On one of the fairly active forums (discussion group), an animated conversation has been ongoing (saccadic: a quick movement interspersed with micro-pauses; observe a bird and you will see how it has a jerky movement of the neck as it looks around -- even the owl in which the movement is smoother but still saccadic if captured by a rapid-firing camera in its 'burst' mode! It reminds one of digital rather than analogue movements! Incidentally, when we scan or read a line, our eyes make the same movements reading the line in segments, but it seems fluid if we are not being photographed/videographed! Perhaps the micropauses allow the brain to process the information taken in or whatever...!).
On internet, I call it the 'pause that refreshes'!
Back to the topic -- the discussion started with calendar reform and then went on to deeper and increasingly imaginative interpretations and misinterpretations and with a few insulting remarks and soon got personal! The train didn't even leave the platform and got derailed!
The individual who was obsessively trying to push a new zodiac (coordinated or something like that!) and sprinkling in personal remarks about hinduism this, hinduism that and many fantastic theories were pouring forth rather incoherently!
Suddenly, folks took him to task and indeed this person lacked basic communication skills and kept digging the hole he was already in, deeper and deeper ...
Someone a bit irate then told this person -- who was propounding all these half-baked theories had already confessed that he was clueless about phalit and then starting calling all jyotishis names that they are frauds and only after money and stuff like that -- that he should become a poet rather than flogging astrology (as we all understand and use it) and astrologers.
Standing a bit distant from such skirmishes (Time is money...
), it got me thinking if jyotish and poetry are mutually exclusive!Sceptics will say that all of the framework of astrology that we use is humbug and product of misdirected imagination (a.k.a. superstition).
Leaving that aside, for the moment, it struck me and not for the first time, that pretty much all of so called ancient scriptural literature from BPHS to Uttarkalamrita to phaldeepika and a dash of Varahmihira and Satya and Saravali etc. thrown into the traditional Borscht of Indian astrology (which is more polite than calling it 'khichdi'!) ALL had TWO distinctive features:
None of those had a single horoscope or example (except for Satya Jatakam which pointed to one chart and that too in passing mention!)
Secondly, ALL were written in the verse (poem) form, although using strict meter! Which was rather clever because the style provides a built-in checksum type of pattern without which distortions and corruptions or for some astrohistorians provided an indication of the TIME STAMP when those were written (one would have to know the prevailing styles in those times, etc, though!).
Even divinatory quatrains written by Nostradamus are essentially in the style of poetry! So too many religious scriptures from East.
From where to where to where, some of you may be impatiently feeling as you read my long sharing (this one!) with your trigger finger twitching on the REPLY button!
Astrology and its framework does use a lot of imagination and assumptions but therein lies the NEED for caution and finding a fine-balance!
One can go very concrete and learn jyotish like a parrot -- critically essential (like learning any language) while we learn the alphabet, the vocabulary and the GRAMMAR and IDIOMS etc.
BUT thereafter we must not remain SLAVES to those shackles and must not lose the two WINGS: Logic and Imagination! Imagination is a wide cloud but within it also lies Intuition!
Poets have that opportunity to exercise their imagination, intuition, and if 'well-trained', serious and sincere and passionate, can see patterns that the parrot never learned or could!
Interestingly, Khana, an astrologer from Bengal (only heard of, not really read) is attributed with uncanny statements and most/all written in the verse form. Many stories abound including that Khana was a woman and related to Varahamihira. Some say she was the daughter-in-law of BIG "V", others (so typical!) insist that Khana was a man!
Bottom Line: There is a lot between the heaven and Earth, Horatio! Don't close your mind, but at the same time do not open your mind so much that your brain falls out!! Particularly when dealing with astrology or any divinatory subject that you have not personally studied or spent time (LOT OF TIME) on, or with!
Love, Light, Reality!
