Precession of the Equinox Idiot
by Daniel R. Hirtler on 01/14/11
So they are starting to degrade magickal thought the same as they have been doing to ordinary thought...jerks!
Shifting the astrological signs and adding a new one is an error based in a complete misunderstanding of astrology itself. Proposing a whole new cosmology could be a reasonable proposition, however, arbitrarily gumming up an old one only serves to disable it.
First, astrology is not based in the stars; we use the constellations to mark the position of our earth to the sun and the other planets, and it is that relationship which is associated with qualities of our sensible world. the marking of the astrological signs is out of sync with the constellations because of the precession of the equinox, where every 2000 years or so, the constellations move one twelfth of a revolution out of sync with the images we have associated with the constellation markers. The qualities do not change; adustments are made in reading the markings; the disparity grows over time.
Second, the division of qualities into a system of twelve serves us to integrate the magick of our number system, our languge, and other psychological patterns into a system of understanding and prediction that the number thirteen can never parallel.
Obviously, if astrology is used to give people a cocktail party badge, then it does not matter what the system is, because people take any such badge and mold themselves to it. In fact, the less identifiable the badge is, the more comfortable it is to wear. Leaving astrology at knowing only a sun sign is like that now, however, cocktail conversation is not the purpose of astrology.
On the sinister side, just as the degradation of literacy, the elimination of vocabulary, and the fungibility of definition has made intelligible conversation more difficult each following day, scrambling ancient systems of knowledge to destroy correct record keeping, and to make understanding and predictions based on them trivial, is making the world a less safe, and less controllable place for ordinary people to occupy and in which to try to live.
