Monday, June 23, 2014

Evolutionary Astrological Music Monday

A relevant song to lead me into today's post: "In My Next Life" sung by Merle Haggard, written by Max D. Barnes.

Last week the topic of planetary nodes came up in commentary on this post.
While searching online for more information on planetary nodes, a branch of astrology known as Evolutionary Astrology kept cropping up. I've investigated this branch of the astrological family tree before, and have tried to feel enthusiastic about it, due to a few well-known popular astrologers being involved. I couldn't quite do enthusiasm, curiosity was the best I managed.

Aspects of reincarnation - it plays a major part in Evolutionary Astrology - have been featured in past posts linked below, they're worth a look, also for commentary there. I'd like to feel confident about past and future lifetimes being possibilities for us all, but I can't, and remain, probably for ever, a student of the Don't Know School.
Archived posts touching on reincarnation:

Reincarnation
Reincarnation - Another Look at Tallan
Wednesday Woo-woo: Past Lives

During my search the other day I found a long, painstakingly thorough and even-handed, piece by astrologer & therapist Glenn Perry on the topic of astrology's role, or lack of it, in reincarnational thinking:
A Critical Review Of Reincarnational Astrology. A paragraph from the piece is quoted below:
One might anticipate that evolutionary astrologers will argue that their stories work precisely because the South Node symbolizes karma from past lives. Yet, it cannot be overstated that all one can actually know about the South Node is that it appears to correlate to a deeply ingrained, inborn pattern of feeling and behavior, just as the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant correspond to deeply ingrained, inborn patterns. This is all that we can actually observe. Over time, one might notice a shift in behavior from what is more familiar (South Node) to what is less familiar (North Node), and back and forth, until the polarity is maximally integrated over the course of the life. Astrologers can embellish this simple observation with all sorts of esoteric meanings and karmic entailments, but it doesn't change the fact that all we can know is what we can observe. To claim any more than this is to draw a dogmatic conclusion from ambiguous data.
I see Moon's Nodes as just sensitive points and/or cyclical markers, in a natal chart, nothing more than that so really, I stand a few steps back even from Mr Perry's view.

Part of the author's concluding paragraphs:
The commercialization of reincarnation through the sale of astrological readings, books, and computer-generated reports casts a tawdry shadow over the entire field. The law of karma is at the core of virtually every spiritual tradition that has exerted influence throughout recorded history and is arguably the deepest, most profound of all moral teachings. Likewise, the doctrine of reincarnation refers to the immortality of the human soul and outlines the means by which the psyche finds its way home—reunited with the source of its own being. For astrologers to commercialize these sacred doctrines for personal profit through a pretense of transcendental knowledge is ethically indefensible. Merely believing in reincarnation does not entitle one to make up stories of past lives and then sell this information to the gullible masses. Such a practice exploits the credulity of clients by fraudulently portraying the astrologer as having knowledge not actually possessed.................

Standing ovation on this:
....The best remedy against the seductive but ultimately false security of self-sealing doctrines is critical thinking, without which astrology will remain forever in danger of contamination by noxious and spurious claims. False prophets abound in fields situated in the heavenly realms. And true believers are their life-blood. Every individual astrologer needs to take special pains not to become either one—neither a false prophet, nor a true believer.

I began with a song, and will end with one - this song seems to be looking back to a past life rather than onward to a next life....but who knows where or when?"

11 comments:

mike said...

Oh, Peggy Lee...captivating voice.

Like you, I have no clue how our lives operate...I keep an open mind regarding possibilities. I now lean more toward "we are all one", which would infer my relationship to everyone past, present, and future...so, in that sense, includes reincarnation, but not an individual "me" that repeats over and over. I'm also willing to include all life forms on Earth as connected to me...maybe Gaia is the true source of my essence...and Gaia is the truer consciousness.

If there is a hell, we are living it right now...LOL. Our human-to-human interaction is what creates that hell...our separation from each other through our egos. The myth of Lucifer seems appropriate: the separation from the divine and oneness. BTW - did you know that Lucifer is also the name of Venus as a morning star [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer]?

I also enjoy reading the newer quantum physics' view of our universe that consciousness creates our reality, or decoherence and the universe is holographic in nature...every piece represents the totality. Separation is an illusory mental state.

Whatever this life, Earth, universe is about...I guess I bought a ticket, so I'd best enjoy the ride, however it ends or its purpose...LOL.

mike (again) said...


"Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream"

LB said...

Twilight ~ The thing about subjects like this is that no matter how compelling the evidence or experience might be, those who choose not to believe will dismiss it anyway. Maybe it's comforting for some to believe this is all there is, without concerning themselves with the possibility of a distant future they helped to shape. I don't know.

Having said that, when it comes to reincarnation and past-life memories, I've had some pretty wild experiences (usually involving the Nodes) that I'm not able to (or interested in) dismissing. I can't.

The last, and by far the most mind-blowing one, happened around the time of April's Eclipses, which were conjunct points along my natal 2nd/8th house axis, including my natal 2nd house Sun-Venus-North Node, which was conjunct my progressed Ascendant coming from my progressed 12th.

I believe the gift of forgetfulness most of us enjoy -about specific details of who we might have been- is given to us for a reason, and though I still don't completely understand *why* I was meant to remember and *know* such things, astrology has helped me to make better sense of it, and for that I've been grateful.:)

Twilight said...

mike ~ To be absolutely candid the whole thing is way beyond my comprehension.
Certain theories attract, others repulse, but more along the lines of a novel or movie theme. I think my feet are too much fixed to planet Earth to think much beyond its immediate surroundings, and maybe around the ecliptic (on a good day). :-) Yet this is one of those topics I can't quite leave alone entirely, like picking an irritating spot.

Your song in (again) reminded me of that wonderful quote by the late lamented Bill Hicks:

The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round and it has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud. And it's fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: 'Is this real? Or is this just a ride?' And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid -- ever -- because... this is just a ride.' And we kill those people.

'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride! Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry; look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that -- ever notice that? -- and we let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because... it's just a ride, and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort. No worry. No job. No savings and money. Just a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy bigger guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.

Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, into a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and, instead, spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would do many times over -- not one human being excluded -- and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever. In peace.

Twilight said...

LB ~ I suppose it comes down to individual experience in the end If a person has experienced something which seems to them to prove "something" be it the existence of UFOs, ghosts, God, gods, astrological validity, reincarnation...etc. then it has to colour their personal perceptions for ever.

I'd love to have insight into some previous lifetime I might have lived, the idea does appeal to me, even though I mightn't like what I found - but I have experienced no such insight. I remain a "don't know".

I tend to put down feelings of déjà vu, or that I've somehow known a new acquaintance before, down to either coincidence, memory from a novel or movie, or in the case of a person, some sympathetic astrological factors in natal charts.

LB said...

Twilight ~ I understand. The illusion of this reality being all there is can *seem* very real sometimes.:)

LB said...

Twilight ~ I understand. The illusion of this reality being all there is can *seem* very real sometimes.:)

LB said...

Sorry, don't know what happened with the duplicate comment. I guess if a thing is worth saying, then it's worth saying twice!

I was going to add how, aside from a few romantic delusions suffered during my youth, I don't think I've ever *felt* a past-life connection - even when the astrology would seem to fit.

The sister I found through dreams and messages after my mother passed (the child my mother kept secret and who was given up for adoption before she met and married my father) might have been the one exception. That particular experience made a believer out of quite a few doubters - not that it mattered to me either way.

Twilight said...

LB ~ Yes, I see - evidence of communication with a person who is no longer alive (as we know "alive" to be). I haven't ever experienced that myself, but have read of several such experiences by others. I've no idea what to make of it, but feel that it wouldn't be at all outlandish to think that one's unique "echo", or electrical imprint on the Earth's atmosphere would remain around for a while after death, especially if there were some important message a person wished to impart. Scientists don't understand the mysterious workings of the human brain. There have to be many possibilities involved in that mystery that we cannot even imagine at present.

mike (again) said...

Some years ago, I read "Duluth", by Gore Vidal. Maybe we're deader than a door-nail right now and don't know it!

"One of the experimental texts Vidal refers to as his "inventions", Duluth describes both a novel written about Duluth (that, bordered on one side by Minneapolis and on the other by Michigan, bears scant resemblance to the real city) and a television series of the same name; when residents of the city die, they end up as characters in the TV show, who can in some cases continue interacting with the living through the TV screen. When members of the cast of Duluth, the TV show, die, they become characters in Rogue Duke, a romance novel serialized in the pages of Redbook, the popular women's magazine."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duluth_%28novel%29

Twilight said...

mike (again) ~ LOL! Oh my! Interesting!
We could, all unknowingly be characters in some vast, on-going mini-series for the delectation of what the Greeks and Romans (& others) though of as "the gods". When our characters die they will pass into descendingly atrocious sit-coms for lesser gods to watch; then when those characters die they'll go to be characters in commercials or infomercials for even lesser gods...after that I'm not sure...maybe they'll become politicians. ;-)