Having sat and chatted around the table with Dharmaruci last summer when I was in England, I know how interesting a conversation with him can be.  Dharmaruci runs an astrology blog called Astrotabletalk that is one of the more interesting ones out there.

Now you too can enjoy this fascinating discussion of astrology and magic.  Such as this exchange:

D – I think of astrology as a system of knowledge that respects and uses all our faculties. Science is very strong on rationality and sensation (air and earth) but not very respectful of intuition and feeling (fire and air). . . and so to me, astrology is a more complete system of knowledge than science. Jung saw astrology as the summation of ancient knowledge — as an umbrella, if you like, that can incorporate all other systems. A proper relationship between astrology and science would see science as a specialisation within this broader tradition. What we have instead is a Sorcerer’s Apprentice situation: We have many brilliant scientific inventions, but havoc is being wreaked within the psyche because the apprentice has taken over, pretending to knowledge outside of his areas of competence.

H – And yet many people would argue that the ‘truths’ of science can be tested and proved, while the ‘truths’ of astrology are more subjective. . . .

D – Astrology works, but it can’t be explained in scientific terms. Like science, it is empirical, it is based on observation, but its truths are not statistical. They don’t rely on laboratories and ‘double-blind’ tests. They are the truths of a novelist, or of a work of art. It would seem ridiculous to try to reduce the insights of a novelist to a lab situation…but that’s what the scientists want to do with astrology in order to discredit it. It is more than a Sorcerer’s Apprentice situation: the apprentice has become bold enough to stage a coup!

R – Yes, there are many things that are real and ‘true’ that can’t be tested by the scientific method. For example, there is no scientific test for whether you love someone or not!

D – No, you can’t prove it in a scientific sense. Or look at evolution. It’s an example of a theory that has become an accepted fact in science, but you can’t observe it or test it.

R – Well, you can observe it. There are moths in the black country [the industrial midlands of England] which changed their wing coloring over the course of a few generations as a result of the pollution in the atmosphere, in order to hide from their predators.

D – Yes, you can observe the odd smaller change, which supports the theory. But evolution involves massive change and development, and you can’t observe that within a human timescale. Don’t get me wrong: I think that the process of evolution does occur, it is true, but it can’t be proved in a scientific sense. And I don’t think the mechanism is understood yet either – I think evolution happens far more quickly than a process of natural selection and random mutation alone would seem to allow for. This is an area where scientists are willing to forgo their usual criteria of strict observational laboratory experiments and still accept it as truth — yet in another area, like homeopathy, for example, they will apply endless tests to prove it is untrue and thus reject it as having any validity.

Evolution, like many scientific theories, is now seen as an absolute truth. We have developed a new Creation Myth – Evolution – that reflects the tribal myths we live by.