"In the vital power of the human being that is ignited at birth
there glows that remembered image..."
--Johannes Kepler, World Harmony(1619)
" Well,
there's this crazy thing that happens when we draw certain
kinds of pictures....which ain't spozed to happen. It just ain't
natural.
Mmm....that is to say, it ain'tscientificallynatural .
It's just kinda people natural. Science, or no science, Art just happens! " --Pedantus Pontificus The First Outragious Case in Point : In
trying to instigate a drawing task which would allow a
psyche to sneak out and wave at me from somewhere behind the bulk of
a socially defined personality and the always misdirecting front stage
ego, I thought of this, Self-as-Island, scenario. This, if
only to be iconolastic an demonstrate that every person is,
in a way, very much an island. I always thought that there was
more socio-political propaganda than understanding in our
characteristic denial of human Individuality, its very real
existence. Burying Individuality in a ton of group defining
statistics seems a heck of away to look for our personal
singularity...our unique soul...our very ownisland universe Fig. 1 Lori's Personal Island Kingdom Map
Nifty map, huh? It appears that young Lori kind "knows" something
about astrology, without ever being taught anything about it ! Carl Jung would be even more proud than usual, and Kepler would be doing his first backflip.
Now, It doesn't matter what anyone thinks is supposed
to happen, and, or, why it happens; that preconceived notion is a scientific sin
called observer bias-- a big no-no in elitist academic circles, or so I'm
told. We are here just looking to see if there was any empirical
evidence that people are influenced in any way by what astrology calls a natal chart.--an
Earth-centered "map" of the solar system as viewed from one's birth
place. Because astrology is an Art, not a Science, few
practioners agree on the exact details of how these things are supposed
to be drawn, exactly. But, this example is a common sort of
birth chart , and we can see that Lori's "Moon" object is placed so
that, *if* we didn't know what time a day she was born, we could easily
figure it out...get awfully close...see what I mean? We are merely
observing onticempirical evidence of non-random event patterning. And, as well, Dr. Geoffrey Dean , Rudolph Smit, et al, it is falsifiable.
Of course its not really evidence
if we don't have a lot of repititions to back it up. We always need repeatable
experiments that keep finding the same thing; like, say, we actually do keep seeing what
time of day people were born just by comparing an astrological chart to
their Self
projective drawings...if and when we can subjects to put out. The
lack of free flowing self-expression is a bit of an
obstacle; most people stop being creative and naively expressive
at about age eleven or twelve, I hear. I truly think
that inhibition is the only real stumbling block, not our lack of
talent for expressing an individual self, or Self. My best guess
is this imaginary map drawing task is the best task to centerpiece
any formal experimentation.
Not "just any" map
or natal chart can be thrown together, and declared "just as good" as
any other. The half-hearted melange thereby produced, such as in the
case of a disingenuous seeming, hyper-skeptical, James Randi,
styled disclaimer, doesn't really fit. The devoted fan and
author of this unofficial website draws his carefully deduced map of Hogwarts and environs. When we do try to match this deduced map to the natal chart , of JK Rowling, it is awkward at best--just doesn't have any kind of elegant fit. Close, but no cigar. (So
now I guess we''ll have to get a hold of one, Steve Vander
Ark, and see if we can learn any thing about how his attempted map of
Hogwarts was altered by the injection of his own birth pattern
expression...:)
Frida Kahlo
has here also made an unitentional reference, via an admixture Mimesis and symbolic Diegesis , to the pattern her birth
chart. Having found only her birth date and place, I was able to
make an experiment of this abstract self portrait : by cycling
through the pattern possbilities for the correct date and place,
I merely adjusted the time being charted until the two images
looked most alike, more or less. We see she has a "Moon"-looking
object placed high in the portrait, depicting the bottom of here dress,
but it is not as correctly postioned as Lori's token "Moon" , in Fig.
1. For the record, Lois Rodden eventually found a photo of Frida's
birth certificate, as filed in Mexico, it cited 8:30 AM, exactly. But we
are of course required to accept that science defines this as just a
lucky guess.
An image in the process of being composed seems to
have all kinds of artistic forces working on it simultaneously. So the
postion of a crescent shape, which is the essential character of the glyph astrology uses to indicate the moon, might be urged
into a given location on the painting by the psyche in the process of
projecting it's Self. Here Carl Jung meets Johannes Kepler.
The pattern of Kepler's astrological idea, his "remembered
image", (see quote above) , well , I say, "there glows" the
Moon as the psyche remembers it in her natal chart, (which of course could not possibly exist in what we call reality) .
The Case of Amazing, Wholly Unreasonable, Totally Unexpected,
Empirical Nature of Horoscopic Expressionism, and the .03%
Error.
Here is an "experiment" I conducted using our priceless internet
access to images an birth data: an abstract self-portrait, entitled
"Self Regeneration", by one Emanuela Ligal:
Fig. 3a http://pedantus.free.fr/Ligal_E_SelfRegeneration.gif
I saw the crescent moon's token/glyph, and Mars appearing as the projecting ignition switch
depicted on the neck of this figure. Here's is how I "measured" it:
Fig. 3b http://pedantus.free.fr/Ligal_E_Fig.3.gif
I emailed the artist. I disguised the expected birth time by
adding two hours to my estimated of birth time, 3:14 PM. I did
this to prevent a false positive response, some people either
don't remember the correct time, or may even just try to please the
"astrologer" by politely letting him seem to be correct. This was a good chance to find
out if I had the right stuff going on in my head, so I was very careful to let the artist
come up with her birth the time all on her own. Well, she
wrote back and confirmed my "guess":
Dear Roger L. Satterlee
I was born on 17th May 1958 at 3:10 PM. Does this makes any sense to you?
I
hope so.
Thanks for yours appreciations and many greetings for yours studies.
There is a rare if not completely unique experience/phenomenon
which occurs in this overlay. It is as if a mimetic parallelism
involving Uranus exists between these two graphics. Each graphic
is the product of two differnt, separate, seeming unrelated, human arts. Note that the glyph for the astrological planet , Uranus
(itself being but a symbol) has here somehow been projected and
expressed in the visual form of an automobile stick shiter and gearbox
shifting pattern. It just blows me away. It may not be "real" but
we *can* use it, empirically, to accurately identify the artist's birth
time. We can either see it as confirmation of his given birth
data, or the means to make an accurate, observable, "prediction" guess
of his birth, accurate to within with a few minutes. I just
didn't beleive it was probable enough to honestly suspect it to be as
it apparentlty is, just there...capable of being, astrologically
speaking, "real"....:) Roger L. Satterlee
Elmira, New York
May 21, 2006
email: me