“The Moment of Astrology” by Geoffrey Cornelius, 2005

Ironically, the critique of status quo astrology by Ficino in the late 15th century was a critique of stupid fatalism, which was the rationalistic position at a time when the influence of the celestial sphere was unquestioned.

(Lol is humanism an unconscious magical tradition?)

Pico — Ficino’s dazzling student — first went to Rome to argue that Kabbalah was not only compatible with Christianity but proved the divinity of Jesus (the Church forced him to recant). To me this makes it obvious how he became this historic humanistic opponent of astrology.

The problem was that the status quo astrologers of this time considered themselves practitioners of a science separate from natural magic, which required that their conclusions about it be as deterministic as everyday physics, and this was eventually revealed to be dumb.

Ficino casts these pseudoscientific astrologers out of proper magic, and then Pico casts them out of proper science, putting them into a “double exile” that sets up astrology to be cast aside by the increasingly successfully materialist mainstream.

The difference between Ficino and Pico is key to understanding the waste of centuries created by this double exile. Ficino practiced magical astrology and knew Heaven and Earth are in dialogue. Pico was a philosophical goofball who thought the Soul was higher than the World.

“Modern humanists attack and [modern] astrologers defend, in both cases using the language of science. It is in this way that astrology has allowed its domain to come under the arbitration of modern scientific rationalism, at the expense of its philosophical self-awareness.”

“[W]e should admit something which our more perceptive critics sometimes hold against us. In out usual description of our subject, its foundation in a magical-religious inspiration has been obscured.” …

… “The materialism and positivism of our opponents is the complement to a misleading materialism and positivism within astrology itself.”

“‘Science’ has been made a substitute for philosophy, that is, for careful description and reflective analysis of what we do. Whenever this attitude is carried over into astrology, we become as if cowed and submissive, and a profound unthoughtfulness results.”

I was not actually expecting to be challenged like this on “I don’t know how astrology works. Try it and see,” and I like it. He’s right; it’s socially necessary to at least be able to articulate, “Reality is some kind of pattern, and astrology participates directly in it” or something.

I’m already onboard with PART of the job, which is to complicate people’s models of causality and prediction by making them confront the fact that people must mean something when they say astrology “works.” But to use it in practice, I have to be able to provide my own view.

“It is commonly taken for granted that science has this supreme arbitrating role, so astrologers seem to justify astrology by an appeal to science, rather than to directly engage ethical or religious questions.” …

[hell yeah]

“However, since astrology repeatedly fails to achieve scientific and rational justification, in reality it takes its chances as another variant of personal or religious belief, whether astrologers like it or not.”

[HELL YEAH]

“The modern rationalist may feel depth psychology is a pseudo-science but will allow that a rational case can be made for its investigation. Psychological astrology cannot disguise its seemingly absurd and irrational foundation.”

[🔥🔥🔥𝖍𝖊𝖑𝖑 𝖞𝖊𝖆𝖍🔥🔥🔥]

It just struck me how hilarious it is that people imagine the gods would allow their will to be discerned via STATISTICS, as though that weren’t the entire history of theological thrashing about with the “problem of evil” &c. from the moment humans lost contact with the gods.

THEOLOGY

LOL

IMAGINE TRYING TO DO DIVINATION IN A COMPLETELY UNREAL PLACE WHERE YOU MADE EVERYTHING UP

The exact converse of this is “statistics, lol, imagine trying to do divination without participating in it at all.”

“If we are going to employ the concept of synchronicity, or anything similar, it cannot be made a simple substitute for causation.”

Studies of correlations between chart data and observable phenomena have found ZILCH. Studies of ASTROLOGERS’ ability to identify the correct chart or biography or whatever have erratic results not dependent on technique or experience, but sometimes absurdly accurate. Soooooooo…

It’s almost as though divination takes place in relational situations between beings and symbols, is unlikely to go well in the form of taking a written test for some scientist, and is (🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️) not going to show up in a bunch of data with NO DIVINER INVOLVED.

“To make a horary is equivalent to beginning the rites of sacrifice.”

“He that understands no more of Astrologie (nor will make a further use of it) then to quack with a few Tearmes in an Horary Question; is no more worthy to be esteemed an Astrologian then Hee who hath onely learnt Hebrew may be accounted a Caballistical Rabbi…”

— Elias Ashmole

“Ashmole is striking at one of astrology’s persistent fallacies, ‘the illusion of technique’. It is this illusion which lets the astrologer follow a rule, pick a significator, and forget to question whether he or she should be judging at all.”

I love Hellenistic technique, don’t get me wrong, but this book is making pretty clear that Hellenistic doctrine was the beginning of the Dark Ages of mechanistic/deterministic astrology. Platonism, Stoicism, the abstraction of the gods… same thing that happened to Judaism!

“It is impossible to defeat by sacrifice that which has been established from the beginning of time.”

— Valens

BRUH

“We assign certain moments as significant, so our art is not one of reading off an objective influence in material reality. It is an act of assignation. We both create and respond to significance, and our interpretation reaps the fruits of our assignation.”

“In our natal astrology let us get away from the illusion that we are really dealing with an ‘objective’ birth moment. From the potent totemic truths of the Sun-signs all the way to the sober sophistication of the horoscope, we are trading in psychic and symbolic images of birth”

“We assign our natal astrology to the hospital clock to see what the divination gives us — but the horoscopes we work with are not astronomical records of an event in the physical world.”

ok I highly recommend any Jewish people reading this book just skip pages 277–282 and read this Wikipedia page instead, trust me on this

“It follows that the war in which we make our symbolic practice, what we turn it towards, and how we act in relation to the symbol, is just as much part of the meaning and therefore the definition of astrology as is an objective statement of its principles and rules.”

“The source of astrology’s ethic, and the arbiter for each astrologer’s conscience, cannot be wholly separated from something in the fibre of symbolism, at the centre of its phenomenon. It is engaged in every interpretive decision we make.”

“The divinatory understanding also leads to the conclusion that since divination puts us in a creative relationship with our fate, the practice of divination is in itself conducive to the good that is being inquired about.” really getting to the grand finale here

“The knowledge of astrology is not separate from the action and conduct of the astrologer, and there is no such thing as value-free astrological interpretation.”

Finished. Wow, I trust myself so much more having read this book.