Friday, January 14, 2011

Are astrology signs changing?

I've been asked to comment on the "discovery" sweeping the airwaves that astrology signs are shifting. This is ridiculous and hugely uninformed, something astronomers often bring up to dismiss astrology because they literally don't know what they're talking about.

In Western astrology, your "sun sign" is determined by the sun's position in the twelve equal divisions of our natural seasonal cycle, the solstice/equinox pattern, which, yes, rotates every 26,000 years against the background of stars (very old news). It doesn't matter what stars it's aligned with. There's no "new sign."

As Sir Isaac Newton famously responded to astronomer Edmond Halley, when he questioned how Newton, of all people, could believe there's anything to astrology: "Sir! I have studied it, you have not!"