Need some quick help with a random project...

[gwladgarwr]

As an amateur astrologer (yes, I can calculate charts by hand), I'm not really sure how you formulated your questions to determine whether or not the responses you were looking for would be based on somone's knowledge about astrology.

None of your questions appear to have any relevance to Sun-Sign astrology, nor would they shed any light as to the possible Sun-Sign of anyone reading the questions. If you understood the basics of astrology, you would not have asked any of your questions in hopes of uncovering any potential Sun-sign traits you attribute to each question. It is clear you do not understand the fundamentals of Sun-Sign astrology (which is only a small part of astrology overall) and confuse traits associated with between the "signs".) What you are asking really depends on "pop psychology" and does no great service to either astronomy or to astrology.

Since astrology and astronomy parted company in the late Middle Ages, I'm finding it hard to determine how your professor would find any relevance in the astrology-astronomy debate: one deals strictly with the hard, physical facts concerning celestial phenomena while the other deals with the subjective interpretation of said phenomena.

I cannot say at all that you have proven that astrology is inaccurate since you have not in the least demonstrated exactly how you or current astronomical study have proven astrology inaccurate otherwise. Your questions (and I doubt you came up with them yourself, seeing that they all seem to blend Jungian psychology - Jung was well-versed in astrology - and a fudged version of descriptions of basic Sun-sign types.)

Your questions are hardly "horoscopes": your questions are merely descriptions of Sun-signs, and they are highly faulty and leading at best. A true "horoscope" is not even a description: it is the ecliptic degree of the zodiacal sign (or constellation, in the sidereal system) on the horizon at the latitude and longitude at the time of birth (or any other time of the event in question.) That's all. It is not a "fortune" or "forecast" or "prediction".

If I were you, I would challenge your professor and simply ask what relevance does a subjective interpretation of celestial phenomena has to do with the observation of the physical behavior of the celestial phenomena itself.

BTW, I'm a Sun-Sign Gemini. Description #6 at its core is not a Gemini Sun-Sign description at all as you depict it in, though Description #12 for Sagittarius comes pretty close (Sagittarius' being receptive is descriptive of a person with Moon in Sagittarius or with any degree of Sagittarius on the cusp of the 12th House rather than to Sun in Sagittarius, for example.)

Sgt gw

[SlingerDun]

gwladgarwr, I was watching a Nostradamus doomsday show the other night and went for the ice box to prepare for the big 'cash in' with a chilled Guiness and a quirley. When i came back they had just finished talking about a sign between Scorpio and Sagittarius that had been canked from the circle. whats the deal with that?

--->Dave

[PatriotGirl422]

As an amateur astrologer (yes, I can calculate charts by hand), I'm not really sure how you formulated your questions to determine whether or not the responses you were looking for would be based on somone's knowledge about astrology.

None of your questions appear to have any relevance to Sun-Sign astrology, nor would they shed any light as to the possible Sun-Sign of anyone reading the questions. If you understood the basics of astrology, you would not have asked any of your questions in hopes of uncovering any potential Sun-sign traits you attribute to each question. It is clear you do not understand the fundamentals of Sun-Sign astrology (which is only a small part of astrology overall) and confuse traits associated with between the "signs".) What you are asking really depends on "pop psychology" and does no great service to either astronomy or to astrology.

Since astrology and astronomy parted company in the late Middle Ages, I'm finding it hard to determine how your professor would find any relevance in the astrology-astronomy debate: one deals strictly with the hard, physical facts concerning celestial phenomena while the other deals with the subjective interpretation of said phenomena.

I cannot say at all that you have proven that astrology is inaccurate since you have not in the least demonstrated exactly how you or current astronomical study have proven astrology inaccurate otherwise. Your questions (and I doubt you came up with them yourself, seeing that they all seem to blend Jungian psychology - Jung was well-versed in astrology - and a fudged version of descriptions of basic Sun-sign types.)

Your questions are hardly "horoscopes": your questions are merely descriptions of Sun-signs, and they are highly faulty and leading at best. A true "horoscope" is not even a description: it is the ecliptic degree of the zodiacal sign (or constellation, in the sidereal system) on the horizon at the latitude and longitude at the time of birth (or any other time of the event in question.) That's all. It is not a "fortune" or "forecast" or "prediction".

If I were you, I would challenge your professor and simply ask what relevance does a subjective interpretation of celestial phenomena has to do with the observation of the physical behavior of the celestial phenomena itself.

BTW, I'm a Sun-Sign Gemini. Description #6 at its core is not a Gemini Sun-Sign description at all as you depict it in, though Description #12 for Sagittarius comes pretty close (Sagittarius' being receptive is descriptive of a person with Moon in Sagittarius or with any degree of Sagittarius on the cusp of the 12th House rather than to Sun in Sagittarius, for example.)

Sgt gw

Ok, I'm sorry if I offended you and your science. This really wasn't a scientific experiment. All I did was look at the daily horoscopes from the LA times and see if people can correctly pick their own out. This is something that everyone in my class had to do. We were given directions for the project, and I just did it. This was, in no way, my own original experiment. It's just a beginners astronomy class, and we are doing a little segment on astrology. It's really not that serious. It's really not meant to be anything profoundly scientific. It was just an easy fun little 20 point project we had to do, and I followed the directions. I didn't write any questions on my own, and I was in no way discussing the movements of planets or stars or anything like that. I promise it's not that serious.

[gwladgarwr]

No offense taken.

My criticism about your assignment focuses on your professor's wisdom in mixing pop psychology with hard science. That kind of assignment seems to belong better in a psychology or behaviorial class rather than in an astronomy class. I think he/she should stick to star maps and supernovas rather than daily horoscopes from the LA Times. Cheap sun sign astrology just cheapens the hard science of astronomy and further gives a bad name to astrology.

Just keep in mind, whether or not you believe in the validity of astrology, that astrology and astronomy were one and the same for thousands of years (both the scientific discipline and the "esoteric" part); even the terms "astrology" and "astronomy" were used interchangeably. That all changed with the advent of the Age of Reason (and political moves by the Church who feared "religious" competition from "fortune tellers" and "soothsayers".)

I did an extra-credit assignment years ago in my statistics class where I analysed the sun signs and ascendants in birth charts of my co-workers in a pizza joint. I sought to "prove" that certain persons with specific sun sign and ascendant combinations would be more likely than others to work in that pizza place (based on traditional sun sign/acsendant types). I found that there was a higher incidence of Scorpio Sun Sign/Aquarius Ascendant types at that pizza joint when compared to results from previous studies at other major corporations and companies. I don't know if this is significant or not, but it was interesting to see the numbers.

Sgt gw

[gwladgarwr]

gwladgarwr, I was watching a Nostradamus doomsday show the other night and went for the ice box to prepare for the big 'cash in' with a chilled Guiness and a quirley. When i came back they had just finished talking about a sign between Scorpio and Sagittarius that had been canked from the circle. whats the deal with that?--->Dave

They were talking about a zodiacal constellation (as opposed to a zodiacal sign) called Ophiuchus, the Snake-Bearer. Way back in the day when different cultures had different and/or converging accounts about various groupings of stars, the old timers identified and designated a constellation between the constellations of Scorpius (the Scorpion) and Sagittarius (the Archer). At that time when the apparent motion of the sun passed "through" the constellations (the ecliptic coincided with the constellations), the sun "spent" about the same amount of time passing through each constellation, the stars of each constellation floating within a few degrees above and below ecliptic latitude.) Most of the stars comprising the constellation Ophiuchus did not fall within the parameters of ecliptic latitude, so the sun passed through the constellation only partially, and at that, only for a very short time.

Since counting Ophiuchus would have meant including a thirteenth constellation (sign, since back then constellations coincided with "signs"), it would have jacked up the math; it's hard to calculate with odd numbers. So, they didn't pay much attention to that constellation at all.

On top of that, back then as now, the constellations are not all of equal dimension of thirty degrees. Some are only 10 degrees wide and some are over 45 degrees. So, the sun could technically spend about 14 days in one constellation and five weeks in another.

Complicating that, the systems using the constellations, called sidereal astrology, are based on a fixed zodiacal starting point and where the constellations (also called signs) have been alloted a fixed number of degrees of thirty degrees per constellation. Astrology using the so-called tropical system uses a gradually moving "zero point" that is determined by geophysical points in relation to the sun; "signs" here are also thirty degrees each and do not coincide at all with the zodiacal constellations.

Nostradamus was aware of the constellation Ophiuchus but did not take it into account in his astrological work. There are many other minor constellations also not used in sidereal astrology, but since like most Western astrologers work in the tropical system of astrology, there was no correlation between zodical constellations and zodical signs. There's another old constellation called Arachne (the Spider) that may have been used in a thirteen-sign zodiac by the ancients; there's evidence that the first zodiacs were 13-sign/constellation systems.)

As a quick example, I'm a sun sign Gemini in the tropical system, but in any of the sidereal systems (there are more than one, depending on what zodiacal starting point you use), I'm a sun sign Taurus. The rest of my birth chart is completely different from my tropical zodiac chart. No Snake Bearers or Spiders appear nor are used in either system or chart!

Sgt gw