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Astronomers Mislead the Public
20:21 Feb 05 2011
Times Read: 593

Fear Drives Astronomers to Mislead the Public

January 18th, 2011 by Jeff Jawer

The “news” of the discovery that the astrological signs are wrong exploded in a media frenzy last week. It’s been said that “Truth is the first casualty of war,” which was certainly the case here. This is a long-standing struggle waged against Astrology by astronomers who periodically repeat the big lie that the signs of the zodiac are wrong. It takes less than 30 minutes of research to debunk this falsehood, but some so-called scientists are so threatened by astrology’s existence that they allow their fears to overcome reason.

An honest inquiry into the subject would show that astrologers have been using a seasonally-based system called the Tropical Zodiac for over 2,000 years. Aries, the first sign, begins on the first day of spring, Cancer on the first day of summer, etc. 99% of astrologers in the western world use the Tropical Zodiac and know that it does not align with the constellations. The big lies are that we use the stars to determine the signs and that we don’t know what measurements we’re using.

I’ve recently mentioned the possibility of runaway polemics with expansive, judgmental and philosophical Jupiter joined with disruptive Uranus in emotional Pisces. This non-story story of the zodiac and the reactions to it are a good example of such a loss of reason. Only it’s not us fuzzy minded metaphysical types who slipped off the reality track; it’s the supposedly logical scientists whose glasses are so fogged with their emotional illusions that they make factual lies about Astrology. I spent two days online challenging an astronomer quoted in the New York Times to provide evidence for his claims about what zodiac astrologers use now and have used historically. He never cited one source for his assertion. I presented the simple and direct evidence of Ptolemy’s “Tetrabiblos,” the foundation text of western Astrology published in the second century AD. You can find Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library version online and do a word search for “Tropical,” and will find that the seasons, not the stars, are how the signs are determined. This has not changed.

The ignorant assumption that the signs are derived from the constellations led to the phony Ophiuchus story. Since we use the seasons, not the stars, this is irrelevant. There is no historical evidence that the signs derive from the stars and, in fact, it’s more logical that the names of the constellations were derived from the human-created division of the year into twelve parts that gave us the zodiac. The zodiac of the seasons divides the year into equal 30-degree segments, but the constellations are not equal in size. If you asked someone who didn’t know the constellations to find a crab, a lion or a bull in the sky, it would be very unlikely that she or he would recognize these star groupings.

What’s fascinating in this matter is how the public reacted. Almost no one is taught to believe in Astrology at home and no one is taught it at school. Yet the identification with the typology of the signs is so strong that the (false) notion that our signs are wrong created a profound sense of disorientation for many people. Some skeptics are assuming that a desperate need for meaning is the cause of this attachment. Considering the familial, religious, professional, social and educational influences in our lives, you’d think that we all have more than enough material to describe who we are. Perhaps, then, the persistence of identification with the signs comes from self-knowing and a recognition that “What’s your sign?” is not just a pick up line, but a real way to get to know who someone is.

Tarot.com