Ye Skepticism
by John Walker on Aug.17, 2007, under The Rest
How lovely that Mr Shakespeare was scoffing at the nonsense of astrology all those years ago.
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,–often the surfeit
of our own behavior,–we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star! My
father compounded with my mother under the
dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under Ursa
major; so that it follows, I am rough and
lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing.
August 17th, 2007 on 13:30
Fallacy Alert. And you don’t even need Barthes to tell you so.
This is not “Shakespeare”, but one of his characters, Edmund. He is Edgar’s bitter, bastard brother, a big baddie in King Lear. This speech of his (beginning, earlier, with “Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law my services are bound”. He commits terrible crimes, and is eventually hoist by his own petard in a plot device which makes clear that his little speech is dramatic hubris of the most potent Greek kind. Deny the fates, and they come back and kick you in your puny arse. As he dies, he admits he’s been a treacherous, arrogant son of a bitch, and basically recants.
So NURR.
August 17th, 2007 on 20:36
Plus John is a Christian so just as foolish as astrologers! A-ha!
August 17th, 2007 on 23:34
bob – you got me there with your master satire-wit.
Nick – oops. I just started reading it, and was delighted by the rant. Ah well.
August 18th, 2007 on 10:50
Trust Nick to spoil things.
August 18th, 2007 on 13:35
What do you think of astrotheology, John?
August 18th, 2007 on 16:17
Well, it’s nonsense.
August 26th, 2007 on 15:04
So Egyptians worshiping a pharaoh as the sun god is nonsense? What about other sun gods of yore?
August 29th, 2007 on 21:46
Well yes, clearly it was nonsense.
Are you arguing that the Sun is God? I’d argue that it’s a massive ball of very hot gases.
September 1st, 2007 on 16:25
Haha, no. I’m not arguing that’s the case. I was illustrating the idea that old religions heavily featured astronomical motifs and themes.
Representations of a God as the Sun, and vice versa, feature in many religions including Christianity: Jesus, the light of the world and the risen saviour. There are many intriguing parallels between old mythological religions and modern theological religions, and their apparent similarities to astrological events.
I was wondering what your thoughts on the matter were.