I'm a Libra, So Maybe All of This Makes Sense in That Regard

I recently read The Book of Hyrum: Freemasonry, Venus, and the Secret Key to the Life of Jesus, by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. I haven't read the previous books in the series, but I don't think my understanding of this particular book suffered much for it as the topic, though related to previous books, was not a direct continuation. It was an interesting book, but I was frustrated with the authors' conclusions for two reasons: a) even though they claimed not to, I believe they fell into the trap of considering all civilizations, societies, and individuals who lived previous to our time as primitive in intellect and understanding; and b) the information they unearthed about The Grooved Ware people and their reliance and reverence for the path of Venus in relation to the sun and moon was considered the basis for all types of religious worship. In other words, Venus worship formed the base of most (if not all) superstitions and religious methodologies from that point onward, including for Jesus Christ. The authors' research was phenomenal, and it was incredibly interesting to read, but I constantly wanted to argue that their conclusions were backwards.

But that's a blog post for another time.

What I really wanted to write about was something that has been slowly solidifying in my mind over time. The authors listed above heavily reference a book called The Astrological File, by Gunter Sachs, who set out to investigate in a thoroughly mathemetically sound way whether or not astrological signs seem to have any bearing on a variety of aspects of peoples' lives. Sachs and his team are not believers in astrology themselves, but they were curious to see if sound statistics taken from very large data sets could prove any correlation between what sign you were born under and who you were likely to marry, how likely you are to divorce, what career you might choose, how likely you were to be a criminal, and so forth. Turns out there are some very significant correlations, and Knight and Lomas used this information to bolster their theory that the stars do, indeed, play a large role in the formation and basis of ancient religions and spiritual beliefs. I decided I needed to get a copy of Sach's book and read it for myself.

When I was younger, in elementary school, I was curious about astrology and even read a few books about it. That's probably because I'm a Libra with strong Scorpio tendencies. The more I read, the more I felt that the information was too vague to be of any real use. I also have a healthy respect for individual agency, so running my life according to the stars seemed like a very silly thing to do. But I also believe (and that belief has been supported by my further research into quantum physics and energy) that each of us influences every other of us, from our own small bodies made of star dust to the great celestial bodies that float in the black of space. Therefore, to find that there are, indeed, significant correlations between signs of the zodiac and areas of our lives doesn't surprise or shock me even if I find the practice of astrological life predictions itself to be thoroughly inadequate.

Here's the picture that I think best explains my conclusions: I was remembering my youngest child watching the trees outside the window back when he was two years old. The wind was blowing very hard, and the tree limbs were moving around very energetically. "The trees are dancing!" he exclaimed in delight. In his mind, which was not yet very versed in how the wind works and in cause and effect, this was the most likely reason the trees were having such a party. He assumed the trees were acting independently of any other influence. Likewise, if you were an adult who had been raised entirely indoors and had never experienced any cause-and-effect from a breeze or wind, you might look out of the window and see individual grass blades bending in the wind and conclude that the grass blades were acting in concert, somehow communicating amongst each other when to bow and when to straighten. You might not consider that an outside force, invisible and unguessed, was working on all the grass blades simultaneously.

I think astrology is something like seeing the grass blades bending or the tree limbs dancing and assuming that they are acting on their own. We fail to see other as-yet invisible but completely natural forces that may be in play.  There is good evidence that something is happening here, that the grass blades are bending and the limbs dancing, but we don't know enough yet to know exactly what that force is or how it works, or even if there are multiple forces in operation.

And for me, the charm of life is knowing that there is so very much more to learn. I am very grateful for people who take the time to research, think, ponder, and write about what they learn, even if the result is very dry (you'd think a book on astrological correlations would be just a little more spunky and entertaining, wouldn't you?). Being a Big Picture kind of gal, I feel like I ingest all these pieces and details in order to learn more about what really is and how everything works. As the author of the manuscript I'm editing wisely stated (and I am paraphrasing here), education isn't about finding an answer and being done; it's about learning what new questions to ask. Asking the questions and finding the answers leads to finding new questions and revising the answers. It's all such fun!