Empirical Astrology

A few years ago, a reader of this blog contacted us and asked if we had heard of Richard Tarnas.  We had not, and we believed that the foundation for our ideas flowed from C. G. Jung, Dane Rudhyar, Grant Lewi, Anthony Louis, as well as selected ideas from mainstream science.  We thought we had created a unique and novel synthesis from these existing works.

But, selected commentary of our work looked so similar to Tarnas that we took down certain entries, particularly the one located at this page.  No history of those entries was kept, and apparently they are “gone forever.”

However, we recently saw an article that contains the basic ideas that we had originally written.  That would be this one.  Without making specific statements, we adopt that page as being very similar, if not the same, as the ideas underlying the approach of this site to Astrology.  We would also say that our ideas are either the same or similar to those of Tarnas.

Specifically, we offer (1) planets, signs, and houses are either the same as, or associated with, archetypes; (2) the best way to understand the relationships between these universal symbols (“archetypes”) is to OBSERVE the events that correspond to planetary aspects and PATTERNS of those aspects.  Experience is the best teacher.  And, the real focus of this blog is to teach and disseminate our ideas about astrology in a fashion that can live beyond us when we are no longer on this earth.

But, let us be clear: the ancients developed astrology from observation of events in the sky and noting correspondence to events on Earth (sometimes called the Law of Correspondence, which has been expanded by others into a more general metaphysical “law”) and Jung’s idea of synchronicity looks suspiciously similar. 

While we note that some may argue that Astrology results from spurious correlations, we also note that even those are thought to result from what is called the “third variable problem.”  This means that the relationship is somehow tied to some third variable (or a group of them) that we do not know how to observe or measure (yet).

We also note that some may argue that Astrology is driven by the perceptual phenomenon of “illusory correlation.”  We accept that this is a real danger, but we note that it would become an irrelevant issue if an oracle, any oracle (whether astrological or otherwise), has predictive validity, at least as informally assessed by a particular observer. 

In particular, for a particular individual, we emphasize that the critical question is whether or not an oracle has utility, in at least an informal sense.  Said a different way, oracles might actually be a type of projective.  In layman’s terms, if you find that an oracle, no matter how irrational, gives you useful and meaningful answers to questions in your life, then use it as long as it continues to work for you.

To that end, we focus on the use of astrological patterns as oracles for those who are interested in the topic.