FROM : Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Here We Go Again with the "Zodiac Is Wrong" Scam
(There's more info about this issue on my site: http://bit.ly/AstroHoax)
News Flash: The zodiac isn't wrong. Your sign isn't changing. Ignore the
misinformation.
Every year or so, another astronomer erupts into the mainstream media
with a portentous announcement about how, due to the precession of the
equinoxes, the astrological signs are no longer aligned with the actual
constellations. Often the supposed 13th constellation, Ophiuchus, is also
invoked as a further proof of how delusional astrologers are.
What it means, according to these experts, is that astrology is invalid.
Most of the people who think they're Tauruses are actually Aries. Most
Scorpios are really Libras. And so on.
That latest offering is from Parke Kunkle, a board member of the
Minnesota Planetarium Society. "When [astrologers] say that the sun is in
Pisces," he speculated, "it's really not in Pisces." His supposition hit the
Internet recently, on Gawker (http://bit.ly/i1VxqE) and the Minneapolis
Star Tribune (http://bit.ly/f7hWwW), among other places.
I understand that scientists like him would prefer not to lower themselves
to the task of actually doing research about how astrology works. But if
they're going to question its foundations, they should at least learn it well
enough to know what they're talking about.
Here, briefly, is the lowdown on what certain astronomers are too lazy to
find out for themselves.
The astrological signs are not defined by the constellations you see in the
sky. In antiquity, when both astrological and astronomical thinking were
based on insufficient data, the names of the constellations happened to
be paired with the astrological signs. Today, those pairings are no longer
in sync: Astrological signs do not line up with the constellations in the
same way they did way back then, due to the precession of the
equinoxes.
Modern Western astrologers understand this perfectly. It 's irrelevant to
their work because the information upon which they base their
hypotheses does not involve a study of distant stars or constellations.
Rather, their data have to do with the movements of the planets in our
own solar system within a zone of influence defined by the relationship
between the Earth and Sun.
The key demarcation points in that relationship are the equinoxes and
solstices. At the Northern Hemisphere's vernal equinox, which occurs on
about March 20th of each year, the Sun enters into the sign of Aries. At
the Northern Hemisphere's summer solstice, the sun enters into the sign
of Cancer. The locations of the constellations are irrelevant; the "influence
of the stars" isn't considered.
To reiterate: Western astrologers don't work with stars or constellations.
Their focus is our solar system. They study the patterns of the planets
and the moon as they pass through 12 zones defined by the relationship
between the Earth and sun. Those zones have the same names as
constellations because of a historical quirk, but they are unrelated to the
constellations.
When Parke Kunkle triumphantly says, "There is no physical connection
between constellations and personality traits," as if he has finally stamped
out the delusions of us astrologers, he doesn't realize that we agree with
him completely. We don't deal with constellations.
P.S. There haven't been many corrective articles in the mainstream press
-- most publications have been content to let their un-fact-checked
stories stand as if they were gospel -- but the New York Times and the
Daily Beast did have the journalistic integrity to make a stab:
http://nyti.ms/gSSVIq and http://bit.ly/fNEijs.
