Astrology and Chaos Theory

I’ve just been reading Bernadette Brady’s recent book ‘Cosmos, Chaosmos and Astrology’.  This won’t be a comprehensive review, more of a wander around points that interested me. It is an original and stimulating thesis, and short enough to actually get read!

The basic premise is that there are 2 different types of creation mythology, ordered and chaotic. Over the millennia the West has increasingly plumped for the ordered version, which has left less and less room for astrology. With the advent of Chaos and Complexity theories, however, a new paradigm is emerging that in many ways models the workings of astrology.

Christianity provides an ordered, causal creation mythology: 1^st you have God, then you have the earth, then the plants and animals and so forth. There is no explanation of where God the ordering principle came from, he was just there. And there is a discernible causality behind events.

Khnum

By contrast, in ancient Egypt, there was the void Nun, metaphorically seen as the waters of the Nile, out of which the creator god Khnum emerged. In the form of a potter, Khnum proceeded “to create the rest of life, dipping his/her hand or pot into the patterns forming in the silt of the Nile and shaping these patterns into life on a potter’s wheel…Periodically Khnum would dissolve back into the void only to re-emerge again.”

This chaotic mythology is found elsewhere: “chaos was an essential, even pivotal, concept with the ancient Taoists, Egyptians and Native Americans”.  Among native Australians we have: “In the beginning the earth was a bare plain. There was no life, no death. The sun, the moon and the stars slept beneath the earth…”

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Aboriginal Creation Story

I’m not quite sure where we would put the scientific, Big Bang mythology (which isn’t mentioned): first you have the Singularity, then the Big Bang and so on. (Some might say hang on, this is scientific fact, not mythology, to which I’d reply that even if it is a fact – which we can never know – it still speaks to and satisfies the basic human need for story.)

But basically you have nothing, out of which comes the ordering principle of energy and its laws. And unusually, it is a myth in process, we continue to look backwards and forwards in time for more clues to the story. This creation myth has been used to create cosmos (that which emerges from causal mythology) to an extreme degree. But you can see the room for Chaosmos in it, in that in the beginning there was nothing (the singularity) and one day we will have nothing again, either through heat Death or through the Big Crunch. And that, maybe, leaves room for a new creation.

A characteristic of traditional creation mythologies that is worth mentioning is that a people can have more than one such mythology, and they can be conflicting. This is true of the Chippewa Cree, and probably many other peoples. This is in itself chaosmotic. A cosmos requires one causally based mythology. Science cannot have 2 theories about the origin or end of the universe: if it does, one of them has to eventually be proved wrong. In the West it is hard for us to think in any other way.

As an astrologer, articulating the different powers and realities behind each planet, it has become natural to me to live with different mythologies. Astrology teaches us that we can’t pin things down to a single, predictable reality – as Brady says, what the scientific testing of astrology has resoundingly shown is that astrology does not work scientifically.

A Chaosmos suggests a universe in which all things are connected, and this leaves room for the principle of the sympathy between objects on which astrology is founded.

According to Brady, Chaos theory in a sense began 100 years ago when it was shown by Poincare that you cannot exactly describe the motion of 3 or more bodies around each other. In other words, science cannot know everything, and the ordered universe has reached its limitations. I looked this one up, because it’s such an interesting point, and it turns out that some years afterwards a Finnish mathematician did indeed find a solution to the problem, but one that was of no practical use!

So maybe we need also to look to quantum theory, which is not mentioned, but which was roughly contemporaneous, as the grandfather of Chaos theory. One result in quantum theory is that the more you know about one property of a particle, the less you can know about another property eg velocity vs location. You can probably know enough to be getting on with, but the point is you can’t pin it all down: that is exactly what cosmotic science wishes to do, and quantum theory says no, ultimately things cannot be pinned down, made rational and measurable.

Chaosmos emerged with a vengeance in quantum theory, which occurs at the microscopic scale. We had to wait a while before it emerged at the macroscopic level, with the advent of Dark Energy. In recent decades astronomers have discovered that the only way they can make sense of the universe was to postulate that it is filled to over 90% with undetectable dark matter and energy. If this is not Brady’s ‘Chaos’, I don’t know what is!

Patrick Harpur puts it thus: “The theory of dark matter tells us as much about the modern unconscious as it does the cosmos. Jung noticed that whatever we suppress gathers in the unconscious and throws a ‘shadow’ over the world. Dark matter is precisely the shadow of the imaginative fullness we have denied ourselves. The daimons we cannot bring ourselves to admit to return as dark ‘virtual particles’. Like the psychological shadow, dark matter’s invisible presence exerts an unconscious influence on the conscious universe.” (The Philosopher’s Secret Fire: a History of the Imagination p177)

Behind Harpur’s viewpoint is an assumption that the mind plays a part in creating scientific reality, it is not the hard, factual, ‘out there’ phenomenon that we may think. This point can be very hard to grasp for some people, and yet obvious to others. A bit of training in philosophical thinking can start to de-literalise the way we see the world, to begin to see it as the co-product of the mind and whatever it is that is ‘out there’.

If you grasp this, then the sympathy, or sumpatheia, which Brady repeatedly puts as the basis of astrology’s workings, starts to make sense.


I don’t see division of the universe into Cosmos and Chaosmos as an absolute one. It is a useful distinction, pointing to different ways in which the mind works, and it has analogies. Apollo and Dionysus. Rational and Non-Rational. Saturn and Neptune. Pisces and Virgo. The inner planets and the outer planets. Indeed, the emergence of the outer planets over the last 250 years, which are not subject to rational control, amounts to a resurgence of Chaosmos in the face of an increasingly ordered Cosmos.

Central to Brady’s book is that the new scientific paradigm of Chaos and Complexity theory models the way astrology works.

Chaos Theory has been developed to model non-linear systems, systems that do not function in a predictable, cause-and-effect way. Like crowds, for example. Or weather systems. Small differences in the starting point can lead to huge differences in outcome. There are mathematical models for these systems. And there are various characteristics: Strange Attractors, Hopf Bifurcation, Saddle Points….. It is an arcane world that Brady does a good job of elucidating.

And then she lists these characteristics alongside those of astrology to make her case.

Strange Attractor

For example, Strange Attractors are “the moving foci [of a non-linear system] which seem to invisibly influence the external events or pattern.”

And the astrological analogy is: “Planetary combinations which define the nature or quality of what the person will attract towards themselves and the story of their life.”

Lung Bronchi

And: “Self-similarity and scale invariance. Repeating themes in patterns occurring in unrelated patterns – eg river systems and the bronchi of lungs.”

Alongside this: “Astrologers use of cycles which link planetary cycles with smaller cycles within an individual (or country or organisation) life.”

Brady makes her case, but I think it suffers from lack of illustration, particularly concrete cases of astrology working in the way it is said to. There’s nothing like a chart to bring the subject alive! 

Like quantum theory before it, Chaos theory is a branch of science that has to model reality outside of the usual linear, causal framework. (It would be interesting to draw analogies between the ways quantum theory and astrology work. Eg the idea of the observer influencing the outcome of the experiment, and the astrologer doing the reading being as important as the chart itself? And that one is dealing with probabilities rather than certainties?)

And I think the analogy between Chaos and astrology may not ultimately prove relevant to how astrology is generally seen. I say this because the findings of quantum theory, which are 100 years old and which have profound philosophical implications, do not seem to have made their way into the public perception of science. 

Take Richard Dawkins, Emeritus Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. For him, scientific findings are the simple truth of things, religion needs to be rooted out, and fairy stories shouldn’t be read to children because they encourage them to believe in beings that don’t exist. Existence is a struggle for survival between ‘selfish’ genes. Because of his public position, he cannot be dismissed as an anomaly. He embodies an important cultural current, the 'academic establishment view', perhaps, that is at war with Chaosmos, holding a literal view of reality that a serious study of the philosophical implications of quantum physics would undermine.

So by the same argument, however well Chaos theory allows in the Chaosmos – the non-rational, the daimonic, feeling, life itself – I am not optimistic that understanding would find its way through to general perception.

There are a couple of points Brady makes that I want to question. On page 110 she says, “I make no claim to astrology’s efficacy”  (in using astrology “to observe the emerging patterns and timing of these patterns in a person’s life”.)

I thought it was an interesting thing for an astrologer to say. “I make no claim to astrology’s efficacy.” Why would she say that?

I guess I can understand it from a viewpoint of ‘scholarly objectivity’: you are claiming to stand outside your subject in some way, not influenced by personal feelings, and are therefore able to make an objective argument.

But hasn’t Bernadette Brady written this book precisely because she is an astrologer, precisely because she knows it is efficacious and would presumably have no hesitation in saying so, and is trying to make the subject more intellectually acceptable? How can that not influence her arguments?

It is a bit like a priest saying he makes no claim to the efficacy of Christian teachings. Then why would he be a priest? 

It seems to me to be a bit of a false position to take. I think the more straightforward way is to ‘declare an interest’ in the subject. If you read the small print on the back of the book, you will discover that Brady is a professional astrologer. It is almost hidden away.

Brady is undoubtedly influenced by her feelings for the subject, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t view that as biased or as lacking in objectivity. Knowledge that is the most interesting, the most alive, is that which is rooted in personal experience. It comes across. Something you may have observed about Pisceans, for example. It undoubtedly wouldn’t stand up to statistical testing, but it may nonetheless be true. The truths of ordinary human observation, which are so easily undervalued nowadays, but which served humanity well for thousands of years. And in which personal experience, feeling and intuition play a core part.

I've picked out this one sentence, "I make no claim to astrology’s efficacy", because it makes clear a stance that runs through the book without being explicitly stated. It is the elephant in the room. The efficacy of chaos theory as a useful way of describing reality is not questioned, and it is discussed in those terms. But astrology.... let's not go there. And that is understandable. But it is also defensive, and sets astrology up as the poor relation, hoping that by knocking at the door of Chaos Theory, she may be eventually allowed in to the party. And it sets up an imbalance, privileging Chaos Theory over Astrology as a means of knowledge.

I think this book needs a preface that addresses the issue, in which Bernadette Brady makes clear her own personal stance on the efficacy and value of astrology, and makes no apologies for it. And that addresses the intellectual climate and methodology that has resulted in an astrologer making the statement that: "I make no claim to astrology’s efficacy."

Another point I found hard to understand was a quote from Nick Campion and Liz Greene on p117 that “no two astrologers appear to be able to agree on what it is they believe in, how they define their work.”

Yet on p18 we read: “Patrick Curry offered a definition of astrology as ‘… the practice of relating the heavenly bodies to lives and events on earth, and the tradition that has thus been generated’.

And I’m thinking well I can go along with that. I could say more about astrology than that, and I’m sure Patrick Curry could, and like any subject, we would find points we don’t agree on. But I can go along with that.

Dion Fortune

And I can also go along with Brady’s quote from Dion Fortune that: ‘Ceremonial, and especially talismanic, magic is the essential component of Astrology; for Astrology is the diagnosis of the trouble, but magic is the treatment of it by means of which the warring forces in our natures are equilibrated.’

I wouldn’t put it quite like Dion Fortune does, but something like that happens in a good reading: the astrologer as shaman, as witch doctor, as guide to the spirit world. It is the energetic communion, if you like, that seems to come from another world, as much as what is said, that does the work.

So on my own I appear to be disproving Campion and Greene’s ‘observation’. One exception is enough! And from a common sense point of view, I am able to communicate with other astrologers precisely because there often is a broad sympathy in the way we see the world. Take those of us who view astrology as essentially divinatory, does that not constitute a broad agreement as to the way astrology works?

So this ‘observation’ doesn’t seem to me to make sense, unless you artificially lead people to a point at which, sooner or later, there is bound to be divergence.  It is a point that Brady uses to support her statement that there is a confusion caused in modern astrology by the idea that astrology should conform to cosmic order. A statement that in itself I agree with; it is an important insight.

In the absence of further clarification*, I am left wondering why this 'observation' was generated? Statements like this aren’t bare and objective, even though presented as such, probably with statistical back-up. They are generated for a reason. An effect of it, one could argue, is to privilege the academic perspective on the nature of astrology over the ‘confusion’ of lay astrology. It also opens the way to a relativistic, pluralistic view on astrology.

Pluto

Which Brady is in fact arguing against. Astrology, she says, has up until now been able to adapt to the changing nature of the societies in which it has been practised. To that extent it is relativistic, a cultural phenomenon. But it has not been able to adapt to modern society, because of society’s extreme affiliation with cosmos, with order. And this reveals the absolute element in astrology, with is its origins in chaosmos – in the irrational, in soul, if you like.

As she says, her book ‘concludes by viewing astrology as a product of human intuition put to the service of humanity’s need to bring a level of domestication to chaos in order to give meaning to life. In this regard it can be considered as one of humanity’s enduring subjects.”

Neptune

So there you have it. Astrology is a product of human intuition, defined at oxforddictionaries.com as: The ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. In other words it is rooted in Chaosmos. And I think that is a very important epistemological statement. What astrology has to say comes ultimately from a non-rational source. It is, in other words, divinatory.

But astrology is also more than the above statement. The point about Chaos is that you cannot ‘domesticate’ it, not in the usual meaning of the word. Try doing that with an outer planet! I’d see it the other way round: astrology is there to chaoticise the domestic, the habitual and safe, by revealing the intentions of the gods. As Rilke says: “Every Angel is Terrifying.” Astrology awes us.

Nor does astrology just ‘give meaning to life’: an astrology reading is not meaningful unless we also consider what is being said to be true. It isn’t just a story that we find meaningful and useful. Astrology, or rather the astrologer, says things that are true, and if you don’t, your clients won’t come back. There needs to be insight and knowledge as well as meaning. I’m sure Bernadette Brady knows this as well as anyone. Without that truth, astrology is not anchored in earthly reality.

I view this book essentially as a plea for soul, couched in academic language, and I don’t think they are always happy bedfellows.

About 8 years ago I encountered Bernadette Brady’s books, computer programme and online newsletter on Visual Astrology. And I was struck by the raw power of astrology done in this way, that has been to a large extent lost to intellectualised horoscopic astrology. That work has been a considerable gift to the astrology world, partly in terms of technique, but principally to the strength of its soul.

And that underlying passion can be glimpsed in this book, which has original and important things to say. And I know I won’t be popular for saying this, but I think the academic medium cramps Brady’s style, and means that certain things can’t be said that need to be said. And what does get said could sometimes be said better through stories and images. Cosmos is an idea, but Chaosmos belongs more to feeling, it is life itself, ideas alone cannot do it justice.

For me, the central insight of this book is that astrology’s origins are in Chaosmos. And that is a starting place for a whole approach to astrology. It is akin to that of Geoffrey Cornelius in his book 'The Moment of Astrology', in which he maintains that astrology is essentially divinatory - ie that it comes from a non-rational source, which is what Brady is saying.

Geoffrey Cornelius is another astrologer involved in academia - in his case, in running the MBA course in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred at Canterbury. Their prospectus indicates that they aim to explore 'seemingly non-rational means of knowing'. That, of course, is a problem in academia, and as a result Cornelius' approach has been called 'one mumbo short of a jumbo' by a fellow academic. It's a tricky area, to which Brady and Cornelius take different approaches. 

My own view is that something that is crucial gets lost if one steps back too far from affirming the epistemological value of 'non-rational means of knowing.' You're left with the bathwater - of which there is plenty to go round - but no baby.

* There is a reference to this quote from Sky and Symbol by Greene and Campion, but in the absence of purchasing the book, the reader has to try and make what sense of it they can.