The first task or group concerns the semiotics of speech-alone talk. One of these would be about unveiling the hidden history of a word. This topic is addressed in chapters 2 and 12.
0001 Does astrology begin with the first singularity?
The first singularity potentiates civilization, by opening the door to unconstrained labor and social specialization.
Astrologists exemplify a certain type of specialization.
0002 How does astrology work?
Astrology offers a primary causality, associated to the celestial realm, as a way to appreciate the secondary causality of our mundane realm.
0003 In sum, astrology provides context and potential to events that we experience in the here and now.
Figure 01
0004 Yes, this structure parallels the primary and secondary causalities appearing in scholastic philosophy.Primary and secondary causes are discussed in Comments on Fr. Thomas White’s Essay (2019) “Thomism for the New Evangelization”.
0005 The normal context3 and the potential1 for astrology2 depend on another actuality2, consisting of what we see in the celestial spheres, the motions of the sun, moon, planets, constellations and other stars.
This gives rise to the astrologer’s vision, where a reading of celestial events1b expresses the potential1b of celestial arrangements, transits and so on2a.
Figure 02
0007 Now, there are two actualities. On the content level, there are celestial arrangements. On the situation level, there are various civilizational events, including personal dramas.
There is no apparent material or instrumental causality connecting the two, even though the sun, the moon, and the planets have gravitational influence. The sun also determines space weather. Plus, the sun orbits the galactic center.
The tradition of astrology offers final and formal causes, cobbled together over time through correlations between planetary motions and mundane events.
0008 The discovery of planets beyond human sight contributes to modern astrology. An entirely new branch of astrology looks at historic events and trends in relation to the motions of the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and now, Erin. This branch of astrology considers civilizations as beings.
0009 Conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, the outermost visible planets, occur in a every 20 years. One lifetime may see 4 conjunctions.
However, the pattern extends beyond one lifetime. The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occur in one type of sign for around 200 years. The typology of signs is earth, air, fire and water. So, every 800 years, the cycle completes.
The last conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn occurred in an earth sign. The 2020 conjunction takes place in an air sign, Aquarius.
0010 The Jupiter-Saturn cycle of 800 years, belongs to both ancient and modern astrology.The recent Saturn-Pluto conjunction, in January of 2020, belongs to modern astrology.
0011 In April 2020, I posted a series of blogs about the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn, with Jupiter co-present (but not in conjunction). This celestial event in January, 2020, marks the start of one of the most bizarre plagues of modern medical history. Even though the novel coronavirus from 2019, has a fatality rate of less than 5% for people over 75 years old (and for people with co-morbidities, including asthma), the responses of governments throughout the world has been amazing.
Rather than protecting old folks, health-care bureaucrats locked down entire populations.
0012 How did the crisis start?
The novel coronavirus initially spread after the City of Wuhan held a huge banquet commemorating the upcoming lunar New Year, the Year of the Rat. Already, the easily transmitted RNA-based virus had infected many. This was its opportunity. When Wuhan’s residents returned to their native homes for the Lunar New Year, the disease spread throughout China. Also, the disease passed through international air terminals to the rest of the world.
0013 This mundane event coincides with the Saturn-Pluto conjunction. Capricorn is the sign of government and organization. Saturn is the planet of time (as in, ‘your time is up’ or ‘your time has come’). Pluto is the sign of the underworld.
Is it any coincidence that health-care experts come out and declare this novel coronavirus to be a grave disease?
Here is a picture.
Figure 03
0014 As discussed in my blogs in April, 2020, the imagery of the sign of Capricorn touches base with the first singularity.Thus, the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn resonates with the dawn of astrology, as a specialization within our current living world.
0015 Does Aquarius touch base with the first singularity?
Capricorn is half-goat and half-fish, which corresponds to the dual earth-water origin of the Ubaid culture, 7821 years ago.
The Greeks do not capture this image with their story of Pan being caught in an alternate chimerism.
0016 Neither do the Greeks capture the nature of how Aquarius resonates with the origin of astrology within our current Lebenswelt.
Ganymede is a youth so handsome that he is taken up to be the cupbearer for the Greek gods. So Aquarius is symbolized by a youth pouring water from a jug onto earth.
0017 Ah, it turns out that in Babylon, the god Ea carries an overflowing vase of water. This is the same Ea that is associated with both land and sea in Capricorn. And, this is the same Ea that is associated with the primordial waters.
0018 So, bearing jugs of water for the gods?
In one Mesopotamian origin myth, humans are created in order to do the work that the gods were tired of doing.
Is that what is in store for the next 200 years?
0019 Against this speculation, the sign of Aquarius is an air sign, rather than an earth or a water sign. So, where does Ea fit in with the creation of the air.
What does pouring water have to do with giving birth?
In one ancient Mesopotamian myth, Enlil, the god of the air, is born from the union of Aku, the sky, and Ea, the water.
0020 Ah, that is more like it.
Aquarius touches base with the birth of unconstrained social complexity. Unconstrained social complexity has the character of the weather, the air, the storm and the wind. There is no telling how the spirit moves. But, drop a coin into an astrologer’s hand and you may hear how the sun, the moon, the planets and the constellations put your turbulence into a celestial perspective and divinized opportunities.
0021 So, the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, in the sign of Aquarius, in December 2020, also resonates with the start of our current Lebenswelt. Enlil is born again.
0001 Sociology is often a curious field of inquiry. In the mirror of the world3, there is only one Be Little Men movement (blm). Blm is a slogan2. No substitutions to these words are allowed. The potential1 underlying the slogan2 is fixed on the only possibility among a sea of possible meanings, presences and messages. That potential is the possibility of marxist righteousness1.
Here is a picture of a triadic relation, as introduced in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.
Figure 1
0002 What is marxist righteousness1?
Marx is a “communist” who names his enemy, the “capitalist”.
The specter of “capitalism”?
Das Kapital?
The root word for “capital” is “head”.
Wrap your cap around that.
0003 Marxist righteousness1 relies on the emptiness of spoken words. A speech-alone word is merely a placeholder in a system of differences. Meaning, presence and message must be projected into each spoken word. The marxist reserves the right to project that meaning, presence and message.
Allow no substitutes.
Substitutions squander the purity of the projection.
0004 What does this mean to me3?
This is what the target of a marxistslogan never asks.
The slogan isolates the guilty.
Originally, the capitalist is the one upon which marxist righteousness descends. The target is guilty, with no option of managing the label, except through submission1. Indeed, the organizational objective2 is to manifest submission1.
Now, other labels serve as slogans2a.
This second nested form situates the first nested form, as described in A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.
Figure 2
0005 There are two blms. On the content level, blm is a slogan2a emerging from (and situating) righteousness1a. On the situation level, blm manifests organizational objectives2b that actualize the potential of submission1b, thus increasing the wealth, power and overall prowess3b of those reflecting the mirror of the world3a.
According to rumors, advertisers in saavy suites say that executive suits of major corporations donate large sums1b to an organization2b whose namesake is the slogan2a. Other, less well-endowed targets are suited up as scapegoats, following the historic and literary patterns noted by Rene Girard. Marxist righteousness projects a lack, held within the accuser, upon a scapegoat, the target.
0006 Yes, by definition1a, certain types can never submit1b. These characters are magically gifted with the power to create the lack that they are accused of1a as well as the standing to fill that lack with their own… shall I say?.. capitals1b.
0007 Is marxism a modern version of an ancient religion?
Surely, early civilizations sacrifice humans to their gods.
Remember the old adage?
A capitalist will sell the communist the rope to hang himself.
The joke works as long as the target does not comprehend the intent of the customer.
Why would anyone hang the fellow who sold “him” some rope?
Marxist righteousness calls the fellow, a “capitalist”.
The seller’s hanging manifests the realness of the marxist’s organizational objectives1b.
In the same way, ritual sacrifice validates the realness of ancient deities.
0008 What else does this imply?
The target is not privy to what does this mean to me3b. The deadly earnestness of marxist submission1b cannot be appreciated from the outside. The above two-level interscope is sensible only from the inside. The insider holds the secret knowledge3a that secures the slogan’s single possible meaning, presence and message1a.
If a gnostic path blossoms into a social movement, such as the be little men movement, then today’s secular academic sociologists include the topic in their regional and global meetings, showcasing how they are in tune with the emerging secret knowledge. They can explain it. They can write books about it. They can explore its righteousness1a, explicate its slogans2a, develop pathways for submission1b and extol its authority2b. They can conduct surveys in order to show how a slogan has struck a cord in social consciousness3a. They can tell all how the insider feels3b.
0009 Modern sociology is such a curious field of inquiry. It poses as a mirror3a ofthe worldc. As such, it constructs its own sensible approach, in the same fashion as marxist religions.
0010 Five related works are available at www.smashwords.com.
A Primer on the Category Based Nested Form
A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction
How To Define the Word “Religion”
Comments on Eric Santner’s Book (2016) “The Weight of All Flesh”
Comments on Peter Burfeind’s Book (2014) Gnostic America
An expert in Medieval Philosophy, Armand Maurer, traces their history, backwards from Charles Darwin. He publishes an article in The Review of Metaphysics (volume 57(3), 2004, pages 506-511).
Darwin thinks that his theory of evolution endowed living beings with secondary causalities more profound and subtle than hitherto contemplated. Creatures have the ability to produce new substances on their own accord. That new substance is a new species or genus.
Before this, philosophers never confront the question of evolution. So, secondary causality belongs to creatures, in accordance to the Will and Presence of God, the primary cause. Secondary causes are living creatures getting on with their lives.
As it turns out, that is also what living creatures do according to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The difference is that their survival is subject to natural selection, especially in regards to exploiting their niche.
Surely, there must be consistency here, besides that both medieval philosophers and the educated folk of Darwin’s time use the terms, primary and secondary causes.
Maurer ends with Maritain, who publishes and exploration of the role of primary and secondary causes in Darwin’s schema.
The introduction and five parts follow the Maurer’s arguments, not point by point, but according to the timeframe that he articulates. The story begins with the Book of Causes, a Neoplatonic work written around Baghdad a few decades after the death of the Abbasid caliph, Al-Mamun.
This work comments on an article by an expert in medieval philosophy, Armand Maurer, published in The Review of Metaphysics (volume 57(3), 2004, Pages 506-511). My goal is to comment on this work using the category-based nested form and other relational models within the tradition of Charles Peirce.
‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.
Dates are in Ubaid Zero Prime. 0 U0’ equates to 5800 B.C., around 7800 years ago. 0 U0’ roughly marks the first appearance of the Ubaid culture in southern Mesopotamia.
Prerequisites: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction
According to the gospel of Matthew, after Jesus is born, wise men arrive the East, following a “star”. Of course, the term, “star”, must be broadly construed, pertaining to the superlunary domes, as opposed to the sublunary planes. The motions of superlunary beings represent ‘something’ to the magi, corresponding to ‘something’ in their sublunary situation.
They read the “star” as a sign ofa birth of a king.
The magi are “magical” is so far as this: There is no direct cause whereby a divine superlunary being activates, moves, arranges or manipulates ‘something’ in our sublunary realm. Yet, causation appears to be present.
In Comments on Fr. Thomas White’s Essay (2019), “Thomism and the New Evangelization”, available at smashwords.com, one finds a parallel with primary and secondary causation. Primary causation entails God’s Will and Presence. Secondary causation pertains to God’s creatures. Creatures exhibit secondary causation, without compromising the primacy of God.
The “magic” at the heart of modern and premodern astrology re-articulates a foundational distinction in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas.
The indirect causality of astrology, as well as of primary and secondary causes, is captured by the four statements embedded in the category-based nested form.
Let me consider astrology.
An actuality2 occurs our sublunary world.
Its normal context3 and potential1 pertains to the superlunary sphere.Here is how that looks.
There are events on earth. There are events in the heavens.
One belongs to actuality2. The other is held by potential1.
So, how does the modern astrologer, like the magi of old, offer the newborn Christian a gift?
Recently, a particular set of celestial events unite modern and ancient astrologies. Modern astrology considers the influence of celestial bodies that cannot be viewed with the naked eye, such as the dwarf planet, Pluto. Premodern astrology considers planets visible to the unaided eye, from Mercury to Saturn.
The notable event is the conjunction of Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn on January 12, 2020. This particular conjunction is one step in a minuet involving Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, dancing on the dividing line between Capricorn and Aquarius.Here is the nested form for this celestial event.
