a quest for meaning - I


M. C. Escher (1898 - 1972)


Astrology is an attempt to bring order, consistency and meaning to the series of usually confused and conflicting happenings which constitute our life experience. The "basic scientist" likewise, as he tries to discover "laws of Nature," seeks to reduce the complexity and seeming chaos of natural phenomena to simple, regular and predictable patterns. Order and simplicity are the two foundations of "predictability"; and the sole business of the scientist, at the level of applied science, is to predict what will happen when. A law of science is a formula of predictability. It states that this will take place when such and such things occur together under such and such conditions.
Where astrology essentially differs from modern science is, first, in making certain assumptions about the universe and man; secondly, on the basis of these assumptions, in seeking to discover not only the "order" inherent in the events of life on earth, but also their "meaning."
The scientist also makes basic undemonstrable assumptions which he calls "postulates"; and religion likewise makes there is one God, Creator of all there is. The main premise of astrology, which partakes somewhat of science and religion, is that our solar system is an organized cosmic system — perhaps indeed an "organism," in the broader sense of this the basic unprovable assumption that word — a "whole" constituted of interrelated and interacting "parts."
If the solar system is a definitely organized cosmic whole or organism, and if a human being on earth is also an organism, it is logical to expect that the principles of organization and cyclic growth of the cosmic system (the solar system) have some definite relationship with the principles, which determine the formation and development of a human person. The ancient astrologers started from such a premise and, deducing from it a series of consequences, formulated a system of interpretation of human experience which we know today as astrology. By using this system, we can discover the order and periodicity which is inherent in events of our life, where before we could only witness chance and meaninglessness.
All astrology is interpretation. When we say that Aries "rules" the head or Jupiter the liver, we interpret the cyclic motions of the Sun or of Jupiter in the zodiac as "corresponding to" certain periodic changes and organic functions in a human body. Something happens in the solar system and something happens in a human body; we say that the former can provide a basis for the understanding of the latter. To say this, however, makes no sense whatsoever unless we have first postulated that the solar system as-a-whole and the human person as-a-whole are significantly related to one another by the simple, yet fundamental, fact that both are "organisms."
Astrology as used today and in the past, without such a basic premise, has no theoretical justification. It is because the modern college type of mind, the so-called "scientific" mentality, does not accept the premise, and usually does not even understand that this is the foundation of all traditional astrology everywhere on earth, that our officially trained intellectuals scorn and ridicule astrology in all its forms.

~ Dane Rudhyar



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