Astrological Signs
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Lord SteveO
Hero in a world of demons
If people want to enjoy it then by all means let them. It's not like astrology is used to make governement decisions or anything, it's just a bit of fun for some people who need to use spiritual means to explain their lives.
It does no harm to anyone.
It does no harm to anyone.
derek
Grey Eminence
There's more evidence for psi experiences than people generally tend to believe. I find much of it fascinating, some great minds have reflected upon teleology in the universe.
see: david jay brown; "converstions on the edge of the apocolypse"
see: david jay brown; "converstions on the edge of the apocolypse"
Dushan S
Member
Some aspects in persons natal chart can be so strong that they are more obvious in a person than character traits described from Sun Sign. Sun Sign can be discribed as a foundation, but foundation can be sometimes radically changed by other influences. In your case Taurus influence is probably very strong, so it is easy to recognize yourself in description of Taurus. Signs by itself are just basic Archetypes in psyche, that we as a human beings are universaly sharing.speed said:
It probably has something to do with Ortodox Christianity tradition and in case of eastern europe, with Slavs temper, I guess. Generally, people living on the coasts of Meditteranean are more realexed and open to life, as is often case when there is a see and climate is nice. It is hard to enjoy the see and sun, and have enough tension to be into metal
Maybe that is the reason that Metal music is most popular in England, Germany and Scandinavia. I have checked that subject, and although there are some rules, I have found that most of the good "Tellers" are actualy using a hand contact to make psychological influence on the person being read (more on the fraud side) or just as a starting point for some kind of clairvoyance. There are very old traditions here , especially among gypsies, palm reading, coffe reading, beans reading, and even most of them are talking nonsense, I have met people that are fascinating, giving clear portrait of a person thez have never met before just by droping beans on the table and looking at them. I could hardly find a pattern in beans or some kind of obvious rule. I think palm reading even if it is more explained, is more on the "clairvoyant side", at least here. I was not checking it further because Astrology and chinese I Ching were quite enough for me, and even if they are technically non-scientific and can be taken as rubbish by some people, they are still very logical and technical, precise, very well documented, and easier to grasp. Although I do admit that results that some people get from palm reading are amazing, this is just too much of a "free form" for my taste.
It may be interesting for you to know that a lot of big companies have Astrologer on their pay list, for instance, consulting him when looking for a new employee, Italian Fiat first crossed my mind. Also, you would be surprised how many of USA presidents had their personal astrologers. Actually if you could know how much money USA has spent (and still are) on things as researching possibility of using astral projection to make their spies go on places where they could not go thet easy in physical form, I think you may get really upset
Also Psychological Astrology, and therapist using Natal Chart to shorten time of getting to know basic psychological portrait of patient are not rare these days. Actually I am only interested in that aspect of Astrology (treating it as a helpfull tool to analyse personality) as it is only way I see that Astrology can give something beneficial to society.
Yes, and for instance some of the border reaserch in physics in last ten years are almost closing scientific picture of universe to picture of universe given by Mystics and eastern religions. Stuff like unpredictable behaviour of electron depending on will of experimentator or if they are watching experiments or just checking results later.
I was interested to know the fact, and I agree that 95% of "those" things are nonsense, but I was lucky to meet some people that were amazing and witness some very strange things. Some of those experiences are not only connected with psi, for instance, my friend, She was practicing "living on prana" technique that is rigorous feasting, you actually sto eating at one point, and finally you even stop drinking water, and during that time you do specific set of exercises. Technically, science says that she should be dead, but she was full of energy, spending at least one hour a day dancing, and because of energetic transformation happening she started to paint and had a hard time to convince her friends that those are her paintings because they knew she had no talent for painting.
Naturally, I understand that anyone can write something on internet forum, and everyone can say anything and sometimes you just are not able to know for sure. So when I am talking about things like in this topic, it is more to encourage people to check everything themselves and let themselves be more open to real experience instead of pre-defined opinions based on limited knowledge.
What relationship is there, exactly, between the solar system and our personal lives and how the hell are these connected to someone's birthday? Are you suggesting that if I were born 5 minutes later I'd have a completely different personality? That distant objects which have zero physical influence on me affect my life more than DNA? I simply can't understand your logic.
Dushan S
Member
This forum has one nice feature, you can go back few posts and actualy read someones posts, and find what interests you. Try that, don't be shy.kmik said:
Also, it has to do something with the ESP too because I have guessed that you will ask this and wrote an answer to you even before you have asked! Now, how nice is that?
As far as suggesting goes I am not suggesting anything. Pay attention that you have assumption about DNA being somewhat "out of laws of universe". If we take as an theory that astrological chart is just a representation of forces of universe at work, logically, what you have got from your parents as a genetic material is also part of the whole. Astrology is just about perception what already exists and happens anyway, it is representation, not some kind of "higher power". If you make a photograph of your friend, and he has a blond hair, he will have a blond hair on the photo to. Your question is like if you have shown that photo to a person born in an african tribe and than that person asks:
"Are you suggesting that this photo HAS MADE YOUR FRIEND HAVE BLOND HAIR? It does not matter if your friend was blond, this machine has trapped his soul, and even chosen his hair color for him???"
About being born 5 minutes late, answer is NO. There was NO possibility for you to be born 5 minutes later, because then it would not be you. It is part of the pattern. Even if you would be born 5 minutes late, it would not change things much. Hate to repeat myself, but natal chart is about representing patterns of behaviour, thinking and feeling. Two persons having same patterns (and having for instance similar natal charts) will have a lot of in common, but will have diferent individualities, because of different choices during life, and diferent social enviroment.
So, you're saying that astrology is not about predicting (stars are the cause for everything that happens on our planet) but about perception (the astrologer actually 'encrypts' the stars)? That doesn't answer my question - why is there a connection between stars and our life? Stars are just big things in the sky, when all is said and done.
About the 5 minutes later thing. Consider a parallel universe in which I WERE born 5 minutes later, maybe because of the traffic at the time. I'm not Alexander the Great so things wouldn't be awfully different in such a universe, I suppose. My parents and house will be the same and so will my genetics, so I guess I'd be a very similar person...
identical twins, by the way, can have different signs. According to astrology they should be very different which they of course aren't. how do you explain that?
About the 5 minutes later thing. Consider a parallel universe in which I WERE born 5 minutes later, maybe because of the traffic at the time. I'm not Alexander the Great so things wouldn't be awfully different in such a universe, I suppose. My parents and house will be the same and so will my genetics, so I guess I'd be a very similar person...
identical twins, by the way, can have different signs. According to astrology they should be very different which they of course aren't. how do you explain that?
Demiurge
This user has no title
There's a fairly decent wikipedia entry on astrology, perhaps someone would find it interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_of_astrology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_of_astrology
Dushan S
Member
Yes, kind of encryption, but have in mind that even stars moving in order is again just encription of something else, that is actualy beyond of any kind of intelectual understanding. We are part of the nature, and we can use it to our benefit but we are still not understanding it.kmik said:
Yes, you would be very similar if you were born 5 minutes later, as I have said, astrology gives only patterns for your life, but there is certain freedom within them, and the same patterns in different circumstances give different results. Similar natal charts for two persons one born in middle class family in New York and other in african tribe would give quite different lives technicaly, but if you happen to get to know both persons, they would have similar character.
Why different? They are not born far away from each other in time, have similar natal charts and same family, same social enviroment. But they still have certain freedom of choice. Some astrologer would also say that they have different herritage from past lives, and even if it is the same character, the soul is different, individuality is different, so twins even if very similar won't be the same.
I think that Astrologers don't want to admit some things, and it makes a lot of confusion.
First, Astrology in middle ages was VERY precise. It was to the point that they could go into very little details, for instance telling french king exact date of death and way he will die. This is not case today. This is because of big difference in human psychology, that most people are not aware, partly because of movies showing ancient people like just like todays americans, acting modern but with togas or armours, wearing swords. In middle ages, 99% of people were slaves of their own natures, and could not be able to distinguish their personality (in sense of a face we are showing to the world, persona - mask in greek) and their inner, real selves. So in a sense they were were mechanic in behaviour, very self-unaware, even more preprogrammed robots. So they were acting right on patterns and astrology was able to be exact.
Today it is different, and I think that Astrologers are often overstimating possibilities, and it makes things look unserious because it is really easy to prove that predicting things just wont work in a lot of cases.
Only way I have find it is possible to relly on astrology and its functionality is psychological aspect, using it as a tool to get better understanding of a character.
Then there is a market, and people looking for astologer are in most cases not interested in truth, except at the beginning, so they can see that astrologer is good enough, after that they want him to be some kind of psychiatrist/priest/mother so they can relly on him, tell him about their problems and they wont him to give them hope and selfconfidence in invisible tommorow they are afraid of. My friend astrologer often gets frustrated having bussines with people that really don't want to know anything about their problems and themselves but have all kind of strange motivations.
I could just invent a similar pseudo science which is not based on stars but on, say, rain. I can tell you what kind of person you are according to what the sky was like in the time you were born. How is that different from astrology?Dushan S said:
Besides, if it is beyond our understanding and everything how can the astrologer encrypt the stars? How could the person who 'discovered' astrology know its rules?
Regarding the twins. They can have different signs (say the first one is born at 23:59 and the other at 00:01 the next month). So they should be according to astrology totally different.
kmik said:
I'm sure there was a psuedoscience based on rain. There were rainmakers in almost every early culture.
I agree with you, the whole idea of astrology seems preposterous, but certain aspects of it--including these personality archetypes--seem to have some truth to them. After a few thousand years of doing this, you;d think they figured something out.
Dushan S
Member
Rainy days patten is not mathematically predictable and precise, so it is not possible to use it like solar system. As I have said, to use sinhronicity, you needreference system in macro-universe that is easy enough to follow and predisctable.kmik said:
Astrologer is not encryprting the stars, opposite, he is decrypting it. Also, there was no discovery of astrology, as it was something that was coming along with astronomy, it was one same science about the "stars". A that time, people were obviously aware that one of the things that they can't comprehand is what the sky, sun and planets are. Forces of nature were gods at first, than came the planets, sun and stars. Every god from that period of civilization actually represents one of the archetypes, forces very alive in our personal subconsious mind, as well as in collective subconsious mind.
In astrology, human mind HAS MADE, INVENTED the planets and stars as a way to understand ourselves, and communicate with deeper levels of our own psyche. In the same way as man has invented god, but that does not proves that god is something unreal in turn. Even groups of stars representing signs in horoscope are not on the same places as when the astrology puts them, but that does not matter.
This is not so simple. When someone is born close to the beginning of the next sign, he got influence of the next sign. At the very end of the Taurus sign, someone is actually more a Gemini than Taurus, except there are moreother planets in Taurus sign giving more weight to Taurus influence. So there is no sharp line between signs. Also, real year is 365, 25 days, and we have 3x365 and 1x366 days so that means that astronomically, 0 degrees of one sign can be on diferent days in two succesive years. Those tables telling that people born from one date to another are born in a one sign are not completely accurate.
Also, I don't consider sun sign that much important. Again, check what I have already written, there are a lot of different parameters in natal chart. If someone is born at 23:59 and his brother at 00:01 next day, it is not next day, it is 2 minutes difference. Day to day difference in your example is just subjective, in reality just two minutes have passed and planets are in the almost same positions.
Dushan S
Member
True about rainmakers.speed said:
Biggest enemy of Astrology are actually astrologers themselves, but it is another story. Good thing is that a lot of modern astrologers are more realistic about astrology and its real possibilities in practice.
Quick comments (aka - Apologies in the case that I am not strictly following the flow of the thread):
The Barnum Effect:
-A psych term, the etymological roots of which lay in PT Barnum's well-known phrase, "A sucker is born every minute."
-In brief: There is a well-worn pysch experiment (I have read journals of this experiment as well as conducted the same experiment in accordance with APA standards) in which subjects are given a statement of their personality based on their astrological profile and asked to evaluate it's accuracy and completeness. Typical results yield a rating of 90%+ accuracy...but every subject is given the same profile.
-The conclusion is that a general assessment of a person is a correct assesment of most anyone. After all, we are humans and, as such, are very much the same in many ways.
Observation of salient characteristics and self-fulfilling prophecy:
-Cognitive psychologists recognize that a person looking to affirm, via inductive reasoning (also know here as conclusions drawn from "real-world experience"), a particular idea, will collect information that supports the claim, while eschewing evidence to the contrary (speed: What is the total number of people that have ever wrongly guessed your sign versus those that have guessed correctly?).
Jungian Synchronicity:
-Jung's idea of Synchronicity is an excercise is "meaningful coincidences." That is, examine the matrices of interaction and you will recognize instances of interconnectedness. The objection I have to this is the fact that such instances are quickly contradicted by certain instances directly to the contrary. The Jungian Gestalt is, to me, nothing more than the aforementioned collecting of "information that supports the claim, while eschewing evidence to the contrary."
/Born on the same day as Carl Jung and Mick Jagger
The Barnum Effect:
-A psych term, the etymological roots of which lay in PT Barnum's well-known phrase, "A sucker is born every minute."
-In brief: There is a well-worn pysch experiment (I have read journals of this experiment as well as conducted the same experiment in accordance with APA standards) in which subjects are given a statement of their personality based on their astrological profile and asked to evaluate it's accuracy and completeness. Typical results yield a rating of 90%+ accuracy...but every subject is given the same profile.
-The conclusion is that a general assessment of a person is a correct assesment of most anyone. After all, we are humans and, as such, are very much the same in many ways.
Observation of salient characteristics and self-fulfilling prophecy:
-Cognitive psychologists recognize that a person looking to affirm, via inductive reasoning (also know here as conclusions drawn from "real-world experience"), a particular idea, will collect information that supports the claim, while eschewing evidence to the contrary (speed: What is the total number of people that have ever wrongly guessed your sign versus those that have guessed correctly?).
Jungian Synchronicity:
-Jung's idea of Synchronicity is an excercise is "meaningful coincidences." That is, examine the matrices of interaction and you will recognize instances of interconnectedness. The objection I have to this is the fact that such instances are quickly contradicted by certain instances directly to the contrary. The Jungian Gestalt is, to me, nothing more than the aforementioned collecting of "information that supports the claim, while eschewing evidence to the contrary."
/Born on the same day as Carl Jung and Mick Jagger
derek
Grey Eminence
The part on Jungian Sychronicity is particularly interesting as i just read a book where folks were questioned about certain events and where the placed them on a scale of meangingless/meaningful coincidence. I had much the same thoughts when I was reading the book. It crossed my mind that much of para-psychology is based on such an idea of avoiding contrary evidence and/or not actually producing experiements where such contrary evidence could ever come to light.
Dushan S
Member
This is interesting. It tells a lot about human nature but not much about astrology. I mean, close 50% of voters obviously think that Bush is complete idiot, so are they just "Influenced" and wrong? Or, that much people eating junk food in McDonalds, do they prove anything about quality or lack of quality of food in chain restaurants? How can personal opinions and self deceptions be something that proves validity of anything?ARC150 said:
There are some more serious scientific experiments connected with astrology, and they are in some case very convincingly proving that astrologers questioned were wrong, if you want to dig deeper
No, real question is what is number of experienced astrologers that have guessed your sign correctly. And even that question is not valid because, there is (repeating myself) a lot more influences in natal chart than simple sun sign. For instance there is a reason it is really hard to recognize my sun sign, alost no one ever did that.
And you forgot that person very often avoids to percept reality if it is not close enough with her concept of what reality should be. (case with the Darvin and natives that were unable too se his ship because there is nothing similar to it in their culture, only their cleric was able to see it)
I have often seen cases where even if it is obvious that some person has one character thrait or problem, even if it is obvious and everyone is pointing at it, that person still refuses to see it. So I have seen a lot of people intentionaly refusing to admit that astrologer is right in their case because of different reasons, and more ste astrologer is close, the more they are denying.
If you want to be strictly scientific, you should first prove that, right? If not, how do you know?
I must point here that most of the "evidences" that Jung was wrong were coming from causal way of thinking, and Jung says that causality is not able to grasp sinhronicity. So it appears like proving that Einstein is wrong just by using only old newton physics.
As I have said, there is no evidences to the contrary and because most of all evidences are based on causal thinking, That won't work. I guess what is needed is radical shift in way we think and research world around us. We are using causality to research laws of causality, and it is quite normal for everyone, but how could we research laws of sinhronicity without researching them by synchronistic methods?
Again have in mind that sinhronicity is quite normal for the people on the far east, and is part of their perception, it is our western idea that all minds on this planet function in the same way as ours. Even some Nobel price winners for Physics were using I Ching during their research, and I remeber that Hong Kong Police was using I Ching on numerous occasions, for instance when looking for missing persons.
Dushan S
Member
I may be little of topic, but there is one thing that always amazes me (and FP, I am not talking about you but generally, I just kind of "got isnpiration" by reading your postFinal_Product said:
:There are people interested in footbal, that end working in newspaper and those that actually play football, the players. I do not care about what some jurnalists think. If my style is nice, or do they think I don't run enough, or for any kind of comments. They are not players, I am the player, and if my team is winning that is it, I don't care about anything else.
So I think everyone should ask for himself, if he wants to be a journalist, and have empty shell of intelectual "knowledge" or wants to really know how does it feel to kick the ball.
It does not means that reading book is wrong, but to me book is just to make your work on something easier, and to help you along the way. We are subjective and science is in current state objective only. That is good for some things and unusable for some other. So personally, I don't care if science proves that we cannot do this or that if it is working for me in practice. I have recently watched Sting's video, and there was a conversation about astrology, two members of the band were talking about astrology and he was telling them it is all robbish, as they were trying to prove some points to him. Then after some laugh, he admitted that actually he has a friend that is astrologer, and after constant Stings denyal of astrology, he told that he should try for himself and see if that really works. They worked for some time, and then he started giving to sting Natal charts of famous persons (without telling to him about what person this is), letting sting work on them, and he said that from about 20 horoscopes he only got one wrong. Not that Sting is authority or anything (LOL) but I think this is a good ilustration for being open minded and critical at the same time.
I am not into astrology that much as before, but as with everything else, why not try and have personal knowledge if it is working or not? Do you make love to enjoy and understand that this is beautifull unmatching experience or you are quite satisfied to have book telling you that science has proven that this is just a bunch of mechanisms in your body, so you do not really have to try?
