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Brennan The Definition of Astrology
Brennan The Definition of Astrology
What is the definition of astrology? If you search around the internet for a few minutes you will find a number of different definitions. Unfortunately most of them are wrong. They are wrong in the sense that they do not accurately reflect the way in which many astrologers conceptualize and subsequently define their own subject. This is often because definitions of astrology are written by people who have little or no familiarity with the subject, and thus they are written from an outsiders perspective. The purpose of this article, then, is to outline a definition of astrology that is broad enough to encompass all or most views of the subject by actual practitioners. I will then contrast this definition with some of the more common ones that exist today.
Astrology: A Definition
This is the definition of astrology that I would like to propose: Astrology is the study of the correlation between celestial objects and earthly events. Thats it. Now, one could argue that the definition is overly broad, but I would say that what it lacks in specificity it makes up for in accuracy. Here is why: Most contemporary definitions of astrology assume that astrologers posit some sort of celestial force which exerts an influence over earthly events, in order to account for the things that certain astrological alignments are said to correlate with. The problem with this is that such definitions of astrology ignore a longstanding debate within the astrological community about whether the celestial objects used in astrology act as signs or causes of the things that they correlate with here on Earth. In point of fact, I would say that the majority of modern western astrologers today hold the view that the movements of celestial objects such as planets and stars do in fact correlate with terrestrial events, but they do not cause those events to take place. Or in other words, celestial objects act as signs of events that they correlate with, but not causes. This is usually conceptualized in terms of a modified version of Carl Jungs theory of synchronicity, where there can be an acausal connection between objects or events in time that
consists entirely of an equivalence in meaning or symbolism. So, for example, while an astrologer might say that having Mars in the 10th house of a natal chart could indicate or signify someone who has a career as an athlete or perhaps someone who is in the military, that does not necessarily mean that they think that Mars causes the person to have that career path. Rather, the planetary placements at the moment of a persons birth simply reflect or symbolize different facets of their life and future.
Our aim here, O most excellent of friends Athanasios, is, God willing, to set forth this handbook as something that can be quite easily followed; it contains some commentary and an essay that has come to us about what was said by the ancients concerning the stars, whether signifying or causing or even in some other fashion encircling and turning everything here under the Moon with their figures relative to each other and to the earth (Hephaistio of Thebes, Apotelesmatics, Book I, Preface: 1, trans. Robert Schmidt, The Golden Hind Press, Berkeley Springs, WV, 1994, pg. 1) While Ptolemys causal conceptualization of astrology came to be the dominant one in the Medieval period, some tensions between the different viewpoints persisted in the astrological tradition all the way into the modern period, when the debate was fully revived again.
city, an idea, a company or a marriage. One does not cause the other; they are synchronous, and mirror each other. (Liz Greene, Relating: An Astrological Guide to Living with Others on a Small Planet, Weiser, 1978, pg. 24) More recently, Richard Tarnas outlined the following position in his notable 2006 book Cosmos and Psyche: In the perspective I am suggesting here, reflecting the dominant trend in contemporary astrological theory, the planets do not cause specific events any more than the hands on a clock cause a specific time. Rather, the planetary positions are indicative of the cosmic state or archetypal dynamics at that time. (Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, Viking Press, 2006, pg. 77) Notice that Tarnas not only explicitly rejects the notion of a causal mechanism underlying astrology, but he presents this as the dominant conceptualization of the subject in the astrological community at this point in time. Surely any contemporary definition of astrology would have to take this into account. But do they? Lets take a look.
Skeptical Literature
One of the interesting side effects of the prevalence of the causal conceptualization of astrology in the typical definitions of the subject is that this definition also becomes widely used in skeptical literature on astrology. This is problematic since it results in a number of straw man arguments on the part of skeptics, where virtually all of their arguments are based on disputing
the notion that the planets can have any causal effect on human life, even though this isnt necessarily what most astrologers claim, as demonstrated above. This makes some of their arguments rather weak and easy to dismiss, since it basically becomes the case where they are setting up and knocking down their own definition of astrology, without checking to see if it actually matches with what the astrologers are saying. This is part of a broader issue Ive noticed with the modern skeptical movement and mentioned in previous articles, where a typical skeptic will seldom take the time to develop more than a passing familiarity with astrology, and so they are usually forced to rely on questionable arguments that have been repeated by other skeptics for decades. At some point I expect the skeptical community to pick up on this discrepancy between the definition that they usually give for astrology and the one that astrologers tend to use for themselves, but until then, here are some typical definitions of astrology from skeptics: Definition of astrology from the Skeptics Dictionary: Astrology, in its traditional form, is a type of divination based on the theory that the positions and movements of celestial bodies (stars, planets [except the one you are born on or those in other solar systems], Sun, and Moon) at the time of birth profoundly influence a persons life. Correlation does not prove causality, but it is good enough for most astrologers. According to some astrologers, the data support the hypothesis that there is a causal connection between heavenly bodies and human events. Phil Plaits definition of astrology (he is the former president of the James Randi Educational Foundation): What is astrology? That question is tough, actually. There are lots of flavors of astrology. Sun sign, Vedic, archetypal, natal, Horary the different kinds of astrology seem to outnumber the stars in the sky. Some of the claims they make are inherently contradictory (some say the moment of birth is important, others say its the month, etc.), but they all operate under a very broad working assumption: there is some sort of force from the heavens that influences us here on Earth. There are lots of different attributions for this force (some say gravity, some say electromagnetism, some say a force that cannot be measured), but it all boils down to the planets and stars having an effect on people. Notice the discrepancy here between Plaits definition of astrology and the definitions given by the astrologers mentioned above, Tarnas and Greene. He actually goes on for a while on this topic, explaining at great length why astrology cannot operate through any known force. Now, to a certain extent this is actually necessary, since there are a number of astrologers who believe that astrology works through some known or unknown force. But in all of his extensive criticisms of astrology the other widespread conceptualization of it is never mentioned. As far as I can tell, most skeptics arent aware of it. From a certain perspective one might argue that since even most mainstream dictionaries only mention the causal conceptualization of astrology in their definitions of the subject, the skeptics cant really be faulted for doing the same. Im not sure that this is necessarily true though, because the dictionaries can only be faulted for having an incomplete definition, whereas the
skeptics tend to portray themselves as authorities on the subject who are knowledgeable enough about it to be able to say definitely that there is nothing to it. Now, I actually know that most skeptics are good people who have good intentions in their skeptical endeavors, but there is something deeply disturbing about what Ive just pointed out. How can a group of people set themselves up as authorities on a subject when they havent even studied it enough to write an accurate definition of it?