Embarassing Astrology: Illuminati and the Age of Reason

A few weeks ago, I did an interview with the lovely Kanyakumari Ayurveda school.

A student read the interview and asked a very good question of her own:

Funny that you mention in the interview that as a teenager, astrology seemed embarrassing. I wonder when such sentiment started building? This reminded me of my classmate's comment. He is an Ivy league graduate who's not doing very well in life. He said "Astrology is too unscientific to me." My inside caption answer to that was "That's why you missed out on 3 big startup exit opportunities." My personal suspicion is that 1) on the surface, industrialization called for humans who just do what they are told, so the ruling class assigned prestige on things that push people further away from success like institutionalized education 2) or, more importantly, there was a cosmic change at some point (perhaps French revolution? End of feudalism?) that somehow pushed certain souls into higher state of consciousness and certain others into "employee" state of mind, to make the industrialization possible to begin with. I think something like this happened again when startup bubble started (division of super smart who use every wisdom passed down to mankind and super dumb thinking institutionalized "knowledge" enlighten them - like myself getting an MBA for a high price). What do you think cause that embarrssement in your young self?

Here is my answer:

Ah, that is a really cool question. I would say it is a bit of both. (Note the rise of the industrialist illuminati with the "Age of Reason".) The best politicians, religionists, industrialists, and businesspeople always​ have used astrology.

The separation of the "everyday people" from astrology probably did occur around the end of feudalism with the rise of industrialism and "Reason".

​My recent ancestors came from a time/space that was still somewhat feudal (early 1900's rural Slovakia, the last place in Europe to get Christianity fully and still not a "Reasonable" place), and the occult was and continues to be quite active in these communities.

​Even in the USA, where far-Eastern Europeans formed very strong communities, such as the pocket of Western PA in which I grew up, there is a deep abiding respect for and use of herbs, organic/biodynamic farming, astrology, and magic.

Remember that the library of the Vatican is covered with a beautiful astrology mural. It and others like it are all dated to 16th Century, an apex of astrological influence from right before the Age of Reason. Perhaps the installation of the separation of the everyday people from astrology  is a result of this apex of astrology, a kind of great peaking awareness of the ​power​ of astrology and a development of a long game of maximizing its power by the most resourced people. Industrialism also took everyday people away from the lessons of wild land and Nature, including the hidden lessons.

​I kind of consider myself one of the first Millennials, so to speak, where, 20 years ahead of the curve, I dropped academia for something much more cool, difficult, and truly worthwhile. As such, I have done things for reasons that I consider ancient: is it true? is it beautiful? is it eternal?  As a teenager, I shied away from astrology simply with a teenager's keen sense of the social: my friends were all science geeks like myself and I wanted to join the whole lot of them in conversation and not stick out.

It is only when we grew up, literally and metaphorically, did their and my respect for, and language and understanding of, these hidden spaces such as astrology grow and develop too. 

Also, how my parents did astrology seemed more about the immediate, the material. The truth, beauty, and eternity of Vedic astrology was not yet shown  to me. And theoretical science as a  field did show those traits to me. I am grateful for that knowledge now for their practical aspects and am only sad for the years of yearning, for the chasm in my life when science was all I had before Vedic astrology appeared, but as a friend points out, without that time, I would not be where I am today.

In a similar way, I am not angry at the Illuminati and the industrialists, et al. ​When astrology has a full comeback, it will be all the sweeter for having been tested.