Astrology

[avevale_intelligencer]

Apparently something has happened (I don't know precisely what, but it may have to do with Ophiuchus and the precession of the equinoxes, which is old news to serious astrologers but who cares), and [EDIT: insulting phrase redacted] various sceptics have been popping up to point and laugh at the stupid people who believe inanimate balls of gas and rock know what you're going to have for breakfast next Tuesday, or something. [Paraphrase is a composite of various general comments on astrology from Terry Pratchett, David Langford and others, and does not refer to any specific comment on this issue.]

So I thought it would be a good time to re-run my speculative theory about the origin of astrology, which I arrived at using my special variant of Occam's Razor, in which you go with the simplest explanation that fits all the available facts and doesn't depend on everyone except you being a moron. Here goes, then:

1. The personality traits came first. Gazing into the sky and propitiating the gods is all very well, but I think it's been fairly well established that your successful king, general or merchant tended to be a pragmatist and was more likely to pay good money for something which would tell him useful information about his subjects, customers or enemies. The traits were not made up, they were observed.

2. Once they had been observed and codified, some form of classification would have been needed, and animals have always been linked in folklore to particular qualities of humans, so that would be a useful way to go. Some people are like bulls, some are like fish and so on. (I seem to remember being told that we went through various systems before arriving at the current zodiac, but I'm not sure what they were.)

3. This is where the stars come in. Looking for some way to explain the progression of animal-like traits they'd discovered, the ancient astronomers found that if they grouped the stars along the sun's path in a certain way and really used their imaginations, they could find the relevant animal shape in the position where the sun was at the moment of the person's birth. To be honest, I'm quite surprised they thought of this at all, since barring an eclipse it's kind of hard to see the stars immediately behind the sun. It doesn't seem intuitive, if you see what I mean. Nevertheless, think of it they did.

4. And this is where the gods come in. "Why is there a bull in the sky?" people would ask, after the relevant constellation had been pointed out to them ("No, there...well, try squinting a bit..."). And the ancient sages eventually came up with a story, which by the time the Greeks came along had been fully incorporated into the corpus of myth surrounding the tenants of Olympus. This explains the bittiness of the stories and the unlikely selection of bods who got asterised.

The beauty of this theory is that it's not in any way a defence of astrology itself. I personally believe there might be something in it, but it's just as likely that the original observations were flawed, that witnesses were inadvertently led, that cold reading techniques were employed. Humans are a diverse lot and don't fit easily into any number of boxes, so all that could ever have been observed and codified were broad tendencies which could have been illusory.

What it is, I think, is a right way round view of events which are commonly viewed in reverse; that the ancients, looking for ways in which the gods might have shaped the souls of humanity, decided the stars were full of creatures and then arbitrarily imposed their characteristics on people. Nothing within the history of science (as far as I know) has been decided that way, and it's not a very sensible way of going on whether you believe in gods or not. My way of looking at it has as much chance of being true as any other version, and it's a good deal kinder to our ancestors, to whom we owe a fair bit.

And it opens up the possibility that the progression of personality traits documented by ancient astrologers, if it exists, has absolutely nothing at all to do with the stars or the planets as such, but has some other cause which nobody has bothered to look for, because opinion is polarised between "it's true, and it's the stars" and "it isn't true at all because the stars explanation doesn't make sense." If that's so, it explains why the precession of the equinoxes hasn't affected the casting of birth charts in any significant way (till now, and if it does I think it will just mess things up for honest astrologers).

That said, if you want to pour scorn, go ahead. I have no proof to offer, nor any particular emotional investment in this issue, so be as sceptical as you like. And if you know something which knocks my theory into a cocked hat, do please share.

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I've seen at least one book in which Western and Chinese astrology are combined to produce a series of composite types, the Aries Rat, the Taurus Sheep and so on...the traits are broad enough that they could be regarded as both right. And there are many possible reasons for the idea of chronological grouping becoming pervasive; one possibility is the earnest desire to produce a solid and persuasive result for the king and thus avoid being executed. Another is that humans love patterns and systems and things they can observe and chart.

(It is, I grant you, if it exists, a tenuous thing at best; I know a fair bit about "star signs" from my reading, but I wouldn't even try to guess anyone's sign from just looking at them, and if I were to say "oh, of course she's a Gemini" when told, you would have to take my word that I wasn't just lying, either to you or to myself. Gather a hundred Geminis in a room and you would have a hundred very different people, and the common factor linking them all together would seem very vague indeed, if it seemed to be there at all.)

Maybe there were such other systems as you describe, and they didn't stand up to scrutiny whereas astrology did. Climate might be an influence; many of the differences between Northern and Southern English, or between Scots and English, could be ascribed to the differences in climate and landscape--people talk about "the soft south."

I don't know, and I'm not really that bothered. I happen to identify quite strongly with the set of traits associated with the sign Sagittarius (and, for that matter, with the Chinese Ram/Sheep/Goat) but whether that's because I'm predisposed to those traits or just a happy chance I haven't a clue. My only impulse in thinking about this is to find a way to credit our ancestors in this with the intelligence they clearly showed in many other endeavours, and make them seem a little less like credulous clowns who ignored reality.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

A Sagittarius? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_%28astrology%29) Really?

You hadn't struck me as particularly optimistic or partial to the great outdoors. Nor did I know of your interest in foreign languages.

Fascinating.

I'm a Sagittarius too, and I'm not very optimistic either. And while I certainly am partial to the great outdoors, I haven't a smigeon of interest in understanding the world from a "higher" (presumably meaning "religious") perspective, nor do I have a great capacity for "faith" (presumably meaning "religion".)

Sure there's stuff in there that might be said to apply to me, or to you, but it's a shotgun blast of unrelated attributes, stated in positive terms, pretty much guaranteeing that anyone born in any month will find a handful of things in there that are true, or that he or she would like to believe are true.

Which is how this point of view perpetuates itself, of course.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

But hey, now I have a ready-made excuse for the times I feel like abandoning the effort of tact.

Except, of course, that using an untrue excuse would be a betrayal of my principles.

Dagnabbit.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Funny. I think of it as a reason to be more watchful of what I say than I might otherwise be. (And I still manage to put my hoof foot in it, as witness lo these many pages.)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

The great outdoors made me sneeze, wheeze and itch from an early age and stung me once in an unprotected spot. Some things are not astrological, and I can take a hint. My interest in foreign languages, though, was there before I even knew what astrology was; I've always been fascinated by other languages, to the point of going on to study them at university and getting bogged down in all sorts of other stuff that didn't interest me. As for optimism, why do you think I'm so damn disappointed all the time?

How much of the above is self-fulfilling whatnot I leave to you. As for your interest in understanding the world from a higher perspective, I'm not going to quote that line of yours again; it is, however, a very Sagittarian sentiment, as I understand it.

The impression I have is that it isn't so much the individual shot holes as the picture you make by joining them up. Maybe it would be possible to make anyone sound like a Sagittarian, or a Virgo, or a Pisces. I don't know; I've never tried, though I'm sure Derren Brown or one of those jokers has.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Of course you don't have to quote anything of mine if you don't want to, but I'm afraid while you choose not to I don't know which line you mean. Which is okay with me, but might interfere with some degree of understanding you were hoping to convey.

I had never thought of optimism meaning being disappointed all the time--I had always thought of it as recovering from disappointment quickly and tending to see the bright side. Perhaps I don't know that much about it, with my generally pessimistic nature.

Some things are not astrological? Are you sure? I thought it was fairly routine for horoscopes to include things like what diseases and injuries one is supposedly vulnerable to?

For example, here at www.astrology-online.com (http://www.astrology-online.com/sagittar.htm) it says:

Possible Health Concerns...

Sagittarius governs the hips, thighs and sacral area; subjects suffer from ailments of the hips and thighs and are liable to sciatica and rheumatism. An alleged deficiency of silicon in their physiques can give them poor skin, nails and hair.

As they are often sportsmen indulging in dangerous pursuits, they are prone to accidents which arise from these. The ancient astrologers mention falls from horses and hurts from them and other four-footed beasts. The taking of risks in other sports is a danger to the modern Sagittarian, and he is also liable to accidents with fire and heat.

Nothing in there about allergies--which are, of course, a perfectly valid reason to avoid the great outdoors (as is simply not liking it; it's not for everybody.)

I think it's a reasonable conclusion that the time of year we're born doesn't govern our health risks. That's all. It doesn't govern our love of the great outdoors, our love of foreign languages, our success in academia, or any other aspects of our personalities. Nor do I think these unrelated traits (optimism and hip troubles, for instance) cluster in any recognizable way.

Humans are very good at picking out patterns, in the midst of confusing "noise." Unfortunately, we're so good at it, we do it even when there is no underlying pattern. Once we think we perceive a pattern, we tend to remember random events that confirm the pattern and forget random events that disconfirm the pattern.

There's nothing about this that makes our distant ancestors more stupid than we are. Our advances in understanding the universe come from a system we've worked out that, shakily and imperfectly, lets us work around these exact same tendencies in us. That's all.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, okay. The line I was thinking of was:

"The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand."

Oh, I recover quickly. It just keeps happening again. And again. And...you get the idea. :) But I am basically optimistic, otherwise I'd never get out of bed.

And I do have poor skin and nails, and the hair while exuberant (at the moment) is coarse and prone to be bristly when short. Rather like horsehair, in fact. Falling off horses I've managed to avoid by never getting on one (mostly due to lack of opportunity: I'd love to try). No hip problems as yet. Problems with being hip, of course, but I tend to ignore those.

There are people who will maintain that astrology can predict future events, that it dictates the courses of our lives and every aspect of our natures. Most of them are either selling something, or buying from someone who is selling something (Joan the Wad, anyone?). I'm more inclined to suspect that there are influences, maybe very weak ones, maybe sometimes stronger, and that our destiny is actually in our own hands--we can go with the flow or against it, and most of the time we don't even notice it, but sometimes, in small and unconsidered ways, it helps or hinders us.

And I could be wrong on that, being a pattern-picker myself.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Remember, I was writing that song from the perspective of a believer. The fact that I can, somewhat, adopt that worldview as my own for the length of time it takes to write a song about how a believer can reconcile science and religion, does not mean I have any interest in adopting a religious perspective permanently myself.

You have poor skin and nails and my skin and nails are okay. You have coarse "horselike" hair and my hair is as fine as a baby's. We both have no hip problems.

And if it counts when one of us matches the characteristics, it counts just as much when one of us doesn't. The reason these patterns start to seem like there's something to them is in part because we fall on matches with glad cries of interest, and pretty much ignore mismatches, or come up with some reason why they don't count. Like "no hip problems yet."

Old people tend to get hip problems, but do old people born in December have more? Probably not. What's probably going on is that old Sagittarii ascribe their hip problems to their birth date, and old non-Sagittarii ascribe them to their age, and point out that when they were young, they didn't have hip problems. And vice versa for young ones. And of course in a large population a few young non-Sagittarii have hip problems, but they're just anomalies: the pattern generally works.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"Remember, I was writing that song from the perspective of a believer. The fact that I can, somewhat, adopt that worldview as my own for the length of time it takes to write a song about how a believer can reconcile science and religion, does not mean I have any interest in adopting a religious perspective permanently myself."

But I for one thank you for making the effort to at least do it for that long, which many wouldn't. And now I wanna know what this song is and where I can find it. =:o}

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The Word of God (http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

With "The Word of God" and "Acts of Creation" you did a wonderful job of putting yourself into the mindset of a believer, they both feel completely genuine to me.

So I say "thank you for the music"[1] to both you and Zan, and for making those efforts to get 'into' an alien-to-you perspectives.

[1] And yes, I am thinking of that song...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It was not particularly difficult to get into the mindset--the culture I live in is saturated with it. But I'm pleased to hear I made a good job of it, and glad you like the songs.