Another
way to understand astrology is to imagine the Solar System as a single
molecule and the planets, including our Earth,
as atoms composing that molecule. From this perspective, we humans are
comparable to subatomic particles zooming around in our own dimension,
oblivious to the larger context we exist within. There are some ancient
sayings that capture this: "As above, so below." "The universe can be
found in a grain of sand."
Most people,
including the highly educated, are unable to distinguish between the astro-babble
of know-nothing airheads and the discussions of those who have deeply
studied astrology. But widespread ignorance is no reason to denigrate
astrology, or perpetuate ignorance of it.
I might have
remained ignorant of astrology had it not been for a concordance of good
fortune: I wrote a novel (4) that became a surprise bestseller and was
widely translated, giving me some spare time. And I found myself in the
right place to explore astrology: California.
I began studying
it in 1965, took instruction from a variety of mentors, attended lectures,
read source material. By the mid-1970s I was focused on stock market astrology,
which led in turn to economic-astrological cyclical correlations, for
which there were no mentors or even books to consult. Not back then.
With the
advent of computers, research that had taken days or weeks could suddenly
be done in seconds or minutes. Then, in the mid-1990s, I discovered others
around the planet had been doing much the same, pursuing the uncanny connections
between economic and celestial cycles.
It wasn't
until the past decade that I began to publish some of my findings on the
StarIQ.com website in the US, the International Society of Business Astrology
website in London, and in a magazine published by the International Society
of Astrological Research. These articles are read and responded to by
people who have overcome the prejudice against astrology—not yet a large
number, but an open-minded and questing group.
Many readers
of these sites are in India; a couple of years ago, the Indian government
decreed that public universities must offer courses in astrology. It's
part of India's recovery from colonialism. Indian astrology, known as
the Vedic tradition, is based on millennia of observing planetary influences
that is enhanced by modern astronomy.
One reason
Western prejudice has lasted so long is that back in the Dark Ages, before
the advent of telescopes, mapping our Solar System was haphazard. Ptolemy's
tables of planetary positions were found to be inaccurate during the Renaissance,
and Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler and others worked to rectify
this.
The Roman
Catholic Church, during the Dark Ages, decreed that the Earth
was the center of the universe, and Western history still teaches that
before modern science, "everybody thought the Earth
was the center of the universe." Not so. Egyptians and Maya, Hindus, Babylonians
and others all knew that the Sun was the center of our Solar System. But
a thousand years of Inquisition created a corpus of misinformation in
Europe and the Americas.
We were emerging
from the Dark Ages by the time of the Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s,
but we had not yet shed some of the taboos acquired during the thousand
years of Inquisition. And, although there appears to be an obvious cause-effect
relationship between the 28-day phases of our Moon and ocean tides, the
cause-effect relationship of Pluto's 248-year cycles are not so obvious.
Even less
obvious is the 494-year cycle of Neptune-Pluto conjunctions. The 26,000-year
Precession of the Equinoxes is ignored by most, including most astrologers,
although the Maya paid close attention to it. It is due to make an interesting
marker at the winter solstice 2012, at the same time as the Mayan 13 baktun
cycle, lasting 5,126 Gregorian Calendar years, and students of Mayan astrology
are keenly aware of 2012 as the crux of a major transition. (6)
A modern
way of stating the premise of astrology is that the Earth,
and thus we Earthlings, are part of a much larger
environment. Most of us think of "environment" as confined to the Earth,
but if you could look down on our Solar System from light-years above
the North Pole, you'd see it as a community of planets moving counter-clockwise
around a Sun. You'd see that their paths are surprisingly flat, and egg-shaped
rather than circular. From that perspective, it would be obvious that
Earth is part of this celestial community dance
called the Solar System. And our Solar System is a tiny spec in the surrounding
universe containing countless other solar systems.
There are
now schemata that depict this perspective, as well as colorful depictions
of the universe beyond sent back by the Hubble Telescope. Powerful as
our modern telescopes are, they cannot begin to find all the other solar
systems out there in the vastness of space. Thus, the study of astrology
is about our own little solar system neighborhood in the universe and
how events in it coincide with events here on Earth.
Another way
to understand astrology is to imagine the Solar System as a single molecule
and the planets, including our Earth, as atoms
composing that molecule. From this perspective, we humans are comparable
to subatomic particles zooming around in our own dimension, oblivious
to the larger context we exist within. There are some ancient sayings
that capture this: "As above, so below." "The universe can be found in
a grain of sand."
Astrology
is also another concept of Time. There is Earthly
clock time, calculated by the way our planet rocks and rolls around our
Sun, creating cycles of days and nights, minutes and seconds, and the
four seasons we experience as our planet performs its wobbling orbital
dance. And there is Solar System time, sometimes grandiosely called "cosmic
time," measured by the cycles made by the bodies of our Solar System.
Although
planetary cycles are fairly regular according to our Earth-clock
measurement of time, the overall context within which they occur is ever
changing, never the same twice. Every 28 days when we see a Full Moon,
the other bodies of the Solar System are arranged differently. The Solar
System clock is far more complex than our Earthly
clock. Many have noticed that "history repeats but does not duplicate."
From an astrological perspective, this is because planetary cycles repeat
but within an ever-changing celestial context.
What we experience
each year as winter is due to the Earth's rocking
motion as it rolls around the Sun. Every winter brings cold north of the
Equator, but no two winters are the same. We can predict next winter's
arrival by the Earth's wobble, but we cannot
predict what kind of winter it will be—colder than usual or warmer than
usual.
Similar correlations
exist between Solar System time and economic winters. They arrive as regularly
as our seasonal winters, and some economic winters are far worse than
others.
In part 3,
we'll look at some interesting planetary-economic correlations that enable
us to predict upcoming economic winters, and even make educated guesses
as to how severe each is likely to be.
Part 3 of
this 5-part series appears on Monday, September 22.
Endnotes:
4. My novel One Hundred Dollar MiSunderstanding
was first published in Paris, in French translation; the subject, miscegenation,
was taboo in the USA then. The first American edition appeared in 1962
via Grove Press.
5. Economists have noted that great depressions have occurred in cycles
of 30 and/or 60 year intervals. If the 30-year cycle brings no great depression,
the following 60-year period has brought a more virulent one. But when
Saturn arrived in Capricorn for the 1990s, it was accompanied by Uranus
and Neptune, with all forming a "beneficent" aspect to Pluto in Scorpio.
No grand cross to Uncle Sam's Sun/Saturn square formed; no great depression
occurred. See the library at my two-part article: Saturn
and Great Depressions.
6. Carl Johan Calleman's analysis of the Maya long cycle can be found
at mayanmajix.com.
Essentially, the Maya calculated that at the crack of dawn on the winter
solstice 2012, our Sun will be conjunct a dark rift in the Milky Way,
symbolized as the Mother of the Universe's vagina, from whence will be
born, or reborn, the Lord of our World. Some believe this god corresponds
to the pantheistic Sun god or Christian Christ, god of enlightenment.
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