Yesterday, Jen McCreight, the founder of Boobquake, posted a blog entry about my coverage of her astrology, which was in last Friday’s edition of Planet Waves Astrology News.
The concept of Boobquake was for women to bare a little cleavage, in order to prove or disprove an Iranian religious leader’s theory that sexy women cause earthquakes. The thing rippled out, her Facebook page ended up with nearly 100,000 fans (last time I checked), and she sent a fun message to the world. I replied to her blog post as a comment on her website. Here’s a slightly edited version of that reply. — efc
Dear Jen and Friends:
Thanks for introducing me to this excellent, adventurous audience. I know everyone had a great time with Boobquest (though I wonder what those Iranian imams were thinking last week). As the unofficial adopted astrologer of the movement, I want to tell you first that you’ve had a far greater influence on the world than anyone has yet recognized. You have contributed to a tipping point that is rapidly approaching and that will be rather obvious by early June.
Of course it’s difficult to see this now. The way our media treats anything that is 1) liberationist or 2) explores an idea, tends to diminish it and to reduce it to a cartoon. Our dinosaur media exists as if people, our feelings and our desire to free ourselves from oppressive ideas really don’t matter. We are experimenting with another approach. You, at least, figured out that you make a difference. Just think, this whole fuss started with a single thought in your mind.
Looking at the astrology of last week’s event has given me a window into the many ways you have sent a life-affirming message rippling through the world, at the same time you’ve challenged dysfunctional beliefs that prevent people from expressing their life force and their natural beauty.
You, Jen, feel your strength and power; you have access to many facets of your mind. You’re not afraid to challenge authority — and you have set that example literally for millions of people.
I would like to speak for a moment to the question of whether your astrology, or any astrology, means anything. Remember that astrology is [merely] an intellectual platform. Yes, it as a connection to natural cycles, but as we use it, it’s a mode of analysis — one that is an established part of mainstream Western thought.
It is also a form of divination. Divination is not science. It more resembles an art form. A chart is not “true” any more than a song or painting is objectively beautiful.
I don’t claim astrology is a science, and I argue against that viewpoint regularly (the hope that it will be “proven” is a debilitating crutch for many astrologers). Divination is based on authenticity and sincerity; it’s based on clarity and dedication to the truth.
Basically, any search for the truth will succeed. Whether we use a hound dog or divining rod or the scientific method, the truth responds to us.
Astrology is not science because there is no “cohort of Jen McCreights” to prove or disprove your chart (however, if we apply certain laws of quantum physics, we might find them scattered around the universe). Science as you know requires repeating the experiment under controlled circumstances. Astrology is the case of a unique example, over and over. As we conduct those unique experiments, we can see patterns. Yes, those patterns exist in the mind of the observer — but so does the data from a psychological experiment. It is not the mind’s bias that’s at work, but rather the fact of consciousness itself — and while we know lots about lots of things, we don’t so much about the origin and true nature of consciousness. We’re just bobbing in the middle of it, often unable to question or even notice what we’re experiencing.
Whether something is bullshit often depends on its use. Rhetoric can be used to make a lie sound true, or to make the truth clear and presentable. The law can be used to hang an innocent person, or to liberate one. Science can be used to test the effects of dangerous chemicals, or as more often happens, it can be used to “prove” that they are safe.
Currently, it is science that has issues of belief. Science itself has morphed into a kind of fundamentalist religion that is driven more by profits more than by a quest for truth. My own background is investigating scientific fraud. That’s what I was doing when I embarked on astrology — I wanted to see how it worked. So I approached astrology with a scientific mind — a scrutinizing mind, looking for clues. Proof is another story.
I don’t “believe in” astrology; it’s a tool and I use it, for a purpose. You were (and are) a prime example of that purpose.
I could have said a lot about your aspects that I didn’t say. There are many ways to read your chart, and I used planets in that reading that few astrologers bother with (they are skeptics). I gave my reading aiming for your highest potential, your highest evolutionary potential, presuming that you were and are acting in integrity and good faith. I offered my information to you when you’re a young woman, at the cusp of her adult life, in a moment of truth of your power — honoring your power — and I tailored my ideas to encourage you to go on — to believe in yourself — to affirm your existence and your reality, so that you have it in times of doubt, or serious life choices.
I’m honored that you shared your data and invited me to look at your chart in such a rich moment. I love doing astrology in its flush of passion, and writing about people when they are in peak moments of discovery. Of course, astrology will often fade into the background for them, in that phase of their life (so much else is happening), though part of my intention is to present a document that will be useful looking back.
I write Planet Waves for contemporary readers and for those who will be browsing in around 2400 — so if that happens to be you, hello from a strange, beautiful, dangerous time in history, 2010 — when we’re first figuring out that we can influence the world in positive, constructive and healing ways, even if we did so on a lark, in the dark.
Yours & truly,
Portland, Maine
The divergence between the skeptic’s view and the astrologer’s view reminds me of the divergence between the body-denying religions and the body-affirming religions. Skeptics are so busy looking for their proofs in the scientific realm that they disconnect from the part of themselves that senses things in their bodies.
It makes me think of how my mom told me everything about sex and reproduction but she could not explain how it “feels” to allow your own physical space to be that entwined with another’s. The Pagans talk of the “mystery” that cannot be found outside yourself; if you try to find it outside your self you will never find it. Skeptics are seeking things outside their own selves…..they will never find what they seek which in turn makes them even more skeptical. Astrologers seek things both from within and without and this combination allows them to sense those things within themselves that cannot be explained in any outside scientific experiment.
Pagans tell of that inner part of us that, like a child, needs symbols and physical expression in order to understand the universe. Our obsession with divorcing our bodies (the profane) from our minds (the sacred) and our reverence for logic has broken that link between what we know physically and what we want to know mentally.
I went into my first sexual encounter thinking I knew what it would be all about; I assumed that having an orgasm with someone would be exactly like having one with myself but more three-dimensional. I was completely flooded with the huge change in my sensations, emotional self, and body. That was something no outside source could explain. The change in me was profound and was like a seeing person that had grown up in a pitch-black room their whole life and then the light goes on for a few seconds. You cannot go back to the way you were before; ignorant of the way it looks. You are forever changed. That is how astrologers exist; they have seen that flash of light in the dark room and have experienced the feeling of their full senses. Living like that is far more three dimensional than living in the dichotomous two-dimension way that skeptics inhabit.
The connection between body and mind is amazing and a mystery; astrology uses both and like sex, astrology breaks down invisible barriers to create a wholeness.
oh hey victoria –
my comments were not specifically aimed at you. between the comments here and some conversation i was having with eric, i was starting to sense a shift in focus and just wanted to keep the distinction between the two movements as well as where they overlap clear.
cheers,
amanda
Amanda,
Let me clarify that I wasn’t trying to say all Boobquake participants held one view…I was meaning to address skepticism in general….and re: ” i really think boobquake took on a life of its own, and i’m excited to see it grow up,” ME TOO! So many ways for things to evolve……Great conversation Planetwaves group!
victoria
I am reminded of Alice O. Howell’s (Jungian/Astrologer) comment that “she was once told than an atheist is simply a person who has rejected the image of god on the level below him and gotten stuck. And there are levels and levels. . .”
i have to admit, i’ve only skimmed the comments here, since my attention span is feeling limited right now. but i did want to point out one thing: i’m not sure it’s accurate to conflate “the boobquake movement” with the coterie of skeptics commenting on jen mccreight’s blog.
to be sure, jen started the first campus atheists’ society on the perdue u campus, and she mentions somewhere in her blog how quickly the mailing list grew along with readers of her blog. and yes, the boobquake event began with her: at first as a small semi-joke event among friends, but once the media caught hold of it, she realized she had to step up to the challenge and expand her vision of the event. the whole thing took off on facebook with a focus on breasts, the freedom to dress “immodestly,” and an amusing attempt to disprove a religious claim with science.
my point is, that i have a feeling the vast majority of women actually participating in the event were drawn by the whole freedom-of-women-and-women’s-bodies angle and chance to stand up against a misguided belief, and probably ascribe to a wide array of beliefs/non-beliefs when it comes to religion, spirituality, the esoteric, the scientific, etc.
so yes, jen and her blog followers are skeptics and that’s where boobquake emerged from. but once the cat got out of the bag, i think the movement/event took on a life of its own, one with much more positive and nourishing potential. the initial thrust of the event came from skepticism, but i would hesitate to call the movement itself — that is, how the event in its entirety unfolded — a skeptic movement.
her followup analysis/commentary is just one piece of what we have to move forward with. all the other pieces of that puzzle are held by many many people who may fit them into differently-slanted visions of their own. i really think boobquake took on a life of its own, and i’m excited to see it grow up.
– amanda
Victoria,
I second that emtotion, not having read all the words, yet to paraphrase anyway – as you I find myself in the efc rabbithole falling or rising (there is no up or down) with no need to cling to walls just go for the ride and do best to understand and grow – perhaps like alice bigenough to reach the key? There are large schools of “thought” that I simply can’t get my arms around like what you pointed out about the boobquake skeptics bunch.
I too raise my margarita to you! — awareness of others perceptions is all.
xo
Mystery of mystery…in the course of my gongfu practice I discover the beauty and elegance of my version of the human form. Sure, science has a lot to say about the how (even then it’s only just beginning to admit the the existence of qi on the fringes) but it’s as afraid of the why as it is of the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church and L’ancienne Régime. or so it would seem by the quick dismissals and common lack of respect for anything that smells like religion.
Cheerleaders for Science tend to dismiss or completely ignore the esoteric studies that consumed the passion of their hero Isaac Newton. I would count that dismissal as throwing out pearls for lack of understanding. To someone who has never experienced the skills developed in the practice of internal refinement Newton’s primary passion is something that’s condescendingly accepted as an eccentricity of a more ignorant age if it’s mentioned at all. What really mattered to the England in which he lived an worked was how much money you can make applying his equations to engineering projects. Never mind how many african hands are cut off to scare them into gathering enough rubber to feed Europe’s demands.
Voilà- we have a world dominated by noise, garbage and pollution all maintained to support a lopsided pyramid of Neo Liberal trickle down economics. Newton’s practices to develop inner mastery are ignored and similarly in mainstream society we’re trained by a storm of media informed by a pseudo science that’s the trained monkey of monetary profits that would rather you buy dangerous drugs like ibuprofen than learn how to grow your own herbs and sense your own interior accurately enough to continually practice preventative medicine. We get a holy host of drugs to force changes of inner states instead of neigong, work to cultivate accurate interior sensations free from mental projections. The problem with a bottom line of monetary profit is, well, you end up trashing the biosphere and stuff when you refuse to even look at the actual cost of your habits, so far below your idea of where the bottom is. Just like the modern human who is unaware that the brain in hir gut has just as many neurons as the one in hir skull.
Since I have many years of experience doing various exercises, rituals, techniques to alter consciousness I actually have some idea of what these things do. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find that Newton constructed rituals to invoke Mercury or some such thing to bring about the mental states that gave rise to his ingenious equations. I think that working with archetypes in this way is a technique for self programming.
You can call Mercury a god and then invoke all the noise that comes out of the juvenile argument between science and religion. I like Antero Ali’s word for planets- forces. Mercury as a name for a particular function common to the human organism, in a form that can be engaged by consciousness through the imagination. Blend this mental stuff with physical practices like Taiji Chuan and it becomes possible to relate to emotions as physical energy states and, for example rather than get a headache and pop a pill, cultivate the interior sense such that I feel my heart overheating in an emotional reaction and I can cool its fire by exhaling with a fully open “haaa” sound a few times before any outward behavior manifests.
I would propose that if Jen McCreight only studied astrology as a teenager she didn’t pay attention long enough to watch the cycles that it maps enough times to offer an informed critique. I don’t know how it works, but I’ve watched patterns and cycles for a bit longer than 4 years with repeated occurrences of deeply meaningful coincicidences/synchronicities. It re-enchants my world by removing a veil of bullshit that says my selfhood ends at the border of my skin.
In my interpretation the arrangement of planets in a chart don’t cause anything the way hitting a nail causes it to go into the board. The events in the sky are a macrocosmic map of the same story that includes the events of an individual life. What if the connection can only be sensed by living organisms and can’t be sensed by machines of metal and glass? What if it’s a function of sentience? Even if it’s truly acausal after all for me that doesn’t diminish the utility in terms of interior management that my gongfu, which includes astrology, nurtures.
Eric,
I think this subject requires a deep thinking that can sometimes feel like falling down the ‘Rabbit Hole’ so to speak. I see a link between skepticism and being in control. The way I see it and FEEL it (Me: Pisces Moon conj. Jupiter, 12th House), it takes a certain level of love for oneself to let go of knowing how the world is NOT (ie, not believing in anything that can’t be “proven”), to allow Mystery, to experience Oneness. Many times if you exhibit this self love and allowing ideas to percolate up from our unconscious, there is a backlash from cynics, and you are called a “Cuckoo.” Cue: The Amazing Randi….
Unfortunately, some people start to feel the Mystery of “What if?” and like they are losing control, so they grasp to the walls of the hole and view things in black and white terms from a perch. They won’t go in the dark place and see what’s in there. It makes me sad that so many smart, passionate people could be missing out on the deeper layer of experience of Boobquake-and not just a movement of “This Can’t be Proven Scientifically” only. I think it’s so much more than that, but there’ll be another movement du jour (thanks to so many people waking up to their power to be a catalyst for wide range change and expansion in the coming months), that suddenly we are faced with a tipping point. I think there will be plenty of waves for everyone to ride. I also think it’s about time.
Pessimism and Cynicism are the result for many who can’t let go of disenchantment. I know how fucked up things are right now too. And I think we are being called to do some serious critical thinking combined with meditative and contemplative deep analysis. But I don’t think clinging to what is scientifically proven only is going to work anymore. Just being angry and saying NO to everything is not going to change anything for women, including those in the movement of Boobs who subscribe to this kind of limited thinking.
Chiron is in Pisces-the Peace Train has arrived.
Victoria
Victoria
That is a great point. In my unified view of existence sometimes I miss the divisions. To me everything is introspection, such as stirring my coffee.
I didn’t realize that the Boobquake movement was a skeptics movement that…takes itself seriously. I mean, it’s a mob of skeptics. Kind of sexposiive, yes, but true blue dyed in the wool Amazing Randi kinds of atheists and skeptics and “this is bullshit, you have no proof” kind of thinking. I canNOT believe I missed that notion of how skepticism is basically eliminating self-reflection! But it’s so obvious. That is the missing thing. In my posts, I keep saying, “What you’re left with is awareness of existence…” which is SELF.
A few moments ago, I had just got around to recognizing that skepticism is a way of disenchanting the world (to use Rick Tarnas’ term) just as you were typing your reply. And yes I’ve spent a lot of time around skeptics — Paul Kurtz, one of the most effective disenchanters of astrology of the past few hundred years, was my FIRST college professor (data for arriving in his Philosophy 101 class, my first college class: Sept 1 1981, 9.05 am. Buffalo, NY). Note I had not heard of astrology at that point.
This was my reply to one skeptic on the Blaghag site, who didn’t like my reply (to my lengthy comment below, reposted from Boobquest/Blaghag site):
#
The fictions we tell ourselves about reality pale into comparison with the beauty and strangeness of the real thing. It’s the difference between a schoolboy’s daydream about a girl, and actually having a girlfriend.
D—
in reply to D—
Skepticism or atheism are forms of deconstructionism. You take things apart, and what you’re left with, in the end, is your perception of the universe, and the need to put it together in a way that makes sense — just like an astrologer, a scientist, a priest, a construction worker. If I were Bucky Fuller, I would be skeptical of skyscrapers. If I were Tesla, I would be skeptical of direct current. These people had ideas how to take apart other ideas — and how to reassemble reality in a way that works better. By disenchanting the world, which is what science inadvertently does, do we really get a world that works better? That feels better and is more beautiful? Or have we proven that there are no more mysteries?
To any skeptic, and I am gathering there are a few of you here: Please share with me one thing that is a mystery to you.
This just in — The Amazing Randi came out of the closet at 81.
Eric-
Thanks for the brilliant explanation of how you perceive your work. You are a great writer, thinker, and intellectual, imho. But, I’m a longtime subscriber and wouldn’t still be sticking around Planetwaves if I wasn’t learning and evolving over the years….Muchas Gracias-and I’d be sure to buy you a margarita this Cinco de Mayo if I was in your ‘hood:)
Anyway, I wanted to write in re: skepticism and what I’ve frequently noticed with people who doubt astrology’s validity and/or even the possibility of it as an excellent tool. You mentioned Chaos theory and fractals as close relatives of astrology (that do not receive the doubt and skepticism that astrolgoy does)……the difference is that chaos theory and fractals don’t require self-analysis and facing our shadows AND seizing our inherent blessings.
Fractals are focused on things “out there,” which is easier to stomach for skeptics. While astrology can be a tool for analyzing the world we live in, it first requires an understanding of what’s going on inside ourselves. But isn’t that what’s holding up progress anyway? Refusal to become conscious, wake up, heal within-so that we may move forward into the next level of human evolution?
What good is chaos theory and fractasl if the majority stay “asleep” and we self-implode? I am optimistic that Boobquake and the Gulf disaster are nothing but the final straws that push us towards the tipping point. Hallelulah.
victoria
Reader Comment from Jen’s blog:
I’m having a little difficulty parsing some of your ideas in that post. (You can put some of it down to my being a bit ill atm)
So astrology isn’t true in the sense that the position of the planets/stars actually influences the way that people act later in their life in a manner that can be rigorously tested and falsified(if false)? But as long as we all pretend it works then we can derive all sorts of interesting things using it, which themselves may be useful?
If that’s remotely what you’re going for then it sounds very much like a “psychic” using cold reading to me. Sure, it might be a useful falsehood to claim that astrological phenomena actually influences people in some special way, but I’d be more comfortable with the use of it if people owned up to what’s actually going on.
“Imma make some reasonable inferences about you, and we’ll talk about it/you can ruminate on it and let’s see what we can figure out.”
That’d be totally OK in my books(not that my books get a lot of circulation in the general population)
My Reply:
Hello again.
I have described some methods of using astrology: as an intellectual / analytical platform (that is, a collection of concepts and categories that can be used for analysis), and as a divination tool. I don’t think we’re in tin foil hat territory here; we are still in the realm of intellect, of rational discourse and at worst symbolic representation. In this sense, astrology is closer to poetry than it is to computer code.
How does astrology work? There are a lot of possibilities.
If a skeptic were willing to admit that it _might_ work — that is appropriate, since astrology has not been disproved, and logically a negative cannot be proved (you cannot prove that pink ducks don’t exist) — there are a number of possibilities for how it might work, but remember — the question is to remember is, “work for what?”
Someone above referenced one big giant coincidence. Has anyone heard of synchronicity? It’s a term that was used by C. G. Jung, one of the pioneers of modern psychology. It’s a descriptive term — he was describing a phenomenon he saw in his psychiatry practice. Says Wikipedia, “Jung coined the word to describe what he called ‘temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events’. Jung variously described synchronicity as an ‘acausal connecting principle’, ‘meaningful coincidence’ and ‘acausal parallelism’.”
That’s one starting point.
Jung also worked with the idea of an archetype. A helpful definition again from Wiki: “An archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.” The concept dates back to Plato. Archetypes exist on the subtle planes, such as in the collective unconscious (another Jungian concept). An archetpe might be the concept of the president, rather than the president himself. The thing is, these concepts have life on other levels, in the genetic memory, in mythology, in dreams, and so on.
Then we have a cycle. Nature has many cycles, from the precessional cycle to the year to a planetary cycle to a season to a month. If we can grasp and apply these few concepts — we have some plausible tools to grasp how astrology works — when it works. And everything that works sometimes doesn’t work other times; most oil platforms don’t blow up. In science, nature and philosophy there are apparent failures and differing degrees of success. 100% solid proof never happens; there is always an exception, and quantum mechanics says that everything happens as a probability, not a certainty.
But how astrology really works is, it works in the mind. This is an objective statement: without the mind, there would not be astrology. It is based on human observation and thought. The notion that it is a subjective phenomenon rather than an objective one is not so strange. That it has not been ‘proven’ by science does not mean it doesn’t work, or cannot work; it merely means it has not been proven. Many things we think of as theoretical haven’t been proven, and are awaiting the right experiment or technology; or are outside the realm of proof but considered meaningful (blue is pretty; a song is beautiful).
Certainly, there are lot stranger things than astrology, and some of them are supportive of astrology. Take chaos theory and fractals. If you have a grasp on these two things you have another model with a good working parallel to astrology. Chaos theory says there are not really chaotic patterns in nature; no matter how chaotic something seems, there is underlying order; such as bubbles in a stream, branches of a tree or planetary movement. In terms of pure science (rather than psychology or philosophy, respected as they may be) the closest cousin to astrology is chaos theory and its relative, fractal theory.
In the end, however, astrology is based on observation and interpretation — and these are human functions, subject to discipline, scholarship, faith, sincerity, bias and yes, flaw. Astrology is good as far as it goes, and it needs to be used wisely and carefully — as does every technology or powerful idea. Yes it can be wrong and it can be used to deceive, just like anything.
And it can be a beautiful mirror in which to consider the nature of reality, within which we are just babes in the woods.
–efc