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Check out Rob's EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES. Or call 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700. |
week of May 17, 2012
Q & A
(My most recent book is PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia.)Much of the material below appears in the book.  To read the entirety of this Q & A, go here. QUESTION. How can an intelligent, educated person possibly believe astrology has any merit? ROB BREZSNY. Many of the debunkers who're responsible for trying to discredit astrology have done no research on the subject. They haven't read smart astrological philosophers like Dane Rudhyar, don't know that seminal astronomer Johannes Kepler was a skilled astrologer, and aren't aware that eminent psychologist C.G. Jung cast horoscopes and believed that "astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity." The closest approach the fraudulent "skeptics" usually make to the ancient art is to glance at a tabloid horoscope column. To match their carelessness, I might make a drive-by of a strip mall and declare that the profession of architecture is shallow and debased. That's one reason why these ill-informed "skeptics" spread so many ignorant lies. For instance, they say that astrologers think the stars and planets emit invisible beams that affect people's lives. The truth is, many Western astrologers don't believe any such thing. Astrologer Richard Tarnas says it well: Just as clocks tell time but don't create it, the heavenly bodies show us the big picture but don't cause it. + QUESTION. Because you pack your column with doses of humor and wild imagery, some people think you don't take astrology seriously. ROB. On the contrary, I think this proves how much respect I have for astrology -- I mean REAL astrology. Not astrology as a superstitious belief system that generates boring predictions in dead language about trivial events that only our neurotic egos are obsessed with; but rather astrology as a mytho-poetic symbol system that expands your imagination about the big cycles of your life, liberates you from the literalistic trance that the daily grind tends to trap you in, and opens you up to the understanding that you're much more beautiful and full of potential than you've been taught to believe. + QUESTION. You have said that you believe in astrology "about 80 percent." What's up with the other 20 percent? ROB. I use the same 80-20 approach with every belief system I love and benefit from: science, psychology, feminism, and various religious traditions like Buddhism and Christianity and paganism. I take what's useful from each, but am not so deluded as to think that any single system is the holy grail that the physicists call the "Theory of Everything." Unconditional, unskeptical faith is the path of the fanatic and fundamentalist, and I aspire to be a rowdy philosophical anarchist, aflame with objectivity and committed to the truth that the truth is always mutating. + QUESTION. But don't you risk playing the same role the tabloid astrologers do: enticing people to take on a superstitious approach to life and seducing them into believing their fate is determined by supernatural forces beyond the influence of their willpower? ROB. I call what I do predicting the present, not forecasting the future. My goal is to awaken my readers to the hidden agendas, unconscious forces, and long-term cycles at work in their lives so that they can respond to the totality of what's happening instead of to mere appearances. I want to be a friendly shocker who helps unleash their imaginations, giving them the power to create their destinies with the same liberated fertility that great artists summon to forge their masterpieces. + QUESTION. How do you write your column? Do you use actual astrological data, or just go into a trance and let your imagination run wild? TO READ THE REPLY TO THIS QUESTION, AS WELL AS THE REST OF THIS Q & A, go here. + Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology on Facebook Find me on Twitter + My book THE TELEVISIONARY ORACLE has been reprinted. See the spectacular cover Read the first four chapters After reading the book, novelist Tom Robbins wrote: "I've seen the future of American literature, and its name is Rob Brezsny." |
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© 1995-2012 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved |
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