Ask HN: Help me learn astrology in 2020
One of my to-do in 2020 resolutions is to learn more about astrology and explore it and see if it is a predictive science.
1. I am learning Vedic or Indian Astrology which uses the sidereal and not tropical charts.
2. I have a software that does calculations
3. I have books. So. Many. Books.
I want to be able to study it as a discipline and subject. I am not interested in proving whether it’s ‘science’ or an ‘pseudo science’. Maybe it’s is ..maybe it’s art..maybe it’s a game.
The goal is to read the texts and follow the rules of analysis and predict. And then I want to record it, find patterns based on interpretations and see how it turns out. There has to be a pattern and it can’t be entirely random even if the predictions don’t pan out.
How do I go about this?
33 comments
[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 865 ms ] threadIt's basically the Mediumship-esque parlor trick, the difference being that you're observing stars and planets instead of communing with the dead, you have to probe and search to see what they really want. Ask leading questions, make educated assumptions, refine over time as you learn about them.
This is an actual prediction for Pisces about January 2020 that I've found on a British newspaper's website:
" Splash out on some fashionable clothes or a new hairstyle on the 13th, when you're sure to be delighted with your new look. "
Yes, if someone splashes out on new clothes and new hairstyle I'm sure that the probability of them being 'delighted' is very high even if, gasp, they do it on another day.
I am not looking for someone to convince me or guide me. I have already decided to learn astrology. I want to use the right tools to be able to map it. It is the same if i want to learn astrology or predict human behavior.
I guess thanks for your engagement, but you are not being helpful.
I am sure there is a psychology aspect to it and that’s why I am not interested in learning to predict for people...then it becomes a people pleasing thing.
I want to connect to the mythology and the rules to understand why and how they emerge to form patterns
If you bother to read the question, you might notice the OP asks about ayurvedic (Hindu) astrology, and I don't think you can seperate the cultural relevance from the study.
Would be interesting to try and find a real pattern in any of it (by which I specifically don't mean the type you mention, or the 3 sentences of dross once found in daily newspapers)...
https://www.bl.uk/learning/cult/bodies/astrology/astrologyho...
A lot of astrological concepts are certainly archetypes but if you strip all that down, at the core is an attempt to understand the traffic patterns of celestial bodies and it’s impact on us.
I do see the impact of weather and climate and lunar cycles in my farm and plant growth cycles. One cannot work the soil and in nature and deny that there is some kind of thread that connects earth and the skies.
Someone long time ago suggested that it affects human behaviors and motivations. Romantically I can say that we are made of water and stardust and hence of course, they affect us..but surely it can also be conveyed mathematically? That’s what I want to learn about..I am no mathematician..and that’s why any tools or thought process or module I can adopt to make sense of it will be enormously helpful to my learning.
I'm stone cold on modern astrology, I suspect it more likely the season you were born and spent first three months (i.e. freezing cold or nice and warm) influences more than Mars or Libra. At the same time there was a lot of awareness of science and medicine far further back than you might think, often buried or silenced behind religious policy or dogma, and it was a rather different beast back then. It wasn't specific predictions until much later (well at least how I understand fromt he histories I;ve read). Seasonal patterns and growth cycles have been known since, well, Stonehenge -- hopefully those aren't too controversial too. :)
I see the question has been flagged. Perhaps it might be better to think of how to ask the analysis question generically enough to get past the HN "woo mumbo jumbo" reaction, like "how do I analyse patterns in a vague data set from multiple, potentially contradicting ancient texts" or some such. or s/astrology/astronomy/ and resubmit. :)
Anyway, I believe it is related to OP's question (and so are my other comments). If (s)he wants to see if astrology is a 'predictive science', make predictions, and analyse them to find and interpret any patterns (s)he has to give serious thoughts about what sort of predictions can be made and how (which I think is key since 'predictions' really are whatever the astrologer 'interprets'...), how to analyse the results and what significance any patterns might have.
As such (s)he cannot simply brush anything deemed 'inconvenient' under the carpet.
Astrology can say that your left eyelid will twitch on the seventh day of the waxing moon and it still is a data point.
So I suspect if there is any grain of predictive basis it would be astronomical or meteorological in nature rather than the vanishingly unlikely finding a life partner third week of next month or next Tuesday being particularly lucky.
shrug
That was the case then, it's still the case now.
The difference is that we now know what is fact and what is fiction so that astrology is relegated to harmless issues... Astrology to decide medical treatments is no longer tolerated or legal, but to decide who to date still is.
eclipses or comets -- astronomy, drought or famine -- meteorology or climatology, war -- fun one that could come into several, e.g. a climate change or drought could trigger a war with neighbours, perhaps to try and migrate. War is only one of those I think does fall under modern view of astrology as, like earthquakes, they can't be reliably predicted until inevitable. Comets like Halley's or solar eclipses can be predicted, with decent precision.
If you are in positive spirit to adventure / travel you can find many traditional communities (off-path) and you can truly learn a lot.
The books approach can be difficult to swallow as the learning outcome is limited by your own interpretation.
Seeing is believing!
Have fun
I studied metaphysics in a practical way extensively in the late 90's. I was technically homeless but I lived by magic for about four and a half years. It was pretty intense. Anyway...
I speak with authority in this matter:
Astrology is a form of divination. All forms of divination work, depending on the operator. All forms of: Astrology, Numerology, Tarot, Dowsing by pendulum or rods, Palmistry, Reading of tea leaves or entrails (yuch!) or cracks in heated turtle shells or thrown reeds or coins, I Ching, omens and signs, etc., all of them, work by the same method. It's the internal potency of the operator that leads to correct knowledge (from "esoteric" sources.) Your own connection to source guides the interpretation. The format of the divination system is a conduit to bring semantics into concrete syntax.
If you simply want reliable truthful information the "applied kinesiology" technique of Dr. Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. [1] is the single simplest and purest methodology. It's so mind-blowing that even I can barely credit it. But I have never found it to fail. It's so spooky that I often "forget" to use it, and just bumble along as best i can. YMMV
However, if you want to study astrology, you can just make up your own system. It will be more powerful than adopting someone else's system. Unless you feel drawn to a certain school or format, in which case that's important information for your personal path and you should likely study that. Spread all your books out, pick one at random, open it to a random page, and read the first passage your eye alight upon. (Bibliomancy, another form of divination, one of my favorites. I have a shelf with the Gita, Bible, Beezlebub's Tales to His Grandson, and others and still practice bibliomancy with them from time to time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliomancy )
[1] Although he didn't invent it, his presentation and discussion of it are the only thing I'm talking about here: https://veritaspub.com/ If you go look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_kinesiology there's a lot lot there that could be unpacked, but that's NOT what I'm talking about. I mean specifically the "Levels of Consciousness" interpretation of Hawkins.
How to extract the predictive pattern recognition aspects of it so the ‘intuition’ part of it can be understood?
> But can we codify it in a mathematical language that can be a visual map?
Short answer is yes (but not in the same way as physics.) But there's no "one true" map (somewhat like how there's no "one true" programming language.)
> I chose Vedic astrology because to a certain extent the astronomy and math part of it is pretty well documented and authored.
Yes, but it's all made up. And all in association with a world that's long gone (or at least changed massively since then.) It's no better or worse than e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Astrology isn't about the actual planets.
Have you looked at Sacred Geometry? (It's just geometry, but studied with a sacred mindset.) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sacred+Geometry&t=ffab&atb=v60-1&i...
It sounds to me like you might be wanting to "mind map" psychological archetypes onto a sort of Sacred Geometry? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map )
> How to extract the predictive pattern recognition aspects of it so the ‘intuition’ part of it can be understood?
There's aren't any "predictive pattern recognition aspects" in the thing itself. As scientists point out, rightly, divination is logically barren. The intuition is something the operator does, the system of astrology (or whatever) is just the markings on the dial.
You can't understand intuition (if you could it would just be "thinking") only experience it. Understanding and intuition are like sight and hearing: two different but complimentary ways to sense/model the Universe.
Does this help?
Really, if you just want to study astrology like an anthropologist would then just read the books you have. If you want to use astrology to model the world you should instead use physics. If you want to use astrology to model the inner world then read e.g. "Golden Bough" and Jung's archetype work and his Liber Novus (aka The Red Book), and maybe "The Varieties of Religious Experience" and "The Perennial Philosophy". And then just make up your own system. It will work just as well for prediction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_%28Jung%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Exp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perennial_Philosophy
(It's a shame this got flagged, eh?)
I love flipping the pages of The Red Book. I am charmed by Jung’s calligraphy and art. Even if I don’t understand enough High German. The entire book is a work of art.
That's intelligence. Intuition is more akin to a sense. It can be practiced and improved like a skill.
I've never actually seen the Red Book. I did an image search though and I see what you mean.
I probably should have asked you this before blathering at you, but what are you going for here? What's your motivation to study astrology? If you don't mind me asking.
In Jung’s Man and his Symbols, he says that the unconsciousness is a new phenomenon...and man had relied heavily on his unconsciousness..that is now repressed. It reveals itself in dreams. And so it lingers...like a secretary taking notes and organizing them. Sometimes it comes back garbled as our dreams and not always decipherable.
Writing dream journals is a good habit.
I also want to write down not just dreams but also moods during eclipses and lunar cycles and match it to astrological transit charts.
What if there is a pattern..on an individual level and for the general collective and the for the larger society. If there are 300 or 500k such journals...would it be possible to figure out patterns and trends.
Can we do this by matching Facebook status updates or twitter or fit bit data etc? We already have so much data. How difficult would it be to match birth dates/horoscopes to available data.
A social media app for tracking moods, life events and zodiac should be interesting.
I hesitated to use social media to describe it but did it anyways for lack of a better term. I don’t mean to suggest that this can be a ‘product’ for generating revenue. Somethings should be beyond exploitation for money.
What if we can have a window of insight into our own unconsciousness? And if there is no true free will, then we are still processing information that we are exposed to and making life decisions based on what we perceive subconsciously.
On the other hand, an acceptance of astrology and code of behaviour can steer a society into predictable patterns of behaviour leading to less conflict.
Think of it like a language. If in a country everyone speaks the same language, the changes for miscommunication would be much lower than in a country where there are multiple languages of communication.
This language can be linguistic or mathematical or anything else. Why can’t it be astronomical or astrological?
As for a common language of the subjective world, what I call the "semantic layer" of reality as distinct from the physical "real" world, I don't think you can find one, mostly because if you did you would be the Messiah. :-) There are lots of such "languages", and new ones are popping up all the time.
> I want to understand why and how predictions work with astrology.
Well again, divination works by the operator not the system or tea leaves or whatever. The basic formula is "As above, so below." You can use any system, as long as you practice with sincerity and persistence you'll get better at intuition, which isn't quite like prediction: you get a nudge to go one way rather than another, but you don't know why, maybe you find out later and maybe you don't... It's experiential rather than analytical. (In other words, part of the job of the Tarot cards or Numerology or Astrology system is to distract your analytical mind.)
Gurdjieff claims that there is influence of the planets on humans, and that astrology used to be based on that but all concrete knowledge of it has now been lost. Certainly modern forms of astrology are, shall we say, astronomically naive, and do not (indeed cannot) work according to their own theory because they don't actually take account of the true state of celestial objects.
The most effective and impressive astrologer I ever met had her horoscope software misconfigured! It didn't affect her efficacy.
It sounds like you are interested in the old, lost 'science', eh?
I've wondered too if "big data" would reveal correlations between human behaviour and the state of the solar system, and I think the high-frequency traders would be the first to find out. They have the data, the compute power, the motivation, and a willingness to overlook the "woo-woo" factor if doing so leads to profit.
It will sound strange, but in some ways I pity the NSA. They are the only one with all the data and they must be privy to some strange strange things.
I don’t understand why you say it’s physics..and not mathematics.
Let me give you an example from my low tech job/life. I have a farm and I want to automate it. I have been at it for five years now. To replace humans with machines, you need data. You need data sets to train the intelligence behind the machine. That data is expressed as numbers and in the language of mathematics.
Example: when I want to mow my cover crop field in spring, I simply do if I get a feel for it. I know it’s not going to rain..I know it’s before they have flowered, I know how the soil ‘feels’ before I can disc it. I just know. I pick up a handful of soil and then at the sky, in a split second I can make a decision.
But for a machine to make that decision, mathematically..it needs weather data, soil moisture data, leaf analysis, vision system data..put it all together to say ‘yes, I will prep the field today’. The language is mathematics.
In a way, I forecasted and predicted intuitively from previous years springs to determine when I can prep the field. I could be wrong. A farm machine AI however ..with math can make a decision based on narrow parameters but will almost never be wrong because it only has to be right within those narrow parameters.
Why can’t this be done with Astrology?
How can planets have an impact on humans..lets rephrase that..how can planets not have an impact on humans? The sun does. The moon does. That’s because we know heat and light are forms of energy. We acknowledge gravitational force and tidal waves and electro magnetic forces. Does this mean that there is nothing else? Perhaps there are forces we haven’t even met yet and don’t know how it works.
How can we ever figure it out if we dismiss it off hand because it feels ‘woo’. Nature isn’t ‘woo’. Nature doesn’t care how we label it.
We can only see if we want to look. We can’t look if we are afraid of being judged/mocked/downvoted/flagged. Know what I mean?
Very interesting question that. Would an AI be a person? Or just a sculpture of a mind?
Divination is essentially a communion between the self and the Self (God, Source, Universe, I don't want to presume upon your beliefs) so if we succeeded in making a person somehow, then yes, I believe it would have a relationship with God beyond that of its constituent matter.
If not, if we can only mimic our own minds without kindling the spark of life, then no, it would just be an elaborate dowsing rod, eh?
I think it might be possible to make a tulpa and associate it with a mechanical form (physical or virtual) and there are corners on the internet where people experiment with that. The resulting entity would be somewhat like a golem. FWIW, I would advise against all that kind of thing.
> I don’t understand why you say it’s physics..and not mathematics.
Just that physics is the part of mathematics that maps to real world phenomenon.
> Example: when I want to mow my cover crop field in spring, I simply do if I get a feel for it. I know it’s not going to rain..I know it’s before they have flowered, I know how the soil ‘feels’ before I can disc it. I just know. I pick up a handful of soil and then at the sky, in a split second I can make a decision.
That is the kind of thing where intelligence and intuition blend. If you keep going you'll reach the place where you could be sitting deep in a cave and still know.
FWIW, Tom Brown hints at this in some of his books on tracking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brown_Jr.
> But for a machine to make that decision, mathematically..it needs weather data, soil moisture data, leaf analysis, vision system data..put it all together to say ‘yes, I will prep the field today’. The language is mathematics.
> In a way, I forecasted and predicted intuitively from previous years springs to determine when I can prep the field. I could be wrong. A farm machine AI however ..with math can make a decision based on narrow parameters but will almost never be wrong because it only has to be right within those narrow parameters.
I'm not convinced that machine could be built, I think the variables (including astrological influences) are too involved. On the other hand, your physical body including your brain could be considered to be that machine already. And that seems to bring up again the question of whether or not you could make an artificial person with enough fidelity to the real thing to develop intuition/divination, eh?
I think it would be much easier to make a machine that allowed the plants and soil itself to communicate the optimal times for events.
Do you have a copy of "The Secret Life of Plants"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants
> Why can’t this be done with Astrology?
If you mean letting astronomical data be part of the inputs to your Bayesian AI then by all means I think that might help. But modern astrology is pretty much barren for the kind of thing you're talking about.
> How can planets have an impact on humans..lets rephrase that..how can planets not have an impact on humans? The sun does. The moon does. That’s because we know heat and light are forms of energy. We acknowledge gravitational force and tidal waves and electro magnetic forces. Does this mean that there is nothing else? Perhaps there are forces we haven’t even met yet and don’t know how it works.
I believe there are such "subtle forces" and that our periodic chart of the elements is like a single octave of a much larger plenum of matter/energy/frequency. I'm following Gurdjieff here more-or-less. But I know almost nothing about them. There's...