Exegesis V4 Issue #12

Exegesis Volume 4 Issue #12

From: "William D. Tallman"
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V4 #11

Exegesis Digest Wed, 27 Jan 1999

Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 18:32:12 -0800
From: "William D. Tallman"
To: Exegesis
Subject: Re: Exegesis Digest V4 #11

> < snip > The doctor's
> presence is fleeting, but the solar gravitation field and its influence on
> that of the earth is constantly there, and continually changing in an
> orderly manner. Maybe these are areas that would yield insights if
> explored.
>
> I think this is just what Dale Huckeby (and I, on a more modest scale) have
> argued, with regard to what Dale calls temporal templates. In my terms, the
> planetary cycles have a cognitive function that living (? thinking of Mary, this
> might include any dynamic system, such as a volcano or a weather system ???)
> beings make use of to order and structure their living processes. It is not
> that the planets *force* us to do anything: they merely provide convenient
> clocks around which life as we know it has been able to assemble itself.

Temporal templates embedded heirarchically, according to size, perhaps. That there is not an orderly fit is what makes it work, I think: there are no convenient harmonics, such that some small number of faster cycles are found to fit exactly within a larger cycle. What would be fascinating would be to find that one or another of those "fits" produces an irrational number, like pi, etc..

Here, you have also touched on the original question I asked months ago: does the "astrological effect" require life? I think the answer to that question is fundamental to any effort to discover the mechanism(s) thereof.

> Although I use the word 'convenient', it is important not to - on that account -
> underestimate the possible importance of such clocks. It is not merely like
> deciding whether to catch this train or the next one! It is that if the many
> life processes which make us up happen to have tuned themselves to such external
> rhythms, then there will be times when some things we consciously will ourselves
> to do will just not be "at the right time" in terms of our organic readiness for
> the activity.

Yes! That our experience of our lives and the interaction thereof with our environments has some deep but discernable "thread", has been a basic tenet of virtually all cultures down through the ages and around the world. It is the Tao. It is The Way, The Path, etc.. It is one of the end products of the major spiritual practices, be they religions, life styles, or whatever; having said that, I hasten to add that it is assuredly not the only end product, and this can be said to be true of astrology as well, but that is another matter.

When it comes down to it, the issue is whether one can discern and accomodate this deeper thread. To do so is to find the Tao, etc. Among many other tools, astrology provides a means to do this, but it must be lived, not just studied or practiced, and this is the principal argument of those who would have astrology be simply as subset of psychology. And here we find the crux of the argument between fate and free will.

Free will is indeed possible and within the grasp of anyone, but it requires a pretty steep ramp to get there in a reasonably convenient length of time. The default mode is fate, following where the universe leads one without any attempt at learning how to chart one's own course. The tides of time and events can be observed through the use of astrology, and the horoscope can indeed read the tenor of a life, if there is no effort to learn how to use those tides, etc. Free will lies at the other end of this business, where one has acquired the ability to recognize and turn to one's own will the flow of those tides. The problem is, that is a great deal more difficult to do than most people imagine.

For those who claim to exercise their free will by attempting to breast those tides by main force, it seems inevitable that they find what they seek to avoid manifesting itself in some unexpected or unanticipated form; the claim is then either refuted, or the evidence of this result is ignored. In the first way, hope is lost, and in the second, a longer learning process is mandated. It's no wonder that most people claim free will as a matter of unquestioned faith. The alternative is unacceptable otherwise: it is the loss of hope!

> As William states, fleeting and irregular events such as the 'presence' of a
> doctor may well influence life but could not provide any basis for regulating or
> timing ongoing processes. Cycles that are more or less *eternally* present are
> necessary. The planets in our solar system may happen to perform this function.

This is the popular assumption. As I have said, cause and effect is not the only type of mechanism that is possible; the involvement of the planets *is* the basic tenet of astrology, however.

> If there is not some as yet undiscovered force at work, a gravitational
> mechanism such as William speculates may be plausible. The question then is
> whether the hypothetical mechanism by which we sense the gravitational rhythms
> is direct (which suggests some *highly* sensitive, inbuilt biological mechanism)
> or indirect (which suggests the Earth itself and it's environment is the sensor,
> and we in turn pick up these rhythms through our immersion in this same
> environment).

I would suggest that both modes are active, that we sense directly as well as indirectly through the response of the planet. In fact, it may be that the annual cycle is indirect and the diurnal is direct. There is said to be some good science that supports this.

The direct case I imagine might be rather easy to test in the
> laboratory (at some inconvenience to participants !), because all we need to do
> is to arrange a (hidden) gravitational oscillation over some cycle approximating
> those we already know; the second case more difficult because it depends on also
> hypothesising what senses we use to detect these *particular* rhythms in the
> environment. An isolation chamber perhaps?

I don't think this is a fruitful direction, as it does not take into account how the gravitational field(s) affect the EM fields (of the earth).

It may actually be useful to reread some of Gauquelin's work in this regard, as he actively searched for good science supporting the presence of some "astrological mechanism". Citation:

Original edition in French. Michel Gauquelin: "L'astrologie devant la science", Editions Planete', 1966

Translation in English. Michel Gauquelin: "The Scientific Basis of Astrology", Stein & Day, NY, 1969, Saunders of Toronto. Ltd, CA, 1969. LoCCC# 68-31679.