Astrology and science

[Eric the Green]

Bob Butler throws out astrology as an example of an ideology or value held to despite it having no "objective truth". It is usually very hard to get through to folks who have this notion, which itself is an ideological or value held despite any evidence. 

If astrology is held either to be objective truth never to be questioned, or as a falsehood never to be considered, in either case that is just another dogma like Christian fundamentalism, free-market fundamentalism, conspiracy theory, xenophobia, fundamentalist marxism, or whatever the value or rigid ideology it may be.

It is not longer correct to hold that science does not allow for astrology to be valid. Quantum entanglement theory has proven spooky action at a distance.

This does not by any means prove that any or all claims by astrologers are valid. First of all, astrology deals with human beings and their character and fortune. This is a subject that traditional physical science cannot penetrate. The intellect is characterized by an inability to comprehend life. Consciousness is beyond its ability to encompass. The more alive an object of study is, the less it can be understood by empirical, rational science. The more alive an object of study is, the more its behavior is spontaneous and free and thus cannot be predicted.

Which means that no scientific predictions, either by biology, psychology, sociology, or astrology/esoteric knowledge, and be fully valid, but only valid within a range of uncertainty. The more alive the object is, the greater the uncertainty. The doctrine of efficient cause and effect declines in its validity the more alive an object of study is. Instead, synchronicity and events that "go with" each other become more-often the standard.

Nevertheless, some empirical verification can be made about these subjects, if any claim is made by them about objects of study. Many astrologers just work from the rules and traditions of astrology, although they may be based on past experience or theory. Myself, I prefer that my descriptions and predictions using astrology have an empirical basis as well as on theory and traditions. Such verification of claims made by astrology or other life sciences cannot have the reliability of those sciences on which engineering is based. The objects of those sciences are only barely conscious or alive, not enough to affect the predictions more than the uncertainty principle might allow for. You cannot raise a building or a bridge or put a man on the moon by using astrology. So I do not claim such a level of "objective truth" for my claims. They have some validity and use for prediction if there is a pattern of correspondence of past events to predictions, to some degree. But absolute certainty cannot be gained about astrological predictions. And the Strauss and Howe generations and turnings theory is in much the same boat.

It's interesting though that I mentioned putting a man on the moon. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, Jupiter and Uranus, the planets of flight, adventure and invention, were exactly aligned-- to the minute of arc. Not only that, but the Moon itself was also exactly aligned with them at this moment. What were the chances of that? 

This is what esoteric doctrines call "a sign." The solar system was aligned with the human Moon Landing. Was this conjunction the efficient cause of the landing? No. But it showed some kind of connection with the cosmos for this cosmically-significant event. It upheld the philosophy that all things and all beings are connected, even especially the planets of our solar system and Planet Earth and its Moon and their cycles.

What gives planets their meaning in astrology? A clue is provided by the fact that if you go back a million years from today on Earth, there could not have been planets in the sky that indicated human flight or inventions, or many other human activities and ideas, because such did not exist yet. As humanity evolved through the phases indicated by the planets in planetary dynamics, they discovered and began to embody the meaning of those planets, each in turn. There is something about the planets that indicates their meaning, but mostly it was humans and their discoveries about life through their physical and social evolution in phases that endowed the planets with their meanings.

http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html

[TnT]

"Quantum entanglement theory has proven spooky action at a distance."

The trouble with using quantum entanglement as an "explanation" for Astrology is that we really don't have entanglement examples over that kind of distance. A recent exploration into a new type of computing, "quantum" computing looks to use entanglement. Yet, they have to work very, very hard to get the entangled entities far enough apart - we're talking tiny distances - to manifest the desired phenomenon.

Eric, you and I have gone over this many times. For a scientific principle to be demonstrated, there has to be a hypothesis of how it does what it does. One posits a physical principle or process at work that explains the phenomenon. Then one tests that process. Holding other variables constant during the experiment is handy if it can be done. So, if we posit an hypothesis for a planetary alignment of some sort affecting an event here on earth, we need something - what? Gravity? That sure seems like a good place to start. It's something we can measure. Then we ask ourselves, what would, say, Jupiter's gravity do to "something" on earth that might cause or prevent an event to occur? Right away, doesn't it seem that the impact would be vanishingly small compared to other gravitational forces? So, fine. Maybe that's not it then. What other physical "something" might it be? Consciousness? Spiritual force of some kind? Gosh, those are hard to get one's hands around.

Seems like we're left with correlation, huh? Something happens when Mars and Venus and the moon are wherever - did their being in that position "cause" or "influence" the something that happened? Gets pretty rabbit-hole-y pretty fast, doesn't it.

But you're right! Strauss/Howe's system is very much a correlation "science." Yet, do the cycles cause the events? Or do the events merely run on cycles? That's a very important question. My money would be on the events running naturally on cycles. Astrology also runs on cycles. So why wouldn't it make sense for many, many other things to simply run on cycles that match up with. parallel with or oppose the astrological cycles? That actually seems like more of a simple (Occam's Razor) explanation.

The sunrise and sunset run on cycles. The phases of the moon run on cycles. Seasons come in cycles. Do they cause one another? Is one the root cause? Well, sorta. The physical laws constrain their motions and each individual motion affects the other. By using the phases of the moon, we certainly could develop a system to predict seasons. Would that suggest that the moon causes seasons? No. Would we call that an astrological "system" for predicting something? I dunno - you tell me! It makes as much sense, actually MUCH more sense than lining up planets and trying to predict a political outcome.

But ... Bless your heart, Eric. You like it. It does something for you. It's entertaining. And ... anything is possible. We certainly have not solved all the mystery of the cosmos.

BTW, have you sampled the Harvard physicist Max Tegmark? "Our Mathematical Universe." Fascinating read. He's one of the "infinite universes" dudes. This book is hard to follow, but I was able to get enough to stay interested by understanding some of the high points.

[David Horn]

(12-17-2020, 11:43 PM)TnT Wrote: But you're right!  Strauss/Howe's system is very much a correlation "science."  Yet, do the cycles cause the events?  Or do the events merely run on cycles?  That's a very important question.  My money would be on the events running naturally on cycles.  Astrology also runs on cycles.  So why wouldn't it make sense for many, many other things to simply run on cycles that match up with. parallel with or oppose the astrological cycles?  That actually seems like more of a simple (Occam's Razor) explanation.

The sunrise and sunset run on cycles.  The phases of the moon run on cycles.  Seasons come in cycles.  Do they cause one another?  Is one the root cause?  Well, sorta.  The physical laws constrain their motions and each individual motion affects the other.  By using the phases of the moon, we certainly could develop a system to predict seasons.  Would that suggest that the moon causes seasons?  No.  Would we call that an astrological "system" for predicting something?  I dunno - you tell me!  It makes as much sense, actually MUCH more sense than lining up planets and trying to predict a political outcome.

But ... Bless your heart, Eric.  You like it.  It does something for you.  It's entertaining.  And ... anything is possible.  We certainly have not solved all the mystery of the cosmos.

BTW, have you sampled the Harvard physicist Max Tegmark?  "Our Mathematical Universe."  Fascinating read.  He's one of the "infinite universes" dudes.  This book is hard to follow, but I was able to get enough to stay interested by understanding some of the high points.

I have no problem with astrology as clock and calendar, which may be the actual origin of astrology.  The prehistorians weren't stupid, just highly ignorant.  That wouldn't have precluded them from observing and using the astronomical as a guide, building a narrative around it, and anchoring it with a belief structure to sustain it.  That doesn't validate or invalidate the practice, but it might explain it.

[Eric the Green]

(12-17-2020, 11:43 PM)TnT Wrote: "Quantum entanglement theory has proven spooky action at a distance."

The trouble with using quantum entanglement as an "explanation" for Astrology is that we really don't have entanglement examples over that kind of distance. A recent exploration into a new type of computing, "quantum" computing looks to use entanglement. Yet, they have to work very, very hard to get the entangled entities far enough apart - we're talking tiny distances - to manifest the desired phenomenon.

As I remember it, yes we do have entanglement over that kind of distance.
https://www.livescience.com/28550-how-qu...aphic.html
In quantum physics, entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, even when separated by great distances. The phenomenon so riled Albert Einstein he called it "spooky action at a distance."

On this Bohr was right and Einstein was wrong

Quote:Eric, you and I have gone over this many times. For a scientific principle to be demonstrated, there has to be a hypothesis of how it does what it does. One posits a physical principle or process at work that explains the phenomenon. Then one tests that process. Holding other variables constant during the experiment is handy if it can be done. So, if we posit an hypothesis for a planetary alignment of some sort affecting an event here on earth, we need something - what? Gravity? That sure seems like a good place to start. It's something we can measure. Then we ask ourselves, what would, say, Jupiter's gravity do to "something" on earth that might cause or prevent an event to occur? Right away, doesn't it seem that the impact would be vanishingly small compared to other gravitational forces? So, fine. Maybe that's not it then. What other physical "something" might it be? Consciousness? Spiritual force of some kind? Gosh, those are hard to get one's hands around.

Many times? I guess so. I probably explained everything I can say in my above post. For me, the great thing about astrology is that it demonstrates that reality goes beyond physical determinism, or as I called it above, efficient cause and effect, or it could be called mechanical cause and effect. For those with my kind of bent, the world (the universe) is not a machine. Mechanistic determinism was created in order for us to make machines. Machines operate according to those principles. But life and consciousness do not, and can't be explained by them. So astrology helps fill that purpose. But as I said, having humans as its object of study, precision and definite predictions are not possible. If you wish to stick to the mechanistic view, that is your perogative. I understand if you can't quite get other kinds of connection. In my view though, science no longer disallows astrology, which is not to say it has proven it valid. Quantum mechanics is a whole different ball of wax from the original 17th century kind.

But for those objects less alive, the scientific method is proper and necessary. Even to a large extent, we can learn a lot about living objects and their affairs through physical science too. Your point of view is more narrow than mine. I respect physical science. You do not respect the esoteric "sciences" so much.

Quote:Seems like we're left with correlation, huh? Something happens when Mars and Venus and the moon are wherever - did their being in that position "cause" or "influence" the something that happened? Gets pretty rabbit-hole-y pretty fast, doesn't it.

But you're right! Strauss/Howe's system is very much a correlation "science." Yet, do the cycles cause the events? Or do the events merely run on cycles? That's a very important question. My money would be on the events running naturally on cycles. Astrology also runs on cycles. So why wouldn't it make sense for many, many other things to simply run on cycles that match up with. parallel with or oppose the astrological cycles? That actually seems like more of a simple (Occam's Razor) explanation.

The sunrise and sunset run on cycles. The phases of the moon run on cycles. Seasons come in cycles. Do they cause one another? Is one the root cause? Well, sorta. The physical laws constrain their motions and each individual motion affects the other. By using the phases of the moon, we certainly could develop a system to predict seasons. Would that suggest that the moon causes seasons? No. Would we call that an astrological "system" for predicting something? I dunno - you tell me! It makes as much sense, actually MUCH more sense than lining up planets and trying to predict a political outcome.

But ... Bless your heart, Eric. You like it. It does something for you. It's entertaining. And ... anything is possible. We certainly have not solved all the mystery of the cosmos.

BTW, have you sampled the Harvard physicist Max Tegmark? "Our Mathematical Universe." Fascinating read. He's one of the "infinite universes" dudes. This book is hard to follow, but I was able to get enough to stay interested by understanding some of the high points.

I would tend to think the infinite universes lie beyond the distance of those we can detect. Not the parallel universe or many worlds hypothesis. Just my opinion.

It seems like the astrological cycles do a lot to clarify the other events that run in cycles, and symbolize the zeitgeist of the times. Not always, but often. It became for me an index or clock as David Horn said, but it goes beyond this because the planets and signs represent archetypes, similar to those in T4T. That is the element that allows astrology to bring history and politics and culture to life. The Planetary Dynamics theory I developed, which extends Spiral Dynamics and gives it focus, is a good example of how the archetypes explain social evolution. Did I post that essay here? http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html

But astrology to me is more than a matter of "doing something for me," and "I like it." I was convinced of it through my own process of verification. I could not ignore this. As I have explained, I started reading about the planets and signs and their meanings, and I asked myself, if this stuff is true, where are the planets in my chart? I was in a period of great change and discovery in my worldview then. I felt I was having mystical experiences or awakenings and an opening to higher consciousness, even though I did not take LSD like many others in the late-Silent to middle-Boomer 60s generation were doing. But it was like a contact high. The Strauss and Howe definition that I learned in 1997 of the prophet generation as "powered by a spiritual awakening" certainly fit me to a T, Mr. TnT!

So I identified with the planet Neptune, "the mystic" (as Gustav Holst called it, I later learned). It must be in conjunction with my Sun, I immediately thought. I looked it up, and to my amazement, it was in close conjunction to my Sun. The chances of that are about 100 to one, in my case. Then I thought, I am something of an energetic, self-expressive person with a big ego, so there must be something powerful in Leo. And I looked it up, and Mars and Pluto in Leo were aligned in my chart, which fit my expectation exactly. And I won't go through all of this, but everything in my chart was as I predicted before looking it up. So to the surprise of my pioneering biologist mother, I rode home that day and told her that I thought astrology was valid! The actual process of this verification and discovery went on for a year and a half; by 1969 I learned to set up my chart, and verified that my rising sign and planet was the one I predicted. Uranus in Cancer was exactly on my Ascendant.

But, this first discovery about Neptune and so on was in late 1967. A few months later, I thought about what was happening in society. There must be an outer-invisible planet conjunction going on, I predicted, because revolution, unconventional cultures and transcendent experiences were happening, and those planets indicate this. And then soon I thought, when was this awakening energy at its peak? The conjunction must have been when I felt this energy the strongest, when my own awakening took off, in late June 1966. So, I looked it up, and Uranus and Pluto were exactly aligned in a rare conjunction at this exact time. It was a couple of years later that I started thinking, but what about all the other outer-planet conjunctions? What did they correspond to? Was there a cycle? Thus began my book, which was published on the very same day as T4T in January 1997, exactly during the same conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune that was also going on in 1971 when I first started on it.

So, whatever science-minded people, of which I had been one, might say, I could not ever deny astrology again. It was not only "correlations," but my predictions of where planets would be before looking them up. And the evidence, and my correct predictions, mounted further, and I became the only prophet to have predicted so many major events in the following years. People may quibble with me about that, but I know what I predicted and what I witnessed. It's like I have had inside information. T4T is a natural ally in this work, because the modern saeculum was defined in T4T as exactly the same length as one Uranus cycle around the Sun-- without them mentioning Uranus or The Sun. Their cycle was one that astrologers already knew about.

So, perhaps I would be more successful and popular if I had gone into science or computers, like my parents would have preferred. But I was already a rather eccentric and lonely guy, and I was not in tune with established culture. I was as natural and as fully an example of the prophet archetype as anyone that could be found.

Physical science tells you what calculations are needed to predict what reactions will occur or whether your building will stand. Astrology is something different; it is something you can feel in your bones.

[Eric the Green]

My essay today for our Unitarian Universalist Band of Writers concerned cycles, generational theory, conspiracy theory, science, and astrology.

Cycles
by Eric Alan Meece
Dec.18, 2021, revised Jan 2, 2022
UU Band of Writers
prompt: social studies


In high school and college, cycles are not usually taught about. The idea is not respectable in social studies. History is taught in great detail, and in academic and professional circles sociology and economics aspire to be sciences, however “dismal” they may actually be. Only empirical facts are presented and valued. What is not verified by experimental testing in a laboratory, or at least in careful field studies, is not accepted. Theories about cycles are considered non-academic speculation.

I admit, I prefer empirical, verified facts to made-up substitutes for them. I look to actual measurements to prove that climate change caused by humans is not a hoax, for example. I watched a documentary recently on the JFK assassination narrated by KGO San Francisco investigative reporter Dan Noyes. It claims that researcher Josiah Thompson proved that it was an organized hit job. Thompson said that a blurry image behind the fence on the grassy knoll was a man that a policeman saw, and that the man flashed a secret service badge although the bureau said there was none in the area. There were footprints there, and mud on a car that later disappeared. I guess Thompson’s theory is that the culprit was able to put the gun and bullet cartridges in the trunk of the car quickly before the policeman arrived and still saw him, but no-one ever saw such a gun or any cartridges. Debris from a supposed shot to the front of JFK’s head was scattered to the left and hit motorcycle riders on the left of the car, but not on the right. He said Kennedy’s head apparently moved forward at first, but only because Zapruder jiggled the camera.

But that jiggle would only have moved the entire scene forward, not the head within the scene. And the famous film showed no 4th shot, as Thompson claimed. And it has already been proven by tests that the bullet found on Gov. Connally’s stretcher and the bullet fragments found in JFK’s car and in JFK’s skull could only have come from Oswald’s gun, which was left with its cartridges and with his fingerprints on it in the building he worked in, a building from which he was the only one missing after the shooting. And so on. So the story that a phony secret service agent behind the fence shot JFK in the front of his head seems to me nothing but a made-up theory to fit Thompson’s preconceived belief in a professional hit job. Even films show that the debris didn’t hit the motorcycle riders on the right side of JFK’s car because these riders stopped, while those on the left who got hit with debris did not. And how could Oswald be part of a conspiracy hatched in 2 days, since nobody knew JFK’s motorcade route before then?

So it is interesting to debunk such conspiracy theories. But do you need an empirical study or accurate measurements to prove that you breathe in and out in a cycle? Do you need facts to prove that the sun rises and sets every day, or that we experience the seasons each year? Can science deny that time is measured with these cycles, and that even our clocks are circular? Or that wheels on our cars have to rotate in cycles in order for them to take us anywhere, even straight forward? Can young women deny that they experience menstrual cycles that roughly correspond to the Moon’s monthly phases, or that tides rise and fall according to this cycle? Don’t radio signals move in cycles, and isn’t the table of elements called periodical? Even our brains move in waves. Waves are cycles too, and waves move in the ocean. Even what we call matter is often said by scientists to be waves. Our recent ice ages moved in cycles too.

We hear pundits say that our politics move in cycles, as the pendulum swings from left to right. Looking at history, this is hard to deny. Economic forecasters use cycles, and theorists like Turchin and Kondratieff offer cycles to explain trends and events in history. Strauss and Howe presented a generation cycle that seems to work, since the new generation of civic-minded, collegial, tech-savvy, well-behaved networkers turned out just as they had predicted, and the “fourth turning” 21-year crisis they foresaw in their cycle for our times seems to have arrived on schedule.

Yet these kind of cycle theories are not seen as respectable, regardless of how many facts are discovered to demonstrate them. They don’t apply in every detail, or to everyone; they are not physical laws that can be disproven by one exception. But without cyclic theories we have no idea where we are or where we are going in our lives or in society.

That’s why I wrote my book: Horoscope for the New Millennium. Most people today are cynical and think that the USA, the “empire”, Western Civilization, or civilization itself, is going to collapse soon or fall into a new dark age. But I experienced a great awakening in myself and in society simultaneously in 1966. Soon afterward I read about the meanings of the planets in astrology, and then I predicted exactly where they would be in my chart. I considered the meaning of the slow outer 3 planets and saw that a rare conjunction between them happened on the exact date I expected to correspond to this great awakening. I approached this subject very empirically. I looked at other such conjunctions too and was able to lay out a landscape of time designated by these planetary cycles that has also been seen by non-astrologers.

The three greatest turning points map out our history. The Axis Age of the sixth century BC is well known as the start of many religions and of our western civilization and science. The Fall of Rome ushered in the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance began our modern age of humanism and world exploration. In between these are other turning points. The same planetary cycle designates one of these in the 1890s. It was the start of a new cycle of civilization.

Seeing this turning point in this great cycle, I discovered how much of our society today stems from this rapid new beginning in circa 1892-- in modern arts, in new existential philosophy, in new physics and psychology, and in enormous technological and political changes. If we are still so close to the beginning of this 500-year cycle, then we can’t be near the start of a Dark Age. And looking around, despite the great challenges we face, our society does not seem ready to collapse from exhaustion, as Rome or the Middle Ages did. We seem pretty lively, and there’s still a lot of energy. Cars still go briskly along the street I live on carrying people to work every day. Our media is still full of life, and young people are bright and charismatic. Maybe the cycle is correct. Maybe it disproves the cynics. Maybe endless details of facts without any perspective are not sufficient for our understanding, despite what stuffy academics say.


References and links:
Horoscope for the New Millennium by E Alan Meece
The Fourth Turning By Neil Howe and William Strauss
JFK Unsolved: The Real Conspiracies by Dan Noyes
The Reason for Conspiracies by E Alan Meece with many links on the assassination and other conspiracy theories
Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald by Frontline

[pbrower2a]

Astrology does not get academic respect. Obviously the trashy predictions in mass-circulation media are garbage unworthy of attention. "This might be a good day to plan that long-needed, life-expanding

If astrology has any validity it is as a timing mechanism. We all know about the daily cycle related to the Earth spinning on its axis with comparatively-cold nights and warm days and the annual cycle of the seasons. Where I live in a Dfa climate summers are tropical and winters are polar., and the plant growth and agriculture fit it well. Winter blizzards shield the soil moisture that seedlings will need in the spring, with snowmelt giving copious water to thirsty plants as temperatures rise. The revolution of the moon around the Earth creates the tides which may have created the tidal zones in which the widest variety of life evolved. Tides may have made evolution possible, and large tides are impossible without the moon. I have no idea of what cycles I would associate with Mercury, Venus, or Mars orbits, but Jupiter spends roughly one year per zodiac constellation (well, technically the "right leg" of Ophiuchus does wade into the zodiac, the ecliptic passes close enough to corners of Cetus and Orion that the southern part of the sun can be in Cetus or Orion. The Chinese zodiac fits one year of Jupiter to each constellation of the Chinese zodiac.

The Jupiter orbit corresponds with the numeric grades of K-12 education in the USA. Three orbits of Saturn (29.46 X 3 = 88.38 years) or one of Uranus (roughly 84 years), or half the 164.8-year orbit of Neptune is roughly a long human life. One orbit of Saturn is enough for starting a fully-professional career as a physician or attorney after birth, and it is safe to say that most physicians and attorneys had very carefully-guided childhoods. It's all coincidence, it would seem.

Cycles are important in business. I remember seeing a graph that recognized 19-year cycles of prosperity, crashes, depressions, and recoveries from 1969 that had nadirs in 1932, 1951, and 1969 (fairly accurate) with forthcoming nadirs in 1987 and 2008. One of the biggest one-day falls in the valuation of stocks was experienced in 1987 for reasons that nobody fully understands. The market crashes of 1930 (the real crash was in 1930) and 2008 are 78 years apart in two different starts of a Crisis Era.

[Eric the Green]

(01-03-2022, 04:14 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Astrology does not get academic respect. Obviously the trashy predictions in mass-circulation media are garbage unworthy of attention. "This might be a good day to plan that long-needed, life-expanding  

If astrology has any validity it is as a timing mechanism. We all know about the daily cycle related to the Earth spinning on its axis with comparatively-cold nights and warm days and the annual cycle of the seasons. Where I live in a Dfa climate summers are tropical and winters are polar., and the plant growth and agriculture fit it well. Winter blizzards shield the soil moisture that seedlings will need in the spring, with snowmelt giving copious water to thirsty plants as temperatures rise. The revolution of the moon around the Earth creates the tides which may have created the tidal zones in which the widest variety of life evolved. Tides may have made evolution possible, and large tides are impossible without the moon. I have no idea of what cycles I would associate with Mercury, Venus, or Mars orbits, but Jupiter spends roughly one year per zodiac constellation (well, technically the "right leg" of Ophiuchus does wade into the zodiac, the ecliptic passes close enough to corners of Cetus and Orion that the southern part of the sun can be in Cetus or Orion. The Chinese zodiac fits one year of Jupiter to each constellation of the Chinese zodiac.  

The Jupiter orbit corresponds with the numeric grades of K-12 education in the USA. Three orbits of Saturn  (29.46 X 3 = 88.38 years) or one of Uranus (roughly 84 years), or half the 164.8-year orbit of Neptune  is roughly a long human life. One orbit of Saturn is enough for starting a fully-professional career as a physician or attorney after birth, and it is safe to say that most physicians and attorneys had very carefully-guided childhoods.  It's all coincidence, it would seem.

Cycles are important in business. I remember seeing a graph that recognized 19-year cycles of prosperity, crashes, depressions, and recoveries from 1969 that had nadirs in 1932, 1951, and 1969 (fairly accurate) with forthcoming nadirs in 1987 and 2008. One of the biggest one-day falls in the valuation of stocks was experienced in 1987 for reasons that nobody fully understands.  The market crashes of 1930 (the real crash was in 1930) and 2008 are 78 years apart in two different starts of a Crisis Era.

That's right. The interesting thing is that not only astrology, but cycles in general, such as the generations theory, are not respectable in academic circles. But you are correct, in the real world (such as business), some people pay attention. That business cycle also roughly corresponds to the 20-year Jupiter-Saturn mutual cycle (in that case the opposition half-way through the cycle) that also timed presidents who got elected in zero years (during conjunctions) and could not survive in office. But that pattern seems to have been broken now, although some consider that Biden could be vulnerable to this because of his age. But Kamala Harris in my estimation is not likely to become president. Jupiter conjunct Saturn has often indicated a very evident shift in the affairs and priorities of our politics and government, as well as in our economy. We just had one a year ago, after which Biden was elected, and his build back better is still on the table.

It's more than coincidence involved, and much more than gravity, which cannot explain how the planets time particular cycles and meanings. It's true that the cycles of Jupiter through Pluto do intersect and reinforce each other, and time the phases of our lives. It's not just Uranus or Saturn, but also Neptune, as you point out (2x Uranus) and Pluto too (3x Uranus), that time the saeculum. The planets are arranged in patterns that are remarkable. It's not gravity doing all this, but something ordinary physics does not understand. Physical science does not explain everything; there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in that philosophy, is the point. But quantum physics does point the way. Everything is connected and "entangled." Regardless of the apparent distance-- and to the smog-free and nightime lights-free ancients the planets seemed much more real and closer-- our solar system is one great being and its parts resonate with each other.

Venus is the "planet of love," not just because of its heat, but because of the amazing pattern of its relationship to the Earth and Sun. It traces a five-pointed star, and fibonacci numbers. This pattern, and also the relationship of Sun, Moon and Earth, reveal the sacred number 108.