Thursday, June 24, 2010

Could someone please explains to me how this whole astrology thing works?

How exactly is someone's birthday have any connection to thier personality? I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm just curious.Could someone please explains to me how this whole astrology thing works?
Astrology, in its traditional form, is a type of divination based on the theory that the positions and movements of celestial bodies (stars, planets, sun, and moon) at the time of birth profoundly influence a person's life. Some forms of astrology claim that terrestrial events such as natural disasters are predicted by various celestial arrangements. In its psychological form, astrology is a type of New Age therapy used for self-understanding and personality analysis (astrotherapy). In all forms, astrology is a manifestation of magical thinking.





Ivan Kelly, who has written many articles critical of astrology, thinks that astrology, ';has no relevance to understanding ourselves, or our place in the cosmos. Modern advocates of astrology cannot account for the underlying basis of astrological associations with terrestrial affairs, have no plausible explanation for its claims, and have not contributed anything of cognitive value to any field of the social sciences.';





Even so, astrology is believed by millions of people and it has survived for thousands of years. The ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians engaged in astrological divination some 3,000 years ago. By 450 BCE. the Babylonians had developed the 12-sign zodiac, but it was the Greeks--from the time of Alexander the Great to their conquest by the Romans--who provided most of the fundamental elements of modern astrology. The spread of astrological practice was checked by the rise of Christianity, which emphasized divine intervention and free will. During the Renaissance, astrology regained popularity, in part due to rekindled interest in science and astronomy. Christian theologians, however, warred against astrology, and in 1585 Pope Sixtus V condemned it. At the same time, the work of Kepler and others undermined astrology鈥檚 tenets. Its popularity and longevity are, of course, irrelevant to the truth of astrology in any of its forms.





The most popular form of traditional Western astrology is sun sign astrology, the kind found in the horoscopes of many daily newspapers. A horoscope is an astrological forecast. The term is also used to describe a map of the zodiac at the time of one鈥檚 birth. The zodiac is divided into twelve zones of the sky, each named after the constellation that originally fell within its zone (Taurus, Leo, etc.). The apparent paths of the sun, the moon, and the major planets all fall within the zodiac. Because of the precession of the equinoxes, the equinox and solstice points have each moved westward about 30 degrees in the last 2,000 years. Thus, the zodiacal constellations named in ancient times no longer correspond to the segments of the zodiac represented by their signs. In short, had you been born at the same time on the same day of the year 2,000 years ago, you would have been born under a different sign. In fact, there should be 13 signs, not 12.





More at links

No comments:

Post a Comment

 
viruses