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Hellenistic Astrology refers to the practice of astrology during the
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Hellenistic period of Ancient Greece.
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Astrology is a divination practice of deriving meaning from the
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planets and cosmos, but Hellenistic Astrology has the concepts of
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fate and fortune woven into it.
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In this episode, we'll explore how this is similar yet different
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from contemporary astrology and why it matters on a larger scale.
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Let's begin.
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Thank you for tuning in to an episode of Merwin's Philosophy, where I explore
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the connection between spirituality and psychology and how that coincides
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with social issues we face today.
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Now here's the show.
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So in an old blog post, I wrote about wanting to change directions
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and rebrand from a fiction writer.
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I do have two books out.
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One is a chap book.
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So a small book of poetry and another one is an actual novel.
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But I was wanting to do something a little bit more closer to real life, not so
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close to fiction, because I read way more nonfiction books than I do read fiction.
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And it wasn't until I read a book on Western Esotericism.
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That it made a lot more sense.
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It seemed a lot more interesting.
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So that's where we're going with this, in this podcast, and probably
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from here forward, but we'll see.
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But basically, Western Esotericism is a field of study that examines
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philosophies and practices, often of a spiritual nature, that have
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been rejected from common knowledge.
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And yet they have influenced religion and philosophies today.
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And these groups of philosophical and sometimes religious, but often
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spiritual practices have been viewed in a negative light and pushed out
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of academic and religious studies, despite their historical importance.
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And some of these esoteric practices are still being done today.
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Now in the list of examples, you don't know exactly what I'm talking about.
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astrology, alchemy, magic.
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People have heard at least of astrology and alchemy and have felt one way or
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another on both sides of the extreme.
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It's nonsense and delusion versus it's divine knowledge.
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But what's interesting is that from these more esoteric beliefs,
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we have what's more acceptable and part of common knowledge now.
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So for example, from astrology came astronomy, because they were one
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and the same back in ancient times.
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From alchemy developed chemistry and from magic developed what
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we call the natural sciences.
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Now, even in the realm of Christianity, you have the Kabbalah and Gnosticism,
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which are more esoteric beliefs within that religion of Christianity.
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And so due to the prejudice passed down from the church and academic
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institutions, unfortunately, the general public labels these as delusions and
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superstitions without Any thought to their cultural and historical relevance
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and because the church labels this as blasphemy because a lot of it is from
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pagan beliefs not so much from the gnosticism in kabbalah because it was
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again very associated with Christianity or the Abrahamic religions of some sort,
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but the astrology, mostly astrology, was viewed as more of a pagan belief.
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And there's others too, that I want to get to in a later episode.
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I just finished reading a book called Western Esotericism A Guide for the
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Perplexed by Wouster Honengraaff, I know I mispronounced his name, but I just
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finished my second read through of the book to understand the very complex and
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complicated knowledge that is within it.
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I will definitely do a separate episode about that because
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it is worth its own episode.
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Western esotericism is a modern label put on a very wide spectrum of esoteric
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practices, philosophies, and beliefs.
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So we'll look into that at a later period.
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But this episode is more so about Hellenistic astrology or
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astrology during ancient Greece.
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And as usual, I'm going to break this down into three parts.
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Number one is the overview of Hellenistic astrology.
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Part two is the culture and philosophy behind the practice.
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because that is very important when we're talking about esoteric
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beliefs, such as astrology.
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And part three, why does any of this matter?
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Most of the knowledge that I'll be talking about is from a book called Hellenistic
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Astrology, The Study of Faith and Fortune, written by astrologer Chris Brennan.
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And this is the first book that I've read that uses information from
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archaeological findings to explain the techniques and the rationale behind
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these techniques, and also credits the various astrologers of the time.
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It gives.
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this subject a more academic approach, which is something I've been looking for
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because sometimes, or a lot of times, honestly, articles on websites are
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the most common and immediate source of information, but they don't have
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that rigorous fact checking that a more academically inclined book will have,
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and those sites can spread misinformation and have too much of an enchanting and
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fantastical view about it instead of a more balanced view that is rooted in
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history and not so much personal belief.
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So let's talk about Hellenistic Greece for a minute.
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The Hellenistic period of Greece started when Alexander the Great
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died in 323 BC, all the way until the Roman Empire took over in 30
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BC after the death of Cleopatra.
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Before then, Alexander the Great was the king of the Greek Empire.
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He's called The Great because he went on a campaign to basically take over as much
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of the Asian and Mediterranean world as he could and he did he took over a lot.
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But after he died in 323 BC began the War of the Diadochi which basically
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translates to the War of his Successors.
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So a lot of his generals fought over the land that he conquered which
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stretched from present day Greece all the way up to the Balkans , all the
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way around the Mediterranean, all the way from present day Greece
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down to India, so the Middle East.
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The Western part of Asia, all the way down to India all the way
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around North Africa, where Egypt is.
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There are three main kingdoms that took over.
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When it comes to Hellenistic astrology, the one that Brennan mentions the most in
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his book is called the Ptolemaic dynasty.
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And basically this is the area around Egypt in North Africa.
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After the War of the Diadochi, there was a lot of Greek influence
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into these other areas that Alexander the Great had conquered.
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And there was a lot of mixing of Greek and the culture that was already there.
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For example, one major figure that comes to mind is Hermes Trismegistus,
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and this was a combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.
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There's a lot of astrological writings attributed to him within Hellenistic
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astrology, as well as other religions and philosophies such as Hermeticism, which
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is a philosophical and religious movement that is attributed to this Hermes figure.
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But that as an example of how the Greek and other cultures were mixed together.
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Now, what we learn in school , at least what I learned in school, was
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classical period of Greece, which makes sense because the classical
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period of Greece is a time when there was much flourishing of the culture.
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There was a lot of developments in art and literature in science and philosophy.
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A lot of the main Greek philosophers that I've heard of actually
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come from the classical period.
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This would be Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, as well as Pythagoras, who created
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the Pythagorean theorem that we still use and are taught in school today.
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But this Hellenistic period is after that classical almost golden period of Greece
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And so Hellenistic astrology or astrology in general actually
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derives from the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures.
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The Greeks just developed the techniques and significations of the planets a
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little further . They expanded the significations of the planets as well as
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the houses, which are the sections of the sky that is along the elliptical, which
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is the path that the sun takes across the sky, and the planets through the
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constellations or the Zodiac, which I'll explain a little bit more in part two.
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But astrology was a big factor of the culture, or at least that's
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what I gathered from Brennan's book.
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And it continued on through the Roman Empire until it fell and
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then Christianity took over.
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So if you've looked at Roman history, you will realize that the Romans actually
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adopted a lot of the Greek culture.
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As a matter of fact, when I was doing a little bit of research on this Hellenistic
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period, there's this, I can't say it verbatim, but there's this idea or
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this saying that even though Rome took over Greece, Greece heavily influenced
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Rome and their culture, almost as if Greece still took over Roman ideas.
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Because again, Romans adopted the pantheon of Greek gods and
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just gave them Roman names.
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I've always found it fascinating how Greek deities have a Greek and a Roman name.
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. Part of the culture that they took over was the idea of astrology
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being so pervasive in the culture.
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However, Christianity took over, denounced it as pagan and blasphemous,
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and denounced it from Western Europe.
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However, it continued in the East because at that period the Greek
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empire, was broken into two.
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So you had , where Greece is now and the other areas of the Mediterranean
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Sea, but then where Turkey is on through the Persian area, that's called
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the Byzantine Empire at the time.
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And when you study a little bit about Greece, that's
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called the Byzantine period.
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And so that's where more of the Greek culture continued on while the Western
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area of what used to be the Greek empire, continued on to a more Christian thought.
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And I'll do another episode on the continued history of astrology
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because it's actually fascinating.
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It goes on into the Medieval period to the Renaissance and continues
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on until we have the modern and contemporary version of astrology today.
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But there are several components that will definitely be part of
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later episodes, it's beyond the scope of what I want to talk about today.
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But the major components are the planets in the sky that the
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ancients could see at the time.
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And they included the moon and the sun because to them it was a big planet.
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Those were big planets, but you have Mercury, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter.
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In contemporary astrology, there's other planets, Neptune, Pluto, however, they're
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too far away for the naked eye to see.
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So those are not included in traditional or Hellenistic astrology.
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Then you have the 12 zodiac signs.
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Now these are the constellations, the main constellations in the sky.
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And we'll talk more about that in later episodes, but they
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are very important as well.
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Then you have what's called the 12 houses or the Greek
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translation of what means places.
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Again, those are those 12 sections of the sky that the planets
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and the sun travel across.
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Then you have what's called the configurations, which are the
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relationships between planets in the sky.
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And they're measured in degrees, which we'll talk about in just a minute.
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All of these, the configurations, the planets, the houses, the zodiac signs,
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all of these are configured onto a chart.
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And most of the times you see them on natal charts, which is a chart of all
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the planets and their configurations to each other on a chart drawn up at
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the day and time of someone's birth.
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But the main point of all of this is that the ancients believed that
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the planet somehow influenced our mind and actions, as well as signify
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future directions of our life and the challenges that we'll face.
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It was part of more of a philosophical debate that I'll get into in part two.
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But astrology in itself is just an example of divination and fortune
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telling practices that have existed since ancient times till today.
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They're not mainstream or not really known about in a deep historical
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sense, due again to the Christian rejection of anything pagan, but
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there is a resurgence of it due to the internet and social media.
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I've heard people mock about astrology or make jokes about certain astrological
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aspects such as Mercury in retrograde.
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That's just proof that it hasn't disappeared, obviously, but
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there's not a lot of thought given to the historical elements of
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astrology, which are very important.
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And it brings us to part two, where I talk a little bit about the culture
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and philosophy behind astrology.
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Now, when I was doing my own independent research before I found
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Brennan's book, one name that kept coming up was Claudius Ptolemy.
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Now, he was a Hellenistic astrologer as well, but he did a lot more research
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within the idea of natural science.
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And modern times, we believe that he is the most influential
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and representative of the time.
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Like he was the most representative of Hellenistic astrology.
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However, that's not true.
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He did write four books called the Tetrabiblos, which lists out important
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techniques and relevant philosophies.
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And he also made a connection between the constellations and the seasons.
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For example, when the sun enters the constellation, or the zodiac of
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Libra, that's the beginning of fall.
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When the sun ingresses into Cancer, that coincides with the start of summer.
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He made that connection at first.
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And the reason he did this is because he tried to make astrology into a natural
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science, even though other astrologers at the time disagreed with him.
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He did make a lot of impact into astronomy.
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He created something called astronomical tables, which is still
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used in the field of astronomy today.
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And this is because he focused so much on the natural world and
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cosmos and trying to bridge those into the idea of natural science.
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And lastly, why he's
believed to be the most influential is because his work
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has been the most transmitted over time.
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And so us in modern day will tend to overhype him in a way that overshadows
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the other astrologers of the time, such as Vettius Valens, which when I was reading
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Brennan's book, there was many techniques that are attributed to Valens and led
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to a lot of development within astrology or at least Hellenistic astrology.
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A lot of Hellenistic astrology has been lost as most of what
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contemporary astrology seems to be taken from Medieval tradition, but
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we'll get to that in a later episode.
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I still need to do research on that one myself.
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And that brings us to the main philosophical debates, which
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this is part of Brennan's title.
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It's called The Study of Fate and Fortune.
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And so fate and fortune were the two aspects of astrology that was
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caused for philosophical debate.
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Now, the Mesopotamians, and I think to some degree, the Egyptians
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believed that the planets were signs from the gods of something to come.
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So they were almost as omens.
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However, when we get to the Hellenistic period and the Greeks, there was
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debates between whether the planets were just signs in the sky of moments
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to come of the future events, or if there was a causality to them.
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Did they cause us to behave a certain way, or do they cause us to have to
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go through certain events in our life?
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Do they cause certain things to happen in history?
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Astrologers debated and fell into a spectrum of, "yeah, it totally causes
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us to have to go through certain periods in our life, and the planets do cause
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certain events" and then others fell into the camp of, " no, they're just omens".
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And then with the concept of fate, are we completely beholden
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to what our natal chart shows?
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Whatever fate that is present in that chart?
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Or is it just partially true and we have free will to change it.
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And so there was another spectrum of , are we completely beholden to
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fate or is it just partially fate and we have the way to change it.
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Alongside this development of Hellenistic astrology was the development of the
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philosophy called Stoicism, which is the belief that in order to be a virtuous
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person, and I'm heavily paraphrasing this, in order to be a virtuous person,
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you had to just accept the way life is.
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There was no reason arguing against fate.
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We have little control over what happens in life.
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That was that idea and you just had to accept that.
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It reminds me of the modern day, and I've said this before in other episodes,
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but this kind of reminds me of the modern day idea of serenity, which is
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the idea of seeking a balance in life.
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Even in Christianity, there's something called the Serenity Prayer, which is
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the idea of, or really I could just recite it, Which goes, God grant me the
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serenity to accept the things I cannot change, but the courage to change the
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things that I do have control over.
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I'm paraphrasing.
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And that idea of serenity that I just said falls back to the idea of Stoicism.
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As When I looked up the Serenity Prayer and who created it, there
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was an idea of it being connected to this ancient Greek idea of Stoicism.
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Now, with the concept of fortune, there's this idea of good and bad fortune.
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If you look on a chart done during Hellenistic times, or even a modern
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chart using a Hellenistic idea, there are places within the chart,
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that are called good fortune, good spirit, . And then on the opposite
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side, bad fortune and bad spirit, right?
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So there's this idea of fate within the chart.
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And what separates Hellenistic astrology, in my mind, in my understanding,
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from contemporary astrology is this idea of external circumstances
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versus psychological influences.
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In modern astrology, I learned that when you look at a person's chart, it shows all
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of their kind of psychological influences.
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The sun represents our path in life and the major part of our personality.
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The moon represents our emotions, Mercury represents our thoughts,
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Venus represents our desires, right?
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And so on and so forth.
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However, when I was learning about Hellenistic astrology, our
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personality and physical body was depicted as the Ascendant.
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It's the horizon.
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But everywhere else on the chart represents external circumstances
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that we may face in our life.
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It's not so much our psychology and parts of our personality, but it's
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more so what we will encounter in life.
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Or at least that was from my understanding.
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And I found that very interesting.
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There's a
lot of negative and misinformed judgments on social media
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based on very immature and quick judgments and misinformation, honestly.
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For instance, if your sun sign is Scorpio, then that means you're
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a very manipulative person.
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Or if it's in Cancer, you're a very overly emotional person.
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These very extreme ideas and the idea that the sun is almost the one point on a chart
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that represents your whole personality.
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If someone ever asked you, "what's your sun sign", and they thought they had a
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good reading on you based on your sun sign, that's a very immature way of
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trying to judge somebody because then you get people saying, " Oh, I can't
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date Scorpios" or "I can't date Geminis".
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That's very weird.
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And I've even heard not horror stories, but complaints about people who
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have had their chart read by these very, I'm going to just continue the
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word immature, who have had their charts read by these people, and
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felt extremely judged and confused.
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Or you'll have people saying, I don't really feel like my Sun sign, right?
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And it's because your Sun is just one of the many planets within astrology
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that tells a much bigger story.
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You have to look at the whole chart
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. Now, because astrology is so connected to astronomy, or at least it was, it involves
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a lot of mathematical equations that are relayed in degrees and geometric shapes.
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So for Instance,, an astrological chart is expressed in a
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circle, and it's 360 degrees.
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When planets are 120 degrees apart, that relationship is called a trine,
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which corresponds to the 120 degrees of external angles of a triangle.
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If the planets are 90 degrees apart that is called a square,
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which a square has 90 degrees.
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Also the elliptical, which is the path that the sun takes across the sky, has
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different names and degrees as well.
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So the ascendant is the horizon.
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The midheaven is called the highest points in the sky that the sun
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travels across, which for us would be in the middle of the afternoon.
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The setting place is where the sun sets in the eastern sky
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before it dips below the horizon.
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And what is opposite from the midheaven, the highest point of the sky where the sun
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is, that's called the subterranean, which would be the lowest point out of view.
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Now all of these calculations and degrees and relationships on the chart
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has esoteric explanations behind them.
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This is for me where it turns from just astronomy to astrology,
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to a more esoteric spirituality philosophical understanding, right?
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There are plenty astrologers who will connect these themes that will
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be reflected in a chart, either in a person's life, or if there are
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planets that are making specific configurations to each other, there's
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a theme that will be derived from it that will match certain events that
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do end up happening in life, almost again like divination, fortune telling,
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but a lot of times they come true.
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Because of these coincidences, many people , lie in three camps, or at
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least a spectrum of these three camps.
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Some believe that astrology is an example of divine knowledge.
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Some believe that it's just pure coincidence, and some believe
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that it's absolute nonsense.
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But either way, I do believe that it's an important and a reflection
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of a culture, which brings us to part three of why any of this matters.
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Astrology and really esotericism in itself, is part of history that has
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been left out due to the Christian agenda and the academic elitism.
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Because so much of esotericism is based on philosophical reasoning and
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coincidences that are hard to prove scientifically and replicate, this
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leaving out of history makes sense.
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But there's this prejudice against it.
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For example, when someone says they're not religious or they're spiritual but not
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religious, some people will have a more nuanced take on Christianity, and they
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won't be so prejudiced against Christians.
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Even though, throughout history, Christians have been very
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prejudiced against non Christians, and this is an example of that.
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Christians were very prejudiced against Pagans, basically.
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And as we've gone on into the Enlightenment movement and further
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on, a lot of the academic elites and the thinkers, again, also look
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down on pagan beliefs as well.
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And because of this philosophical aspect of it that's, again, very hard
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to prove scientifically, I personally put it in the camp of spirituality,
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even though it has contributed to modern science, like I said.
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Now with all that said, and I believe Brennan said this in his
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book, how books can give you a
more nuanced and historical information.
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A book that is written from a more historical and rigorous standpoint
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than online, which can be more personal and can give you more
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personal interpretations that could very well be very vague and negative.
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But the reason it matters is because this is a part of history and a part of culture
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that will challenge the beliefs that people have come to think are true today.
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And I find that very fascinating.
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And that brings us to the conclusion.
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Again, astrology is part of history.
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It's not just spiritual nonsense, and we'll learn way more about it
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when I explain more about these components in later episodes.
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But the truth of the matter is that both royalty and regular citizens
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consulted astrologers for major decisions in ancient times and even today.
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I believe that Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer for
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major events and for advice.
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There's a lot of celebrities that have consulted astrologers and even just
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regular people have consulted astrologers for major moves and things in their life.
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Which is another reason why I connected to the realm of spirituality.
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And some astrologers, even in ancient periods, taught classes, and wrote
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books that have survived today.
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Again, I've said about Claudius Ptolemy, writing his four books called Tetrabiblos.
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Vettius Valens transmitted a lot of information, wrote down a lot
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of information, which thankfully, some have survived to date.
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As a matter of fact, Brennan has a whole chapter listing out over 10
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different astrologers of that period whose works have survived with example
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charts, their own philosophies, people that I have never heard of.
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And so that brings me to my last statement that I want to say.
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When we allow ourselves to stop being curious and ignore information
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out of fear or arrogance, that's when we stop learning and our
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understanding of life becomes stagnant.
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Now some people are okay with this.
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Grandma or their preacher or their parents taught them this
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and they're not deviating from it.
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Those are the authority figures in their life.
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That's what they're going to believe 100%.
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They don't want to change.
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Other people are curious, but they're letting fear stop them.
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They don't want to learn about this information that is blasphemy, or
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that is scary to them, or delusional, or devil worship, or whatever.
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They're scared of that.
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And other people may have the similar thought that I have,
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which is knowledge is power.
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There's a sense of expansion of your life when you learn a lot more.
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Now you don't have to blindly accept everything, every new
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information that you're taught.
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But it does give you a more holistic view of life and it expands your
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perspective when you learn more about something that you had no idea.
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Especially when it's related to history, or learning more about a certain
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culture that is different from your own.
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You step out of that ignorance that you once had, and you're able
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to learn more and actually form a more nuanced opinion about life.
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I'll talk more about Hellenistic Astrology in later episodes.
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But for right now, this is just an introduction into it.
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Trying to explain the philosophy a little bit more, which will
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become much more clear once we get into the different components.
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That's gonna be it for now.
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Thank you for listening to this episode.
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If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to leave me a comment and subscribe for more.
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00:27:03
For those of you listening through a podcast app, make sure you
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00:27:06
subscribe and leave me a review.
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00:27:08
Click the link in the show notes or head on over to merwin mccrady.com
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00:27:13
to leave me a comment there.
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00:27:14
Thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next one.