![]() How can we say anything positively? How can we truly know something? I want now to go further into the ideas behind what it is that we’re doing when we practice astrology, beyond the usual answer of ‘God knows!’ I’ll start with where we stand relative to scepticism, which is the idea of doubt. What is time and what is our relationship to it? And of prediction: what are we doing when we predict, and how is it possible to predict? I don’t mean that here in the sense of which techniques we should use for accurate prediction, but in the more basic sense: how is it possible that anyone can predict anything? And from there, of course, we reach the debate between what is free will and what is fated are these things irreconcilable or are they not? This has varied considerably, as I discuss here, over the past few hundred years.įinally, this discussion inevitably involves matters of time. OK, over and against what, exactly? How do we define ourselves relative to what is not traditional?Īnd because the idea that the world, the universe, is intelligible, that it makes sense, that it can be understood, depends upon there being a concept of God, what this concept is also becomes extremely important. The astrology we are doing is traditional. If we are to describe ourselves as traditional astrologers, knowing where we stand relative to scepticism, relativism, the thought of the modern world, is very important. Relativism is really just one particularly fashionable variant of scepticism: there is no objective truth, therefore ‘what’s true for me’ is what goes. ‘How do you know it hurts? Maybe it’s a false sensory perception.’ ‘No, really, I know it hurts.’ And important not only in the debate with scepticism but in the debate with relativism, with the ‘It’s true for me’, those words which so colour modern attitudes, and which we bump into so often in dialogue with those many astrologers who buy into those attitudes. I’ve just been in a car crash my head has fallen off it hurts. Scepticism is doubting, doubting what we think, doubting what we perceive. I use the word here in its philosophical sense, not in the sense used by the self-proclaimed debunkers of whatever they don’t understand. These ideas are also important in the long debate on scepticism. We would be tracking random and meaningless motions: a totally pointless exercise. So far as I can see, it is an impossibility, because if we admit no basis of intelligibility in the universe there is no way in which astrology can make sense. I did once meet someone who claimed to be an atheist astrologer, but the making of such a claim does seem to require a certain lack of reflection. If the universe doesn’t make sense, if we cannot possibly understand it, if we do not have a process by which we may understand it, why ever are we wasting our time with astrology? Because if the universe does not make sense, what we are doing with astrology is nonsense. ‘Oh, it came from the Big Bang.’ ‘OK, but where did the Big Bang come from?’ ‘Oh, that just was.’ ‘Ah, that’ll be it, then.’ ![]() The idea that the world cannot make sense, because there is no source from which this sense can derive, once God has been removed from the equation. Which is something that the philosophy of modernity does not accept: the vernacular philosophy with which you may have been inculcated at school, or through popular writers such as Mr Dawkins, or by whatever wildlife programmes you watch on your television. ![]() One reason these points matter is because in the history of philosophy over the past several hundred years, they have been very important in the battle to establish that the universe is intelligible, that it makes sense, that it can be understood. If you should start to wonder what all this has to do with astrology – ‘Where are all the charts?’– stick with it and the purpose will, I hope, become clear in the end. So this is personal opinion it is not the undying gospel, nor, most certainly, is it any kind of astrological party-line. My only qualification for addressing them is that I am a human being, and as human beings it behoves us all to have an interest in philosophy and theology. In this lecture I discuss certain points in the history of philosophy and of theology: two subjects about which I know nothing. It follows from the Carter Memorial lecture, posted on this site, which should be read first. This lecture was given at the 4th Real Astrology Conference, in June, 2010.
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