Finally, the issue of causal mechanism, or why astrology works: It seems unlikely to me that the planets send out some kind of physical emanations that causally influence events in human life in a mechanistic way. The range of coincidences between planetary positions and human existence is just too vast, too experientially complex, too aesthetically subtle and endlessly creative to be explained by physical factors alone. I believe that a more plausible and comprehensive explanation is that the universe is informed and pervaded by a fundamental holistic patterning which extends through every level, so that a constant synchronicity or meaningful correlation exists between astronomical events and human events. This is represented in the basic esoteric axiom, “as above, so below,” which reflects a universe all of whose parts are integrated into an intelligible whole. – Richard Tarnas
Alternately, the ‘just so’ of a symbolic ecology and information organized by astrology’s focused generalizations are enough evocative so as to penetrate to the level of the so-called personal religious problem, or whatever is the psycho dynamic situational attractor. In this conjunction comes about the constructive animation of meaningfulness. This gets around the obvious problem of astrological correspondence.
(The presumption of correspondence is falsifiable and once falsified it cannot serve any longer as a causal predicate. Correspondence–meaningful correlation between astronomical events and human events–is falsified in cases for which identical subjects’s identical astrological natal data aren’t strongly paired, correlated, and given to highly correlated predictions. The falsification is apparent even through a thought experiment. Obviously, it happens all the times that completely identical natal charts are instantiated by simultaneous births in the same hospital. Both identical and fraternal twin studies would prove this same point.)
From the perspective of astrology, there is no absolute separation between the consciousness of the individual and the consciousness of the Universe in which the individual is embedded. Higher levels of consciousness interpenetrate the lower; attraction-at-a-distance assumes an interdependence between the whole and its parts. Each person is part of the greater whole, just as a wave is part of the ocean from which it arises. In this view, the planets don’t cause events on earth, anymore than a clock causes time. Rather, planetary configurations are symbolic reflections or analogues of cyclic phenomena at the terrestrial level.
The New Paradigm And Postmodern Astrology (Glenn Perry, Ph.D)
