Metamodern Astro: Part 1
Metamodernism is a term in philosophical circles to describe a developmental stage in cultural thought and process. In sequence, it emerged after earlier paradigms of Indigenous, Traditional, Modern, and Post-Modern eras. It is often identified through works which oscillate between these previous modes. The term provides a lens through which one might interpret changes in art, media, religion, politics, and other fields. Naturally, I’d like to ponder a Metamodern Astro.
To understand this oscillation between previous modes, it’s important to conceptualize and make sense of them, individually. So, let’s put on each pair of lenses, to see how they relate to the science and art of astronomy and astrology.
**Disclaimer: while these Eras will be presented as though separate and linear, this is a generalized framework. Peoples in any period of time operate with various lenses; life and culture, like astro, are always mixtures of elements.
Indigenous Astro
The Indigenous paradigm can describe peoples and eras for whom the primary method of communication and record-keeping was verbal, via the spoken-word, or visual, via the image. The invention of complex language set homosapiens apart amongst the creatures of Earth. In pre-civilizational tribes of human beings, knowledge was distilled and passed on through storytelling. As knowledge was gained, it had to be maintained through memory, and passed on through the voice. To aid this, information about the world was personified into characters, given excitement through plot-lines, and made mnemonic through poetic meter and melody.
This was a time of fantastically dark skies above Earth, which is to say, the night was bright with stars! Few other activities were available to keep people occupied while the Sun was down, so talking about the constellations would have been a natural pass-time. As humans discussed the shapes they observed, consensus bloomed around certain constellations which bore striking resemblance to important icons within the developing culture.
The circled dots above the Bull’s shoulder are correctly configured to represent the Pleiades over the Taurus constellation
One of our earliest records in archeoastronomy is the bull painting on the walls of the Lascaux Caves in the South of France, dated to around 15,000 BC. More than just a mere representation of the animal, the dots above it’s shoulder are correctly positioned to depict the Pleiades above the Taurus constellation, and help contextualize the dots on the face as the Hyades cluster and Aldebaron (the bull’s eye 🎯).
Another ancient artifact was discovered on the island of Malta, now referred to as the Tal Qadi Sky Tablet. Rather than painted on the surface of the rock, this depiction of the stars is engraved into the limestone block, and dating places its creation around 2500 BC. Fascinatingly, it shows the same asterisms as the Lascaux Bull, the Pleiades and Hyades. Together, these clusters form one of the most striking features of the night sky, as the Ecliptic path of the Sun and Planets pass directly between them. You can learn more about the “Golden Gate of the Ecliptic” here.
The sections on the Tal Qadi Sky Tablet are configured correctly to represent the Pleiades and Hyades clusters
With enough attention paid to the sky, people began to notice that while most of the stars remained fixed, some of them “wandered”. The Moon was the most obvious mover, but the Sun and 5 additional “planets” changed positions over time as well. Thus, the narratives created by these indigenous groups developed characterizations of the constellations, with distinctions for the 7 moving luminaries. Being oral in nature, stories of the sky spread slowly from one person to another, but could have far reaching effects over time.
As groups interacted, their myths were exchanged and could take on mixed features. Through philogenetics, modern anthropologists use tools from the field of biology to trace various stories between different cultures back to a common ancestor, in deep indiginous eras. Many of them are stories about constellations! My favorite resource for such explorations is Crecganford, who here discusses the myth of the Pleiades as one of the worlds very oldest stories.
Traditional Astro
The Traditional paradigm characterizes peoples who develop the capacity to communicate their ideas through written-language, after the development of script. The ability to record information upon materials existing outside the author helps knowledge to spread, stabilizing culture amongst larger populations, and enabling civilizations to develop. However, since education remains difficult to come by, the ability to read and produce calculations is reserved to select members of society.
In this period, Astrological systems are commodified, and utilized at a greater extent. Calendars are designed, through the careful integration of multiple celestial cycles, (most often of the Sun and Moon) giving time itself better organization. Having a deepening sense of the pattern of the year allowed for agriculture to improve production of food, for the increasing numbers of people.
Being intricately connected to the passage of time, the first astrology to develop involves the proper timing of activities. This is called “Electional Astrology”, deciding the proper moment to perform an action in harmony with the heavens. Kings are the most common employers to astrologers, who’s education and work to perform calculations comes at great time and cost. They elect dates for important events like the founding of cities, or the launch of wars, and warn the King of impending omens like eclipses (celestial events which are understood with surprising nuance, given their erratic occurrences over specific parts of the planet). In the hellenistic world, horoscopes cast for the “hour” of birth also develop to predict activities over a person’s lifespan.
During this period, the heavens were depicted with more detail, each section given names, icons, and various qualities. In Chris Brennan's book, Hellenistic Astrology: the Study of Fate and Fortune, he describes a Pinax as "similar to modern-day chess boards, except that the astrological boards depicted the twelve signs of the zodiac, and sometimes the decans or other subdivisions, and then different stones were placed around the board in order to represent the positions of the planets in the chart." The above depicted and most intricate of Pinax was recovered in Lorraine, France, and dated to before 170 BC.
Somehow even more strikingly, the Antikythera Mechanism was a technological depiction of the cycles of the planets. After its discovery in a shipwreck site in 1901, it took nearly 100 years before researchers could understand the full extent of its design and utility. It is now considered the first analog computer, made from gears of bronze and cased in wood, powered by a hand-crank to show the motions of the Sun, Moon, and Planets at proper ratios, as well as showing eclipses and timing the Olympic games. It’s been dated all the way back to about 87 BC, if not earlier. So mysteriously ahead of its time, the Mechanism calls into question our understanding of the knowledge and capabilities of Traditional Era peoples.
The original artifact, and modern reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism
With the writing down of seminal spiritual texts, aspects of the heavens are given metaphorical and direct connections to aspects of the divine, in various religions. However, astrology as a practice of divination is embraced by some, and antagonized by others. In the far East, the Vedas’ polytheistic Gods are explicitly tied to various stars, and astrology is integrated into the culture. However, the Bible comes to differentiate itself from these sorts of practices by acknowledging one supreme God, and providing the Atonement of Christ as an alternative to the fallen, pagan “fate” of mankind. As Christianity grows a stronghold in Western culture, its adversarial relationship to astrology sees the practices wane, with many techniques being lost by the middle ages. Still, religious holidays and rituals such as Easter are timed by heavenly events (in this case, the Sunday after the Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox).
Modern Astro
The Modern paradigm is generally understood to apply to civilization after the invention of the printing-press, with movable type. This innovation allowed ideas to be recorded and spread much more efficiently than handwriting every letter of every document. The proliferation of printed words encouraged a broader baseline education amongst the general populous, and a deepening respect for, and utilization of knowledge through Enlightenment philosophy. Many sectors experienced rapid progress as scientific experimentation improved the collective understanding of the material world, and technology advanced across the board. A defining characteristic of Modern thought includes a use of Grand Narratives, and a generalized sense of optimism that this progress of revealing universal truths would continue indefinitely.
Immediately important to the field of astro was the printing of Ephemeris, books containing the positions of planets over certain spans of time. The first of these may have been the Alfonsine Tables, created by the Toledo School of Translators, first edition printed in 1483. No longer did individuals have to continuously calculate these necessary bits of data for each chart construction, or painstakingly copy down the work of others. Casting charts became much simpler. These calculations were also sharpened by the advancement of mathematics, which helped astronomers more precisely model and predict planetary movements. Then, even more sporadic celestial events such as comets could be tracked, their appearances fortold, instead of ominously appearing out of the blue.
Galileo by Jean-Leon Huens
The first true technological breakthrough came with the telescope, invented by Galileo and used by him to discover the first extra-terrestrial moons, around Jupiter. However, the subsequent discovery and classification of Uranus as an additional planet orbiting the Sun was a true revolution in our understanding of the solar-system. From that point forward, many other celestial bodies were detected, including Neptune, the Dwarf Planets in the Kuiper Belt, Ceres, and countless asteroids. No longer was the unaided eye the extent to our perception; suddenly the 7 Planets became an uncountable number of Wanderers. Additionally, a deeper understanding of the material characteristics of the celestial matter became clarified.
Further widening our grasp on the cosmos came as the Andromeda nebula, visible to the naked eye, was measured as being so mindbogglingly distant from us that it was recognized as its own galaxy. This allowed us to make sense of the Milky Way we exist inside, and acted as a bridge to an infinitely larger universe. Astronomers peered deeper and deeper into space, finding uncountable numbers of galaxies, each with hundreds of thousands of stars. Other kinds of celestial objects such as black holes were theorized before they too were proven to exist. Through the measuring of various wavelengths of energy, we came to understand the universe as expanding, and running this back, could infer that it started as a single point around 14 billions years ago.
Galileo’s natal chart, cast with his own hand
With such a wealth of discoveries emerging from the use of technology and the scientific method, this period saw the great fracturing of Astronomy and Astrology. Where in the Indigenous and Traditional eras, the two were more easily conflated, and even Galileo and other astronomers still practiced the art of astrology, Modern thinkers began to draw sharper divides between those facts which were discernible through math, observation, and experimentation, and the metaphysical, philosophical components of astrology. The later were expunged from industries they had previously been integrated (eg. Medicine), often for the better. This chasm grew larger as the Heliocentric model caused a paradigm shift though Europe, displayed in the designs of Orreries, like the one below by George Adams in 1750.
The “Grand Orrery” by George Adams depicts the solar system with sun at the center, orbited by the 6 known planets and their thusfar discovered moons
Astrology enountered a double-whammy of antagonism in Western culture, first in the by the Traditional mode of Monotheistic religion which saw it as pagan, and then by Enlightenment science which viewed it as superstition.
At this fork, astrology underwent great transformation, having been destabilized. Much of it’s source material was lost or actively destroyed, and new discoveries were popping up in many fields. Under these circumstances, it changed quite dramatically. Traditional systems were adjusted to include bodies like Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Interpretation was influenced heavily by the emerging field of Psychology, and especially Jung’s Archetypes. As newspapers and magazines became broadly printed, the inclusion of horoscopes based on Sun-Signs blossomed into a pop-astrology, used to entertain the masses through daily or monthly general predictions. These components form much of an umbrella of the practices now commonly referred to as “Modern Astrology”.
Post-modern Astro
The Post-Modern paradigm is often said to have emerged from the ashes of World War II, the deadliest and most wide-spread conflict up to that point, only ended through the devastating power of nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. The horrors of those years caused many to look at the grand narratives of Modern advancement with more critical eyes, now weary of its lofty claims. The accelerating development of televisions and then computers allowed for more information to travel more swiftly, and for people to hear and contend with multiple sides to any given topic.
During the cultural uprisings of the 60s, groups previously excluded from modern narratives, such as racial and sexual minorities, fought for their voices and stories to be heard, and rights to be secured. Priorities shifted away from universal truths to relative, individual perspectives. In academic language, society embraced a tactic of deconstruction, breaking apart previously held beliefs through thorough questioning and skepticism. Media created during this era was saturated in irony and self-awareness, breaking the 4th wall to constantly remind the audience that they are observing a production. Acknowledging competing viewpoints at every layer of process often resulted in disillusionment. Growing nihilism set in, that any problem can be efficiently solved, or any real meaning can be generated.
The extended chart selection on Astro.com allows one to cast any of dozens of kinds of charts with a few button clicks
In my estimation, a major post-modernism impact on Astro came through instantly-generated charts. Just a few clicks on a keyboard allowed anyone to cast one. Compare this to all periods prior: when charts were hand-drawn, the astrologer had to have various kinds of knowledge in order to construct the chart they wanted to study. And these past practitioners developed a symbolic shorthand and abstract representation of celestial objects, which were retained in the virtual display by web-coders. Offloading these tasks to computers meant that anyone who could find and use the correct website could attempt to interpret the symbols, instead of anyone who knew how to draw it up themself knowing what each symbol means.
In the 90s and 00s, a group of researchers known as Project Hindsight began “to translate and interpret the surviving texts of the Western astrological tradition”, most from Greek and Latin into English. Additionally, Vedic astrology found its way to the West in a similar fashion to other Indian cultural practices like Yoga. Since the traditional techniques were more well-integrated into their culture, Jyotish resembled the resurfacing Hellenistic techniques with much overlap, as well as many of it’s own nuances. This sudden influx of Traditional source-material caused many to question the established narratives of Modern astrology, igniting debates about zodiacs, house systems, rulerships, and interpretations amongst the industry, basic components now in flux.
The post-modern period saw the migration of huge percentages of human beings into Urban environments, officially reaching a majority of people for the 1st time in 2007. Within cities, light pollution is at its worst, limiting the amount of celestial objects which one can see at night. Now, stargazing apps allow people to view the sky through the window of their device. These developments exacerbated astrology’s disconnection from any knowledge or experience of astronomy (no science necessary to pontificate on charts’ meaning), and astronomy’s disconnection from the storytelling once used to explain their patterns.
The science of Astronomy became increasingly divorced from Astrology, or any other metaphysical framework. While stronger telescopes allowed for ever-deeper views into the expanding cosmos, discoveries which could previously have been awe-inspiring reflections of the divine now caused feelings of smallness and insignificance. Those looking into the heavens treated their research as interesting points of data, minute contractions in margins-of-error, wary and even hostile toward any impulse to be moved spiritually by it. More insidiously, a secular hunger to peer deeper into space with more advanced telescopes under clearer skies has brought academia into conflict with indigenous people, encroaching colonially on sacred spaces in Hawaii for the past few decades.
Additionally, scientists exploited various inconsistencies to undermine the field of astrology, including the discrepancies between the Tropical and Sidereal Zodiacs, using the modern understanding of Precession of the Equinoxes to bludgeon and deconstruct the Traditional design of the Zodiac. Scientists periodically troll horoscope readers with stellar space and an insertion of Ophiuchus, to throw off dates of seasonal signs, with headlines stating matter-of-factly that “Your zodiac sign and horoscope are wrong”
Native Hawaiians have protested multiple telescopic buildings on sacred Mauna Kea since the 60s
As with many domains, post-modernism left astro fractured, with information overload and no proper filtration mechanisms. Astrologers appropriately understand that each placement in every chart exists in the context of what it is cast for, but have trouble synthesizing the data back into coherent meaning. The new-age motto “whatever resonates” leaves room for everyone to feel personal truth, but most lack awareness of what knowledge can be concretely known. And while the heavens have long been a source for deriving meaning in life, such exercises now found themselves with the derogatory label of “pseudoscience”, and dismissed as fraud by skeptical intellectuals. Though we’d managed to get closer to the cosmos than ever before, heaven had never been further away.
Stay tuned for a dive and exploration into a Metamodern Astro soon! ⭕️