Re: VMs: Astrological alphabets (etc)...

[Pamela Richards <spirlhelix@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Nick

Many thanks for your gracious response.

The concept of an astrological "alphabet" is new to
me, I must admit.  Thank you for the link; it promises
interesting reading!

There are many astrological symbols or glyphs that may
be used in combination; combinations of two suggest,
as I believe you mentioned back in 2001, a planet +
sign.  

Then, we may also find planet + sign + degrees.

Or, planet + sign + degrees + house placement.

Or, planet + "association" (Lord of the second house,
for example)+ sign + degrees + house placement.

It seems to me that historically the decline of
astrology ocurred when those with sufficient education
to teach it (those who could read Latin, understand
astronomy, and perform the calculations necessary to
erect a chart) stopped subscribing to its validity. 
This decline most traditional astrologers date to the
Age of Reason.  This was the period of history when
Sir Isaac Newtown was quoted as saying, "Let us not
throw out the baby with the bath water. . . ".  To put
the quotation into context, he was objecting to the
tendency of scientists of his day to overlook
astrology in favor of what were considered more
emperical studies.  

Apart from the strictures on heliocentricity, (which
is a matter of indifference to "geocentric"
traditional astrology), the Church appeared to be
tolerant of the use of astrology in most instances. 
The Catholic Church had at heart a syncretistic means
of conversion and expansion.  This was highly
practical for their purposes, and left intact many
structures which it would have been impractical to
forbid, in the absence of a reasonable substitute.  

I see astrology as having been used more as a
practical system of guidance than the fulfillment of
an aspiration for spiritual enlightenment.  During
what we call the Middle Ages, astrology was used by
farmers and sailors to time their activities as well
as doctors and merchants.  The church was not in a
position to tell farmers to stop planting according to
the methods that had worked for them in the past, or
to tell sailors how not to time their journeys, or to
tell sick parishoners not to go to qualified doctors
(who used astrology) to seek healing. 

To this day, the Old Farmer's Almanac still provides
advice to those who plant according to the signs of
the heavens.  These are people of the earth, not
necessarily seekers of internal fulfillment only
(unless that means a full stomach!  Smile).

The Church was able to condone the practice of
astrology because of the belief stated in the
scriptures that God had put into place the planets in
the heavens and set them in motion, to act as signs of
the seasons.  "To everything there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under heaven".  I don't think
the church had much of a problem with fatalism, which
would have been simply "God's will".  And in this
there was not much conflict with medieval astrology,
which was highly fatalistic.  Accurate prediction
depends upon fatalism; if all events were determined
by free will, who could make a valid prediction?  Or
why bother?  But I think we moderns tend to forget
that the purpose of astrology was to predict the
outcome of events on earth.  Even natural magic works
on these same principles.

But you have manged to get me on the subject of fate
versus free will in prediction, which is another can
of worms!  Smile.

Nick, thanks for sharing your ideas and your patience
with this newcomer's reflections.

Warmly,

Pam




--- Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Pamela,
> 
> Welcome to the list, I'm sure you'll feel quite at
> home here. :-)
> 
> You mentioned astrological alphabets: I set in
> motion a thread on this 
> theme in 2001, with my "Astrological Alphabet
> Hypothesis" (AAH) - the basic 
> idea was that (as with numbers), as we can't see
> astrology anywhere in the 
> VMs, perhaps it's everywhere, embedded in the
> alphabet itself. IIRC, I 
> found the "17 x 4" ring on f57v suggestive of being
> a sequence of signs and 
> planets, but I'd need to review that evidence again,
> it's a long time ago...
> 
>
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.voynich.net+AAH
> 
> BTW, I'm currently looking for the document I wrote
> summarising the AAH at 
> the time, & will post a link to the list when I find
> it (time to power up 
> my old PC, etc).
> 
> FWIW, I now see medieval-to-early-modern astrology
> not in terms of court 
> astrology (ie directing affairs of state, like
> Frederick II & Nancy 
> Reagan), but rather as a diffusely-located
> middle-class activity, for those 
> seeking empowerment & self-advancement - where the
> (slightly more) modern 
> middle-class zeal for information is just a
> rationalised version of the same.
> 
> Therefore, the Church's pressure on astrologers to
> move away from fatalism 
> & determinism (which ultimately produced Ficino and
> modern psychological 
> astrology, so moving from 'prediction' to
> 'predilection') effectively 
> disempowered the middle classes, removing their
> aspirations to power by 
> undermining their perceived means to achieve it. And
> the same goes for 
> magic (both demonic and natural) - for example, the
> middle section of 
> William Eamon's (1994) "Science and the Secrets of
> Nature" (which I've 
> mentioned before on-list) has a fair bit on how the
> Church explicitly saw 
> the expansion of natural magic and the related
> "naturalism" as threatening 
> its control of its middle-class power-base, which I
> think is all part of 
> the same overall story.
> 
> I don't know of any good books that cover this kind
> of "social history of 
> astrology" (any recommendations, anyone?), but this
> view does impact on 
> where you place the VMs in the web of history. For
> example, I can't 
> comfortably place the VMs' 360-degree zodiac pages
> as a tool for 
> psychological astrology at all - it's far more
> likely to be a late-medieval 
> predictive system, derived from the same (probably
> Arabic transmitted) 
> school from which Pietro d'Abano's works sprang.
> 
> Overall, I think that makes the VMs hard to
> reconcile with post-1600 
> astrology (and most post-1500 astrology, too) where
> that kind of medieval 
> thinking has been stripped right out. The question
> for the VMs' zodiac 
> section is this: if it's expressing some kind of
> astrological secret, what 
> is that secret? Steve Ekwall's belief that it's
> predicting male births 
> (based on the time of conception) seems as good as
> (if not better) any 
> other... interesting!
> 
> Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
> 
> PS: nice Lilly site:
> http://www.skyhook.co.uk/merlin/
> 
> 
>
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=====
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing, than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."

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