In an era of conspiracy theories and misinformation, here’s why astrology has withstood the test of time to provide meaning in our human journeys.
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Transcript of Is Astrology Science or Superstition?
Hey there! I’m super happy to be chatting with you today. I’m Marina Ormes, the founder of Astrology Heals at astrologyheals.com, and today I wanted to talk to you about one of my favorite topics: the age old question, “Is astrology science or superstition?”
This has been a question around, since, well, in my entire lifetime as far as I can remember.
And of course scientists want to you know… if you ask scientists, they’ll say astrology is superstition. It’s not based in science, is not grounded in science. It doesn’t fit the scientific method.
And if you ask professional astrologers who been practicing astrology effectively for decades, of course they’re going to say astrology is not superstition. Astrology is absolutely something valid and useful as a tool in our own personal awareness and growth process.
And What About Conspiracy Theories?
The other thing that we’re adding to this age-old question, in recent times—you know, even in recent years—when the theme of conspiracy theories has come up.
We’re being asked to really use our filters to understand the difference between something that anybody on social media can post and talk about and make a meme about and make it sound as if it’s real, or cherry pick bits of information that makes something sound a particular way, when experts in the field would differ.
So we have this sort of era that we’re in where we are dealing with these conspiracy theories, and QAnon is out there, and different things that come through our information… on the river or stream of information that flows through, that we have to filter.
And conspiracy theories are… right?… are not grounded in science, although there is science that people can… people will use to demonstrate their point of view. They will demonstrate that they have evidence or research to back it up. They’ll say “make sure you do your research.”
So how does astrology fit into this, because there is a lot of misunderstanding or misconception about what astrology is and how it fits into our understanding of science.
Science is Changing
One of the fundamental problems that we have is actually the way that we view science and the way that we’ve viewed astrology through the lens of science.
Science has this mechanistic approach that’s been used in recent centuries. There’s a lot of history and background to this, but the basic idea is that there is an external, objective reality that science can measure, and it is our job to observe and determine what is happening by watching and observing and measuring these things that we can measure.
That’s how we get things like, you know, being able to send a rocket to the Moon, because we figure out how everything works and we figured out ways to build machines that will work with the physics and the objective reality that we know to be true.
And lo and behold, it works! And that’s great. And science is really, really powerful in that way, but science leaves out a whole dimension of experience. What is left out is what we might call the subjective world.
The Significance of the Subjective
The subjective experience is… Well, the objective experience is something that we can all agree about, you know, that in inch is and inch, and that 23°F is 23 degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s true regardless of what you think or how you experience it.
But then you have this other experience of phenomena that is subjective and that’s where the fields of psychology and the social sciences and some of our health perspectives and health sciences come in, to understand not only how, for instance with health, how do we heal or fix a broken bone or cure a virus that’s in our bodies.
Those are very mechanistic, cause-and-effect type of experiences. So not only that, but also, how do we heal the person’s experience of that illness… and that is what astrology does. It brings the objective reality together with one’s subjective sense or experience–what we can also call meaning.
One of the things that holistic healing and holistic healthcare is focused on is the ability for a person to feel well, not only in their body, but in their body, mind, spirit, and emotions, so that’s holistic wellness, right? That feeling of well-being. That not only are we not in pain but we actually have a sense of feeling good about our lives and feel energized, inspired, able to move and create things, and able to do the things that give us joy.
Subjective AND Objective
Astrology gives us this ability to bring both sides together, to understand objectively what’s happening, which is astronomy. And the movement of the planets is very highly predictable and mathematical and observable and objective. It’s something where we can all agree that, you know, the Moon is the Moon is the Moon, and where it is is where it is and it doesn’t change, and it doesn’t matter what you think or how you feel about it.
The Moon is there, where it is, at a particular time. But it also brings that objective truth together with this experience of meaning. And the subjective part of the field of astrology has to do with how we experience the connection between the position of the planets to our experience of well-being, and how knowledge of this objective, symbolic realm can help us understand what’s happening inside of us, because it speaks to our experience.
It speaks to what we feel and know to be true inside, in addition to being objectively true no matter who you are, where you are. And what they’re finding—and this is decades of research—is that this is a different kind of science, a science that looks more at the psychological aspects, the philosophical aspects, how we understand ourselves and our place in the world.
When you put astrology in that context, and you understand that consistently, reliably, and repeatedly, people have this experience of the archetype or meaning, such as the meaning of the planet Venus, or of the Moon, being something that resonates with them in a particular field of experience.
For the Moon that would be our emotional selves, inner children, and our capacity for caring and healing and feeling. And each planet has its own set of meaning or archetype…
Astrology Is Complex
My point is that the experience of astrology, even though you might, on one simplistic level, say oh well it’s not scientific. You can’t predict or prove, you know, that everybody who has Mars conjunct the ascendant is going to, you know, be in sports or be a warrior… that just because that’s not true, it doesn’t mean we have to throw out astrology.
Different people might experience Mars on the ascendant in different ways, and there are multiple factors happening, so that is very complex. Somebody might experience Mars on the ascendant more internally, they might experience it as something that they have more difficulty manifesting and that their soul is learning and working toward experiencing and expressing.
So that is not going to necessarily show up in the kind of predictable way that we might think astrology should work, right? That it should predict the future, that we should know that because the stars are going to align in this particular way we know exactly what’s going to happen.
And of course it doesn’t work that way. But it does, consistently, in a way that professional astrologers using the same system agree across the board, it shows up in the same ways. It shows up with the same set of symbolic meanings and those symbolic meanings speak to us in a particular way.
Ancient Ways of Knowing
Obviously we could go on and on about this but I just wanted to make sure I got across to you that that astrology is grounded in… not only is it grounded in an ancient tradition where for thousands and thousands of years, our ancestors around the world, no matter what part of the world your ancestors come from, our ancestors looked at the sky.
It is a universal experience of noticing, when you don’t have electric lights, which was true for everyone before electric lights came into being. The experience of connection to the sky and the experience of the meaning of different alignments, planetary alignments, that resonated as true throughout history… throughout the… you know, from even before written history.
And these symbols resonate as true consistently for us when we look at our own personal transits and when astrologers look at the transits of our clients and compare notes with other astrologers and, you know, write books. We experience the same sets of meanings that our ancestors experienced.
So, astrology is grounded in a very long tradition and that tradition is also grounded in a very in-depth exploration in recent decades throughout the 20th and 21st centuries where we’ve had a lot of really high-level thinkers delving into this phenomenon and understanding it deeply.
New Paradigms
There are lots of great books out there and things to explore related to that. But the point is that astrology, even though you can’t simply put it into a box and say it is a science or it is superstition, it is a real thing.
I think that as we go forward into the future we’re going to find more and more that actually it’s our science, our way of doing science is what is incomplete, right?
So as we transform our paradigms of how we do science, which is happening independently of astrology, completely independently… right?… with the world post-Einstein and quantum mechanics and relativity and all that, that we are going to continue to integrate and adapt to these new truths.
For example, actually, we don’t have any proof that there even is a world outside of our experience of it. And that’s kind of a fundamental truth, so our experience is important in our sense of wellness and well-being. And that’s where astrology comes in.
In other words, astrology is not a conspiracy theory. Astrology is used by professionals who have had great success in working with clients for many decades and it goes back to our ancestors in those ancient times. It is also shown to be important in the philosophical, psychological tradition with Carl Jung and the archetypes and synchronicity, and amongst thinkers in our times. People are writing about this as we speak.
Thank you so much for watching and for your interest in this very important topic and question. I feel like I could talk more about it. So maybe I will in the future, again in a future video but thanks so much for watching.
Check me out at astrologyheals.com. I have an awesome free gift that walks you through creating your very own soul-based action plan so check that out at astrologyheals.com.
I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.
