A Mason's Work

So astronomy in the context of the several liberal arts and sort of

Masonic symbolism has a couple of different meanings like everything it's

always sort of flexible and depends on where you're coming from and what angle

and all that kind of thing. But for our present purposes when it comes to why do

they have astronomy mentioned as one of the things you should pursue in the

context of self-development, particularly as a lens through which to be the

world, it starts to be obvious very quickly that astronomy follows certain

rules and behaviors and those rules and behaviors are in many ways quasi-mysterious

we've been studying them for generations you know since the beginning of human

history, guys looked up and said, hmm I wonder what that's doing. However, one of

the things that happens and is really important in astronomy as a concept is

that there is a system of how these things move, right? Physics, all of the

kinds of sciences that have emerged from the pursuit of just understanding the

world around us tells us a lot about the way the stars move and how they

interact but that understanding that they are following a pattern and that

pattern is in its own way immutable is really important and profound when it

comes to understanding our own behavior, right? As we sit and reflect on things

that are happening in the world, there are certain things like the concepts

that are really driving things like astronomy like gravity for example. It is

really hard to escape gravity as a concept. It takes us a lot of effort, a lot of

manpower, a lot of fuel to get off of this planet. One of the things that is

very true about gravity is it tends to control things in its influence. When you

start looking at astronomy and looking at how you can use that as a lens into

your own behavior, there are certain things that happen like gravity. You can

take astronomical concepts like that and start to understand that these

immutable laws of the way the world works have an influence not only on the

stars above us but on the people around us and the things within us. It's the as

above so below concept of the sort of hermetic understanding of the fact that

these things start to mirror themselves in a fractal pattern. Now we don't have to

get into the super deep side of that conversation. It's sufficient for most

people to just understand that there are patterns in the way the world works

above us and then those patterns are replicated within us and around us. It is

super productive to then understand that you know some of those patterns, if you

want to change the way the world works, you have to work with the patterns that

are different. For example, if you want to change your weight, there are patterns

in the way your weight is determined. If you eat more calories than you

expend in a general large moving pieces, that's going to result in you

gaining weight. This is no different than orbits and gravity from astronomy.

It is the immutable kind of laws of the universe and so if you want to

change the way that works and you want to change your outcomes or you want to

better shape yourself as a living stone or any of those kind of concepts, you have

to understand enough about the way the world works to then work within those

systems. There are some frameworks that you simply cannot work your way out of

without understanding those mechanics. You're never going to exercise your way

to height. Those things don't work. You can't really exercise your weight

taller. In the same way you can't really fight a lot of the sort of systems

that are immutable. Understanding those and studying those from an

astronomical context and then figuring out how those apply for you on a

personal context is really what one of the majors sort of charges of astronomy

is is go go learn how the world works and then bring that go learn how the

the stars work and bring that into your everyday life and as such you should be

able to kind of start moving your conversations forward or at the very least

stop fighting the things that you can't fight in the way that you're fighting

them. I guess it's probably even even more handy as a sort of way to think

about it. That doesn't mean you again you can't change it just means you can't

defy the laws of nature. The stars can't define their own path in that way

they're stuck but you're not. You can use those understandings and change the

world around you and change the world within yourself.