And I
maintain that the way we tend to believe in its claims is no different to a
society in which, for example, the world is held to have been started by 2
ravens, or sits on the back of a turtle.
Take the Big
Bang. Was anyone there to see it? Does anyone even have a faded photograph of
it in the attic, passed down from the intrepid explorer grandfather? No. You
get my point.
We believe these things because we are told about them by the story-tellers of our tribe. Yes, they also present ‘evidence’, but even they did not see the Big Bang, even they have not even seen an atom directly with their own 2 eyes.
There is
nothing wrong with believing the stories we are told about the world and how it
works and how it came into being. It is a natural and necessary thing to do.
Unfortunately
in our case, there tends to be only one version of it. If there are 2 versions
of the story, one of them has eventually to be ‘proved’ wrong. Now what story
has only one version? It takes the fun out of it and the sense of possibility out
of it.
Not only is
there just one story (and the story-tellers can be pretty punitive about
exiling story-tellers that tell it differently,) but the universe it describes
is cold and inherently meaningless.
In medieval
times we also had only one story, and if you told a different one you were
likely to lose your life rather than your career. And the universe, via the Old
Testament, could be a pretty harsh place that was eager to condemn you.
So in some
ways it was not that different – a demonised universe, and only one version of
it.
The difference
for astrologers in medieval times was that the powers we worked with were described
as demonic rather than non-existent. So it was a different kind of opposition
we faced.
So what
astrologers are left with nowadays is a soul-craft that works, but which we are
told cannot do so. And in some ways I like that. It means astrology leaves me
with a feeling of wonder. Wow, here’s this thing that shouldn’t work, and I can
see why people think it shouldn’t work, but it does. Wow, what kind of universe
is it that we live in where this thing works that shouldn’t?
There is a
joke about Wikipedia, that its problem is that it only works in practice. The
same applies to astrology.
That sense
of cultural opposition easily throws me into a philosophical place. I have the
material vision of the universe provided by science, and in many ways it is a
wondrous achievement. And I also have this enchanted vision of the universe
that astrology provides, a universe fuelled by archetypal powers and subtle
connections that I see as primary.
And that
sense of opposition, this cultural message that what I do cannot work, keeps me
thinking, keeps me pondering about how the whole thing works. Of course for
some people, who are maybe less airy than me, they have a direct experience of
astrology working, and what the culture thinks doesn’t impact on them. But for
people like me, for whom that opposition can be a problem, I think it can also
lead to a place of contemplation.
A guy I know,
who works intuitively rather than airily, once said to me that the big thing he
can’t get his head round is the fact that there is something rather than
nothing. Which most of us have probably wondered at from time to time. But then he added that that fact seems so bizarre and unlikely, that he is prepared to
believe that anything can happen. I thought that’s about right. We don’t need
all those philosophy books with their subtle arguments. Just the fact that
there is something rather than nothing says it all.
And I sometimes
reflect that I am in no position to judge other people’s beliefs, because mine
are so bizarre. This lump of rock the size of the Moon 2 billion miles away is
also Lord of the Underworld, kind of? How bizarre is that?
No, I have
to let people believe what they want. But there is a suggestion here that the ‘normal’
scientific belief is not bizarre. But that is just because we are used to it.
Think about it: a lot of things are only real if they can be reduced to mathematical
equations. How strange is that?
I think where
I start to take issue is where I see inhuman consequences to the living of certain
beliefs. Or when beliefs are promulgated that are held rigidly to the exclusion
of others.
Below is a
quote from Richard Dawkins, who used to be Professor for Public Understanding
of Science at Oxford University.
The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose,
no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Apart from
the fact that it sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, namely that the universe has
a way of conforming to our beliefs about it, take that phrase blind, pitiless indifference. That is
not a neutral term. What would you think of a person who was like that? You’d
want to steer clear of them. It is a chilling description. Such a person would
be severely dysfunctional, even mentally ill. They would be capable of
anything, psychopathic. Dawkins is proposing a psychopathic universe, an updated
version of the Old Testament.
What
happened to Dawkins in his childhood that he has such a warped view of the world?
Promulgating such views from a position such as his is profoundly unethical. Confess it to your therapist or your priest,
maybe, but leave it at that. This man was promoted to a professorship at Oxford
in order to spread the ‘public understanding of science’, as they called it.
Everything about the man is religion in its worst sense, even his opposition to
religion.
Or take
David Icke’s proselytising of the idea that leading politicians are really 14ft
reptiles. If he wants to privately believe that, then that is his affair. But
he has encouraged plenty of gullible people to believe it, he seems to need
them to do so. What it essentially does is to demonise the people in
government, it gives a view of these people that bears no relation to what they
are actually like. It is deeply destructive to get people to think in this way
about their government.
But note it is not the bizarreness of his beliefs that I am criticising. After all, I believe a lump of rock 2 billion miles away is also Lord of the Underworld. The difference is whether others are harmed by your beliefs – by the beliefs themselves, or by your insistence that they are the only way of seeing the world.
Nor am I saying the Ickes and Dawkins of this world need to be stopped. There have always been such proselytisers and always will. And sometimes we learn by being drawn into their worlds and coming out the other side. Like I did with a nutty form of Buddhism in my youth!
I think all
beliefs are in their own way bizarre. After all, at bottom there is something
rather than nothing, and that is the most bizarre thing of all.
Beliefs are
covered in astrology by Jupiter. So are stories, which is interesting,
suggesting that beliefs are just stories we tell ourselves about the world. “God
made the world in 6 days” and so on.
Beliefs are
fundamental to who we are. I often skirt around Jupiter when I do a reading, it’s
like he’s where we are expansive and find meaning and that’s about it.
But he’s the
stories we tell ourselves, not just about the universe but about ourselves and
our lives, and also about what is right and wrong. And we don’t necessarily pay
much attention to all that. Like the Creation Myths, we are given many of our
stories by others and we live them out. And then maybe we have a mid-life
crisis and realise it’s time to live our own story.
The 9th
House of beliefs and religion follows on from the 8th House of
psychoanalysis and the shadow. The 9th House is the outcome of the 8th
House. In the 8th you find who you are, after encountering the
mirror of other people in the 7th. It is a House of shared
experience, of where we are enmeshed with others. It is therefore also a House of separating out from that. The 8th is a House of
Inheritance, and it is Pluto’s House. Pluto takes us to his Underworld and
pulls apart the unconscious way we have lived, the inherited values and beliefs
and stories, and we emerge into Jupiter’s House with our own story, and because
it is our own it has power to it, we can share it with others, and that is why
the 9th is a House of teaching. And the power comes from Pluto, the
power that comes from finding something that is our own. In that sense Pluto is
evolutionary, he wants us to find what is uniquely ours and he is prepared to
destroy us to make that happen, that is his value system.
So I think
if you have been through that 8th House initiation, maybe in the
form of a Pluto transit, then you have stories and values that are living, they
come directly from something alive in you, and they will not therefore be
rigid, they will in a sense depend on the day of the week!
(PS I’m
feeling inclined to nick ‘values’ from the 2nd House and call that a
House of resources and building, and bundle them into the 9th.)
And I think
stories are also Neptune’s realm. The mythopeic ocean from which Jupiter picks
his stories. Neptune is direct experience of what is absolute, Jupiter brings
it down a level to that which can be spoken about in time and space.
Richard
Dawkins has a Saturn-Jupiter conjunction in Taurus. His beliefs don’t have to
be like they are with that signature, they could be wonderful, but you can never tell in advance: Taurus is a
belief system of this world, of nature, of matter. And it is fixed/enduring.
And Saturn denies there is anything other than dead matter, adds to the rigidity and gives a sense of authority and a projecting
of those beliefs onto the world through a position, his professorship. He has
Moon and Venus in Pisces opposite Neptune and in his own way I think he means
well, he is not an unkind man, he is very sensitive. But he is also fucked up somewhere, his poor old
Moon in Pisces has in many ways been bullied out of existence by his self-righteous Sun in Aries, a sign which
at its worst knows it has the truth and a duty to help others see it.
As for David
Icke, his Jupiter is also in Taurus, and his belief system is anything but of
this world. It is, though, very literal, and that is maybe the earthy Taurus.
The only explanation I can think of with his chart is that Jupiter is weakly
aspected, making wide conjunctions to the Sun and Venus and that is it. In some
people a wide aspect leaves room for distance and self-awareness of that
planet, but maybe in his case it means that Jupiter is doing its own thing,
here is a man who really will believe anything, and believe it literally (Earth
sign) and rigidly (Fixed sign.)
And Dawkins,
with his Jupiter in Taurus, is a man who claims to believe nothing, only ‘evidence’,
but unfortunately not believing can also be a kind of belief, you can’t get out
of it so easily. And his non-belief in God and religion is fervent, it is a
crusade. It is very important to him that people believe what he believes.
‘There is
nothing new under the Sun’, and the very notion that in modern times humanity
is at last emerging from the darkness of its infancy, blinds us to the fact
that with our 'Science' we can be just as rigid and intolerant as any medieval Pope. Note 'can be', not 'are'. Plenty of people aren't.
So Jupiter
and Sag and the 9th House are all connected to what happens after
Pluto. When we re-emerge into life, but grounded and real. Without that
initiation, Jupiter can be naïve and up in the sky. But after Pluto, he helps tell
the story of our abduction and what we saw in that other world and the wisdom
we gained.