I won't consider myself versed in astrology as it looks too complex for my ordinary mind. Even without astrology into the picture, I've always been fascinated by the stars and the night sky and the myriad nearer objects that move as if suspended by threads of gravity that could be felt but never quite calculate satisfactorily.
The Orion constellation is always visible around here and some weeks it is right above my head when I step out to look at the night sky. This was actually the case when I checked last night.
The magnitude of what I was looking at, i.e the star Rigel burning at around 860 light-years away and Betelgeuse a variable giant star that might already have exploded and we simply haven't received the news yet, makes the mind boggle compared to the modest scale of every human concern I carried into that moment.
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Older generation folks who came up with all these constellations, giving them their names and mapping structures, might have had the time of their lives engaging with such activities.
I think nowadays, not much of such is happening. We seemed to have reached a limit of naked-eye wonder and have now redirected our efforts towards telescopes, satellites, and the cold mathematical calculations.
Slippery path
Strictly speaking, I don't know how to define astrology outside of its prediction aspect.
On the one hand, I do acknowledge that these sky objects have an eerily recognizable pattern that keeps on repeating like clockwork designed since the beginning of their existence. Solar eclipses have happened for as long as the Moon has orbited at roughly its current distance, which...
Saturn flirting (read: conjunction) with Mars happens every two years or so on average, though the exact interval varies since both planets are moving.
With the latter, the prediction angle goes like looking at the past when these two planets come together and looking up what happened during those times, then extrapolating it into the near future for what could follow a similar pattern.
It's something quite basic until you then add another layer of all these planets having personalities of their own. More like archetypes, really, built up over centuries of observation and mythology.
May I also add the elements into the mix? As in there's watery Saturn, earthly Saturn, airy Saturn, fiery Saturn. Same goes for Mars. Which hinges on which zodiac sign the planet is transiting through at the time.
Ah, it's too much already. The whole astrological system is far from simple even when I try to boil it down to the fundamentals.
Time has a quality
A definition that resonates downstream of the prediction angle is astrology being the study of the correlations between celestial bodies and earthly events/human affairs. Correlation can be a slippery thing when mismatched with causation and taken for more than it is. So I generally don't stretch this into claiming the stars make anything happen, only that they seem to reflect what is already unfolding.
Upstream of that definition however is astrology defined as the science of time. The idea is that different qualities of time correspond to different cosmic configurations, and astrology is the art and science of reading the quality of a moment based on the positions of the planets and other celestial bodies.
Although, it seems like a handful to process, the way it clicked for me is stepping back from all the layers and returning to that single idea. Time has a quality to it, and the sky is the clock face. I don't need to read every hand on the dial to find it useful.
Now, taking the latter as the definition, experiencing a solar eclipse is basically encountering a rare and concentrated quality of time.
In astrological terms it tends to mark endings, resets, and the type of clarity that only comes when the usual light is briefly and completely gone.
I see astrology broadly as a tool for navigating reality. The prediction angle is a non persistent feature that comes along with it.
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