From: eshin@ddsw1.mcs.com (Eshin-Fun)
Subject: Re: Old Stars, New Stars  (was Re: HALLOW'EEN)
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 11:40:31 GMT
Organization: ddsw1.MCS.COM Contributor, Chicago IL
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

>>cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
: 
: As far as I know Hindu astrologers are the only ones who use stellar
: relationships in natal astrology. Western astrological practice is
: concerned with the relationship of the planets with the tropical
: zodiac, which has nothing to do the with positions of any stars, being
: enitrely a local solar system phenomenon.<<<


Perhaps it is you who is out of date. Today there is a whole system using
Fagan-Allen houses which uses sidereal computations and it is not Hindu
astrology that it refers to. Western astrological practices is certainly
ridden still with the tropical house system but then again there is also the
sidereal house system that is rapidly becoming an alternative. 
These have brought about the question of the intercepted sign of Ophiucus
that is rapidly displacing Scorpio and the question of Cetus on the other
extreme.
There is also the practice of using certain stars (Regulus for example) and
asterioids that never were part of the original tropical considerations.


>>: Ptolemy's "Tetrabiblos", written 2,000 years ago, attempted to
: summarise astrology as practised at that time. Translations are still
: in print today, available from your local astrological bookseller. If
: you consult one you will find that 2,000 years ago astrologers were
: concerned with the relationships of the planets to the _tropical_
: zodiac, knew about the precesssion of the tropical zodiac through the
: sidereal zodiac, and used that for other purposes.<<

2,000 years ago in Ptolomaic times Aries >was< 0 degrees on the ecliptic of
the Vernal equinox. Astrology did not then have a "Tropical" term. This
becomes commonly used today to distinguish from the Sidereal which exists in
the Western world now.


>>: I am afraid that it is your understanding of astrology that is more
: than 2,000 years out of date.<<


And I am afraid your understanding of astrology is not only bias but
unrealistic. You are not following the changes that have taken place in the
last thirty years or so. Granted your statement is consistent with certain
astronomers that will not let their convictions be altered with
astrological studuies. But from an astrological or astromantical point of
view there are constant changes that keep taking place.

: 
: >my
: >point was that it is possible for certain aspects of astrology to become
: >enshrined in tradition and then left behind by the equinox precession.
: 
: You are absolutely right. Astrology did once make this error. But it
: noticed and corrected this error more than 2,000 years ago.
: -- 
: Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085<<

Astrology did not make an error. Human frailties did. The correction of the
ecliptical movements was not really popularized till a few years ago when
this argument was made a public scandal.
Several books were written on the subject, dividing the lot of astrologers
into Tropical and Sidereal. I have not kept up with the HIndu diviners on
this subject but for the most part in Hindu astrology which is more comonly
lunar using the moon's asterisms as their basis of computation there may
have not been any change.

My point that has so blatenly glossed over is that certain festival which
>today< we still revere are nothing more than stellar oriented phenomena
that in 24000 years they are bound to once again meet with the original
conditions and stellar combination.
My point again, was to show how our traditions "have" a meaning and are not
just merely superstitions as the cynical disclaimer would have us believe.

Our society is rapidly becoming infested with these pseudo intellectual
points encouraging more people to give up rather than take to a study. Our
society is becoming void of feeling or trust at the subjigation of the
assidious critic that in reality has nothing to offer in return except their
own evaluation and opinion of what is right and wrong. Leaving the
dissapointed alone in their lurch to figure out how to go, not knowing any
more that there is any direction.

Suddenly what people do, becomes superstition or "evil" and we are reduced
to a feelingless, frigid and bleak world of shadows and fantasies that it is
no wonder that many of these victims give themselves wantonly to forgetting
in hedonistic self indulgence than to the encouragement in the pursuit of
knowledge.

Eshin-Fun