The Brave Shall Live Forever
Subtitled “Astrology: Empirical as Fuck.”
I’m sure it comes as a real surprise that I have to deflect a constant stream of astrology skeptics.
Skepticism is 100% fine; in fact, it’s the only real way to get to the truth of anything. Finding the holes in every argument is tantamount to being willing to believe in something that will never fully be understandable.
It’s when people come in hot, claiming something I do for a living and am passionate about is utter nonsense, that it becomes…not fine.
First, it’s just rude. Second, you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. If someone were to do their research, come to that conclusion on their own, decide to respectfully disagree and then approach me as their mental equal, the ensuing discussion usually unfolds into a productive meeting of the minds. And I’ve had a ton of those—it’s been one of my favorite side effects of hosting an astrology pop-up at a bar. No involved party ever really comes out of one of those discussions with their minds changed, but it’s super fun to cross mental swords with smart, interesting people.
But back to my beef. Astrology has been around for millennia, and was widely revered and respected for most of that time. Currently, in modern times, just as an example—the Wikipedia page on “Astrology” immediately describes it as a pseudoscience: a belief system that is not based on the scientific method.
Merriam-Webster defines the scientific method as “principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.”
Using this definition, astrology is decidedly not a pseudoscience.
The Phases of the Moon, Liber Floridus, 1460, The Hague.
This shit has been around for a minute.
Astrologers—and astronomers—have been collecting and analyzing applicable data for thousands of years.
There are troves of source materials if you want ‘em. Astrology is empirical as fuck.
It’s also worth mentioning that, like many, many belief systems that once flourished, the decline of astrology, both in its practical usage and global standing, owes a whole lot to the rise of Christianity and its conflicting agendas.
I won’t get into the whole history of astrology, but part of the reason its current vibe is so out there (if you catch my drift) is that a lot of the original knowledge base was systematically destroyed or lost, making it necessary for modern practitioners to fill in the blanks, at least some of the time. However, the reemergence of traditional Hellenistic astrology over the past few decades, which is particularly indebted to Project Hindsight, an endeavor by several prominent modern astrologers to translate and interpret ancient Greek texts and thus piece together the “original” Hellenistic astrology, is really putting a lot of ill-conceived notions about astrology to bed.
For that, I am grateful, but definitely still a little annoyed.
Original 1543 Nuremberg edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Nicolaus Copernicus.
Copernicus started something huge when he unveiled the heliocentric universe; his theory rattled the entire world, and it would be a very long time before the new model of the cosmos was accepted. Yet at this point in time we all generally believe the Sun is the center of our universe. Flat earthers do not count.
(Robert Westman, author of The Copernican Question, states that there were only ten Copernicans in the world between the 1543 publication of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres and the beginning of the 17th century—all ten of them practicing astrologers.)
I guess what I am trying to say is that no one knows for sure. About anything.
In a few hundred years, we’ll know so much more that when we look back, humanity will shake its collective head and say, how silly we were! (Of course, that’s if we don’t destroy this planet first) (Also, I’m not trying to live on Mars here—a malefic! Can you even? Sorry Elon.) (I don’t know, maybe I’d check it out if there were no other option.)
The nature of belief is tenuous—I can’t claim to understand it, any of it. But it seems its main paradox is somehow tied into how faith, in and of itself, powers the engine and moves all the parts. If you truly believe something, then it becomes your truth and your reality. And if you don’t believe, then of course it has no place in your psyche, no seat of power.
I mean that in respect to the purest essence of faith or belief. If your mind tells you, oh this religious system is the one for me, yet every other part of you is conflicted or confused, then that system is probably not where your faith lies.
I find myself believing things my logical mind would once categorize as crazy (and often still does). I believe things I can’t explain, I believe things no one else seems to. Some of these beliefs, be they small or enormously consequential, don’t even have a name. They are shown to me and I have to trust my senses, my instincts and intuition, and I also have to trust the messenger. I have to have confidence in the chain of experiences that has led me toward any of this. I have to dismantle a lot of what I once thought was truth, whether I came to it honestly or it was shoved down my throat.
A claustrophobia of existence fashioned from rough rope in a hangman’s knot has loomed over my head for as long as I can remember.
I don’t want to be contained; every part of me strains against the bonds. The process of liberation is long—the length of a lifetime, maybe even more than one—but it feels fruitful. And if I prove myself wrong, then at least I would have arrived at that conclusion with the noose a little looser.
The Funeral of a Viking, Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee, 1893.
…also, remembering my pyromaniacal childhood makes me kinda want to colonize Mars now?
When I was a kid, I would stare into fires and fight the urge to jump into the flames.
The heat—to burn—was a powerful lure; immolation seemed pretty alright, too. I once brought up the mystery of Viking funerals to someone I was dating—a wooden craft in water, your body in its body, a flaming arrow shot by the surest shooter, one eye on the archer’s paradox until a spark catches and burns the whole thing to silt. And then—a blaze strong enough to return you to the Sun. I thought it bold, this pure rebellion of asking the ship to burn as it was surrounded by water—almost disrespectful, intentional, magical, and beautiful. To die by contradiction might be the most archetypically human way to die.
The Fool, about to jump into the wild unknown. It should be fine.
But then he pointed out all the logistical necessities, and while I appreciate a mind that works differently than mine, the immediate impulse to demystify was not one I was, or am, interested in. I don’t want that, I don’t want to live in a limited reality. I don’t believe in it. An archer’s flaming arrow. Grave goods on a sodden pyre. I can have anything and everything I want.
Sometimes, like the Tarot’s Fool, you just have to take a leap of faith.
(ALSO—don’t worry about me, I’m a pro at arguing this topic by now. I just say “I’ve had this argument enough times to hone it to perfection…with people a lot smarter than you.” Works a charm. And is fully not a lie.)