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study guide for superdomain02a ["Augury"]
Material from: Cornelius, G. (1998, October). Is astrology divination and does it matter? In United Astrology Congress, May (Vol. 22).
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1. Know whether or not divination is a word that is often loosely used to mean a type of intuition. Know whether or not [the author] came into astrology directly through the I Ching and a love of divination. Know whether or not, for many people, astrology is the first form of symbolic thinking they have explored, making their experience somewhat different. Know whether or not, lecture after lecture and book after book, [the author] almost never encountered the word ‘divination’ in relation to astrology.
2. Know whether or not intelligent critics of astrology maintain that astrologers have always managed to use the prevailing culture and ethos of the times in which they live (the science and philosophy of their period) to disguise themselves and cunningly continue with their practices. Know whether or not, after Pico, craft horoscopy never had a serious intellectual case. Know whether or not that, while it’s not [the author]’s intention to speak against scientific research, he doesn’t see that it has much to offer astrology.
3. Know whether or not Paul Kurtz and the Nobel Prize winners who proclaimed against astrology wouldn't care… if we said we were doing poetic astronomy. Know whether or not it is disingenuous of astrologers to even hint at a scientific basis of the sort understood in physics or biology. Know whether or not there can be no doubt that, strangely and mysteriously, there is some type of response in the universe - captured in the old doctrine of correspondences - that is worthy of a spiritual-scientific endeavor, or of a science of the future. Know whether or not it's quite possible for something to have a genuine physical reference and connection to a mysteriously organized universe…and, at the same time, for each of our acts of horoscope interpretation to be very purely subjective.
4. Know whether or not, when you make a divination with the I Ching by manipulating the trigrams, with their references to the natural world, it doesn't depend on any objective truth that you already know about the nature of wind or water or wood. Know whether or not some astrologers cannot bear the thought that a considerable degree of the inference drawn from symbols is a type of subjective, creative process of the astrologer, and is not dependent on a physical process in the natural world. Know whether or not [Jung] is probably the most important single, intellectual influence for astrologers in the 20th century.
5. Know whether or not, although much that occurs in astrology can be classed as synchronicity, it would be misleading to approach all of its phenomena in this way. Know whether or not, according to Jung, our categories of causality, synchronicity, and symbol are only our mental categories of such things ("nature is not so simple”). Know whether or not the way things actually are defeats any conclusive attempt to catch Nature in our boxes and categories. Know whether or not our practice of judgment from horoscopes, and the results we get when we make those judgments, constitutes divination, and involves a profound dimension of psychic creativity.
6. Know whether or not [the author] is sure many modern astrologers would agree that the whole system of stars and planets is an elaborate metaphor or allegory by which to describe another situation in reality. Know whether or not, without the astrologer’s intervention, the creation of the space of astrology, there would be no mirror and no seeing. Know whether or not the astrologer’s intervention is a type of mediumship. Know whether or not it is we who assign significance, not the stars. Know whether or not, when people get into horary, and see horary really working, they realize it does have an objectivity to it.
7. Know whether or not a genuine horary will show directly a description given by the heavens of a situation in human life. Know whether or not classical astrology, on the whole, has had a lot of trouble with horary and usually tries to repress it. Know whether or not, where psyche is concerned, time is almost infinitely flexible. Know whether or not horoscopes work because psyche and emotion are brought into a symbolic equation through some device. Know whether or not most horoscopes of catastrophic events are actually meaningless charts. Know whether or not some part of the phenomenon of astrology belongs to the natural world and is in principle amenable to scientific investigation.
"As Below, So Above"
[Graphics by Descript's Overlord and Microsoft's Powerpoint. Background videos by Wix.com].
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