Signs

Because I Knew Someone Would Ask....

Why the Astrological Signs No Longer Match Up with the Constellations in the Heavens...

(This information is adapted from a course I taught)

Millenia ago, astronomer-priests noticed that at the time of the year when
light finally began to overtake darkness, and the days began getting longer,
the Sun rose into the stars of Capricorn. The constellation served as a
convenient visual marker for the locations of the Sun along the ecliptic
(apparent path around the Earth.)

The earliest astronomers, the Babylonians, saw 15 constellations, a number
that was eventually reduced to 12. The Greeks, who gave us the zodiac in its
present form, named the groups of stars they saw the Sun pass through the
"zodiac" which means "Circle of Animals."

The 12 signs are equal divisions of the zodiac. The Sun appears
to spend approximately one month in each of the signs, giving rise to what we
call "sun signs." In actuality, there are no sharp subdivisions, and the
constellations overlap in a continuous flow.

Such knowledge helped our anscestors in practical ways, such as timing the
planting season. So what the zodiac really is is an ancient record of the cyclic
series of transformations actually experienced by man through the year, a
record written in symbolic language using the stars as a convenient, graphic
way of building up symbolic images that could be experienced by peoples who
didn't deal with the abstract the way we do today. It depicts the change that
people saw occuring aroung them--these people lived very close to the earth,
and the seasonal changes represented the inner emotional and biological
changes of man's nature which corresponded to the outer changes in the
environment during the year.

But due to a slight wobble in the earth's axis, the position of the Sun on the
first day of what we know as winter gradually shifted backward through
Capricorn toward the constellation Sagittarius. But the tradition of Capricorn
stayed alive among astrologer-priests, BECAUSE TO THE ASTROLOGER,
CAPRICORN MEANS A CERTAIN SEASON, A PHASE IN EARTH'S ORBIT AROUND
THE SUN. TO ASTRONOMERS, CAPRICORN MEANS A GROUP OF STARS.

In other words, the zodiac for astrologers represents a journey through they
year by the Sun and the resulting seasons and what the cyclical changes
represent--i.e., the qualities of experience that flow between people and the
world around them. "As Above, So Below." Actual groupings of stars are really
no longer what's being used here at all!

So this communication problem results in nasty public relations on the part of
astronomers when it comes to astrologers.

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