...astrology...rubbish.
Its central claim - that our human characteristics are moulded by the influence of the Sun, Moon and planets at the time of our birth - appears to have been debunked once and for all and beyond doubt by the most thorough scientific study ever made into it.
For several decades, researchers tracked more than 2,000 people - most of them born within minutes of each other. According to astrology, the subject should have had very similar traits.
The babies were originally recruited as part of a medical study begun in London in 1958 into how the circumstances of birth can affect future health. More than 2,000 babies born in early March that year were registered and their development monitored at regular intervals.
Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading - all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.
Telegraph UK 17/08/2003{Science takes on the heavies. Debunking nonsense right at its source there. Meanwhile Mel 'the Road Warrior' Gibson's taking significant heat for his portrayal of...
a certain Someone who:
1. walked on water
2. turned water into wine
3. brough a dead man back to life
4. was executed and then Himself came back to life, and then rose up through the sky and went somewhere else, without a spaceship.
But you know, they have to start somewhere. The fact that a lot of traditional Muslims have a strong astrological component, that Jews and Christians don't, that there are Biblical injunctions against astrology? Purest co-incidence!
I myself am not astrologically inclined. Though I was once told I have all seven planets in retrograde. Which I liked because it distinguished me some. But the tone of this pooh-pooh irks me no end.
So how about the speedometer on your car? The odometer? Two signifiers that convey information to you, the driver, as to how fast you're going, and how far you've come. Though of course that information is only tangential. The speedometer is connected to the drive train and should under normal circumstances reflect your mph's. And the odometer sort of ditto. Though jacking the car up and engaging the transmission in most cars will subvert that relationship, at least it would in the days I was crawling around under there.
So why not the same universe holding the stars and planets and the human being? And some strange tangential connection to the Big Drive Train providing a readable template for personality and fortune? Our experience of time is such that we need to believe the future is yet unformed, but of course to an observer outside of the temporal flow it won't look like that at all.
It's far-fetched sure.
So are these indisputable truths:
1. to an observer on earth, the moon in a solar eclipse perfectly shields the orb of the sun, though neither body has a direct relationship to the other.
2. the relative sizes of atom to human and human to star are astonishingly similar.
I'm not so sure all astrological philosophy insists the stars and planets form the personality. More that the attributes of personality and the junctures of fate can be read there, that there's a correspondence.
The denial of joyful confluence, the suppression of exciting serendipity, these are delusional mistakes far more damaging than thinking your husband is crabby because his birthday is in August.
I don't 'believe' in astrology. But it doesn't bother me.}
