The joke’s on you: How you’ve been duped by astrology and didn’t even know it…

I blogged a while back on the proliferation of errant beliefs in the information age in viral internet memes:   Sticking My Finger in the Dike (many love it, and you might too). 

I thought it was time to take a moment to briefly debunk astrology, that most repugnant of memes and pseudoscience adhered to by quite literally millions of Americans.   According to Gallup in the fall of 2005, 25% of Americans and just as many Britons buy into the pseudoscience.  That’s ONE IN FOUR OF us!   At 300 million Americans, that’d be about 75 million Americans who virtually believe that THE EARTH IS FLAT!  

I know!  Completely inconceivable!  Are you surprised really, given that 44% of Americans in 2008 said they believed God created man in his present form?   It just goes to show you how grossly ignorant the average American is when it comes to science…  Worse yet, in the Information Age, it could be argued there is no excuse for such glaring and gross ignorance, non?   And willful ignorance is actually not ignorance, but stupidity…  

A Brief History

The Zodiac comes to us by way of the Hellenistic Greeks (think Alexander the Great who combined Classical Greek, Macedonian, Egyptian, and Persian knowledge).   In turn, its origin is from Babylon (the Chaldean period) in the middle first millennium BCE (BC).  

To ancient stargazers and skywatchers in agrarian societies dependent upon predicting seasonality in order to plant and harvest, watching the skies was an imperative.   Thousands of years of sky watching were common to all ancient early civilizations and human societies for very obvious and quite practical reasons.  From Stonehenge to Teotihuacan to the Mayan calendars, knowing when to plant and harvest was imperative to the emergence of all prehistoric civilizations.  From prehistoric Neolithic Agricultural Revolution Mesopotamia to Europe to the New World, the ability to be able to predict seasons and when to plant and harvest became specialized knowledge that was the basis of power for a priestly class, and, along with irrigation projects, is thought by anthropologists to be the origin of increasing human social stratification (class/castes).  

In ancient European history, the Bronze Age Nebra sky disk and golden hats bear witness to the importance of this stargazing in semi-settled horticulturalist central Europe long before classical Greek civilization arose.  

But it was important for other reasons too.   As they looked around at the world around them, they sought explanations for calamities of all kinds—from human sickness to drought to infertility to land that would no longer produce due to over farming and salinization.  Like all ancient peoples generally characterized by polytheism (belief in many deities) and animism (belief that everything, including animals, plants, and inanimate objects like rocks and beaches and phenomenon like rain, possesses a spirit), in the same way the ancient Greeks explained the movement of the sun across the sky daily through their God Apollo and imagining an invisible chariot pulled by horses, they also sought to explain the inexplicable by way of the heavens.  

Ancient humans were also not too different from modern humans in their desire to not only understand the past, but, more importantly, to predict the future on the basis of it.   As inanimate objects and materials and phenomenon in the natural world were imbued with supernatural powers influencing the lives of mortals, naturally, then, the planets and heavenly bodies naturally exerted past, present, and future influences over the births, lives, and events of people.   Those influences must be examined and understood in order to understand past and present and to predict the future.   In short, people are uncomfortable with- and fear the unknown and the uncertain.   Astrology and the Zodiac, in the same way Marx would one day say religion is the opiate of the masses, proved a strong sedative for ancient peoples against the certainty of uncertainty, and, like all belief systems, created a framework for understanding supernatural, natural, and human events.   In the same way pagan belief systems perpetuate a belief in magick as explanations for misfortune, the Zodiac served a similar function.  Hexes, curses, and spells weren’t alone in explaining human suffering and misery.   The planets and stars had their role too, and people offending the gods, spirits or heavenly bodies could likewise explain it… And human success could be explained by those who heeded the warnings given by the stars.  

Of course there has always been a conflict of interest and profit motive on behalf of those who claim special, arcane, esoteric knowledge (as there is today amongst New Age practitioners from Quantum beliefs to Zeitgeist and its pseudohistoric/scientific sequels).   There’s good money in fortune telling now as there was then… And how lucky for today’s practitioners that one in four of us don’t know any better…  

Just imagine the bucks this guy is making preying off of the ignorant…

And so, ancient Babylonians (around 2,500 YBP) through stargazing developed a system of astrology to explain those influences during the Chaldean period, beliefs that were concurrent with the development of Zoroastrianism and Ahura Mazdaism in Persia (Iran).   The Macedonian Alexander the Great’s conquering of Persia ensured the perpetuation of this meme from Babylon by way of the Greeks and Romans to modern Europe and America.  

Why the Zodiac is unscientific

I’ll blog on another day when I have more time about the scientific studies that have been done concerning horoscopes and The Amazing Randi’s lovely debunking of astrology and horoscopes over his life.   But I can’t resist sharing this tidbit at this moment because I find it entertaining…  An astrologer gave James Randi a horoscope, and Discovery Magazine had a fun write up in response including some video… 

You might enjoy this clip.  Really, trust me.  Watch it now.  

But I’ll be brief.  Muslim scientists by the second millennium CE had debunked and rejected astrology and diverged in their scientific study of the heavens in astronomy.  Scientists have known since the Age of Reason/Enlightenment that astrology is bogus and unscientific; hence the divergence of astronomy and astrology.  

In 2006, in response to rising pseudoscientific views of the United States public (sadly), the U.S. National Science Board issued a statement designating astrology as pseudoscientific.   In 1975, The American Humanist Association essentially did the same in stating that there is no scientific basis for astrology.  Karl Sagan felt astrology was invalid, but found this statement’s tone too authoritarian, preferring instead a statement that would reject the specific tenets of astrology.   Two of our modern world’s most renown scientific minds, Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins have issued unequivocal statements that astrology is unscientific.  

As a youth and young adult, I’d succumb to the popular superstition that is astrology myself, especially when so many so invested in the pseudoscience assured me that, yes, horoscopes are bogus and subject to confirmation bias, but sun sign astrology when given an accurate birth time are eerily accurate and precise and can be trusted.   And, low and behold, when I had a birth chart done and such, it astounded me in its accuracy.  It also seemed to be eerily accurate for those I also subjected to birth chart analysis.   But there again, the same phenomenon in overly vague descriptions subject to one’s own confirmation bias applied.  

There were two revelations I had that helped me to realize how bogus astrology was truly in every way.  

Um, the earth is the center of the solar system/universe?   The first was that the Zodiac was based upon a geocentric model of the universe.  Cosmologists can demonstrate that, no matter where one is in the universe, it will always appear as if the location of the observer is at the center of it (see the illusion of space expansion).  

In the same way the Church taught that the earth, with God’s penultimate, perfect creation in humankind, was the center of both the solar system and the universe,  ancient Mesopotamian observers of the heavens were totally unaware that it was earth orbiting the sun, not the other way around.  It is, in effect, an optical illusion, but still totally false.   Knowing this, we also know that the system of observations upon which all of modern astrology depends is totally flawed in its perspective.   In other words, believers in modern astrology are essentially little different than someone alive today who would posit that the earth is still flat.    Believing in astrology is tantamount to superstition and little different than believing that sneezing is caused by demons trying to crawl into your body through your nose or that the bubonic plague could only be explained by Jews poisoning the village well.  

Um, you mean to tell me I’m not the Zodiac sign I believe I am and have believed my entire life whenever I’ve read my horoscope?    Second, and more importantly, I discovered that due in part to the precession of the equinoxes, and completely arbitrary and inaccurate division of the heavens into twelve neat 30° sections (360° ÷ 12 = 30°) that don’t actually correspond to the true constellation boundaries of the Zodiac and the tropical, or solar, year on the Gregorian calendar (and the exclusion of Ophiuchus), most of us aren’t even the birth sign that we think we are (some are still, others aren’t).  

But this is hard to visualize for the layperson new to astronomy.  As such, the video I’ve posted below does an excellent job of helping you visualize what we’re talking about when we say “sun sign,” or “birth sign,” astrology.

Let me verbally try to paint the picture, and then I’ll share the video.  First, we’ve got to stupidly imagine that the earth is the center of the solar system, and the Sun a tether ball attached to the earth (the video actually correctly visualizes a helio-, or sun-, centered solar system).   As you visualize the sun tethered to the earth and moving around it, visualize the string creating a plane that bisects the earth and the sun at the equator of the earth and the equator/center of the sun.   This 2D plane is known as the ecliptic plane or ecliptical because if the moon comes between the earth and sun here, it causes a solar eclipse.  

Now, if you drilled a hole through the center of the sun along this line, so you had a peep hole through the sun to the opposite side of the universe, as the point opposite the earth along this line of sight enters and exits the ecliptical plane constellations, this is how the 12 signs of the Zodiac are determined, along with their dates. 

There’s one problem:  the dates don’t actually match when this line enters and exits each constellation throughout the year.    And we aren’t actually the birth signs we think we are… Sort of throws out astrology and the Zodiac altogether, doesn’t it?   

First, the video (notice the earth at the bottom left, and the sun center; then draw the line from the earth to the sun and extend it out to visualize what we’re talking about when you hear “sun” or “birth” sign astrology)…

Second, now the reality.   My friend’s date of birth is September 26.  All of her life, she was told she was a Libra according to the Zodiac.  In reality, it turns out, she’s a Virgo.   Another friend’s date of birth is January 27.  He thought he was an Aquarius.  Now it turns out he’s actually a Capricorn.   Chances are, you aren’t what you’ve thought you are, and you’ve spent your entire life reading the wrong horoscope.  Consult the chart below I created using constellation boundaries from the 1930 International Astronomical Union to find out your REAL Zodiac sign.  

And now that you know, knowing is half the battle…  The other half is slaying these errant beliefs by confronting these superstitions wherever you find them.  

And so that you can continue inoculating others to such inane beliefs, Michael Shermer of the Skeptic’s Society has a Baloney Detection kit for you to share with others…

And, in case you’re wondering why people believe strange things in the first place…

Michael Shermer explains here in his TED Talk (in which he announced he was recanting his anthropogenic climate change skepticism at its start to the world): 

And in case you’d prefer to read about why… 

You’d probably enjoy the blog I linked in the opening too if you enjoyed this one.  And, remember, sharing is caring.   We’ve got to get the right counter memes out there…  Instead of being part of the problem, be part of the solution.  

Signing off… Your friendly neighborhood Minister of Elucidation, Doctor Jones.

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