From Tyagi@HouseOfKaos.Abyss.com Sun Feb 20 18:32:45 1994 From: Tyagi@HouseOfKaos.Abyss.com To: ceci@lysator.liu.se Subject: A.m Tyagi Astrology 1 Lines: 72 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 94 09:32:06 PST X-Origin: The Portal System (TM) From: Tyagi Nagasiva To: Alt.magick Date: 9206.30 Re: Astrology Not all astrologers are materialists. The 'Humanistic' astrologers tend to shy away from materialistic explanations of astrological arts. Q: Why is the moment of birth so important? a) The issue is personal individuation. Upon emerging >from our mother's womb we become an individual human. Ultimately there is NO basis for selecting the first breath (or birth, etc.). A point needs to be selected and this seems the most philosophically viable as the beginning of our life in separation from our mother (umbilically, if nothing else). However, it would be just as legitimate to select our date of departure from the home or the moment we first feel that we've made a psychological (rather than simply physical) break with mom. People do charts for 'births' into social organizations, adoptions of new names ('Bob' to 'Robert', for example), and beginning new projects. One makes a decision based upon one's own preferences and chooses a reference point. None are really 'wrong' or 'right'. b) Not all astrologers posit such material influence. Some see the correlation between personality and cosmological configuration as 'synchronicity' or the manifestation of a very old occult concept, represented well by the phrase 'As above, so below' or by the Judaic concept of 'Adam Kadman', which essentially relates to an ultimate identity of self and universe. Some accept a limited form of this and posit the REFLECTION rather than the identity. Q: How can astrology claim accuracy based on the exact moment of birth? Most cosmological elements are slow-moving and thus have a wide margin for time. Those which don't (notably the ascendant) can be 'rectified' through considering the overall chart as a context in comparison with the individual in question. In other words, if the ascendant doesn't seem right somehow and there is a possibility for error, alternatives are considered and minor adjustments are made based on other elements of the chart. What must be said here is that for some astrologers these particulars are less important than the process of contemplating one's own chart and how it relates to oneself. Regardless of any particulars, I tend to think that the astrological assertions/guidelines are vague enough to apply to most people, yet specific enough to warrant intense introspection in order to arrive at a useful interpretation. Many would probably disagree here. The way I see it, astrology is similar to a complicated symbol-system (along the lines of the Qabalah/Kabbalah) into which one may categorize one's experiences of oneself and then reflection/imagine one's image within it for the purposes of self-understanding. Our subconscious choices (e.g. Neptune relates to one element more than another for us when placed in the 6th House, is in relationship to other planets and so we must decide among ambiguities of meaning) bring up a sort of mediumistic result with transformative capability. How well this works when someone does this for another person I would not care to speculate. Like Tarot, I've found it more useful to learn it and do it for myself, both for the experience of learning the symbols and for the length of time which I spend introspecting to see if my results meet up with my experience. Tyagi NagaSiva Tyagi@HouseofKaos.Abyss.com