Seeing with Different Eyes Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination Edited by Patrick Curry and Angela Voss Cambridge Scholars Publishing Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination, Edited by Patrick Curry and Angela Voss This book first published 2007 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2007 by Patrick Curry and Angela Voss and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-361-1, ISBN (13): 9781847183613 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments ..............................................................vii Introduction .............................................................................................ix PART I: ANCIENT EYES Chapter One..............................................................................................3 A World full of Signs: Understanding Divination in Ancient Stoicism Peter T. Struck Chapter Two...........................................................................................21 Chaldean Divination and the Ascent to Heaven Algis Uzdavinys Chapter Three.........................................................................................35 Oracles, Dreams and Astrology in Iamblichus’ De mysteriis Crystal Addey Chapter Four...........................................................................................59 Living Light: An Exploration of Divine Embodiment Gregory Shaw PART II: RELIGIOUS EYES Chapter Five ...........................................................................................91 Theurgy in Theravadan Buddhism Garry Phillipson Chapter Six...........................................................................................129 “Nor by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets”: The Story of the Woman at the Well in I Samuel Ann Jeffers vi Table of Contents PART III: MUSICAL EYES Chapter Seven.......................................................................................143 “The Power of a Melancholy Humour”: Divination and Divine Tears Angela Voss Chapter Eight........................................................................................173 Four Faces of Apollo: Divination, Music, Cosmology And Healing in Ben Jonson’s Masque of Augurs (1622) Anthony W. Johnson PART IV: ASTROLOGICAL EYES Chapter Nine.........................................................................................209 A Phenomenological Approach to Astrology: Thinking of Astrology at the end of Metaphysics Marilynn Lawrence Chapter Ten ..........................................................................................227 The Unique Case of Interpretation: Explorations in the Epistemology of Astrology Geoffrey Cornelius PART V: CULTURAL EYES Chapter Eleven .....................................................................................257 The Chance Game of Divining? The Case of the Enochian Chess of the Golden Dawn and its use in Divination Johann Friedrich Wolfgang Hasler Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................295 Mind, Body and Cosmos in Mayan Divination Dennis Tedlock Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................311 Sacred Connections between Self, Other and the World: The Emergence of Integrative Medicine Barbara Tedlock Contributors..........................................................................................329 Index.....................................................................................................334 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The essays in this collection originated at a conference held at the University of Kent, Canterbury, in April 2006, entitled “Seeing with Different Eyes: a Conference on Astrology and Divination”. This was the second event of its kind at Kent, and this is the second publication to emerge from the teaching and research initiative on divination located in the School of European Culture and Languages (religious studies section).1 The MA programme in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination, sponsored by the Sophia Trust, is currently in its second year and is attracting international attention from students and researchers involved in the academic study of the theories and practices of divination and the cosmologies within which these practices arise. The focus at Kent is on the epistemology and hermeneutics of divination and symbolic interpretation as a field of enquiry in its own right, and it is unique in regarding divinatory consciousness as a ubiquitous human phenomenon worthy of investigation on its own terms. Divination studies have tended to become subsumed into other disciplines such as anthropology, classics or history of ideas, but in locating divination (and particularly the study of astrology) within religious studies, we are acknowledging its roots in a sacred cosmos whose order is perceived not solely through speculation but also, if not primarily, through participation in ritual activity. Divination is understood as a fundamentally “religious” experience, however broadly the word is conceived, and however valiantly science, behavioural psychology or the social sciences may seek to prove or disprove its “truth” through their own frames of reference. Our approach is truly interdisciplinary, as the papers in this volume demonstrate, but it is not reductionist. Divination is addressed here through the lenses of ancient philosophy, religious practice, the arts, astrology and specific cultural forms and contexts, all of which emphasise a dynamic interplay between the human rational faculty and the religious imagination, the interpreter and the symbol, the abstract concept and living experience. We do not seek to explain divination, or to relegate it to the product of a “primitive” mentality, but to understand its many manifestations as a rich testimony to the power and creativity of the human soul as it seeks to make sense of the unseen forces that surround it, and act accordingly. viii Preface and Acknowledgments We would like to thank all the staff and students in the MA programmes in the Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience and the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination at Kent for their enthusiasm and intellectual encouragement. Particular thanks go to Dr Jeremy Carrette and Dr Karl Leydecker for their confidence in and support of divination studies within SECL, and to Dr Peter Moore and Dr Leon Schlamm for fostering the seed of cosmology and divination within the study of Mysticism until it was old enough to fend for itself. We are also grateful to the Sophia Trust, without whose funding this initiative would not have been possible, and to the Urania Trust, for ongoing financial support. Finally, we would like to acknowledge Dr Alie Bird for her painstaking proof-reading and indexing, and thank her for her dedication and commitment to this project. 1 The first publication being The Imaginal Cosmos: Astrology, Divination and the Sacred, Angela Voss and Jean Hinson Lall, eds., (Canterbury: University of Kent, 2007). INTRODUCTION PATRICK CURRY Our country from which we came is There… How shall we travel to it, where is our way of escape? We cannot get there on foot; for our feet only carry us everywhere in this world, from one country to another. You must not get ready a carriage, either, or a boat. Let all these things go, and do not look. Shut your eyes and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use.1 The above quotation from Plotinus, which inspired the title of this volume, points to what is perhaps its central thread: namely, that divinatory knowledge involves a mode of insight of quite a different order to normal everyday consciousness. Impervious and even alien to our accepted (and acceptable) human discourses, our familiar frames of reference and our habitual ways of seeing and evaluating the world, it requires a shift in perception. To explore this “other way of seeing” posed by the experiences of diviners themselves—and to allow it to lead to a change of conceptualisation—is a relatively new challenge for academic research, and the essays in this collection, through their various “different eyes”, seek to meet it. There is currently a renaissance of divination studies within the humanities and social sciences, and the papers collected here reflect and will undoubtedly further stimulate this development. Indeed, in both their scope and depth they offer impressive testimony to it. Ranging from ancient Chaldean theurgy (Algis Uzdavinys) through Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Augurs” (Anthony W. Johnson) to Enochian Chess in the Order of the Golden Dawn (Johann Friedrich Wolfgang Hasler), not to mention a wholly original treatment of Buddhist theurgy (Garry Phillipson) and a precise description, almost a re-enactment, of contemporary Mayan divination (Dennis Tedlock), they are as colourful in their contrasting moods as variations on a musical theme. In this introduction, however, I shall concentrate on trying to outline some of the overall context for the book as a whole, and to draw together some of its most significant common themes. x Introduction A key