People often ask "What do you believe in?" or whatever. I, being me, usually have to ponder the syntax. I HAVE beliefs - but do I believe IN something? I don't know what it means to believe IN something. People usually use the phrase for what they think are entirely imaginary entities: Do you believe IN Santa Claus (I do - and in no way was I lying when I told my children Santa exists...although I stressed that his gender, his fatness and his beard are cultural trappings, that he is a Spirit...the Spirit of the Celebration of Light...obviously much more than that as well).
The nature of belief itself is more my thing.
So, I've been thinking about astrology and if you know me, you already know I'm a highly rational person who is not a kook. So, I'm not thinking about kooky astrology.
I believe astrology was invented to be a very different thing (kind of an ancient MMPI) than it has become, for many, today. I've known some really good astrologers, but they weren't using merely astrology to do their personality portraits or their reads of people. Astrology promoted or enabled some faculty of mind to emerge in them - a faculty that not everyone has, clearly. (Google Esref Armagan or go to my Facebook to see about him). Tarot cards work in the same way. I suppose tea leaves and animal entrails do too, but they are not the same kind of system as Astrology or Tarot - both are systems of communication, extra-somatic containers of meaning as we call them in anthropology.
People do have personalities, sometimes unusual ones, and they do have intellects and they do have various components of Mind, which we moderns totally fail at describing or discussing. Astrology was invented to take care of and provide symbolization/language for some of this. So, forget your birthdate for a minute - let's just say that there were no birth certificates in the past. Perhaps you only know the year you are born - as would have been the case for many of the Ancients.
Remember how in many modern, advanced cultures (like Russia and Italy and Spain and many others), people were named after a Saint? Sometimes this was done long after birth, sometimes it was done at birth by parents reflecting on the innate character of the new child. Today, most parents pick a name for the baby before the baby is born, and do not add an additional "saint's name" to indicate these qualities, noted at birth. It would be a fine thing if people did this. Take a person named Mary by her mother. This name is generic and venerable - but because it is generic (please include all the Maries and Marias here too), it says very little about what Mother noticed on that day of birth. I guess some people believe that personality or identity doesn't show up at birth - and I believe that it doesn't - but only for some people. Other people have plenty of identity at birth - I can see it, I believe it, and I know it.
I have no way of accounting for this. Modern science would simply say the geneticists will figure it out someday - I think not. Even identical twins have different characters from birth. Let's just say that the Ancients, in general, called this Soul or Spirit or whatnot. Anyway, it was as ineffable to them as it is to me, which is why I have the topic on a back burner. I figure I need to know way more than I do, if really smart and knowledgeable people from all periods of history cannot answer the question - there's no need for me, at my young age (54) to be getting into that.
But I'm heading there. I am well aware that astronomy is still a science, as is physics. There are conundrums and puzzles in each of those fields as well. I believe these puzzles are interrelated - so more on that next time.
