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.

pdf heaven

http://darkbooks.org/

This site is pretty amazing... which is probably why I'm still kind of shocked that I found it through a facebook ad.  This woman has graciously put hundreds of public domain pdfs of magick and occult books up for us to download.  Crowley, Leland, Dee, Waite, Regardie, Levi, etc.  I am having a field day!  :)

relativism

Just a thought that came to mind tonight.

Back when I was frequenting a certain pagan community site *cough*, the boyfriend and I would get into discussions about objective truth in magick.  A lot of people on the site have a very "if it works for me, it must work" attitude.  I think in a lot of cases this can be true.  Your mind is your most powerful tool.  Simple unwavering belief can go a long way towards making something happen.  Sometimes it's all you need really, so the physical trappings become rather obsolete anyway.  Who cares which color candle you put out as long as it's the one that gets your mind thinking the right thoughts?

But as to the converse - well, allow me to use an example from Moral Philosophy to illustrate.  During a class on moral relativism my professor used this example to highlight a major problem with this theory.  Imagine that we are to accept every cultures' morality and make no judgments.  How can we as outsiders?  Now imagine a culture that takes babies, throws them up in the air, and catches them on bayonets for fun.  It's not a ritual sacrifice, or population control - at least not primarily.  Sometimes they just do this when they're bored.  So what do you think?  Are some things, at least under certain circumstances, universally wrong?(1)

Or try this angle - Can you fit a square peg into a round hole?  (And don't give me any BS about "well if the hole was big enough..."  You know the point I'm getting at, smartypants.)  There are some truths out there that I hope we would all agree on.  We live on this planet.  We have a sun and a moon.  I, or someone, has to pay my credit card bill every month.  If I want to make scrambled eggs, I have to crack open some eggs and find a suitable heated surface.  Sometimes that's the way it is with magick.  You can't make scrambled eggs in your freezer (and if you can, why haven't you made these godly powers known yet, huh?).  Sometimes you need to follow the damn recipe.  Sure, you can add your own flair (I like mine with cheese!) or substitutions, but you can't go and replace the eggs with pickles no matter how much those slimy green things call to you and your soul.  You're just not going to get the result you were shooting for.




1. I want to put a little footnote here for those unfamiliar with this particular philosophical debate.  It's very, very hard to work up an airtight argument for universal wrongs as well.  Take a gander at some stuff about Kant trying to universalize his maxims and arguments responding to it.  It can be hard to say something general is universally wrong without tacking a bunch of conditions on it.

The wonderful world of Deism

So how many of you have been following the Texas text book drama?  As someone who almost (and still might) make their career in academia, it's a topic that has me greatly concerned.  It seems to be getting media attention but I'm really not sure how much people are paying attention to it since Arizona has been hogging the spotlight with its jacked up legislation (If you've been living under a rock, I suggest checking out Dionysian Atavism's posts on racism or read the bills directly: SB1070 and HB 2281).

The Texas issue is very troubling because it directly impacts thousands of students all over the United States who will be using these text books.  It's a bastardization of history and it will influence how students think about the world and what they teach their future children.  I know teachers can at least choose not to cover some of the controversial material the way it's presented, but we also have to take into account that students are influenced by what they're not seeing as well.  Take for example the decision to leave out United Farmworkers founder Dolores Huerta and all her accomplishments and contributions to history because she's not dead yet.  Never mind that our history books cover plenty of other prominent figures that aren't dead yet.  Never mind that this looks racially and politically motivated since this woman is a prominent figure in the Chicano civil rights movement and a Democratic Socialist hated by Republicans and State schools chief Tom Horne from Arizona.  No, no - she was rejected because she's not dead yet.

There were also some attempts at sugar coating the slave trade by renaming it and de-emphasizing the civil rights movement while emphasizing the violence of the Black Panthers.  The former did not happen, but I'm unsure of the status of the latter.  While I think it's important to cover the Black Panthers, I have to ask why there is such a push to emphasize their violence.  This seems like such a trivial bit of history to focus on when we look at the broader picture of the civil rights movement as a whole.  So I have to ask, what is the board's agenda with this one?  I'm sure you can guess what I'm thinking.  But really, if the civil rights movement had been a violent revolution, could you really say we didn't deserve it?

Aside from all the suspiciously racist sounding amendments to the text books, the other big thing being pushed is that whole Christian Nation fairy tale.  You know, the one where our founding fathers were all super duper Christian and believe everything the Bible said and founded our country on these beliefs.   Yeah, I hate to break it to you but most of them were Deists.  For example: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison - ALL DEISTS.  Now you could say that Deism is just a type of Christianity or just a philosophical viewpoint within Christianity... but then I'd have to facepalm in response.

Deism came into vogue because of Newton's scientific discoveries and the great philosophical works published during what is known as the Age of Enlightenment.  If you ever get past an intro course in Philosophy, you might learn a little about this stuff.  Philosophers believed you could prove the existence of God (or a creator) through philosophical arguments.  One of the popular ones was based on cause and effect.  Everything's created by something, everything is set in motion by something else, etc.  But without a creator, or prime mover, we'd end up with an infinite regress.  (Which is a bad thing in case you were wondering.)  Another popular one was the Teleological argument.  The basic idea here is that nature is orderly and well designed.  It makes sense.  Never mind that we can chalk this up to evolution; this is clearly proof that some intelligent mind designed the place!  There's plenty more arguments where these came from, and I certainly don't purport to know which ones our founding fathers happened to like.

But how is Deism different from the Christianity I practice, you ask.  Ohhhh, let me tell you (since you're too lazy to read that wiki entry I posted).  Deists believe in some sort of creator, which most call God, by which we assume they mean the Christian God.  But it bears very little resemblance to the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible.  Funny I should mention that Bible thing.  Deists tend to think it's hogwash.  You see their God created the universe, set things in motion, but like a deadbeat parent he high-tailed it out of here after the birth.  The Bible is just a bunch of nice stories written by humans, not the divinely inspired word of God.  Jesus was just a hippie with controversial views.  God doesn't intervene, there are no miracles, there's not even an occasional birthday card.  Prayer is wonderful for meditation, cleansing, and affirmation, but God isn't going to intervene on your behalf no matter how much you grovel.  With beliefs like these, is it any wonder our Deist forefathers pushed for Separation of Church and State?

Our forefathers, and other prominent figures of the age, believed that reason should govern us. They put safeguards in place so that religious dogma would not control our nation. They promoted tolerance of other religions. Some biographers[36] hold the opinion that many of the American Founding Fathers (and especially Washington) believed that, as leaders of the nation, they should remain silent on questions of doctrine and denomination, to avoid creating unnecessary divisiveness within the nation; instead they should promote the virtues taught by religion in general. (via)   They held great reverence for God and creation, but they knew that no one agreed on the details and didn't want laws and other important decisions based on what someone claimed was the word of God.  If something was truly a good decision, then we would arrive at it through reason and intelligent discourse.

So when you call America a Christian Nation founded on Christian principles, you are doing a disservice to American history and our forefathers.  You're oversimplifying the truth and fooling your audience with an implied comparison to the Christianity practiced today.  You're ignoring Separation of Church and State and disgracing our forefathers intentions of religious freedom for ALL religions, not just sects of Christianity.