The Hermetic system of natal astrology is a specialized subject that explains the facts and basic laws pertaining to the hidden (occult) astral energies and/or processes that influence your life. Its knowledge-base is identified as the science of the soul and stars.
Its origins remain a mystery but over thousands of years the original knowledge was added to and expanded on in a not quite scientific way.
Untested beliefs and psychic (extrasensory) observations of uncertain reliability were accepted and absorbed so when the very scientific Age of Aquarius dawned in 1881 the scientizing of astrology became a crucial issue.
According to orthodoxy science is any mode of knowledge that deals with the physical realm and its phenomena. It’s a quest or method for acquiring new information pertaining to universal facts or the operations of basic laws. And science identifies information that has been thoroughly tested to determine its truthfulness.
The scientific method involves impartial observations, data, measurement, experimentation, repetition, verification, testing, peer review etc. And based on the field of study science has many classifications. The physical – Earth –sciences include astronomy, physics and chemistry; and the biological sciences like biology and medicine investigate the organic nature of life and its activities.
But astrology isn’t an Earth science. It’s the study and investigation of astral energies that have no physical properties; and the quest to discover the universal facts and basic laws of astrology – the great occult science – is made possible by a technology called the birth chart.
To cut a long story short from 1914 to 1950 the scientizing of the 7 branches of astrology was the task of Elbert Benjamine (aka CC Zain) and he transformed the ancient occult arts into modern Aquarian Age sciences.
The arts cover a vast spectrum of human creative expression and many forms of thinking and doing. They’re used to transfer ideas, values, visions, spiritual meanings and life patterns. They create cultural and individual identities and evolve through persistent and purposeful study and training. And over thousands of years that’s what astrology did.
So its scientizing by Elbert Benjamine involved radical transformation. He upgraded the abstract mystical fantasy, that attempted to make sense of the world, with irrefutable scientific facts that provide a much better understanding of reality. Yet he explained that the words he wrote were just a present day interpretation of the ancient teachings using modern day terminology and references to the findings of modern science.
The Brotherhood of Light lessons by CC Zain present the science – not the art – of astrology.
Hermetic astrology is properly identified as a science and those who advertise or promote it as an art are spreading false information and misleading the public.
The art part of natal astrology
From 1928 to 1950 when Elbert Benjamine scientized ancient astrological teachings he rewrote the astrology textbook, the old beliefs on the soul and the book of life.
Hermetic astrology is the science that allows you to find and utilize the natural potential that’s encoded in your birth chart.
Your chart allows you to engage in a detailed study of your soul and reason for being and the application of Hermetic astrology to the chart’s assessment can be called scientific in both concept and practice.
However, when you attempt to estimate birth chart or progressed chart data in terms of probable events or deal with data other than mental and emotional stimuli you’re practicing the art of astrology. So there is an art part to Hermetic astrology.
Your birth chart provides data and your assessment of the data is a scientific endeavor using data that can be called science but when you start to estimate what’s indicated in terms of probable events, taking into consideration factors like your place of birth and current environment, you’re practicing the art of event forecasting.
And even if an energy-pattern in your chart makes an event highly probable – even 99% certain – due to a number of factors you should never consider it inevitable. And it’s commonly known that the practice of event forecasting involves data identified as ‘the unexpected element.’
So the art of astrology involves the skill to assess and estimate the influence of energies and energy relationships and The Brotherhood of Light courses on astrology do not teach the art of event forecasting.
You can use them to learn the science of astrology and the rules to follow when forecasting events but the art of energy assessment as real-life events – the art part of astrology – is something you learn by applying the science to charts, verifying forecasts with the truth of reality, and practice.
The data provided by your birth chart is verified by real-life experience.
In regard to Hermetic astrology Elbert Benjamine wrote: ‘It is one of the cardinal doctrines of science, applicable to every line of research, that so long as a conditions can be adequately explained by factors already recognized, no new factor should be introduced into its explanation. Both in delineating the birth chart, and in its progression, we have held tenaciously to this principle, upon which material science has so successfully been able to build its systems.’
The science of Hermetic astrology includes rules for estimating probabilities and the estimation process – the art of astrology – considers birth chart data, progressed chart data, self-knowledge and knowledge pertaining to events made possible by current circumstance.
You now know that Elbert Benjamine scientized ancient astrological beliefs; that they’re now grounded in scientific facts and rightly called Hermetic sciences; and that the practice of natal astrology is both a science and an art where practitioners apply evidence-based facts and rules, and estimate probabilities, that are never inevitable.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
