And yet, both are exactly equally valid.
This is, of course, completely wrong. Science is everything. Everything we know, everything we experience and everything that exists has the capacity to be explained by science.
Yes, and they were prepared by someone who didn’t know me (and never got to know me.)
I think that would be an interesting experiment, but the person reading the charts would have to know the subjects and their histories very well for it to work.
Their own “chart” (I assume you mean natal wheel) or their own natal wheel interpretation? I wouldn’t know my own chart if I fell over it in a dark alleyway, although if you gave me a list of planetary symbols I could probably find mine out of a small stack because I know my Ascendant (Aquarius), Sun (Sagittarius), Moon (Aries) and Mars (Scorpio) - but I could be wrong; those are only four attributes and I don’t even know what houses they’re in.
But yes, I think that if people can pick out their own natal wheel interpretation more often than chance that we might be on to something. (This is where you link me to a study where they’ve done that and not found anything statistically significant, isn’t it?) It’s possible I and my 30 best friends are all flukes, sure. 
Or maybe we’ve unconsciously alienated anyone who doesn’t fit the pattern.
Do they? For natal wheel interpretations or for horoscopes and prognostication? I know nothing of the later two, but natal wheels are pretty cut and dried, and I’ve never heard much controversy (among astrologers) over the main ideas. Of course people have arguments over the minutiae, but if people disagreeing means that something isn’t valid, we might as well throw in the towel on global warming, artificial sweeteners and mammography, eh?
I put astrology on par with correlations like short skirts and the stock market, or the migration habits of blue whales. Do I think the position of the planets *causes *personality traits? No. But I think it’s interesting how often (in my experience) the two are correlated.
Does this mean that people born around the same place and time as you will have the same personality regardless of upbringing, life experiences, and genetics?
I knew you would know all about it as usual. My friend predicted his own death with astrology and died on the exact day he predicted. No lame skeptical explanations please. Yes, it was natural causes.
Nonsense!
He ended his own life, by wilfully using choosing to seperate his metaphysical self from his physical body. Of course, skeptical coroners would see that as “natural causes”, but then that’s just to be expected.
It seems to me that **WhyNot ** and **elucidator ** have answered your question, InvisibleWombat. Unless you think they are lying and I don’t think they are. Everything else is just a hijack.
The only thing I can think of is perhaos we underestimate the power of the stars and distant planets over some aspect of our existence. If the Moon can have such sway (I know, it’s gravity, stupid), then perhaps the other planets and celestial bodies can possibly affect is in some way that can be charted by the movement of the constellations.
Perhaps it’s all a gravitational issue?
That would probably be Ray Hyman, last seen at the University of Oregon, the author of several books on parapsychology and one on dowsing.
I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned precession, which means that all the signs from Babylonian times are shifted to the next set, but no astrologer seems to have noticed the serious error that should show up in all charts.
Perhaps you should sit at the feet of the master and bask in the glow of his wisdom:
I guess there’s no way we can refute this…because until you provide a dated prediction about his death and a signed death certificate stating cause of death, and the two match up the way you say, this is just another in a long line of anecdotes.
Heck, another possibility occurs to me, even if it happened just as lekatt said it did. If I was about to die, I could make up 30 predictions, one for each of the next 30 days. Then my co-conspirator could open up the one that came true and discard the others. “Look, he predicted his own death on this day!”
Of course. A civil question deserves a civil answer.
A living, more or less. I was quite a bit younger, childless. I might have done better, but wasn’t willing to hustle, and there were perfectly adequate practitioners in my area. Made more money teaching and lecturing on the subject. But never very much.
Nah, that would make it more difficult to convince old ladies that their money was cursed and they should give it to me. Just kiddng! I believed then as I believe now, its damned interesting. I would, if the client asked, approach the question from points of view that I don’t actually hold, there are forms of astrology that are more “in tune” with fortune telling. The same principles apply, really. But I offered it more in terms of an experiment.
I have known people with some psychic gifts, but they don’t need a chart to function, anything will do. Problem is that it is wholly unreliable, sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t, and you make of that what you will. Myself, I’m about as psychic as a tree stump.
Accessibility to the data, I suppose. Best explanation I’ve heard is that birth is the first moment where a being is seperate from its mother, and the cosmic moment impresses itself upon the “blank slate”. Good as any.
Wholly agree. So do most practitioners, its pretty silly otherwise. Some unfortunate souls spend hours trying to exactly pin down the math (A Cancer? A Leo? The suspense mounts…) but the fact is that birth time recording is pretty sloppy anyway. Most modern astologers treat the Zodias as a continuum: Aries is fiery and enthusiastic, Taurus solid and phlematic, a Taurus born close to Aries is more energetic than one born towards the center, further from other influence. Kind of like blue going to green going to yellow, there is no precise point where blue becomes green. (Are you Bluish? You don’t* look * Bluish!
The tradition goes back a long, long way. There are any number of books on the subject, but the work of balancing and synthesizing takes place above my eyes and in front of my ears. Its a human skill, involves some trained intuition, but Jupiter in Aries means pretty much the same thing no matter which books you consult.
No insult taken, esp. under the circumstances. I have definitely taken some insults over this. Hoo boy. But this is not the first or only unpopular opinion I’ve had, my skin is so thick, a rhinoceros asked to borrow it for a knife fight.
Always glad to answer a polite question. Its what we do here, isn’t it?
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I casually practice astrology. I have done charts up for people I do not know, as well as people I do know. I do not follow or believe in the published “horror-scopes”. However, I do get a kick out of the “astro-slams” =)
As for the charts I have done, to get as accurate as possible, you need DOB, Time, place30irishdivil
I’ve never used the placeirishdivil system. Is that sidereal?
grrrr -I dropped my keyboard and it posted the message. dangit.
here’s the rest of it:
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I casually practice astrology. I have done charts up for people I do not know, as well as people I do know. I do not follow or believe in the published “horror-scopes”. However, I do get a kick out of the “astro-slams” =)
As for the charts I have done, to get as accurate as possible, you need DOB, Time, place (city, state, country, etc). Some signs have familiar traits that will overlap which then gives the concept of “generalization”. I dont use astrology for “fortune telling” and I would never waste my time or money on such a thing. My studies have never gone to the point of doing a daily projection for myself or anyone else, I have used the practice mainly for communication aspects. Most of you would not believe me if I told you how handy this practice was when doing customer service work (and had access to the caller’s DOB), all I can say is that it worked 99% of the time!
Now, my friend and I used to make little bets on what our server’s sign was whenever we went out for a drink or food and we would consistantly get either the sign correct, or the element (air, water, earth, fire). The ones on a cusp were very tricky, though!
There will always be skeptics and those that are unwilling to keep an open mind (there are no such things as ghosts/spirits, astrology is bogus and as effective as virgin sacrifices, and while we’re at it - the world IS NOT ROUND!) :dubious: Hey, I was attempting a bit of wee humour, leave it alone!
So… anyone want a chart done??? 
I was just throwing that out there. I personally don’t believe in astrological predictions, etc but I have a keen interest in astronomy, and having said that, I can see where my posit that perhaps gravity of some distant kind was a potential cause and effect for astrological occurences seems foolish, but I already knew how gravity worked.
I guess what I should have said is that we don’t know everything about the cosmos yet…and we may never know.
He was about 36 when he made the prediction. He had never been sick a day in his life except for a cold now and then. He was full of life, fun to be around, and had a very large following. He made his living doing charts. He told me his chart looked really bad around his 40th birthday, but felt he could get through it. He didn’t, he died on his 40th birthday of a massive heart attack. His mother found him laying across the bed, dead, when she came home from work. He was one of my closest friends that I lost early in life. I expected skeptics to make fun of it and to suggest I was lying. I don’t lie, I don’t need to lie. I remember telling a story about my experience in a hurricane when I was in the navy on this board. One of the posters called me a liar about the whole thing and proceeded to check it out. I was amazed when he kept everyone up-to-date on his progress. He found out I was in the navy, aboard a DE named Willett, and there was a hurricane in July that brought snow to New Orleans. Having found all the info to be correct he refused to apologize. Typical. I feel compassion for those who are so distrustful of their fellow man. They become isolated from the general society and fear to believe anything. Now having said this I will probably get called for off topic even after posters have made fun of what I said.
What was his name, when did he die, can you show us a copy of his dated prediction, and can you show us the death certificate? In other words, do you have anything to support this anecdote?
I think this thread would go more smoothly if we all agree not to respond to anything Lekatt says.
The thing is, the Earth itself exerts one thousand trillion times the gravitational force on us that the moon does, by nature of it being bigger and us standing right on top of it. Yet the Earth never factors into astrological predictions (I wonder if it would if someone were born on the moon?). The Earth is a celestial body too, isn’t it? Each of the planets seem to sit in equal astrological footing, but the magnitude of gravitational force from each planet is all over the place, from pretty-much-zero to almost-zero to as-close-to-zero-as-any-scientific-calculator-will-take-you.
The constellations themselves are just optical illusions, the stars in most constellations are actually nowhere near each other, they just look that way from our point of view. It seems rather arbitrary that collections of otherwise unrelated stars would gather together to exert some influence (that travels faster than light even!) over life here on some random planet.