Death is coming

The closer death creeps up upon me the less I am able to understand the reasons for life or living.

Yes I have experienced a close family member dying and unlike television it takes decades to handle such a thing. To think I am going to put my family through such a thing when I finally leave is more horrific to me than the thought of death itself.

My life was and is still a learning experience but when all said and done what am I to do with all this accumulated learning over my lifetime if I just die. There is no logic or reason to this.

Long ago I became aware that the God story that is sold to the majority is just a nice story to give mankind with a message of a basic layout of how nice life could be if everyone followed these ideas. Not many in life do and if one thinks about it the good and evil structures actually depend on each other. The good that can be experienced in life is only understood as good when there is it's opposite to compare it to. This is not rocket science only common sense in reality. I am not saying we need to experience bad but understanding in it is needed to appreciate the great things many of us can have in our lives. From birth to death there are many ways mankind helps his fellow man. How many ways can you help?


Friday, August 12, 2011

Regular Western Astrology - Its Background and Its Treasure

By Ricky Hindricks


Conventional Western zodiac sign compatibility may be the predictive astrology in the Arabic, Greek and Latin language traditions as it was practiced in between 750 C.E. and 1700 C.E. Its origins lay within the astrology of later Greek philosophers who had integrated the stellar omen lore from the ancient Mediterranean world into a masterful synthesis that by the late 4th century would become a sacred science held in high esteem throughout the Roman Empire. From 500 C.E., however, political and religious crises led towards the decline of astrology throughout Christendom. This decline was hastened during the Latin West by the loss with the technical knowledge, specifically mathematics, on which astrological calculations depend.

Even so, astrology thrived inside the Muslim Arab empire, which by 750 C.E. had already fully absorbed it as component of a systematic absorption of Greek learning to the emerging Islamic world-view. When, close to 1100 C.E., the Latin West awakened to its unique require for your sciences, a massive translation effort opened the door on the Arabic world, such as their astrology. The Arabic astrology would flourish to your next three centuries, even as its Islamic, "oriental" origins created it suspect to increasingly disdainful European intellectuals. By 1500 C.E., this would lead to a movement to purify an idealized Greek astrology, based mainly on Ptolemy, from they believed were Arabic additions.

Late 20th Century scholarship has shown that Arabic astrology was mostly faithful to its Hellenistic antecedents. The "purified astrology" on the Renaissance, in fact, reflected the biases of a growing rationalism and scientific methodology that would more and much more lay an exclusive claim on the correct to decide reality and meaning. Right after the 17th century, the gathering strength of this scientific materialism would force astrology, now demoted on the realm of superstition, into cultural and intellectual backwaters. Having lost its moorings inside good tradition, astrology would seek legitimacy and intellectual coherence from ideologies - mainly Theosophy and psychology - foreign to its essence. The result these days is an astrology reduced to a trivial amusement, a sad caricature of what had once advised kings.

How do we return towards tradition? Conventional Western Astrology is learned through study. It's not Lunar ("intuitive") but Mercurial and Hermetic, and is based on texts transmitted by a line-age of teachers, for instance the Hermetica, Dorotheus, Ptolemy, Firmicus, Vettius Valens, Masha'allah, Alkindi, Abu Mashar, Bonatti, Lilly, Morin and several others. These texts supply us using a variety of tested concepts and procedures which are rooted in an authentic sacred cosmology. Adherence to these old writings isn't mere antiquarianism. Rather, from the greater Hermetic tradition, it reflects a truly intuitional knowledge that these writings have integrity and are alive with the voice of the Great Teaching.

Traditional Western horoscopes compatibility each describes and predicts. It seeks very first to delineate the chart - to describe what definitely is (not simply what we think about what is) and what may be - and on that basis to predict accurately what will be. With out delineation, there's no prediction. But without having prediction, delineation is denied its fruit. As it strives for specificity, this predictive aim is more ambitious than the "forecasting" of contemporary astrology.

Paradoxically, it's also more modest, because its ultimate function is to lead its those of us who benefit from it to determine that life in this changeable world, no matter how unhappy or how blessed, is no a smaller amount subject to divine providence than heaven is. Traditional Western Astrology leads us to a threshold in which we may possibly hear Wisdom crying out within the streets, "Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk inside the way of insight." (Proverbs 9:6)




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment