Knowing the Unknown God
I said that astrology is older than philosophy. That is because religion is older than philosophy, and astrology was initially a bastion of religion. That is to say, like religion (and philosophy for that matter) astrology is the result of man’s and woman’s reaching out to the phenomenal world in order to explain the subjective. The psalmist calls us gods, and Jesus repeats this insight. Meanwhile, the famous inscription of the Delphic oracle says know thyself. But like the altar at Mars Hill, every mirror above a bathroom sink is a shrine to an unknown god: oneself. The question “who am I?” has plagued humanity since as long as it can remember, on par with the miracle of life and the search for immortality. And as confounding as the vastness of space and the natural world may be, the regularity of the rising Sun and the cycle of the seasons is far more dependable than the cycle of our own emotions and thoughts. And so, in looking to understand ourselves, we turned to the outer world, which we can understand better.
To say we can understand the natural world better than we can understand ourselves is not to say that we can understand the former perfectly, but that the natural, observable world is at least subject to taxonomy, cause and effect, and other modes of categorization and relationship. The internal subjective sphere is not so amenable to observation. Even if we have one emotion at one time, and a similar emotion later, one can never be sure if that second emotion is of the same order as the first. Therefore, it is impossible to have a private system for describing those internal workings, for if we are incorrect about the attribution of a name to an emotion, we have no further, external check in order to corroborate the taxonomy we have created for ourselves. Therefore, the internal workings of our minds and subjective selves are not readily subject to categorization.
Secondly, the same event in the observable world can at one time produce great emotional upheavals, and at others produce laughter, or nothing at all. And when there are emotional triggers which we can rely upon – that the sight of meat may make one feel sorry for the animals’ suffering, or the smell of cookies makes one think of Grandma – the fundamental structure of those cause and effect relationships often escapes us. In the case of meat making one sad or angry, or in the case of cookies and fond memories of Grandma, we have reasons which make sense – the knowledge of how meat is produced, or the memory of Grandma making such cookies before she passed away. But these types of causes are shareable with other people, communicable and plausible. But why is one person sensitive, and another person austere? Why is one person stubborn and his or her sibling adaptable and amenable to change? With these other examples, we lack the ready cause and effect relationships that serve to explain other emotional phenomena, and we often find ourselves stumped – even by our own emotions.
The regularity of the phases of the Moon and the transits of the planets provide a regularity in the natural world which, though complicated to discern, provides hope. For certainly, in the natural world, the cycle of the Sun’s course correlates with the seasons, and the Moon correlates with the tides. With the causal mechanisms behind such observable relationships beyond the ken of our ancestors, it was only plausible that they would imbue such correlations with majestic, religious power. And by analogy, since the Moon and Sun in their regular courses correlate with regular natural effects, there was reason to think the other moving bodies in the heavens also correlate with patterns in the natural world. Although our minds are presumably part of the natural world, many of the internal workings of personalities lack ready signs to represent them. Meanwhile, the planets move in regular patterns without corollary, sublunary effects. Therefore, a correlation between the unobservable subjective and the observable natural world was presupposed, on par with the observable Moon and Sun and the observable tides and seasons.
Or at least, this is as probable a narrative of the emergence of astrology as any other. But while the tides and seasons affect the biological and natural world observably for all life on this planet, it is only the human race, the unknown gods, who have the capacity to find symbolic signification in natural phenomena. By signification I mean the notion that one observable thing is taken as a sign for some other thing, which is unobservable. The relationship between sign and signified comes in three broad types. There are indicators, where the sign is somehow caused by or correlates with the signified. A sneeze, for example, indicates a cold or an allergy, which is unobservable. A certain odor in the living room may indicate that someone is or was cooking, unseen, in the kitchen. The sneeze is an indicator, as is the smell. There are icons, where the sign is somehow similar in imagery to the thing signified. The familiar smiley-face ‘emoticon’ is visually similar to a human smiling face, and is thus an icon thereof. But in more detail, a painting or a photograph is an icon of the signified image, thusly pictured. And thirdly, there are symbols, where the sign has neither a causal nor any observable similarity to the signified, but the relationship between sign and signified is completely dependent upon the observer. The word ‘star’ looks nothing like an astral luminary, and is not caused thereby. We merely take the word to represent the phenomenon. In fact, almost all language is symbolic in this sense, with an exception made for onomatopoeia, or words which are formed to bear auditory similarity to the signified thing they represent. As in “meow” for the noise a cat makes or “sizzle” for what oil does on a hot skillet.
Other creatures use indicators and icons often, but rarely symbols. When ants follow the pheromone paths laid by their foregoing peers, we could say the pheromones indicate the path of the preceding ant. That male deer mark territory by scraping away bark from trees leaves a sign, and that sign is also an indicator, since it was caused by the preceding buck. Human beings, the unknown gods, use symbols primarily, and indicators and icons only somewhat. Almost all the words I am using are symbolic. Much of our art is iconic, but also symbolic. A crucifix is iconic insofar as it resembles Christ on the cross, but a symbol insofar as Christians take the crucifix to represent His suffering and human salvation. The free-form drip painting of Jackson Pollock is importantly an indicator, for it was produced as a result of, or caused by, his going to a special psychic state. Of course, it is also symbolic, insofar as we take his art to represent anything other than the psychological state which produced it.
This discussion of indicators, icons, and symbols is not a digression, but preparation for an explanation of astrology. In short, astrologers take astronomical phenomena to be indicators of our internal world. The location of the planets at an individual’s birth are taken to correlate with, if not even cause, certain personality traits, gifts, and weaknesses, which they represent. And in explaining how the correlations between astronomical phenomena and subjective reality function, astrologers use symbolism. The activities humans engage in at certain times of year, and the gradual, observable processes of nature, are taken to symbolize the internal workings of the human mind. Icons in astrology play little to no role – unless we were to discuss astrological art and really believed that anthropomorphic gods lurked behind the planets in the sky. Or unless we incorporated astronomical photography and constellations into our analysis. But, the latter is not necessary, and the former is not a required commitment for understanding astrology. So for the following discussion of astrology as a study of signs, icons will be laid aside.
Most simply put, the planets in astrology are indicators of the internal world, while the signs are symbols. The planet’s location in a particular sign at birth is therefore both an indicator and a symbol of the native’s internal world. Each planet indicates, via a causal or correlative relationship, a particular domain of the native’s life and personality. And the causal influence of that domain is symbolized by the sign in which the planet is placed. Knowledge both of the planets as causal indicators, and of the signs as a framework of symbolism, is required to understand how astrology works. And by understanding astrology, we can come to a deeper understanding of ourselves, the unknown gods, which we cannot observe directly. Or, at the very least, we can take the conclusions of astrology as symbols, and interpret them as representing our internal states.