Second Journal Entry for Astrology
This is my second journal assignment for my astrology class. These might be a bit vague in context since it would take a lot to explain for those who aren’t taking the class, but if there are any questions, let me know.
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Topics: Eliade’s Sacred and Profane, Sproul’s take on myth and Gleiser’s cosmology.
The words sacred and profane usually tend to set off flags in the imaginations of people as “good and bad”. The idea of something that is sacred is that it is someway holy and that which is profane is unholy. Though technically that’s what Eliade is putting across, he doesn’t mean profane is a bad thing, simply the mundane. He states that Hierophany is “the act by which the sacred reveals itself” which when I looked into the possible origins of the word, makes a certain sense.
The first part I focused on, was -phany, which I’d seen/heard before in words such as epiphany or theophany. I found the word Hieros in Greek means sacred and “phainein” means to reveal or bring to light. This is the break down of the word Hierophant, which is someone who reveals the sacred truth. I don’t believe this to be coincidence, in fact that’s exactly what Eliade is talking about, except the revelation doesn’t come from an outside source (like a priest) but it’s a realization that one makes (much like an epiphany).
If this is the way we see hierophanies, then I would agree to say the sky is a hierophany in that it reveals its sacred nature to those who notice it. Sometimes you can look at the stars and see twinkling lights and other times the vastness of the universe and the tremendous feeling of awe leaves you breathless. Chalk one down for Eliade.
The relevance of the sky in myth is not lost on me, in that as Sproul states, myth proclaim values and from those values assert facts. When ancient man looked up at the sky, they saw the overwhelmingly vastness of multitudes of stars, whether they were seen as gods or holes in the celestial sphere, the importance of the sky remained because of the value it had. It caused wonder and awe and it was something that revealed itself to anyone who cared to look. Nobody needed a priest to show them the stars.
It’s because the sky had a sort of public appeal that anyone could seek to discover what the meaning was, except that with increased knowledge, it became apparent that great knowledge of mathematics and geometry were needed is one aimed to be an astrologer. The perception of patterns in one’s daily life led to trying to understand and predict those patterns, what then of finding that in the vastness of the cosmos, there are familiar entities (planets, originally named in Greek meaning “wanderers”) which seemed to be locked in patterns with us, suggesting that though there is an infinite sky, there are still patterns and meaning behind it.
Gleiser mentions the different beginnings of creation myths, which begin with “chaos” and order is drawn forth from this “void” of chaos. The preoccupation with creating order is based in physics as well, at least in the realm of learning to recognize patterns in the most chaotic of places. Gleiser briefly summarizes the “Theory of Everything” in which he refers to the four basic forces of: gravitational, Electromagnetic and strong and weak nuclear force. The theory is that from these forces, one can point back to a single force that causes these fundamental forces to function, which sounds a lot like the argument for finding the first cause of reality.
Tags: astrology, religion, assignment, school, ponderings, journal
Originally published at Stressmint Dot Com. You can comment here or there.