Could divination work?

What is unexplainable today need not be out rightly wrong.

Astrology¹ is said to be among the oldest of sciences. Some consider it a pseudoscience at least. The similarities, in the basic structuring and techniques, across astrology’s many variants (from Native-American to Mayan to Tajik to Indian to Chinese) that too in seemingly disparate communities) is fascinating. 

Even attempting to prove that such divinations (or superstitions) may work do sound preposterous and even embarrassing to rationalists (that includes me). But what if there is a perspective we simply missed!

Let me even try: 

Erase-off the proponents’ common explanation that astrology works because light from the other planets in our solar system affect the living things on earth. A simpler mind may be happy with this line of explanation just as most believers are happy with the Genesis story of human origin.
The real obstruction to our explanation-attempts is our mental paradigm (rather our belief) of the universe. In our current belief everything is separate – God, you, me, the planets, earth, oceans, animals, space. What this model makes us believe is that we are the center of the universe and everything else revolves around us humans. Its a model we are used to for so long.
What if it’s a model that could use some improvisation?

For the sake of my attempts here, let’s try switching to a monistic² model. By monistic here I mean that all of the universe is one entity – imagine it as a cosmic clock or say a gigantic jukebox J or maybe even the body of the Almighty!

If that can be imaged - hold that model in your head and realize that this cosmic-entity’s constituents are sub-systems. They should be interconnected and interdependent – say like the organ-systems of a human body. 

Yes? If this much can be realized, then we have progressed much. Many of these constituent-(sub) systems within may be individually deterministic³

Now zoom in to our solar system. So its now (in this model) just another cog in the bigger machinery. It is a sub-system which has further, almost infinitesimal layers of constituent, sub-systems – one of level being us as individuals. So if this Solar system is like a human body, we are then just cells within!

In this model, the planets' state maybe more like positions representing the overall system status at a point of time (like an LED blink-pattern on a panel in a control room) . Which in turn translates to a situation at our realm. And this is the information that  an Astrologer tries to use.

A pulse check is not the cause of a hypertension, a scan picture is not the cause of a tumor – they are the lights patterns on the panel that depicts the current state of the overall whole.

Occult (hidden) connections could be plausible. Omens may be useful. A divination stream may be a case of someone happening to decipher the patterns on the panel. Like using eyes (one constituent of the human body) to see rashes on the skin (state of another constituent) and analyzing that the soup had shrimp in it (interpretation) and predicting the run to the nearest toilet (fortune-telling) J

It’s what I call a side-effect of singularity.



¹ Astrology is just one among the many divinations practiced around the world; there are numerous other fortune telling systems like readings based on geckos, entrails of sacrificed animals, tea leaves, coffee-dust patterns, omens or just rants of a person in trance – many of these traditions on the decline. Some ex-believers have just degraded Astrology to a pseudo-science, and not a full-blown .

² Monism is a philosophical view. One of its regional definitions is called 'Advaitham'. For our purpose this essentially means: Everything is one, and the one is part of everything else. In the east they call the 'everything' as the 'Supreme Being’.

³ Based on the system’s general behavior, given its state at a point of time one could determine its status in the next. Here in this example assume the solar system is deterministic and its constituents works interdependently. Why? For a reason perhaps, which is beyond a mere human’s imaginative capacity. 

Babel

What makes perfect sense to one may be utter nonsense to another.

Monistics consider the dualists to be inferior. Monotheists consider themselves superior to polytheists. Puritans are generally in contempt of traditionalists and liberalist. Scientists cannot agree with Occultists. Why, husbands will never understand wives and vice versa J

Not only do each of the sets speak a different language, but each also on a different paradigm of thought. Many of these sets inherently have a particular model of the world; consider that both theology and science are essentially doing the same thing – figuring out the world and our position in it!

To unravel bigger questions, first step would be to release oneself from the confines of the paradigms (and labels) one is familiar with and start testing the world out of that box.

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them” is what Einstein said.

Lila

Abuna Tuma, the Christian priest noticed the opening-crack atop this rocky hill when he first ventured here alone. He was only ten when he discovered it when a hyena emerged out of it with a strange object in its mouth, something almost like a crucifix. He would later fix his calling to priesthood at this ominous sign. He still visits this small opening in the rock on his spiritual retreats. The priest has led the local parish to believe that this was a spot where Jesus spent his ‘wilderness’ days and that there used to be an ancient church at the same spot, the remnants of the church intact underground he said. The strange tiny engravings, he believed, just inside the mouth of the opening were faded-writings in a language long lost. To keep it intact and as pure as he found it, he fixed a glassy covering over the opening, closing it to any further curiosity.

Lieutenant Mattias is a geologist in the Imperial forces, operating in and around Sudan. His job was to help the Engineering team blast a road through this treacherous land. The road will quickly transport necessary supplies to northern front. While surveying this rocky hill, he observed something like a fault line at the base of a rocky hill, like a vertical cleft. When the torch was shone into it, he observed a cave-like interior with chalky markings on the walls and some shiny powder on the ground. But too narrow for most humans to squeeze through the opening. Lt. Mattias decided to work around this rocky hill, leave it alone and record the location as potential crystal mine.

It was not long before the archaeologists of the area stumbled upon another cave-like opening just a bit uphill of the cleft at the base. What they found in this one was spectacular: there were Lascaux-like figures and that too with colors & pigments that were never known possible during ‘pre-history’. The paintings stretched inwards some 200 metres of twisting walls, like a museum of events across a time period.

Some years later, an eccentric ancient astronaut theorist raked up some noise on social media about this hill. He claimed that the whole hill is nothing but hardened sandstone but burying a large disc shaped alien ship that crashed into this location just before the last ice age. The cleft, the cave and the church openings were nothing but the cracks into the disc-like ship. He proposed that stone-age timed humans, unaware of this fact, had used one of its opening into its interiors as a dwelling and later some Christians Stylites would have possibly used the hill top too.

Recently, Dennis, a nine year old of Father Tuma’s parish, ventured atop the same hill one day and decided to remove the covering. In his innocent curiosity, he even crawled down into the opening. There is no school at this time of the year and he had all the time in the world discovering it. By evening, his absence from meal-times caused a commotion back in his village. His parents and friends, along with the priest, combed the area. Towards dusk the priest, saddened now almost sure that the boy was lost to the hyenas, went out to the hill top to pray. To his astonishment he saw the boy crawl out of the opening, just as he saw the hyena 20 years ago.

The boy was smiling, he said “Abuna, I had the time of my life!”

The priest, furious that Dennis defiled the holy place, shouted back “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

The boy was still gleeful “There is no church there Abuna! But a long slide that speeds you all the way to the bottom and then there is way to climb up through another tunnel. Looks like the rock termites took a long time to build it”