Journal

On the Late, Great Planet Pluto

by Charlie Obert

I don’t think well on my feet. I do my best thinking sitting relaxed, with a cup of hot tea and some classical music on in the background – at the moment it is Beethoven string quartets. This gives me time to really think through subjects before I say or write anything.

I have some things to think out in this post.

Yesterday I made a post to my Facebook page about how I thought it was time to stop treating Pluto as a full fledged planet, and that position could no longer be easily justified in either traditional or modern terms.

I reproduce my post here.

At the risk of being the party pooper in the astrology community – I really don’t think continuing to make a big deal out of Pluto works today with either traditional or modern astrology.

In traditional terms it is not one of the classical planets, and traditional astrology works very well without it. I have quit including it in the charts I do. (For that matter, most of the time I now leave out Uranus and Neptune.) Most of the meanings assigned to Pluto were originally part of the more complex traditional signification of Saturn – I talk about that in my recent book on Saturn.

In modern terms it is no longer considered a planet – it is in 2006 that Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. Any astrologer that speaks at all about being “scientific” is on shaky ground in science terms by hanging on to Pluto’s significance as a full planet. Still treating Pluto as a planet is being way behind the times scientifically.

The concepts normally attached to Pluto are pretty ominous, and very vague, and you can attach them to pretty much anything because of that vagueness. At any given point in time you can find SOMETHING going on you could assign to Pluto.

I find that leaving Pluto out eliminates a kind of ominous background noise, like clearing away a cloud of smoke.

I am just starting to see occasional posts referring to the eight (rather than nine) planets, so maybe we’re starting to get caught up.

– Charlie Obert
Facebook, February 6, 2020

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The post drew quite a flurry of responses, most of them negative, mostly trying to “prove” to me that Pluto is a planet.

My reaction to pretty much all of the pro-Pluto posts was something like this: Continue reading “On the Late, Great Planet Pluto”

Astrology, Prediction and General Knowledge

by Charlie Obert

It is all too easy to fall into the trap of believing that being an astrologer automatically gives you the knowledge to be able to make pronouncements on any subject area. The result of this attitude is obvious in the large amount of astrology writing I see online that is little better than gossip and bias dressed up with astrology keywords.

There are two assertions I am making here that are the subject of this essay.

First – your ability to make meaningful astrology predictions in any area is only as valid as the depth and quality of your knowledge in that specific area.

Being an astrologer does not instantly make you an expert in politics or judicial law, just as being a famous entertainer does not make you an expert in constitutional law or the electoral college. Our astrology knowledge does not exist in a vacuum by itself; it is always based on our general knowledge. Whatever we stock our minds with in general is what is going to come out when we start talking astrology.

Second – Before you make an astrology statement, it is worth asking yourself, is this any different from what I would say without the astrology? If there is no difference, then omit the astrology. You would just be using the astrology as window dressing to justify your opinions.

I want to explore these assertions in a couple of different subject areas.

Continue reading “Astrology, Prediction and General Knowledge”

Pluto and Overhype

by Charlie Obert.

One of the sand traps of astrology interpretation is the tendency to overhype, to blow things up out of proportion. This tendency to exaggerate seems to come into play with special force whenever Pluto is involved. We’re seeing that happen now with the approach of the Dreaded Saturn Pluto Conjunction this coming January 2020.

Here are just a couple of the phrases I am seeing today in my Facebook feed referring to this amazing once-in-a-lifetime event.

“One of the most extraordinary transits in our history.”

“Epic.”

“Sitting on an atomic bomb.”

“A disaster waiting to happen.”

and so on.

Listening to language like this we should be looking at the most important and earth-shaking astrological event since the great Cardinal Grand Cross of 2014. Continue reading “Pluto and Overhype”

Bias, in Astrology and Elsewhere

– by Charlie Obert

Confirmation bias – “This is the human tendency to see all evidence as supporting your beliefs, even if the evidence is nothing more than coincidence. This is another common phenomenon that we believe only happens to other people.”

“Confirmation bias isn’t an occasional bug in our human operating system. It is the operating system.”
– Scott Adams, Win Bigly.

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Here in the United States we are in the middle of another election season – actually, these days it seems we are always in an election season. If you follow astrology you are likely starting to see predictions as to what will happen in the 2020 presidential election.

I have noticed something interesting – with very, very few exceptions the predictions being made align with the person’s political preference. They predict the outcome they want to see.

That is what I want to talk about here – the overwhelmingly strong human tendency to interpret all data to match your opinions and preferences. Continue reading “Bias, in Astrology and Elsewhere”

Plato and Reincarnation

Plato: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul

by Charlie Obert, June 2019.

Does the human soul have a purpose for being here on earth? Is our life here part of a larger experience that transcends a single human lifetime?

I come at the subject as a traditional astrologer who is rooted in the Platonic and Pythagorean tradition of philosophy.

The purpose of this post is to examine reincarnation and the immortal soul in a platonist model – exploring the soul’s purpose in life – and how we could address it in traditional astrology.

Evolutionary Astrology

Evolutionary astrology is very popular today. It expresses a prominent dimension of modern astrology that works with reincarnation and multiple lives, and with the soul’s purpose for this life within that context. This is a typically modern approach that heavily emphasizes the outer planets in talking about past lives. Like much modern astrology, evolutionary astrology typically looks to India for a metaphysical underpinning for their work.

That hunger for a sense of meaning and for a sense of soul purpose is a large part of what draws people to astrology.

Can we address the subject matter of evolutionary astrology – the soul’s purpose in this lifetime viewed in the context of a series of lives for the immortal human soul – using the context and tools of traditional western astrology? Yes, I think so. Continue reading “Plato and Reincarnation”

Myth Is Not Enough

Memorial Day weekend, 2019. by Charlie Obert

These reflections were triggered by an interpretation I saw of the upcoming conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto in 2020.

Being a traditional astrologer I think of this as the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, moving into a series of conjunctions in Air signs. Pluto can tag along if he wants.

The piece talked about the myth of the elder god Saturn being overthrown by his sons Jupiter and Pluto. This myth was then used as the basis for a prediction of the 2020 US presidential election. I happened to know the person and their political preferences – and somehow their prediction exactly matched their preferences.

This got me thinking about the use of mythology as a main predictive technique. I want to take some time here to make some observations about mythology in modern astrology, and how it affects one planet in particular – Saturn. Continue reading “Myth Is Not Enough”

Using Two House Systems

This post started with a discussion I had with Anthony Louis, who wrote this piece about using multiple house systems.  He uses quotes from Masha’allah that refer to houses in two different ways – by whole sign, which were referred to as ‘by counting’, and by a quadrant house system, probably Porphyry according to Anthony Louis, which he referred to as ‘by measurement’, meaning measurement from the two angles, Ascendant and Midheaven.

Quadrant house systems take the Ascendant as the cusp of the first house, and the Midheaven as the cusp of the 10th house. For a long time they have been by far the dominant form of house system at use in Western astrology until fairly recent times. Placidus, Koch, Regiomontanus, Porphyry and many others are all examples of popularly used quadrant house systems. They all agree about the four quadrants of the chart, and each have different methods of dividing up the space between the angles to find the intermediate house cusps.

I have been aware for some time that both kinds of house systems appear in the works of Masha’allah, Sahl, Abu Mashar and other Arabic astrologers. References to both kinds of house systems appear widely in their works including those translated by Ben Dykes, and in a conversation with Ben I confirmed that the two kinds of house systems, by counting and by measurement, are all through their works.

What fell into place for me here, was the notion of using both kinds of house systems at the same time. Prior to this I had thought in terms of these astrologers sometimes using one house system and sometimes the other.

That was the new piece that set me on fire. It helped me realize I have been heading in that direction in my own practice for a long time, without really realizing it.

Prior to this I thought along the same lines as Ben Dykes, Demetra George and other traditional astrologers, that whole sign houses signify topics and quadrant houses signify angularity and relative strength. I do think that relative strength, angularity, is best measured by quardrant house.

What we are doing here is something beyond that, using both house systems for topic symbolism, at the same time.

Continue reading “Using Two House Systems”

Astrology and Science

Some time back I wrote an essay where I argued that astrology is not a science in the current understanding of the term. I still agree with what I wrote there – but I would now emphasize one particular part of that statement – astrology is not a science as we currently understand the word science.

For astrology to be viewed as a science we need to rethink what we mean by the word, and what that says about the world, and about what is real.

Most people don’t realize that the meaning of the word science has changed drastically over the past two hundred years. That is what I want to look at here.

This involves going back into the history of our language, and recovering some of the meaning of the term Science that has been lost in the last century.

I want to give an example here of an older text where the use of science is obviously different from how we currently use the term. Continue reading “Astrology and Science”