Hudson Valley Astrologer

“Do you really want to live forever?”

~ Marion Gold

The first thought that comes to mind whenever I hear the issue of longevity come up is that Claudius Ptolemy the extraordinary polymath from Ancient Greece, discussed techniques for predicting the end-of-life in his book Tetrabiblos. Ancient astrologers identified a point called the proragator along the ecliptic (either the Sun, Moon, or dominant planet) and advanced that point one degree per year toward the horizon (ascendant or descendant). The rate of advance would be slightly different depending on your location on earth. In technical terms, the distance measured, by advancing of one degree of oblique ascension for the proragator, to the horizon, was said to determine the length of life.

You can poke around on a search engine and discover that the average life span in Ancient Greece was only 25-28 years old. This essentially is merely one revolution of Saturn around the Sun during a lifetime, which takes anywhere from 27 years to 30 years time. This astronomical observation is the infamous Saturn Return. The actually average life span was probably greater when subtracting out the higher rate of infant mortality, which may bring the average down by about 10 percent.

Fast forward to a Google engineer named Ray Kurzweil who wrote Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, and who predicted in 2018 humanity would reach “escape velocity” by the years 2028-2030. (see my post Break on Through to the Other side)

Another futurist, Aubrey de Gray, was quoted in 2005 who said that “the first 100-year-old is probably only -10 years younger than the first 150-year-old.”

Imagine, someone living to the age of 1000 will experience over 30 Saturn Returns in a life time, and over 4 Pluto Returns. To put this in context, the United States is experiencing its first Pluto Return,

My mother is currently 93. She is in fine health, after a triple bypass-pass at age 88. She watches a lot of television and needs a walker if she leaves her chair just to navigate her way around. Her mind is still pretty sharp reveling in pearls of wisdom and sharing a positive attitude, two big contributors no doubt toward a long life and living well. My mother-in-law is 10 years younger but terminally ill. She’s entered hospice and also is relegated to using a walker, plus dragging behind a length of hose that could wrap around the house, and is connected to an oxygen tank. By comparison my mother-in-law is cynical, complains, and is pretty much sour. A small sample size but it is interesting to note that their attitudes near their end of life isn’t much different from the attitude I remember belonging to them all along. At 83 and 93 respectively, I have to imagine that their proragator has come and gone over the horizon, even though they are still here. What I can’t imagine, after logging 3 Saturn Returns already, is that they have anymore Returns left in them. It’s also hard to imagine myself getting much beyond 3 returns.

Aside from medicine and technological advances, Peter Attia who wrote the book Outlive argues that weight bearing exercise and nutrition can help. His contemporary David Sinclair who co-wrote Lifespan created a stir in the nutritional supplement space because he takes nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) which is not exactly a vitamin B complex but its related. It gets complicated but NMN is a rabbit hole you might find worthwhile, even helpful to building longevity.

If you poke around some, you’ll even discover supplement companies marketing products called Immortal and Eternal that happen to be constructed around this “new miracle” ingredient.

Queue up the song by Alphaville, “Forever Young,” and ponder this question a little more. Maybe what we need to consider is not so much the length of life but a more nuanced definition, beyond the physical. As the saying goes, “it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” Which makes me want to circle back to Be What You Become.

HVA

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