Astrology?

[Left Coast]

I don't see many believers in astrology (of any variety) around RF. Are there any?

Do you believe astrology provides us with consistent, accurate descriptions of people's personalities? Or of future events? Or anything else other than the position of stars and planets in the sky?

 

[Milton Platt]

I don't see many believers in astrology (of any variety) around RF. Are there any?

Do you believe astrology provides us with consistent, accurate descriptions of people's personalities? Or of future events? Or anything else other than the position of stars and planets in the sky?

I don't see any benefit to it.
But it is interesting that there isn't a forum for it.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Im basically the antithesis of what people try to say I am.

 

[Left Coast]

I don't see any benefit to it.
But it is interesting that there isn't a forum for it.

I agree, I would expect more people to be advocates for it. It's fun to play around with as a kind of game, like tarot cards. But I don't think it has any real predictive power.

 

[The Hammer]

I really hate when people call tarot cards a game. I don't put a huge amount of stock in astrology, but tarot has it's uses.

 

[Left Coast]

I really hate when people call tarot cards a game. I don't put a huge amount of stock in astrology, but tarot has it's uses.

The two seem similar to me in that the cards, like signs, are very general and can be interpreted in numerous ways. Thus their perceived utility or relevance is often dependent on how hard you try to fit the system's peg into the hole of your question. And neither, to my knowledge, has been shown to have any notable degree of objectively verifiable accuracy.

 

[Willamena]

I don't see many believers in astrology (of any variety) around RF. Are there any?

Do you believe astrology provides us with consistent, accurate descriptions of people's personalities? Or of future events? Or anything else other than the position of stars and planets in the sky?

It depends on what is meant by astrology: a fortune-telling trick, or a method of divination. As the latter, I have no problem with it. Astrology is not about casting personalities, but moments. It's the moments that are variable.

 

[Left Coast]

It depends on what is meant by astrology: a fortune-telling trick, or a method of divination. As the latter, I have no problem with it. Astrology is not about casting personalities, but moments. It's the moments that are variable.

Can you explain the difference between fortune telling and divination?

And what does it mean to cast moments?

 

[The Hammer]

The two seem similar to me in that the cards, like signs, are very general and can be interpreted in numerous ways. Thus their perceived utility or relevance is often dependent on how hard you try to fit the system's peg into the hole of your question. And neither, to my knowledge, has been shown to have any notable degree of objectively verifiable accuracy.

A lot of people do see it the same. I do not. Astrology is meant to show correlations to a person's personality and life events from some third party person (a writer or whoever puts those things in the papers/grocery stores), in relation to star positions. Whereas Tarot is used as a divinatory tool (finding new ways of looking at a problem, via randomness, is how I define divination), and the cards represent archetypes of the psyche (kind of jungian). And just like there are 52 cards in a classic playing card deck, that when shuffled you will never have the same order twice; Tarot is similar with 57 cards, and a similar infinite number of combos. It may seem square peg round hole, but I don't see it as such.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I really hate when people call tarot cards a game. I don't put a huge amount of stock in astrology, but tarot has it's uses.

That's how it started, is a deck of game cards. Sort of as if Magic The Gathering cards eventually become a means of divination.

 

[The Hammer]

That's how it started, is a deck of game cards. Sort of as if Magic The Gathering cards eventually become a means of divination.

I know it's history, started in medieval times as a game, moved on to fortune telling. You could do the same divinations with a standard deck of playing cards, with a few additions.

 

[Willamena]

Can you explain the difference between fortune telling and divination?

And what does it mean to cast moments?

Divination is about reading signs. It's an art. We associate a symbol with an another thing, such as an event, a person, or a circumstance, and the symbol takes on significance because of the consequence of the association. We know signification. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is about people purporting to know the future. The stars, as lots, do not cause things to happen, in a billiard-ball knocking fashion, but rather point to what befalls us as significant.

As for casting the moment: if you are doing a divination, you do it in the moment. You cast lots, be they sticks on the ground, cards on the table, or cloud formations in the sky. Their significance in that moment are the signs that you read.

 

[Willamena]

I know it's history, started in medieval times as a game, moved on to fortune telling. You could do the same divinations with a standard deck of playing cards, with a few additions.

And have.

 

[Left Coast]

A lot of people do see it the same. I do not. Astrology is meant to show correlations to a person's personality and life events from some third party person (a writer or whoever puts those things in the papers/grocery stores), in relation to star positions. Whereas Tarot is used as a divinatory tool (finding new ways of looking at a problem, via randomness, is how I define divination), and the cards represent archetypes of the psyche (kind of jungian). And just like there are 52 cards in a classic playing card deck, that when shuffled you will never have the same order twice; Tarot is similar with 57 cards, and a similar infinite number of combos. It may seem square peg round hole, but I don't see it as such.

I've done a little reading on tarot and downloaded an app for it a while ago, which fascinated me. The correlation to Jungian archetypes makes sense.

 

[Left Coast]

Divination is about reading signs. It's an art. We associate a symbol with an another thing, such as an event, a person, or a circumstance, and the symbol takes on significance because of the consequence of the association. We know signification. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is about people purporting to know the future. The stars, as lots, do not cause things to happen, in a billiard-ball knocking fashion, but rather point to what befalls us as significant.

As for casting the moment: if you are doing a divination, you do it in the moment. You cast lots, be they sticks on the ground, cards on the table, or cloud formations in the sky. Their significance in that moment are the signs that you read.

So essentially you are reading into the symbol whatever comes into your head when you see the symbol while simultaneously thinking about something else (a situation at work, or a relationship, or whatever). Do I have it right?

 

[sun rise]

I don't see many believers in astrology (of any variety) around RF. Are there any?

Do you believe astrology provides us with consistent, accurate descriptions of people's personalities? Or of future events? Or anything else other than the position of stars and planets in the sky?

All I know for sure is a personal experience. My wife and I once had our charts done by a very well respected astrologer. He could not figure out why we were married - not a lot of chart connections. But we've managed to stay married for a total of 50+ years now.

He also totally missed my question about a career path.

Of course this is a statistically useless sample of one, but it and some other evidence convinces me that if astrology has any validity the vast majority of astrologers don't know what they're talking about.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

He could not figure out why we were married - not a lot of chart connections.

Im curious how that played out. Like, did he insist it shouldn't work? Claim it some sort of miracle?

 

[sun rise]

Im curious how that played out. Like, did he insist it shouldn't work? Claim it some sort of miracle?

We had just been married a few years and our relationship was rocky at that point. His error was only in decades long hindsight and I had no interest in looking him up at that point.

 

[Trailblazer]

I don't see many believers in astrology (of any variety) around RF. Are there any?

Do you believe astrology provides us with consistent, accurate descriptions of people's personalities? Or of future events? Or anything else other than the position of stars and planets in the sky?

My older brother has been into astrology for decades. He could have been a professional but he never did it to make money.

Yes, I believe that astrology provides us with consistent, accurate descriptions of people's personalities.
It also can predict how we will get along with other personalities.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I think astrology is useful in terms of archetypes and can have accurate psychological things to say about a person.