The Forum: The Science of Inner Sight
Zodiacal Signs vs. Constellations: A Response to Parke Kunkle
By Mark Lerner
(Note: This is a brief introduction to our Forum on The Science of Inner Sight. For additional information, you are encouraged to review question #7 in our "20 Questions and Answers" section. Also, if interested in the longer version of this article, a White Paper on the subject is available.)
Back in January of this year, an astronomer and professor in Minnesota, Parke Kunkle, gave an interview to a reporter at the Star-Tribune newspaper in which he tried to disparage Western Astrology. As has occurred on numerous occasions over the past few hundred years, people with scientific backgrounds who have never made a full and fair study of astrology attempt to poke holes in our 12-fold division of zodiacal signs by claiming: (a) The Sun-sign dates are now inaccurate; and (b) There is a thirteenth constellation in the zodiac Ophiuchus that astrologers have ignored.
What follows
is my response to Parke Kunkle. The 360-degree circular zodiac utilized in
Western Astrology does not involve distant stars or apparent star-groups (known
as "constellations"), but is really the Earth's aura or electro-magnetic field
divided into 12 equal divisions of 30-degrees of space and associated with the
12 zodiacal signs of which we are all familiar. Thus, the foundation for a
12-fold zodiac of 360 degrees of signs comes from the simple geometry of the
circle. And it was this geometry that dominated the thinking of Hipparchus and
Claudius Ptolemy the two key astrologer-mathematicians who laid the
foundation for Western astrology approximately 2000 years ago.
By the way, all of our mathematically accurate Sun-sign and Celestial Body
zodiacal placements in Western Astrology come from the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), connected to California Institute of Technology and NASA. And
the US Naval Observatory and the Royal Greenwich Observatory in England use the
same data from the JPL that astrologers use in their creating a joint publication
that is called The Astronomical Almanac. We know what we
are doing in calculating dates, times and cycles correctly.
Parke Kunkel, the Minnesota sky watcher who wanted this past January to interject the constellation of Ophiuchus (as a 13th star-group) into our mathematically constructed zodiac thought that his list of alternate Sun-sign dates was accurate, but because he didn't realize that Western Astrology does not work with constellations and hasn't for almost 2000 years and that we divide the year into equal 12-fold divisions starting from the first moment of spring in the Northern Hemisphere he wound up confusing millions of people.
For example, the 9th division of the Tropical Zodiac of Signs Sagittarius starts approximately on November 22 of any calendar year, when the Sun appears to enter this section of the zodiacal circle from the Earth's vantage point. Sagittarius, the sign, ends approximately on December 21 of any calendar year when the Sun appears to enter the sign Capricorn . Since Ophiuchus is not a zodiacal sign but rather a constellation of stars, it has no place between the signs Scorpio and Sagittarius.
Had the Minnesota sky watcher had a copy of The Fated Sky by Benson Bobrick, and particularly read pages 50 51, he would have realized that " Hipparchus (about 140 B.C.) assembled the first great catalogue of stars, established the modern form of the tropical zodiac, and discovered and accurately measured the annual precession of the equinoxes to within four seconds of arc "
Another pithy notation should reveal why our Western Astrology using the Tropical Zodiac of 12 signs, each having 30 degrees of space is based on rigorous studies from around 2000 years ago: "Still in certain respects the classic textbook on the subject the stem and branch of astrological teaching in the West the Tetrabiblosestablished the tropical zodiac as canonical, laid down the rules for drawing up a chart, identified the influence of various fixed stars, described the astrological rulership of nations, and gave a method for determining the length of a person's life."
The bottom line is that Claudius Ptolemy (in the 2nd century A.D.) and Hipparchus (living several hundred years before) were well aware of the difference between constellations and signs, they knew of the Precession of the Equinoxes (whereby the 12 zodiacal constellations and the same-named 12 zodiacal signs did not always coincide), and that the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere (the Vernal Equinox or 0 degrees of Aries the Sign) was sliding backward in the constellations, so that now (around 2011) our springtime rebirth every year has the stars of the constellation of Pisces as a backdrop.
When anyone and this has happened more than once in the last few decades tries to introduce the notion of a 13th constellation into either the Western Zodiac of signs or the Eastern/Indian Zodiac of constellations, one subtle effect is to disturb the mathematically sound concept of dividing a circle into 12 equal divisions of 30-degrees of space.
The Greeks, Egyptians and Romans worked with the numbers 4 and 3 (as well as 4 times 3 = 12) in astrology since there were four elements (fire, earth, air and water) and four seasons (spring, summer, fall and winter), but three celestial sections of 30 degrees of space in each season (representing a thesis, antithesis and synthesis of the electro-magnetic energy-field), and the astrology chart was separated into four quadrants each of which contained three houses or domiciles.
Thus, to keep suggesting that astrologer-astronomers of ancient, medieval or modern times should add a 13th constellation to the mix is to make astrology unworkable and unwieldy. It doesn't make logical sense relative to how charts are mathematically constructed and interpreted based on the practical and reliable numerical system of 4 X 3 = 12.
The number 13 does not divide equally into the 360-degree zodiacal circle 12 does. 12 Signs = 360 χ 30 Degrees of Space has been the Western Astrologer's E = M (C squared) formula for the last 2000 years, and there is no reason why our mathematically sound equation has to change now.
©2011 by Mark Lerner and Great Bear Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.
The Science of Inner Sight: A
Response to Parke Kunkle
By Tara McKinney
Be a scientist not a philosopher, but be a scientist of the Mind.The Buddha
As Mark mentioned in his Forum article, back in January of this year, Parke Kunkle, a professor at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College, gave an interview in which he was critical of Western Astrology for the following reasons: (a) The Sun-sign dates are inaccurate since they no longer correspond to the actual stars in the sky, but are, in fact, 23+ degrees off; and (b) There is a thirteenth constellation, Ophiuchus, which astrologers have failed to incorporate into their zodiacal sphere of reference.
As an astrologer who is more aligned with the Vedic system of astrology than with Western Astrology, I could conceivably take this opportunity to exploit a potentially-divisive situation, arguing that Vedic Astrology is sidereal (oriented around the stars) and, therefore, more "scientific" than Western Astrology, but to do so would entirely miss the point and would also contribute to the very thing that professor Kunkle was apparently trying to achieve: a discrediting of Western Astrology and by extension everything that isn't strictly scientific, according to his conventional definition of that term.
There is actually much more at stake here than the validity of Western Astrology, although that is a significant issue, in and of itself. What is at stake here, it seems to me, is the validity of what might be called "the inner sciences," or "the science of inner sight." This is definitely a topic worth drawing a line in the sand and taking a stand about, especially when your life is devoted to reclaiming and revalorizing that precious, inner terrain. My line-in-the-sand moment begins with the assertion that the conventional approach to scientific inquiry has been much too narrow and outwardly-oriented, to the great detriment of the inner realms of experience, the subjective, the emotional and the feminine.
Wikipedia defines science as: "a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world." Notice, this definition doesn't specify whether the world in question is of the inner or outer landscape. Typically, the assumption is made that only the external world can be studied and known in a scientific manner. Once we turn our gaze inward, according to this view, we start sliding around on the slippery slopes of subjectivity and it's all downhill from there. But, in the final analysis, is this assumption really accurate? Or is it possible instead that, in fact, the opposite is true: the ultimate scientific instrument is the human Mind turned profoundly inward?
Consider the fact that 2,500 years ago, the Buddha described the nature of reality with astonishing clarity and in great detail, in terms that have only recently been hinted at by quantum physics, and he managed to accomplish this feat without benefit of modern scientific instruments. He described the co-arising and co-perishing of all things, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, from moment to moment, as well as their interdependence, mutual-containment and interpenetration; and rather than a single universe with a Big Bang beginning and an inevitable end, he described an eternal multi-verse of infinite universes coming into and out of existence in a perpetual, cosmic dance. Furthermore, he beheld all of his past and future lives in the grand drama of these same parallel and interwoven universes.
This is only one example among many of the great power of the Mind as an instrument of scientific exploration into the inner caverns of experience. It is precisely this type of highly-focused, laser-like exploration, I would argue, that has given rise to the world's great divination systems, including the I Ching, Astrology (in all its variations) and Tarot. Each of these systems has its own unique reference points on the ground of inner knowledge and experience. For example, it was through a kind of shamanic journeying into the Galactic Center at the heart of humanity that the Mayan Calendar and Mayan star glyphs were born. Vedic Astrology is of similar intra-psychic and galactic origins, while Western Astrology accesses the Earth's aura, or electromagnetic field, as its guiding, esoteric principle, in addition to drawing upon the wisdom of sacred geometry. The I Ching gets its prophetic potency from the binary yin/yang template at the epicenter of creation, which gives rise to 64 hexagram formations comprising our very epigenetic code; and the Tarot encapsulates the archetypical Hero's Journey common to all people in all cultures around the globe while also employing the esoteric science of numerology.
Who is qualified to say that the aforementioned divination systems and others like them are not examples of the most rigorous of scientific methodologies applied to the domain of inner knowing? Who really is qualified to make such a determination? Only a true scientist of the inner realms commonly known as a "mystic," it would seem; only a true scientist of the Mind.
