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Re: Astrology as predictions, I have these rather elaborated thoughts: There are a lot of issues that come with fixing a supposed list of traits to the planets. Such that, for example, Venus is usually described as Sanguine and Feminine. Yet, Isaac Newton in his "Lapis Philosophicus cum suis Rotis Elementaribus", or "The Philosopher's Stone and its Wheel of the Elements" in English, describes Venus as Choleric and Masculine. Variance like this breaks the fundamental logic behind predictive Astrology. Does Venus correspond to Air (Sanguine), Water (Phlegmatic), even Fire (Choleric)? There is no consensus, and without knowing the traits of the planets, you cannot predict based on them. The idea of strict correspondence is dreamt up by later Kabbalists who have not read the Medieval or Renaissance Latin manuscripts. Hence, an archetypical model is better, where the planets are not believed to be literal predictive powers, but as forces that permeate the Universe, and can be harnessed/tapped into by the practitioner. This also explains why correspondences shift, because each practitioner internalises these forces differently. The social function of marriage lends itself to the social qualities of the Sanguine temperament, the stability of marriage also lends itself to a Phlegmatic temperament, and later, ideas of passionate love resurfacing naturally lend themselves to a Choleric temperament. It's not that any are wrong, but that they are using different lenses to view the same forces. That is not to say that the planets are merely psychological archetypes, as some modernists like to claim. They exist as forces within and beyond the psyche, much as an individual is compelled by gravity, but gravity is not merely an individual's perception of it. Kabbalists would also later distort the model, moving from the classical Septenary (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) to a model that also incorporated Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, hence "modern" astrology. The issue is that, if it's accepted that these planetary forces are real, you cannot simply invent new ones. The planets are not the centres of power, but symbols that we use to describe the forces, the existence of more astrological planets doesn't strictly mean there are more astrological powers, per se. |