Exegesis V07 Issue 018

Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #018

In This Issue:

From: L:Smerillo
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #14

Exegesis Digest Mon, 04 Feb 2002

Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 11:01:41 +0100
From: L:Smerillo
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #14

From: "Roger L. Satterlee"
> >For example,
> >if a particular god is said to wear the colors red and black, then astrology's
> >Mars and Saturn are an emphasized part of that god's *formula*...this,
> >regardless of whatever culture projects whatever deities for whatever purpose.

This may be a way of saying that one saves the theory and to hell with the appearances/facts. The other day I was composing a longish piece on the Babylonian roots of Hellenistic astrological lore, and the above lines relate to what is said below. Apparently this attitude above, is reflected also in the texts of Assyrian astronomers.

Omina are a direct expression or indication of the will of the gods, the message the gods are sending, and as such they hold their place and import in the other forms of Mesopotamian divinatory practice, such as exispicy, oniromancy, lecanomancy, libanomancy and aleuromancy. Indeed much of the celestial omina material, as in EAE (37-49/50) the meteorological omina, follow the same structure of reference as the other non-astral materials, and in those other sections dealing with the sun, moon, planetary omina first and last visibilities, acronychal risings and fixed star phases. The schematic functional organisation of this material is the same as in the other divinatory practices: left-right, above-below (beware!), and other sequences following the order of body parts, as well as colours: white, black, red, yellow. This shows the dependence of the astral omina on the literary form of other forms of divinatory practice in the Mesopotamina scholastic tradition.

A further evidence of this same phenomena is that the EAE (especially in 52 and 53) records as events some astronomically impossible situations: constellations move, EAE 53 K.3558 starts, "if the Pleiades reach the Yoke--Saturn reaches Mars. If the Pleiades reach the Star of Marduk-- Jupiter or Mercury reach the Pleiades. If the Pleiades reach the Kidney-- the Pleiades and Mars. If Orion stands in the Head of the Pleiades-- Saturn stands in front of the Pleiades. If the Pleiades and the Wagon {= Ursa Maior] stand together-- Venus rises with the Pleiades..." The commentaries tend to preserve the text not the 'phenomena'. Colour is also a denominator: if one star in ŠU.GI (Perseus) is very red, the commentary will explain it as 'Mars [is seen] in ŠU.GI with Venus' if it is very dark, the commentary explains it as 'Mercury is seen in ŠU.GI' (See: Erica Reiner, 'Babylonian Celestial Divination' in N.M. Swerdlow (ed.) _Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination_, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1999, pp 21-37 ad loc. 28-29).

A system will, in other words, work well within itself, until there is either an information over-load, or a contradiction of fact. To save the system for the sake of the system is a very heiractic form non-thinking, something the modern western mind almost instinctively finds repulsive. Perhaps it would be best to let the system, in this case, astrology (whatever that might be taken to mean) collapse. And then see what develops out of that. Perhaps that is what happened in Hamburg in the 1920's.

It is of course a truism of historical cycles that a culture or society which is hell-bent on preserving its past (a form of fundamentalism) is already in a state of advanced corporeal decay, producing much C2O. The ordour of sanctity, or comforting insights, is sometimes not necessary.

However, I think I should add that ancient and mediaeval and Renaissance and 17h century astrologers never go into great explanations of the mythology of the gods or planets. The names are simply cyphers, and I think that none of them were particularly interested in 'tales about the gods,' which their culture, and I think especially of any astrological development or text after the first century BCE, held to be old wives' tales. Nonetheless there was a use of astrology by some of the more fundamentalist Hermetic authors, but here we are engaged in a very segregated expression of polythieistic theurgy.

The emphasis on 'mythology' is directly traceable in the modern astrological schools to the influence of romanticism and nationalism in the 19th century. Other expressions of this same phenomenon are the Nazi party, the New Age Movement, Neo-Pagans, and other such not flotsom.