The basic precept of astrology is that many, if not all, aspects of any individual’s personality are determined by the star sign which was overhead on the day (or night) of their birth. The star signs themselves are made up of random collections of stars which have historically been given fanciful names depending on what mythical creature or god they happen to resemble.
Of course there are endless combinations of stars which can be imaginatively linked with imaginary lines to create pretty much any shape you want. Over the centuries the constellations have had their stars and their associated imaginary lines fixed by general consensus. Subsequently arguing how accurate or appropriate these stellar associations are is clearly pointless, and for the purposes of astrology pretty much meaningless.
The fact that the Earth and all the other planets orbit the sun in a way that would look like a load of marbles rolling round and round a dinner plate is all that matters. For the record this plate is called the ecliptic. This has the simple effect here on Earth that every year the sun appears to move across the same twelve constellations of stars, known as the constellations of the zodiac.
It is important to note that although the preceding text was quite factual and involved big words like ‘orbit’ and ‘ecliptic’ that it is totally irrelevant to those who read their daily horoscope and believe that it has foretold their future for the next several hours. Based solely on what set of stars they were born under forty years previously.
It is inevitable to suspect that people of that persuasion are ill-equipped with the mental capacity to grasp the orbital mechanics and are more interested in the fact that they are a Libra.
To be fair though, there is nothing inherently wrong in knowing which star sign you were born under. The fact that the random collection of stars falls on or around the ecliptic and is therefore a ‘zodiac’ constellation, allows for those in the know to refer to the formation as a sign. This is clearly a catchier word in astrological circles and much more likely to appeal to Sun and Mirror readers. Without actually researching this specific statement, it is fair to assume the Financial Times does not have some wizened old bag reading the stars and taking up valuable pink column inches telling you what to do with your stocks and shares.
In any case, and regardless of which paper you subscribe to, it’s not difficult to grasp the simple fact that the stars that go to form all the various constellations, and not just those that occupy the zodiac signs, have no meaningful relation with each other at all. Almost without exception the stars which form the constellations as seen here on earth are ridiculous silly vast distances from one another. The single most obvious thing that all the stars have in common is that the locals wherever they are and whatever they look like with call their star the sun.
The point being that the stars which go to form the zodiacal star signs have no other significance or relation to each other apart from the fact that from here on earth they form a vaguely recognisable pattern.
A suitable analogy would be to point out that the individual spots and smears of snot from the average sneeze have no meaningful relation to one another, even if they did form a remarkable likeness of Bruce Forsyth.
In fact these same stars which form the signs themselves are adjudged irrelevant even by the professional astrologer. The fanciful shapes they form have marginally more significance, but the real key nowadays is the name of the star sign. Even the professionals appreciate that more importance can be associated with a strong statesmanlike Tony Blair sneeze than a rape your country and let your people die for laughs Robert Mugabe.
No-one gives two hoots where the phlegm has landed, just what shape it makes and what name it subsequently comes to be known by.
In that context, it would be easy to see that those born within a Myra Hindley sneeze are likely to get less favourable horoscopes say, than someone born signed in as a Sebastian Coe lookalike snot smear snot. Harold Shipman nasal excreta are always going to struggle in this world against the likes of William Windsors and Paris Hiltons. Then, of course there are the in-between signs of the Richard Bransons and the Hilary Clintons.
That is not to say that any given sign of the zodiac will doom you to an eternity of stereotyping, although now that statement has been laid out in black and white, it is patently false. Being born under any given sign does in fact do exactly that. True, there is some wriggle room which concerns where the planets were in their orbits, where the Moon was and how close to the cut-off dates your birthday is.
These refinements will be fully explored in due course.
The names and the associated characteristics of the real zodiacal signs have been fixed now more or less in their current form for centuries. In the same way that a layman could look upon a mythical Mike Tyson sneeze pattern as a ‘powerful and self-motivated achiever who acts impulsively with little forebrain activity’ an astrologer would professionally interpret a Cancer as ‘constantly seeking reassurance and intimacy, love and romance.’
There is the equally valid observation that an independent observer could view the Mike Tyson as a dangerous bastard with a new found sense of humour and the Cancerian as an easy lay and a bit of a bike to boot. The male of that birth sign would probably be an accountant.
In essence, this demonstrates simply that the astronomical association of modern astrology is a coincidental nonsense, based upon random star patterns and unsupportable derived personal characteristics (such as a Leo the Lion or a Taurus the Bull) which are emotive and suggestive but otherwise simple drivel. It is then possible to dissociate the commercial exploitation from the otherwise intriguing characteristic similarities of people with annually similar birth dates.
In other words, there is more to it than knowing that your ruling planet is Mercury and that your pure element is Air. Just to put that last point into context, modern astrology was essentially established between three thousand and four thousand years ago. In those days, there were four elements: Air, Water, Fire and Earth.
It is no coincidence then that nowadays, Virgos can have Sapphire as their ‘stone’ which is presumably a legitimate choice, whereas they do not have Zirconium as their element because the superstitious cretins of the age didn’t realise they had an option of upwards of a hundred proper elements. So Virgos got Earth, which on the face of it sounds like a win-win option, but seeing as this sign is anything but ‘meek’ you can basically kiss goodbye to ‘inheriting’ shit.
The one concession to this point of view is that some of the real chemical elements are not naturally occurring and you need a multi-zillion terravolt particle accelerator to make them. By any stretch on the expectation scale, it would be unreasonable to suppose the ancient atrologers had one of those.
The final and ultimate dissociation of the zodiacal constellations and your astrological star signs comes from the conveniently ignored fact that none of the dates associated with the star signs are even vaguely accurate.
The reality, as close as makes no difference, is that all of the long-recognised dates for the various zodiac star signs are factually out by about three weeks. At first glance this might sound a bit odd, and raise cries of outrage and denial amongst the wider zodiac community, that the purported astrological gurus could really be so wrong.
There is of course a simple (non-astrological) explanation, although one which does nothing to address the fact that all the astrological dates are still wrong.
If we take Cancer as a typical example, because this sign is also associated with the Tropic of Cancer which is the imaginary line 23O north of the equator, where the sun reaches its highest position in the skies of the northern hemisphere. This is mid-summer in the north. Historically, the sun was in the constellation of Cancer when this happened; entering the constellation on or about the 21st June (the longest day by definition) and departing the constellation around the 22nd July.
Due to the orbital precession of the earth (which is a complicated way of saying the poles wobble like a spinning plate on a stick) the sun nowadays doesn’t enter the constellation of Cancer until the 14th July and leaves again on the 6th August.
Although astrology by its nature is a ‘fuzzy’ science, where the word ‘fuzzy’ is there to excuse the fact that the word ‘science’ is used in the same sentence, any purist believer in astrological prediction should have at least some concerns. Clearly the boundaries of the various zodiacal signs are so loose that a horoscope cast for someone five hundred years ago would in fact be more relevant to the person of the next or previous sign.
It is true, that being told five hundred years ago that your goat may visit itself upon a neighbour’s ram in the hours between the third bell and the eventide gathering is likely to be of little use if you even if you know the astrologers have the dates wrong. But if you were warned as a Libra to take an umbrella wherever you went today, whilst in reality you are an olden-days Virgo who needed to be keeping one eye on the pussy after lunch, then you’re going to be pretty disappointed with the prediction.
In many cases that last scenario isn’t so bad, as you not only didn’t get wet if it did happen to rain, but you also end up with the moral high ground in the divorce.
However, the point is valid. The current dates are as immaterial to the astrological prediction as are the stars upon which they were originally based. Although you would think that the dates which combine to make your star sign would be pretty unique, this is not in fact the case. Of course such a minor detail is a mere inconvenience to a professional astrologer. Of three national daily newspapers in the UK, taken at random apart from the fact that they are the three best-selling national daily newspapers, there is an astonishing level of disagreement. In fact, of the twelve star signs, the three papers only agree with each other on the dates for seven of them.
This means that your star sign is now dependent on which paper you read.
Virgos might be Leos or Librans and Geminis can be Taurans or Cancerians. If it wasn’t for the fact that the daily horoscopes read like something generated by a random sentence generator (honestly, Google it) then anyone actually seeking real guidance based on the prediction could be in serious trouble.
To be fair, the disparity between the papers and the star signs is only for a day or two at either end of the zodiacal dates for each sign, and the professionals are quite up-front about the fact that people born on these dates can share many characteristics of those born legitimately in the other sign.
Essentially, you should probably read both astrological predictions which would double the chances that some of the random observations might actually happen to you on that given day.
This is not to trivialise the difficulty in making daily predictions. Monthly must be a lot easier as the planets get to visibly move a bit and things like conjunctions and occultations can come and go. On a daily basis, saying that Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are in conjunction is likely to get a bit repetitive if it only happens once every 300 years and the astrologer needs to harp on about it every day for six weeks until they drift apart again.
So, given that horoscopes are loosely based on where the sun (and for the purists, the Moon and other planets) was on the date (and for the purists, the time and prevailing weather conditions) of your birth, how detailed can any prediction be? The answer is mind-blowingly spectacularly detailed.
Again taken at random, three Leo horoscopes for the same day:
The powerful Pluto/sun connection could transform a project that’s used up a lot of your time and money into one that rewards you. Later, liking can turn into hot loving when you see the gentler side of someone you thought you knew well. Luck calls at door number 26.
Something isn’t right in Leo land. As you move yourself into gear to find out what it is there will be those who start to look uncomfortable. Stay true to your values, what sits outside that needn’t be part of you.
In theory, it is easy to be popular. Just give people what they want. But what if what they want is for you to understand when they don’t want what they think they want? Then, you have to give them what they don’t think they want even if you don’t want to, and they don’t think they want you to. You are only going to be popular if they come to realise how much they want what they once thought they didn’t. Confused? Then try this. It is not appreciation that you need; it is trust.
Now obviously not everyone is going to buy three papers and try to make head or tails of the differing horoscopes on a daily basis; however as a one-off exercise it is quite enlightening. Without commenting on how accurate any of these quality professional statements were at the time, its impossible not to draw some reasonable conclusions:
The obvious one is that any Leo who had the misfortune of getting that last horoscope should feel justifiably pissed-off. Remembering that these statements have not been created randomly by a computer that doesn’t know the first thing about your birthday and/or where the sun and stars are at the time of printing, which bit about this is unique to Leo?
The first two sentences and the last are universally true, and the text in the middle is just a nonsense which does exactly what it suggests, and confuses the reader. How, you got that specific horoscope for that specific day is a mystery. Nevertheless, it no doubt gave your fellow Leos an equally hard time.
In a nutshell, horoscopes are supposed to provide guidance or warning which based upon your 1 in 12 unique star sign is going to profit you in some way by having read it. Which bit was that last horoscope missing?
If you’re struggling, then you’re not alone.
Another conclusion from these three horoscopes is that, apart from the fact that they’re written in English (although that third one is on thin ice) they have no common thread whatsoever.
So, not only does the paper you read in 5/12ths of the year determine what star sign your are, but even within a given star sign, you have to question the intelligence of the computer that generated the random selection of phrases which were supposed to guide you through the day.
Spectral Analysis doesn’t do horoscopes, although we know some people who do.
A quality random phrase generator can be found here: http://phrasegenerator.com/ although it won’t give you a horoscope. You have to go to astrology sites for that.