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Talking To Skeptics Of Astrology: Some Appetizers

(CLICK HERE for the Introduction to this series)

When you go to a buffet (Remember those? Will they ever return? Sigh.) you should start with something a little light so you don’t automatically stuff your face with the bulky stuff. Likewise, when learning to counter skeptical arguments, let’s start with a couple of relative lightweights…

-“There are more than twelve types of people in the world, and they’re going to have more than twelves types of day, so there.”

…and of course, anyone with a basic understanding of astrology will point out the importance of the Moon and Ascendant and the other points in the chart. If you decide to take up smoking and crossing the street without looking both ways, it’s no guarantee you’ll die earlier than otherwise. Likewise, being a Gemini doesn’t guarantee you’re going to be a chatterbox — but it increases the odds.

-“Because of precession, people who say they are Aries are really Pisces. So there.”

This is the old “your Sign has changed” argument that turns up every few years.

Precession is the wobble in the Earth’s rotational axis, and it’s a really great scientific-sounding term. There’s no easy way to describe it: just get a top and spin it, and watch it wobble. The same thing happens to the Earth on a much larger and slower scale. The net result to an observer on Earth is that a person born around March 23th, 2000 years ago would have seen the Sun actually line up with the end of the constellation (not the “Sign,” there’s a difference) Pisces, and a person born on that day now would see the Sun well into the constellation of Aries.

This is the difference between the Tropical Zodiac (which most Western astrologers use) and the sidereal Zodiac (which is largely used now by Vedic astrologers). And those two Zodiacs are very distinct and different parts of the sky, and both schools of astrological thought work wonderfully. They also work differently.

“Signs” are the divisions astrologers make in the sky. “Constellations” are patterns of stars that appear to make pictures from our perspective here on Earth. They’re related, but ultimately they are two different things.

Put another way: if your natal Mars and Uranus are 90 degrees apart, you could call those points in the sky “five degrees Sagittarius and five degrees Virgo,” or you can call them “18 degrees Scorpio and 18 degrees Leo,” or you could call them “Fred and Ethel Mertz.” Regardless, you still have a Mars-Uranus square, and you should watch your blood pressure regardless of the terminology.

If you are confronted with the precession argument, your best response is likely to be something like “Yes, astrologers have been watching the sky for a long time now, and noticed that. Now, what do you say the difference is between an Aries and a Pisces, anyway?” The truth is, most of the people who argue against astrology understand their arguments against it a lot better than they understand the thing they’re arguing against.