My Post C-SPAN Life
Jan 29th, 2008 at 7:15 am by Susie
My sister called me early this morning. “Next time, you shouldn’t talk about the astrology,” she said. “You shouldn’t give Republicans anything to use against you.”
“Fuck ‘em,” I said. “I don’t care what they think.”
And I don’t. I mean, if the party of a disintegrating economy, a disgraceful war, torture and Constitutional abuses wants to attack me because of astrology, well, God bless ‘em. On that karmic scale, I’ll take my odds against theirs any day.
If I choose to believe that the position of my car outside the house in relation to my writing desk here inside affects the quality of my prose, does that make me crazy? I DON’T THINK SO! But then again, what others think doesn’t matter.
Hostile much?
Awww, naw, not really. My mom swears by the astrology too.
Much of the time we humans enable each others’ delusions, which is occasionally fun. As Carl Sagan wrote, it’s a demon-haunted world. No offense intended, actually. I didn’t subject myself to the Simpering Chimperor’s bloviations last night — not even astrology can explain his dead, lifeless heart and eyes. Evil needs no editorializing.
Well, I may indeed be delusional (I have an awful lot of company there, so no big deal) but I’ll never vote for another cancerian.
I think we’ve had more Scorps in the White House than any other sign. (Hillary is a Scorp.)
I read that too, Susie. I know Teddy Roosevelt was, but I’d have to look up the rest.
susie, you know i was just yankin’ your chain on my blog…
we in blogtopia (and yes, i coined that phrase) are proud of you!
Harry Truman was born on the same day as my wife and daughter.
And they are always gving me hell.
Astrology is the only vice I have left, since I won’t even entertain the caffeine thing. I was pleasantly surprised when you so brazenly tossed out reference to it.
And as a cancerian, I want Merciless to know it’s been a terrible struggle these past 8 yrs. I remember when he was running in 2004, the second time he stole it, and I was finishing graduate school. I got the first 4.0 in the history of that particular dept of the university I was attending and a cash prize that went with it, and I was crestfallen because it meant he’d “win” something too.
But surely there is some decoupling that should be allowed the 1/12 of the population that share the sign with him.
I don’t know which moon is in what house or if Mercury’s aligned with I-35, but you go girl. Keep up the good work.
er, the books Astrologers use are so out of date that the positions they say the stars are in are, well, not the positions the stars are in.
And the magnetic field of your monitor is far stronger than the pull of the stars.
That’s an idea! Monitorology! It should apply to the Younger Generation.
But astrology certainly has more going for it than Bushonomics.
Tarot, now, that’s another story. No one has ever touched my tarot deck except me.
Frank, we don’t use books. We use very accurate software programs.
Two different zodiacs are commonly used in astrology - one tropical (a metaphorical system which places 0 Aries at the Vernal Equinox) and one sidereal (which factors in the precession of the equinoxes). Most Western astrologers use the tropical system, most Eastern astrologers use the sidereal system. Any ephemeris (a book showing the daily position of planets) calculated for the sidereal system indeed shows the accurate current positions of planets relative to the ecliptic. There is room for debate about whether the tropical system is legitimate, but in any event, the signs of the zodiac are only one tool in the astrologer’s arsenal. Of much more interest to me, for instance, is the geometric relationship between the planets relative to earth, which is consistent from one system to another.
I’ve been a professional astrologer for eighteen years and have yet to encounter an astrologer who subscribes to a causal explanation for astrology. By and large, we don’t believe moonbeams radiate down and activate humanoids. I’m not saying there are no astrologers who believe this, but they seem to be few and far between. The philosophy behind astrology seems to be, simply, “A thing born in a moment in time has the qualities of that moment in time.” Most Western astrologers seem to resonate with a view akin to Jung’s idea of synchronicity - that there is a meaningful but acausal connection between the movements in the heavens and the affairs of man. In many ways it’s not unlike choosing a random card from a tarot deck and drawing conclusions between its symbolism and the circumstances of the person sitting across from you.