Back to Basics

[Guest guest]

, Therese Hamilton <eastwest@s...>

wrote:

> Hello Western Siderealists,

>

> I continue to be bothered by the fact that siderealists continue to

> proclaim that Cyril Fagan discovered the one true ancient sidereal zodiac,

> but no one on this list has yet shown any real evidence for this.

 

With regards to the lives of people, the things with the most power to

influence are the natus, progressions, and luminary returns--none of which rely

on any zodiac to be accurate. You could use the tropical zodiac if you wanted;

all you would have to do is correct for precession and progress at the proper

sidereal-day-per-sidereal-year rate. The signs of the zodiac are useful for

only two things: the flavoring that the signs give to planets contained within,

and the timing of the cardinal luminary ingresses, which don't typically affect

people on an individual level. The positions of the cardinal ingress points

has been demonstrated scientifically for all to see (although I'll be the first

to admit that the research hasn't been terribly extensive); the flavoring of

individual signs has been demonstrated to my own satisfaction, but not with

formal science.

 

So, whether or not Fagan rediscovered the 'one true ancient zodiac' doesn't

matter as much as whether or not what he discovered/invented works and is

useful, and Bradley's fairly extensive research on weather and natural

disasters would seem to be pretty convincing for demonstrating the position of

the zodiac's cardinal points--you cannot calculate accurate cardinal ingresses

without knowing precisely where those ingress points are, and using Fagan's

proposed zodiac positioning, he came up with stastically significant results.

 

> In an

> earlier post Ken Bowser cited Epping, Strassmaier, Kugler and

> Schaumberger's work as the references for this claim. But their work was

> published around the turn of the 20th century!!

 

'Old' does not necessarily mean outdated or inaccurate. Newton's laws of

gravitation, 350 years old, are still accurate enough for all but technical

work; you can still use them to track a baseball flying through the air or

calculate the positions of the planets in space (with a few shortcomings with

regard to Mercury).

 

> This new work, ASTRAL SCIENCES IN MESOPOTAMIA in no way supports Fagan's

> claim. Rather ASTRAL SCIENCES makes clear that the ancient Babylonian

> zodiac was a rather hazy matter, at least within a degree or two.

 

Not surprising. How would ancient Babylonians measure ecliptic longitude with

any accuracy? A quadrant or similar device can only reliably measure altitude

from the horizon. Even if you tried to measure distance along the ecliptic

from a fiducial star, how do you know where it is? The Moon and planets do not

travel exactly along the ecliptic, but are frequently a couple degrees north or

south of it. The Sun is no help, since you can't see the stars behind it. And

the ecliptic's apparent position shifts throughout the night and throughout the

year, making any attempt at averaging very difficult.

 

Nowadays, through the use of mathematics and physics, we have the technology to

be much more precise about the location of everything, and we should rely on

that instead of ancient approximations.

 

> So if anyone would like to see these lists of star positions, some of which

> I posted earlier this year, please feel free to contact me. I will be more

> than happy to send photocopied pages. I can also send copies of relevant

> posts that appeared on this list. If you are interested, please e-mail me

> at eastwest@s... ASTRAL SCIENCES is a $100 book and I don't think

> that many siderealists would want to shell out that much money to learn

> that Fagan's statements may not be true.

 

Any interesting information you have is certainly welcomed by me, Therese. Can

you point me to the post you reference here?

 

> It seems to me that all siderealists need to know the latest research on

> the ancient zodiac. Otherwise we're just like the many Tropical astrolgers

> who simply accept what they are told without question and continue to

> parrot back what an 'authority' wrote 20, 50 or more years ago! We can do

> better than to sound like broken records. (For anyone who's old enough to

> remember what a vinyl record is!)

 

I don't think the comparison here is fair. I don't see anybody blindly

accepting what they hear--far from it, most people are here because they

questioned what they thought was true. I also don't see anyone appealing to

authority; just to the fact that the zodiac as Fagan and Bradley have defined

it is highly effective in practice, is verified at least at a rudimentary level

by statistical studies--and that no other zodiac matches those two criteria.

 

Since I have not seen or replicated Donald Bradley's research, I tend to regard

it as more of a pointer than a proven fact--but in my experience it does work

and describe things better than other zodiacs, and thus I regard it as

provisionally accurate, and will until it is demonstrated otherwise or

something else is shown more useful.

 

" Getting back to basics " may in fact be a good idea, but it may also be a waste

of time. If you have any reason to suspect that our currently-accepted

zodiacal positioning is wrong, please tell us. But if you don't have an actual

reason to suspect that current belief is wrong, your time--and ours--may be

better spent on something else.

 

 

Jesse Milligan

[Guest guest]

At 03:58 PM 5/22/03 EDT, Chris wrote:

>To Jesse Milligan: Thanks for your most recent post. I for one swear by

>Fagan-Bradley only because it works so well. /// chris in texas

 

Hi Chris,

 

Of course it works well, and it will work just as well 20 lifetimes from

now as long as you don't investigate harmonic charts. Any of the modern

ayanamsas will work. I wasn't asking anyone to change their ayanamsa, only

to be aware that the 15 degrees Aldebaran/Antares dogma isn't so set as it

appeared to be in Fagan's time. A matter of education, that's all.

 

Aldebaran/Antares did mark calendar dates AND lunar mansions. But lunar

mansions are distinct from signs of the zodiac and don't align exactly with

signs.

 

I have a strong Mercury and like to keep the facts straight. It does

bother me that western siderealists apparently couldn't care less if the

dogma they accept is true or not. Sidereal astrologers generally claim to

be progressive and open minded, so I thought some of them would be

interested in today's research.

 

Sincerely,

Therese