in centaur research since the discovery of Chiron in 1977. Unlike the main-belt asteroids (such as Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta), which have orbits circumscribed to the region between Mars and Jupiter and whose astrological meanings were heavily dependent on mythology, Chiron represented both to astronomers and to astrologers a challenge of definition due to its odd orbit: it was the first slow-motion asteroid that belonged to the outer solar system, and its orbit overlapped that of Uranus and Saturn, swinging between both. The name "Chiron", half one thing and half the other, is a reflection of this.
It was Chiron's astronomical oddity and the work of pioneers such as Zane Stein, who relied on orbital symbolism rather than mythology, what established a precedent in centaur research in which the orbit is "read" and interpreted as a model of the astrological characteristics found or confirmed by empirical evidence. When the other centaurs were discovered beginning with Pholus in 1992, it became evident that their orbits stood out and were dramatic when compared with those of the regular planets that they traversed. Centaurs dramatize the "orbital gestures", their orbits are more eloquent, and in the future they will inevitably help us redefine the astrological role of the outer planets, such as Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto helped redefine the roles of Jupiter and Saturn in the past.
III. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORBIT
Every orbit is described by a set of numerical parameters that refer to its shape and its orientation with respect to time and space in the structure of the solar system. For our purposes, we can describe these parameters as an imaginative tree with branches which are a set of numbers and quantities called "the elements of the orbit" describing the trajectory of the planet over time.
A better metaphor is that of a musical score, made out of abstract mathematical proportions represented in space that describe something that happens in time. Like the flow of music, the imaginative representation of an orbital trajectory, when compared to the other trajectories, will speak to the imagination due to its relative placement in the whole and its particular shape and "gesture"; like the different themes in a large-scale symphonic movement, the orbital trajectory or gesture acquires meaning when it is seen (or "heard") with respect to other themes or sounds of the composition.
The word "gesture" regarding an orbital trajectory can be better understood if we think on how we naturally "draw" images, emotions, and sounds with our hands when we speak to an audience. Hands make unconscious movements and gestures that describe shapes in the air which are geometrical analogies of what we are trying to convey; these movements of the hands produce strong impressions in the audience and are an integral part of the message being transmitted. When we interpret the orbital gestures of the planets, especially those with "dramatic" orbits like the centaurs, we are doing imaginatively the same thing that we do when we inadvertently contemplate the hand-gestures of a good story-teller. The gestures are intrinsic to the nature of what is being told, and to the personality of the teller.
The orbital characteristics are essentially of 3 types:
a-) those that describe the position the object occupies in the solar system, expressed in terms of distance from the Sun and the speed or frequency with which it moves (the semi-major axis and distance range, transformed into velocity by means of Kepler's third law). Distant, slow-moving trajectories are like the low frequency sounds in music...
b-) those that describe the shape of the orbit (a combination of eccentricity and semi-major axis), which determines the type of gesture, the "curve" the orbit describes in space, the motion of the object from aphelion to perihelion, the changes and contrast in velocity, the perihelion "visitations" and the aphelion "stand-stills", the coming and the "going away".
c-) those that describe the orientation or "attitude", the "perspective" of the orbit, its capacity to "dive", to "hover", to "plunge" or in general its vertical orientation in space, how much it can get away from horizontality, expressed in the orbital inclination and the argument of latitude of the perihelion. The orbital inclination is one of the least studied orbital characteristics so far.
In the case of the centaurs, the combination of a-) and b-) results in one of their main characteristics: their orbital crossing or interception, of which we have had in astrology for decades the example of Pluto crossing the orbit of Neptune. Pluto also made us aware of the possible meaning of orbital inclination, and is in fact the model and the fore-bearer of all centaurs, which are considered to have physically originated in the same region of space as Pluto. http://www.expreso.co.cr/centaurs/essays/paradigm.html
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Raymond Andrews,
President,Executive Director of Developmental Neurodiversity Association
Supporting the Neurodiversity Movement
A Different Mind Is Not A Deficient Mind.
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