Astrology
Astrology is total bunk. How could the position of astronomical bodies at the time of one's birth possibly influence personality characteristics? For that matter, how could planets and asteroids as seen against the background of distant constellations have any effect of terrestrial events? And anyhow, the astrology we know in the west has been filtered from the original Sumerian through the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, various European societies, until we have this weird patois of various cultures' views of the stars and planets as viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. Due to Earth's wobbly orbital ellipses over the past five millennia, the constellations aren't even in the same place they were when this stuff was thought up. No way astrology could have anything to it.
But somehow every natal chart reading I've done is fairly accurate. Like dead-on for personality profiling. It seems to work, even though there's no reason why it should. Perhaps gravitational pulls and cosmic rays have something to do with it. Perhaps there exist imperceptible extra-dimensional forces or quantum mechanics of which we are not aware and currently have no way to perceive. But something works here.
One day when I have the leisure and resources to do so, I'd like to do a study correlating Myers-Briggs personality types to sun, moon, ascendant, and other important personality indicators in a natal chart. A survey of sun signs by itself won't be good enough because that's like trying to slice bread with a chain saw. Sun sign astrology pisses me off because it's kindergarten astrology - people make everything out of a tiny, albeit important, piece of the astrological personality puzzle. When their Playskool astrology fails to paint an accurate picture, some people think that astrology doesn't work. But there's way more to it than just sun signs.
Astrology is predictive, but not in the way that divination is. While divination is more immediate and flows from the querent himself, natal chart astrology is based on something outside the querent's control: his time and place of birth. Astrology is only predictive insofar as it points out innate inclinations and tendencies. Kind of like the Myers-Briggs. There's a quote attributed to Robert Heinlein (my hero!) that ties into this: "The stars incline, they do not impel." A natal chart is one of the best techniques I know to get a snapshot of someone's motivations, personality quirks, and underlying psychology. Taken one step further, astrology can be used to parse out elements of the human condition, and if you really want to get loony, life lessons/karma.
I'll freely admit that I use astrology as a tool only. It is a model, and models are never 100% perfect. But models can be useful, to paraphrase a mathematician I know. The criterion is whether or not the model works enough of the time to be useful.
How about transit astrology and progressions? These of course tie into comparing the position of natal planets to the current or future position of the planets. I cannot claim to have a deep understanding of these topics, but to me it seems that the tendencies that certain planetary alignments portend are so vague as to be useless in forseeing specific events. We know that Saturn and Pluto came into opposition shortly before the World Trade Center fell, but no one could see in advance precisely what would occur. A very good discussion of the occasion is here. But nebulous predictions that something bad (read: violently transformative) is going to happen does not a reasonable system of predictive astrology make.
But somehow every natal chart reading I've done is fairly accurate. Like dead-on for personality profiling. It seems to work, even though there's no reason why it should. Perhaps gravitational pulls and cosmic rays have something to do with it. Perhaps there exist imperceptible extra-dimensional forces or quantum mechanics of which we are not aware and currently have no way to perceive. But something works here.
One day when I have the leisure and resources to do so, I'd like to do a study correlating Myers-Briggs personality types to sun, moon, ascendant, and other important personality indicators in a natal chart. A survey of sun signs by itself won't be good enough because that's like trying to slice bread with a chain saw. Sun sign astrology pisses me off because it's kindergarten astrology - people make everything out of a tiny, albeit important, piece of the astrological personality puzzle. When their Playskool astrology fails to paint an accurate picture, some people think that astrology doesn't work. But there's way more to it than just sun signs.
Astrology is predictive, but not in the way that divination is. While divination is more immediate and flows from the querent himself, natal chart astrology is based on something outside the querent's control: his time and place of birth. Astrology is only predictive insofar as it points out innate inclinations and tendencies. Kind of like the Myers-Briggs. There's a quote attributed to Robert Heinlein (my hero!) that ties into this: "The stars incline, they do not impel." A natal chart is one of the best techniques I know to get a snapshot of someone's motivations, personality quirks, and underlying psychology. Taken one step further, astrology can be used to parse out elements of the human condition, and if you really want to get loony, life lessons/karma.
I'll freely admit that I use astrology as a tool only. It is a model, and models are never 100% perfect. But models can be useful, to paraphrase a mathematician I know. The criterion is whether or not the model works enough of the time to be useful.
How about transit astrology and progressions? These of course tie into comparing the position of natal planets to the current or future position of the planets. I cannot claim to have a deep understanding of these topics, but to me it seems that the tendencies that certain planetary alignments portend are so vague as to be useless in forseeing specific events. We know that Saturn and Pluto came into opposition shortly before the World Trade Center fell, but no one could see in advance precisely what would occur. A very good discussion of the occasion is here. But nebulous predictions that something bad (read: violently transformative) is going to happen does not a reasonable system of predictive astrology make.