Pluto

Back in my day, Pluto was a planet.

Amateur astrologers and neo pagans seem to think that this is some major blow to astrology. After all, what about all those poor people whose charts are really affected by Pluto? The consequences will never be the same!

First of all - chill. Let’s not conflate astrology and astronomy.

Pluto is no longer a planet in astronomy. That doesn’t mean that astrology needs to follow suit and diminish Pluto’s importance. Look at how important the moon is to one’s chart, and it’s certainly not a planet. It’s not like Pluto changed size or got destroyed. It’s still the same lump of space rock it’s always been. And if astrologers want to still consider it a planet, why not? This is an issue of taxonomy, not physical change. 50 years from now scientists might reinstate its planethood because they’re using some other method of classification.

The only issue I foresee is that Pluto’s demotion would mean a change of perception in the collective unconscious. But would this affect astrology? Well, only if astrology is based on people’s perceptions and preconceived notions of heavenly bodies’ attributes rather than something more mathematical and independent.

Your Sign Has NOT Changed (and neither has your future children’s)

Cross-posted on tumblr

OK, so first off - I don’t give a toss if you believe in astrology or not.  But I hate MISINFORMATION.

You see, the news media and these so-called scientists are trying to debunk something with a little drop of truth in a whole sea of misinformation.  It’s like trying to debunk the geocentric theory by saying “The earth is not at the center of the solar system.  Uranus is!”  Do you see why this is a problem?

The other problem is that everyone with half a brain (and only half) is trying to debunk the debunkers by saying that the sign changes only affect people born after a certain date.  So your sign is the same, but your future kids’ signs are all jacked up.  WHAT?!  Do you think the constellations just shifted overnight?  This is an ongoing process that has been happening since the beginning of time.  The constellations didn’t just chill in one spot and then decide to move after astrology got invented or after this news story aired.  Use some frikkin common sense.

So before I go further into this, here are the links you need to read if you want to understand what’s going on.  They are concise, informative, and not dry.

http://prolixe.livejournal.com/338600.html
http://thelaughingmagus.blogspot.com/2011/01/when-debunking-its-critical-to.html
http://austincoppock.com/2011/01/zodiacnews/

So I’m going to make this short since I’ve already explained this in my other blog and the other blogs cover pretty much everything else (and I know you all on tumblr have no attention span when there’s no pretty pictures):

1. Astrologers have known about the constellations shifting since they invented astrology.
2. It’s called precession.
3. Precession is how we determine what age it is, ie Age of Aquarius (like the song!)
4. Western Astrology, which uses the Tropical Zodiac, is not actually based on the stars.  It’s based on the planets.
5. It’s a fixed cross anchored by the solstices and equinoxes. These quarters are divided into 3 sections each and assigned with names that just so happen so be the same names as the constellations (yeah, they used to match up once upon a time).
6. Vedic Astrology uses the Sidereal Zodiac which is actually concerned with the stars’ influence.
7. It’s not affected by this “news” either as it’s nothing actually new.  Read the 3rd link.
8. If you’ve ever picked up an actual astrology book and noticed that the sun signs shift back and forth by a few days depending on the year, don’t make me smack you.  This is not precession.  This is the equinoxes and solstices shifting because of earth’s orbit and thus affecting astrology.
9. This really only affects cuspers anyway.
10. And btw, you’re not just your sun sign.  You have a whole frikkin birth chart including sun, moon, all the planets (even pluto!), ascendent, and a bunch of other stuff that I’m not going to get into because that’s where I stopped my studies about 12 years ago.