A Kind Word About Skeptics

Like most astrologers, I get a bit frustrated with skeptics. They tend to misrepresent astrology, they make incorrect arguments based on misinformed assumptions, and, most of all, they rarely take the time to actually learn anything about our discipline. As astrologers, we sometimes get together and kvetch about skeptics, and at those times there is a palpable frustration because the skeptics arguments are so freaking poor, but they get much more credence than careful astrological responses to them.

But let's leave the frustration with skeptics aside for a minute, and try to look at the issue with a little more compassion. By the middle of the 20th century, there was a real bias towards the materialist perspective that informed the worldview of most educated people. Many of us today realize that that worldview is not only limiting, it is in many ways just plain old incorrect. The work in consciousness studies, transpersonal psychology, and even physics has pointed towards a central role of consciousness in the cosmos.
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Yet there was great value in the scientific/materialist worldview. From the perspective of people who were deeply entrenched in it, they were fighting back centuries of superstition: superstition that was often enforced with horrible torture, both physical and psychological. Superstition that was far more hostile and intolerant than the scientific/materialist view has ever been. The pull away from those limiting belief systems into a world where any trained observer could "see for yourself" was an exciting and empowering change. Because the material world is easiest to measure, it became the only world for the scientific/materialists. That was their error, and that's why they don't like astrology and never will.

They taught us not to swallow truths without testing them for ourselves, and then checking the results with others. That's the scientific method, and it isn't going anywhere. We'll keep that part. But we no longer feel the need to ban anything that isn't brick-and-mortar material from existence. We can accept that mind, emotion, soul, and spirit are real, without reverting to the superstition of the past.

Scientific/materialists who are skeptical of astrology are in many ways like the soldiers who were lost on desert islands and were still fighting the Second World War into the 1950s. We can invite them out of the trenches, the war's over.

(the "Thinker" is a pre-Columbian statue from Ecuador)

The Audacity of Hope...

That phrase began to sound hopelessly ironic about 18 months into the President's first term (note the assumption of re-election).

But it may manage to ring out once again, if only for a while, as Barack Obama is nominated tonight by the Democratic Party. It actually made the news that a group of astrologers at the United Astrology Conference in New Orleans in May all agreed that Obama would win the election, so I guess that is settled (note the mildly ironic sentiment). So let's focus on the nomination itself.

First, the moon will be void-of-course when Obama is nominated. In general, that wouldn't be good news for a candidate, but we can let it go - one meaning of the moon's void is "nothing will come of it," and that would certainly be a discouraging phrase. Yet actions taken with the moon void often have a kind of fated, inevitable quality about them. It's been decades since party conventions we
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re really about dueling to see who would win the nomination - for both parties the decision was made months ago.

Then there is a sun/Jupiter square tomorrow morning, which will color all of Thursday and Friday. Sun/Jupiter can be great for inspiring us to be ourselves. Hope does spring eternal, and these two planets can really foster enthusiasm - especially for a leader, and especially for a Leo. Venus will also be gracing the President's sign as he accepts the nomination.

All in all, I would say that Obama's off to a good start. The sun/Jupiter square might get him to go a little overboard, or whip up a bit of exaggerated enthusiasm in the party, but that's not a bad thing in such a contentious election. Hyperbole is pretty much par for the course in politics, and sun/jupiter can make sound bites with the best of them. And the void moon just means the nomination was inevitable. As for the election...