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Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon -
Ray Willis and Patrick Curry.
Berg Publishers, Oxford 2004
Cloth 1 85973 682 3 £50.00
Paperback I 85973 6874 £15.99
Reviewed by Annabella Kitson in Astrology Quarterly Spring 2004
 This
is recommended reading for those putting a tentative toe into the turbulent
waters of astrology; required reading for those long gambolling therein,
still unaware of the implications of the various modes.
Patrick Curry, social historian, known to the Lodge as author of A Confusion
of Prophets, originated what is by no means a duet! The text is explicitly
divided between the two writers. Their early careers enphasize the divide
between open-minded and hostile attitudes to astrology. Willis, as a cub
reporter, was forced to fabricate a “Stars Column” –
“presumably harmless exercise in deception”.
Curry “came early to astrology, and fell in love with its richness,
subtlety and complexity as a symbolic system.” But he disliked the
uncertainties of interpretation, and being marginalized by conventional
colleagues.
Late in life Willis studied anthropology with Evans Pritchard, worked
on spirit healing and mythology in remote areas, before researching astrology.
His question: Why did the public – to scientists' fury – cling
to what they stigmatized as infantile delusions?
He discusses cosmic myths in a range of non-Western cultures, providing
thought-provoking comparative material of great interest to Fixed Star
buffs.
Willis places astrology within an anthropologist's experience of re1ated
phenomena.
Curry presents a condensed, sometimes controversial history of astrology
in the West. He identifies its three main enemies: first, the Christian
Church (it, surely, chiefly opposed the fatalism of the astrology he himself
deplores?); next, scientists and those astrologers who collude with their
researches; last, 'metropolitan literary professionals meticulously defined
to – it seems – exclude the many writers and artists who are
the allies of 'enchantment'.)
Max Weber (b.1864), a powerful influence, is quoted in a sympathetic
discussion of “the soul finding its own fate”. Briefly, Enchantment
has been lost to the aridity of the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic tradition,
and to the inappropriate, misapplied, pretentious science of today.
Via Northern European Pagan astrology, which was ousted when the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic
tradition came to dominate cultures around the Mediterranean basin, Curry
arrives at divination as the ideal.
He sees the Metic mode as natural for this open, participatory method
where one may negotiate with the gods. Metis, (goddess of Wise Counsel
in Hesiod's Theogony) has been remodelled recently as a kind of intelligence:
“cunning wisdom”.
A “mode of action or attitude of mind... both intellectually and
morally ambiguous... the ability to see through and disregard conventions”.
Both ancient myth and recent application are worth exploring.
Curry's contribution is controlled, passionate rhetoric, resisting summary
and requiring a strong digestion. It is an “anatomy” of astrology,
performed with surgical élan.
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