On the Crucial Difference Between Astro-theology and Existential Theology: Or why it is Actually OK to Begin a Journey on Thursday

"One must not begin a journey on a Thursday, particularly in the afternoon; it will be inauspicious if one does so."

~Old South Asian Custom

In my work on the history of the concept of Time in Asian religion, I have developed a certain view of what constitutes a legitimate, defensible version of the claim that God is Time, and also a certain view of what does not constitute such a claim.

In order to demonstrate this difference, we need to have an appreciation for the sort of history which gave rise to the latter, in the form of astrological fatalism/predetermination. It will be obvious to many, that when we closely examine the history of astrological thinking among Indo-Europeans in the earliest recuperable periods of that history, a certain fascination held the imaginations of the religious mind, one which inclined religious discourse toward a magical conception of the divine.

It should be recalled that the term for "heaven" (dyaus) translates into many contemporary and classical terms that remain in use by religious thinkers: divine, deity, day, Jupiter, and Zeus. The imagery which is thus conjured by reference to the heavens is not simply an abstraction which lay beyond the living world, but is drawn directly from observation of the sky above, in both its diurnal and nocturnal phases, as well as the transitive phases between these. Such attention provides us with many of the earliest notions of divinity and the heavenly, and signals the general domain wherein we ought to seek out the narrative sources for such widespread practices as cosmogony and cosmology.

Some contemporary religious groups, ignorant of this original source material, have posed the idea that their sacred texts implicate heavens beyond the vision of the unaided eye. They would suggest, for example, that when Kṛṣṇa gave Arjuna divya-cakṣu (eyes for the heavenly), this meant that Arjuna was able to see behind the veil of worldly appearances, instead of simply attaining a higher understanding of the visible. I differ in my view on this. As I read the Gītā, Arjuna's vision of Kṛṣṇa directly implicates the astrological vision of the universe. The many visual artifacts described by Arjuna in the 11th chapter neatly fit within an astrological interpretation of the world. The various personas, animals, and motifs all suggest that the ancient visions of divinity (divya) belong to a vision of those constellations which can be observed in the Northern terrestrial hemisphere.

I can produce a nearly inexhaustible list of literary artifacts which point toward this conclusion, and yet such is not the focus of the present note. Rather, I want to argue that, despite this astrological thinking, there is an important vision of Time which supercedes and transcends the fatalism entailed in conceiving God simply as the structure of the astrological forces, so that all determinative fate is held to be intelligible to the skilled astrology. To concede so much to astrological thinking would be to merge theology in a kind of fatalism from which it could scarcely hope to recover itself. A sustained critique of the history of astrological thinking thus belongs essentially to the existential theology which I envision as of basic value to Hindus of the Postmodern era. Only by such a criticism can the original intuitions which gave rise to such thinking be cleared of their misgivings, and thus can our thinking of God be given a justifiable basis in the phenomenality of the world and its temporal frame. Without such a criticism, existential theology, read through Hindu modes of thinking, would remain bound to a passive and deeply distorted vision of Time, one in which Time, all-powerful, robbed the human individual of all true agency, all capacity to seize upon the opportunities of existence. We can recuperate a valuable existential, theological sense of Time if we follow an historically critical reading of Indian sacred literature.

Consider the following example: among contemporary Gauḍīya-Vaiṣṇavas, the Brahma-muhūrta is still treated as approximately an hour and a half prior to sunrise. This would remain perfectly true if the sense of "brahma" were restricted to its popular translation as "spiritual". Yet the sense of brahma here is very probably a result of the visible celestial locus of the Swan constellation, Cygnus. Brahmā-deva, the personification of brahman, is depicted in classical iconography as riding upon a Swan, and so the reference has some immediate merit, particularly when we examine the other constellations immediately adjacent to Cygnus. Lyra (the Lyre constellation) shines in close proximity to Cygnus, and this reifies our thesis, insofar as there are two immediate relations to Brahmā, Sarasvatī and Nārada, who both carry a stringed instrument, in the form of the Vina or Sitar.

Beyond the depiction of the Swan, Brahmā's four heads and four arms offers further correlation to Cygnus.

Such an association is further strengthened by the fact that among the thirty Epic muhūrtas (as opposed to the fifteen muhurtas mentioned in the Vedic Saṁhitās), there is a muhūrta named dyumad-ga-dyūti, or "loud light". This metaphorical translation of luminous brilliance into volume may in fact help to explain why the Lyra constellation is treated as a musical instrument; alpha-Lyra has been regarded from classical times as the brightest star that can be seen year round (other than the Sun, of course). And if we thus allow for the hypothesis that the constellations are the sources of the names of the Epic period muhūrtas, we find that very many visible constellations evidently correspond to the various specific names of them. This suggests that a muhūrta signifies the dominance of a constellation, perhaps either by virtue of its appearance upon the Eastern horizon, or else, by its ascendance to the zenith of the visible sky.

By all narrative accounts, Nārada's Vina is virtually inseparable from his persona.

But if this is true, then we also need to account for the gradual decalibration of the calendar, affected as it is by axial precession. Constellations which once appeared upon the horizon at the vernal equinox no longer appear at that time, but only several hours later! If Gauḍīyas were to retain a rigorous adherence to the system in its celestial form, they would not begin their daily meditations until around 10 AM!

At the same time, this provides us with an important clue to the critical historical origins of the muhūrta system, since it can be shown that the names and times were in fact once well calibrated, and that the historical origination of the names would be most easily explained by discerning the period of highest correlation.

Further, if such decalibrations can be shown to pervade the entire calendrical system, then this would go further to demonstrate the inherent problematicity of assuming the intelligibility of an astrological interpretation of Time. I have already given some indication of this issue in my blog on the annual Durga-Pūja festival in Kolkata, West Beṅgāl.

The icon depicted here is strongly suggestive of the events occurring as the Zodiacal constellations Virgo, Leo, and Taurus.

If astrology depends for its power and intelligibility on the regularity of the motions of the stars and planets, then there is still no reason to assume that humans can access this information in a meaningful way. The natural decalibrations of the celestial calendar suggest that such powers are deeply chaotic and in must increasingly depart from the classical models. Indeed, the very periodicity which the ancients assumed for these decalibrations have been superceded in the last couple centuries by far more accurate measurements, and much more sophisticated physical models of the universe. Again, nothing is inscrutible or invisible here (though perhaps subtle enough not to be obvious to the untrained observer—say, someone lacking divya-cakṣu!). Everything is evident to trained sight, sufficing that we simply take careful enough measurements, and account in general for all of the physical forces which determine the vectors of the celestial bodies.

What then is left behind after such a thorough-going critique of the astrological vision of Time? The whole original existential sense of Time as the father of our being. Even if Time doesn't apodictically demonstrate the sort of predeterminative powers ascribed to it by astrologers, it remains the very basis of our every action: not even a blade of grass moves without its assent. Moreover, as the very interiority of our understanding, Time constitutes the very structure of the intelligibility of the world. By it and through it, the world gives itself to us as cause and effect, as coherent, as unified, as of One cause.

Eternal, Infinite Time temporalizes, finitizes.