Movie Nerd wrote:is there a mathematical formula that astrologers use in their work?

The first point to make here is that astrology is not directly relevant to this thread. The matching that Leonardo applies between the stars and the saints to construct his painting was purely and solely empirical, based on looking at the sky, understanding the cycle of the year, and embedding that natural pattern secretly in the picture.

Astrology is the claim that the patterns of the cosmos affect life on earth. The way Leonardo has used the cosmos in The Last Supper only requires cosmic effects to the level of the four seasons, since the apostles are grouped in four groups of three from right to left to match the positions of the sun in spring, summer, fall and winter.

The mathematical formula or axiom that unites astrology with science and religion, but is generally very poorly understood, is an extremely old Egyptian Hermetic idea, "as above so below". In its simplest form, this axiom means that everything shares the character of the whole of which it is part.

The earth is part of the cosmos, so our planetary biological identity shares the character of the whole of which we are part. The most basic facts of terrestrial cosmology are the regular pattern's of earth's orbit. Copernicus accurately saw that there are three main patterns, the day, the year, and the wobble of earth's axis.

Leonardo picks out the year as the main pattern. He says the biological identity of life on earth, symbolised by Christ and the twelve, is a part of the whole cosmos, and so is like the shape of the year. So he embeds the year in his painting in order to explain the meaning of the Christ story - as above so below, or thy will be done on earth as in heaven.

This cosmic mirroring principle appears in the Bible in this line from The Lord's Prayer, and in science in the recognition that laws of physics apply equally on earth as in the heavens. The scientific meaning is very basic, but is often not seen due to the magical way this principle has been distorted by both astrology and religion.

A big assumption in The Lord's Prayer is that God's will is not done on earth. Traditionally, this is understood against the theology of the fall from grace into corruption, and the hope that the Second Coming will restore a true relation between earth and heaven. So Leonardo’s depiction of a relation between earth and heaven in The Last Supper keys into this theological idea of a return to a state of grace, a true relation between time and eternity.

These concepts have been severely confused by the magical traditions in astrology, which starts from the same ‘as above so below’ principle which Sir Isaac Newton used to discover the law of gravity but extends it into highly speculative claims about individual personality. Astrology has a mathematical structure, but has not found any evidence that this structure has any causal mechanism and power.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Movie Nerd wrote:is there a mathematical formula that astrologers use in their work?

The first point to make here is that astrology is not directly relevant to this thread. The matching that Leonardo applies between the stars and the saints to construct his painting was purely and solely empirical, based on looking at the sky, understanding the cycle of the year, and embedding that natural pattern secretly in the picture.

Astrology is the claim that the patterns of the cosmos affect life on earth. The way Leonardo has used the cosmos in The Last Supper only requires cosmic effects to the level of the four seasons, since the apostles are grouped in four groups of three from right to left to match the positions of the sun in spring, summer, fall and winter.

The mathematical formula or axiom that unites astrology with science and religion, but is generally very poorly understood, is an extremely old Egyptian Hermetic idea, "as above so below". In its simplest form, this axiom means that everything shares the character of the whole of which it is part.

The earth is part of the cosmos, so our planetary biological identity shares the character of the whole of which we are part. The most basic facts of terrestrial cosmology are the regular pattern's of earth's orbit. Copernicus accurately saw that there are three main patterns, the day, the year, and the wobble of earth's axis.

Leonardo picks out the year as the main pattern. He says the biological identity of life on earth, symbolised by Christ and the twelve, is a part of the whole cosmos, and so is like the shape of the year. So he embeds the year in his painting in order to explain the meaning of the Christ story - as above so below, or thy will be done on earth as in heaven.

This cosmic mirroring principle appears in the Bible in this line from The Lord's Prayer, and in science in the recognition that laws of physics apply equally on earth as in the heavens. The scientific meaning is very basic, but is often not seen due to the magical way this principle has been distorted by both astrology and religion.

A big assumption in The Lord's Prayer is that God's will is not done on earth. Traditionally, this is understood against the theology of the fall from grace into corruption, and the hope that the Second Coming will restore a true relation between earth and heaven. So Leonardo’s depiction of a relation between earth and heaven in The Last Supper keys into this theological idea of a return to a state of grace, a true relation between time and eternity.

These concepts have been severely confused by the magical traditions in astrology, which starts from the same ‘as above so below’ principle which Sir Isaac Newton used to discover the law of gravity but extends it into highly speculative claims about individual personality. Astrology has a mathematical structure, but has not found any evidence that this structure has any causal mechanism and power.

Yeah, sorry if I made it seem that it was relevant. We just got to talking about astrological stuff, and I was curious as to that side point. But thank you for taking the time for providing the info; I found it enlightening.

Nearly five years since the last post in this thread!

Today (2 May 2019) is the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo Da Vinci - see https://www.thelocal.fr/20190502/france ... ire-valley

I did some more work on my analysis of Leonardo's use of the observed star patterns as his template for The Last Supper - see powerpoint files at http://rtulip.net/yahoo_site_admin/asse ... 24431.pptx and http://rtulip.net/yahoo_site_admin/asse ... 24511.pptx

These provide a simple proof of the hypothesis by showing how each star group is the model for each figure in turn. It remains a source of extraordinary perplexity to me that this obvious empirical scientific discovery remains of so little interest.

I struck up a friendship on this topic with Max May, who found my work on this and contacted me. His efforts to gain interest in it struck a complete brick wall. It seems the cultural barriers to the idea that Leonardo applied his basic philosophy to The Last Supper are just too strong.

Leonardo's core idea was that man is a model of the world. This is exactly what The Last Supper demonstrates in presenting Christ and the twelve disciples on the model of the visible universe. Leonardo is applying his basic method of detailed empirical observation, as seen in his anatomical drawings, combined with his political need to lightly conceal his heretical ideas, as seen in his use of mirror writing.

The underlying problem is that Leonardo's work expresses the heretical idea that Christianity originated with a rational cosmology, the Hermetic tradition expressed in the Lord's Prayer idea that God's will should be done on earth as in heaven, as above so below. By modelling all the figures in The Last Supper on the zodiac stars in order, Leonardo suggests a new paradigm to explain Christianity, recognising the astrological framework of the original inventors of Jesus Christ.

As this method explodes all the supernatural traditions of faith, it confronts deeply held assumptions among both the religious and the modern. That makes it an emotionally repugnant idea, naturally invisible both to believers and scientists, despite being simple and obvious and transformative once studied without preconceptions.

I tried to relook at the image, but it wasn't appearing. My first take 5 years ago was that I simply didn't see what you were seeing. Atttribute this to mental myopia or lack of visualizing ability, but I think that the silence you comment on isn't the result of intrangience, but rather some such difference in simple perceiving. You seem to be saying that not seeing the correspondence is the same as refusing to see it, but I have to disagree.

DWill wrote:I tried to relook at the image, but it wasn't appearing. My first take 5 years ago was that I simply didn't see what you were seeing. Atttribute this to mental myopia or lack of visualizing ability, but I think that the silence you comment on isn't the result of intrangience, but rather some such difference in simple perceiving. You seem to be saying that not seeing the correspondence is the same as refusing to see it, but I have to disagree.

Did you click on the links in my last post? If you have powerpoint on your computer you can see the animated slides. I have made the explanation very simple and obvious there. I will make them into a youtube video.

You may not have seen the short youtube video I previously linked in this thread, made by my friend Max May. It has a couple of small mistakes, but it clearly shows how the twelve zodiac constellations in order were used by Leonardo as his template.

Failure to see this is not necessarily intransigence or difference in simple perceiving. It may be more like the Gorillas in the Midst experiment where people are concentrating on something irrelevant and so fail to see the main story until they get the key piece of evidence that makes it click. Please watch the video and hopefully it will be more obvious.

I see this discovery as key to explaining a major change in thinking about religion, as significant as the paradigm shifts away from the geocentric and creationist frameworks. The precession cosmology presents a third major deconstruction of Christian mythology by explaining how and why Jesus was invented as a purely fictional character, central to a coherent cosmology. In the case of the previous paradigm shifts the refusal to see generated an inability to see, since the old thinking was so intimately entwined with major social institutions. In this case, it may be that the refusal to see mainly arises when people find the astrological content used by Leonardo unacceptable on principle.

On this model, the whole story of the upper room in the gospels at Mark 14:13-15 is allegory for the starry sky, especially the man with the water jug. The purpose of Leonardo's method in the Last Supper was to describe this empirical parable, by drawing the Upper Room where the last supper took place as the Upper Room of the celestial sphere. The meaning of the gospel story is that the man with the water jug who shows the path to the upper room represents the Age of Aquarius, foreseeing a time when humanity will evolve beyond the literal mythology of Christianity to understand its real Gnostic meaning.

On this interpretation, Mark is suggesting the meaning of the upper room as parable for the starry heavens will not be generally understood until the Age of Aquarius. The model is that Jesus was invented as Avatar of the Ages of both Pisces and Aquarius, with precession of the equinox the intellectual framework for the entire story.

By drawing Jesus on the template of the constellation of Pisces, Leonardo demonstrated that he understood this underlying scientific cosmology behind the Gospel myth.

The authors of the Gospels could see that precession provided the structure of time, with the Passover point moving when they were writing from Aries into Pisces, and then moving into Aquarius after two millennia, ie now.

The 'day-millennium' cosmology from Psalm 90 and 2 Peter shows how this code was employed. The 7000 year theory of time implied by the seven days of creation in Genesis sets the imagined 7000 years of the fall from grace beginning in 4000 BC with Adam and the Age of Taurus. The millennium, the second coming of Jesus Christ, equates to the seventh day, the dawn of the Age of Aquarius.

This entire scientific allegory was perfectly possible for the Greek and Jewish authors of the Gospels to develop with their existing astronomical observation, working together with the partner myths of Serapis and Mithras. My view is this cosmology is the blueprint for the Gospels, but it was systematically and largely successfully eradicated from view by the Roman Empire due to its incompatibility with the literalist Nicene Creed, leaving only fugitive traces like the man with the water jug.

Leonardo could see most of this, which is the core of his genius.

Starhwe is a fucking idiot.

Sorry, Robert. I just do not see enough similarity between the human figures and the star patterns to believe that Leonardo used the patterns as templates. I get to "well....maybe" at best. Admittedly it is intriguing to speculate based on the identical number of disciples and Zodiac signs. However, "12" and its multiples are common in the Bible.

DWill wrote:Sorry, Robert. I just do not see enough similarity between the human figures and the star patterns to believe that Leonardo used the patterns as templates. I get to "well....maybe" at best. Admittedly it is intriguing to speculate based on the identical number of disciples and Zodiac signs. However, "12" and its multiples are common in the Bible.

Were you able to look at the powerpoint version?

It is purely simple, empirical and coherent. The star patterns are embedded in the figures in the same order as they appear in the sky. I am truly amazed that you cannot see this.

From right to left in the painting:
1. The apostle's hands and arms form a shape with angle 135 degrees, exactly the same proportions as the three main visible stars of the Aries star pattern.
2. The apostle's hands form contorted shapes, a V and a circle, exactly the same shape, size and relative position as the Taurus star patterns of the Hyades and Pleiades.
3. The apostle's hands form two parallel lines, exactly like Gemini.
4. The apostle's body forms a Y shape exactly like Cancer
5. The apostle's hands form a question mark shape exactly like Leo
6. The apostle's hand pointing to heaven is designed from the constellation Virgo
7. Jesus Christ forms a V shape just like Pisces, with his hands in the shapes of the two Pisces fish, indicating his symbolic role as avatar of the Age of Pisces.
8. The apostle's hands and arms form a quadrilateral just like Libra
9. The apostle's hands form the elongated curve of the constellation Scorpio, with the added detail that the dagger held by Peter is in the position of the scorpion's sting
10. The apostle's hands and arms form the distinctive teapot shape of Sagittarius
11. The apostle's hands and head form the simple triangle shape of Capricorn
12. The apostle's hands form the distinctive right angle of Aquarius, which is why his left arm is draped over his neighbour's shoulder
13. The apostle's hands form the V shape of Pisces, with the added confirmatory point that the star Alpha Piscis, known as the knot, is depicted by the large knot of the apostle's gown.

In each case, the constellation in order is clearly embedded in its expected position, illustrating the Hermetic Gnostic philosophy of 'on earth as in heaven'. The most distinctive event in Christianity, the Last Supper, is thereby seen as reflecting the observable path of the sun through the cosmos, presenting the Upper Room as direct symbol for the observable heavens.

In terms of scientific prediction, the question is 'can the expected shape be found in the expected position?', to which the answers are all a resounding simple yes for all thirteen figures in the painting.

Galileo wrote:My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth.

https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ ... lileo.html

Movie Nerd wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:A lot of old stuff at Booktalk has been lost, but I still have all the images, and in fact they are available at my website. I will get back to you Chris on your question about the meaning of the zodiac. Essentially, my approach is to systematically exclude all magical claims while exploring why people have found such beliefs to be meaningful.

Perhaps they hold these beliefs and symbols meaningful simply because we find beautiful, strange things to be meaningful on a subconscious level. Through the ages people have attached sacred importance on things for which we wondered and had not yet discovered the scientific reasons behind them. Curiosity and wonder propels us to attach meaning to things, and even when scientific research catches up to give the thing naturalistic value and meaning, it can be hard to lose the original mystical meaning.

Very well put, Movie Nerd. A related way of stating the case is to propose delight as a primary feeling leading people to believe in things that aren't based in evidence. It can feel kind of liberating to skip all of that everyday marshalling of facts and just go with the gut or with what seems, as you say, beautiful and strange, feels like something that should be true. There might be little practical cost in doing that, so why not? You need to be more careful and rational when it comes to which plants or animals will harm or help you, or which stock to invest in. People need meaning, it seems, just as much as they need reason, so if they derive meaning from astrology that is not so clearly a bad thing.