Astrology’s Old Calendar/New Calendar debate

  • my-new-horrorscop_sm.jpgIf you don’t fol­low mat­ters relat­ing to astrol­ogy, you might have missed this big storm brew­ing amongst those airy, herbal-tea-drinking folk. But it’s actu­ally kind of an inter­est­ing col­li­sion of their beliefs and a lit­tle hard sci­ence. And it might just give them the kind of schism that we Ortho­dox know all too much about — those adher­ing to the Old Cal­en­dar and those embrac­ing the New.

    The prob­lem is that the entire wob­bly infra­struc­ture of horo­scopes rests in the stars, and while the stars don’t move, the van­tage here on earth does. The earth wob­bles on its axis, and so the 12-sign zodiac needs to be updated, accord­ing to this astron­o­mist.

    “This is not some­thing that hap­pened today. This has gone on for thou­sands of years,” said astronomer Parke Kunkle.

    The star doc­tors say Earth is cur­rently in a dif­fer­ent spot in rela­tion to the Sun, and its equa­to­r­ial align­ment has changed from 3,000 years ago when the study of astrol­ogy began — back when 12 zodiac signs were assigned to 12 dif­fer­ent peri­ods of the year.

    Those signs you were born into are dif­fer­ent now because the Earth’s wob­ble on its axis has cre­ated a one-month bump in the align­ment of the stars, accord­ing to Kunkle.

    “Because of this change of tilt, the Earth is really over here in effect and Sun is in a dif­fer­ent con­stel­la­tion than it was 3,000 years ago.”

    What that means to you is a Virgo may now be a Leo, an Aquar­ius – a Capri­corn, and a Tau­rus – an Aries.

    … The Sun and Earth are mov­ing surely and slowly, so the stars of your sign aren’t the same as they were when that sign was assigned to your birth thou­sands of years ago.

    So here is his updated list (which takes me from a Pisces to an Aquar­ius. Big whoop.) …my-new-horrorscope.jpg
    Capri­corn: Jan. 20 – Feb. 16
    Aquar­ius: Feb. 16 – March 11
    Pisces: March 11– April 18
    Aries: April 18 – May 13
    Tau­rus: May 13 – June 21
    Gem­ini: June 21 – July 20
    Can­cer: July 20 – Aug. 10
    Leo: Aug. 10 – Sept. 16
    Virgo: Sept. 16 – Oct. 30
    Libra: Oct. 30 – Nov. 23
    Scor­pio: Nov. 23 – Nov. 29
    Ophi­uchus: Nov. 29 – Dec. 17
    Sagit­tar­ius: Dec. 17 – Jan. 20

    I sup­pose the thing that’s the most intrigu­ing is how he came up with the new sign, Ophi­uchus (sec­ond from the bot­tom). What the heck is that? Come ON. If we’re going to have a new astro­log­i­cal sign, can’t we at least have a con­test or some­thing? If we got a coo­lio phoenix named Zatira or some­thing, it’d just be the best. But Ophi­uchus? How do you even pro­nounce that? And what is it, any­way? What if it’s like a con­stel­la­tion of a civil ser­vant or an amoeba or some­thing? We need to put some mar­ket­ing geniuses onto this job. There’s an entire indus­try of gag-producing trin­kets depend­ing on it.

    The inter­est­ing thing will be to see how this new infor­ma­tion is received.


    Related posts:

    1. Pres­i­den­tial wanna-be’s and the great national debate
    2. The Daily Lives etc. Calendar
    3. “Pas­tor with 666 tat­too claims to be divine”
    4. Remem­ber­ing one reflec­tive object from Kronstadt
    5. Pon­cho Sun­day roundup

    January 15th, 2011 | Grace | 8 Comments |

8 Responses and Counting...

  • Anam Cara 01.15.2011

    Ophi­uchus is also called the Ser­pent Bearer (or the doc­tor in the sky because he is hold­ing ser­pent). He is a pretty good sized con­stel­la­tion although his stars are dim and far apart. His foot lies in the path between Scor­pio and Sagit­tar­ius. I’m sort of sur­prised that he wasn’t listed earlier.

    I am amazed that this infor­ma­tion is just now get­ting atten­tion. Those of us who were star gaz­ers (or spent time study­ing Chris­t­ian apolo­get­ics — or per­haps a combo of the two) knew that the zodiac signs bore not resem­blance to real­ity. In fact, that was one of the main objec­tions to astrol­ogy — it was right 2 or 3 thou­sand years ago, but not now.

    For begin­ners learn­ing con­stel­la­tions, I highly rec­om­mend H.A. Rey’s The Stars, A New Way to Look at Them. (yes, the Curi­ous George author!) I have used it many times with scouts earn­ing var­i­ous astron­omy badges.

  • Grace

    A snake han­dler! Well! That one ought to be a hit.

    So how is it pro­nouced — oh-fee-YOU-cus?

  • Anam Cara

    off — hi– YOU– kuss.

    Remem­ber, it also rep­re­sents a doc­tor. so it should be accept­able once peo­ple get used to the idea of 13 zodiac signs.

    Asciepius is in Roman mythol­ogy the fig­ure in Ophi­uchus. Asciepius was the Greek god of heal­ing. A staff with a snake is still used as a sym­bol for med­i­cine although we more often see the caduceus (2 snakes).

    Don’t you find it inter­est­ing that we see so much of God in pagan thought? When I first learned this, I imme­di­ately thought of Moses in the desert with the bronze snake which fore­shad­owed the crucifixion.

    Yes, the gospel is writ­ten in the stars for all to see.….

  • Doug s

    I remem­ber this same story 30 years ago. Whether you believe in astrol­ogy or not (i don’t, Nancy Rea­gan did:), it all has to do with the trop­i­cal zodiac (west­ern astrol­ogy) vs. side­real zodiac (east­ern astrology).

    Trop­i­cal zodiac is based on sea­sons (the start of Aries is fixed to one equinox, and Libra the other) and is not based on the posi­tion of the con­stel­la­tions, so noth­ing has changed. I think this “news” only applies to side­real zodiac, if it’s news at all.

    H.A. Rey’s The Stars, A New Way to Look at Them was my first “astron­omy” book as well

  • Word­mama

    Hey, I’m much hap­pier being an Aquar­ius than a Pisces. Instead of being artis­tic, dreamy, and lazy (as an astrol­ogy buff once informed me), I can now be a “problem-solver with an inde­pen­dent, imag­i­na­tive spirit.” Much bet­ter fit. (grin)

    Inci­den­tally, one web­site says the name is “Ophichu­cus.” Do we have a defin­i­tive spelling on the name, or shall we just call him “Doc­tor Snake-Handler”?

  • Anam Cara

    a friend just sent me this: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/…

    I had no idea that Ophi­uchus was a ancient sign that had been dropped!

    Also, I find it amus­ing that the astrologer says that the new signs just don’t work. As though the old ones did.

  • Grace

    Word­mama:
    I know, right? You sud­denly get do-overs!

    As far as my horo­scope for the day, I’ll still just do what I’ve always done — pick one at ran­dom. (Which is *guar­an­teed* to annoy peo­ple, BTW, even if they start off by say­ing ‘I don’t believe in any of this stuff.’)

  • Grace

    As far as whether it’s news and so on… you got me. All’s I know is, it’s been mak­ing a splash recently on Face­book. So if this is ancient his­tory (fig­u­ra­tively or lit­er­ally), it’s prob­a­bly just a mat­ter of finally hav­ing got­ten into the pop cul­ture funnel.

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