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Are People Being Serious With Astrology?
- Thread starter Maximum Spider
- Start date
People don't like to follow their horoscopes when it gets too real.
That reminds me of an old Joe Bob Briggs bit that ends with him complaining that noone wants to buy his horoscopes.
So? I know a lot of people who went to school but can't read properly, so I guess, kids watching nothing but TV all day is ok. What does that have to do with anything? It just means that those specific people educated in science fields are idiots. It is known to happen.
People don't like to follow their horoscopes when it gets too real.
Who the fuck did you just call a commie uh?
Astrology itself may be harmless to most people, but the principle behind it is very dangerous. When you start to undermine the scientific method and the logical approach, everything becomes possible if you want to believe it. Like - say - eugenics. Or phrenology.
And if you believe starts influence your life - why not believe that the Earth is flat? Or that skin color determines intellectual and mental capabilities? Or that global warming is a myth?
And if you believe starts influence your life - why not believe that the Earth is flat? Or that skin color determines intellectual and mental capabilities? Or that global warming is a myth?
Lol, I just wrote that as an example earlier - and then I saw your post (honest!)
Yes, you're right - phrenology, eugenics - dangerous beliefs that are proven to be untrue. Scientific method, of course, is the best way to combat these very dangerous beliefs. It is exactly by ignoring the scientific method that you can start believing all these faux-sciences like phrenology or astrology.
You're joking, but this type of response is quite unsettling to me, and I hear it a lot. Like - yes, yes, I know you don't believe this, but that is typical of your sign, or something.
Let me put it this way - do you think it would be ok for a christian person to tell a Jewish person that Jesus guides their hand, because they believe it to be true?
OP
OP
People don't like to follow their horoscopes when it gets too real.
Oh my sides!
historically jewish people have faced endless persecution from christians and trying to liken people talking about astrology on social media to actual persecution is real fucking tacky my dude, but i should expect as much from someone who keeps trying to draw a fucking causal link between astrology and eugenics
I would love to think it's mostly harmless but, anecdotally speaking, I've seen evidence to the contrary. And the fact that scientific literacy among the general public is so low makes witnessing people enthusiastically believing in astrology just kind of...depressing.
I was clear that I wasn't likening astrology to eugenics, I was trying to explain how diminishing the scientific method leads to some very dangerous beliefs. In no way is astrology in itself dangerous as eugenics, but when you open the door to disregarding things like facts and proof you also open the door to some very very dangerous beliefs, like the one that got my grandfather in a Nazi concentration camp. So thank you for the history lesson about my people, it doesn't change the fact that astrology is a shitty, shitty thing to believe in.
OP here's an easy way to remember which is which: Astrology has the letter "L" in it, which stands for lies.
Last girl I met up with for a date was weirdly into astrology. Didn't come across at all when chatting with her, but then in person told me alllll about how personality traits line up with various signs she's dated. Then she started trying to guess things about me after determining my sign. Was crazy because she's a chemical engineer, so having her be pretty deep into something like that was surprising.
Recently, I decided that even though I don't believe in astrology, I was going to try and learn more about it just because I couldn't understand astrological charts because they looked too complicated-- I hated the idea that something like astrology would be too complex for me to get, so I just kinda jumped into it. Additionally, it helps with reading certain historical manuscripts.
Anyways, having decided that I was going to get into this, I needed free software that could do astrological calculations. I found two. Astrolog and Morinus. Both do most of the same stuff but have slightly different advanced features. But guys. Guys.
Do yourselves a favor and check out the Astrolog Website. Really just... soak that juice in. IT'S STILL PART OF A WEB RING.
So anyways, having downloaded my chosen program from this Geocities of the Stars, I get to putting in my birth date and latitude and longitude.
And it's just the worst thing ever straightaway. What do you MEAN Yin and Yang?! What do you MEAN Learn and Share? I've only got two Suc? What's... is that an insult?
So the first thing I have to do is figure out what everything means. I know I'm an Aries, so I realize that being an Aries means your sun is in Aries. "Your" sun happening to be where the sun was at at the time. The same applies to every planet. So, and it took me days to figure this out, the first thing you have to do is figure out what planets are in what constellation. That's apparently super important. Then, you look at the house each planet is in. No, the constellations are not the houses. No, I don't know why. It has to do with the Ascendant, I'm pretty sure, which is that horizontal line. It's what constellation is rising in the east. The not-quite-vertical line is the midheaven, which isn't quite vertical because I wasn't quite born on the equator.
So the next important thing is figuring out how "your" planets interact with each other. This has to do with the angles that they have with each other. That's what all the lines in the center grid of the chart are. There's conjuncts, squares, sextiles, trines, and oppositions. My chart appears to have all of those. There's also semisquares, semisextiles, and so on, but those just pretty much mean "they don't do any of the above." So when they're three zodiac signs (or houses?) away from each other, they're square. When they're four, they're trine. When they're six, they're opposite, when they're two, they're sextile. Squares and oppositions are bad. Trines and sextiles are good. Conjuncts can be either or. You may already be able to tell where this is going.
So if you say you're an Aries, that means that you have Aries traits, right? Wrong. Because only your sun is in Aries. You have to determine what your MOON is in. My moon was in Cancer. That's your inward self. Aries and cancer happen to be... pretty much opposites of each other, since Aries is a fire sign (hence the red) and Cancer is a water sign (hence the blue) and both are cardinal, meaning they're serious about that. You may also note that that means that Aquarius, the sign whose name means "water," is an air sign. Yes.
You may notice I'm not actually mentioning what any of the planetary configurations mean. That's because it's impossible to determine past the seven classical planets and not even then. Sun in Aries makes you an impulsive, and willful born leader. Moon in Cancer makes you a sensitive and emotional person. But then other places say that makes you passive instead and a bit of a follower. So... which is it.
We haven't even discussed the houses. So each house is supposed to give an answer to a question as to who you really are. The first house is who you really are. So I'm... moon and mars in first house. Mars in first house is supposed to make you strong and athletic. My body is the House of Usher in its final days on a good day. I can't run for two minutes without my throat deciding it's got better things to do than letting me breathe. I'm double-jointed at the shoulders so I can't, on a physical level, lift as much as other people. And it goes on and on from there. I... what? It's not the only place that's like this. Sun conjunct Venus means I'm an excellent lover. Neptune conjunct Uranus in the 7th house means that my relationships aren't at all conventional and are bumpy.
All this aside, all the information on the Internet about what these things mean is vague at best and contradictory at worst. Like if you tried to get Derren Brown to cold read you while but you concussed him a few times. Venus in 10th house means you're a natural artist in one website. On another, it means you're not much of a loving person and are devoted to your career (LOL if anybody knows me).
Also, the writing behind the modern planets is weird as hell. If you look up any chart details about the Pluto formerly known as a planet, you'll basically get nothing but descriptions of you as some weird omega-tier psyker. It's... ridiculous. Every description of Pluto on your chart makes you sound like Paul Atreides. You know, that thing that's not a planet anymore. You may notice Ceres isn't on this chart either, by the way. Also, that horseshoe-looking cyan sign on my chart is my North Node. What's that mean? Has to do with the moon. Anyways, it's supposed to represent my destiny. It being in the sixth house is supposed to mean that my destiny involves the day-to-day, routine, and habitual. Whatever that really means. But then the modern planets instead describe a visionary.
My ultimate conclusion here, and what I want to, like... explain by doing this, isn't just that I don't get astrology. Although, I clearly don't. More to the point, I don't get how other people find this to be appealing. It clearly is a generator for about a million different traits and you pick which ones are important to you. That's where all this has been leading up to and what this is a system for. How has this persisted throughout millenia and in different cultures. It's entirely atavistic. Baked into the human experience. But why? Does our appetite for meaning and labeling so outstrip our capacity to just... actually connect with this?
There are people who get paid to do this. There are people who pay money to learn how to do this and get certified. There's a whole culture behind all this. And I just don't understand it.
EDIT: Oh, and as a postscript, of course I never find out what Yin, Yang, Learn, Share, or Suc have to do with anything.
Anyways, having decided that I was going to get into this, I needed free software that could do astrological calculations. I found two. Astrolog and Morinus. Both do most of the same stuff but have slightly different advanced features. But guys. Guys.
Do yourselves a favor and check out the Astrolog Website. Really just... soak that juice in. IT'S STILL PART OF A WEB RING.
So anyways, having downloaded my chosen program from this Geocities of the Stars, I get to putting in my birth date and latitude and longitude.
And it's just the worst thing ever straightaway. What do you MEAN Yin and Yang?! What do you MEAN Learn and Share? I've only got two Suc? What's... is that an insult?
So the first thing I have to do is figure out what everything means. I know I'm an Aries, so I realize that being an Aries means your sun is in Aries. "Your" sun happening to be where the sun was at at the time. The same applies to every planet. So, and it took me days to figure this out, the first thing you have to do is figure out what planets are in what constellation. That's apparently super important. Then, you look at the house each planet is in. No, the constellations are not the houses. No, I don't know why. It has to do with the Ascendant, I'm pretty sure, which is that horizontal line. It's what constellation is rising in the east. The not-quite-vertical line is the midheaven, which isn't quite vertical because I wasn't quite born on the equator.
So the next important thing is figuring out how "your" planets interact with each other. This has to do with the angles that they have with each other. That's what all the lines in the center grid of the chart are. There's conjuncts, squares, sextiles, trines, and oppositions. My chart appears to have all of those. There's also semisquares, semisextiles, and so on, but those just pretty much mean "they don't do any of the above." So when they're three zodiac signs (or houses?) away from each other, they're square. When they're four, they're trine. When they're six, they're opposite, when they're two, they're sextile. Squares and oppositions are bad. Trines and sextiles are good. Conjuncts can be either or. You may already be able to tell where this is going.
So if you say you're an Aries, that means that you have Aries traits, right? Wrong. Because only your sun is in Aries. You have to determine what your MOON is in. My moon was in Cancer. That's your inward self. Aries and cancer happen to be... pretty much opposites of each other, since Aries is a fire sign (hence the red) and Cancer is a water sign (hence the blue) and both are cardinal, meaning they're serious about that. You may also note that that means that Aquarius, the sign whose name means "water," is an air sign. Yes.
You may notice I'm not actually mentioning what any of the planetary configurations mean. That's because it's impossible to determine past the seven classical planets and not even then. Sun in Aries makes you an impulsive, and willful born leader. Moon in Cancer makes you a sensitive and emotional person. But then other places say that makes you passive instead and a bit of a follower. So... which is it.
We haven't even discussed the houses. So each house is supposed to give an answer to a question as to who you really are. The first house is who you really are. So I'm... moon and mars in first house. Mars in first house is supposed to make you strong and athletic. My body is the House of Usher in its final days on a good day. I can't run for two minutes without my throat deciding it's got better things to do than letting me breathe. I'm double-jointed at the shoulders so I can't, on a physical level, lift as much as other people. And it goes on and on from there. I... what? It's not the only place that's like this. Sun conjunct Venus means I'm an excellent lover. Neptune conjunct Uranus in the 7th house means that my relationships aren't at all conventional and are bumpy.
All this aside, all the information on the Internet about what these things mean is vague at best and contradictory at worst. Like if you tried to get Derren Brown to cold read you while but you concussed him a few times. Venus in 10th house means you're a natural artist in one website. On another, it means you're not much of a loving person and are devoted to your career (LOL if anybody knows me).
Also, the writing behind the modern planets is weird as hell. If you look up any chart details about the Pluto formerly known as a planet, you'll basically get nothing but descriptions of you as some weird omega-tier psyker. It's... ridiculous. Every description of Pluto on your chart makes you sound like Paul Atreides. You know, that thing that's not a planet anymore. You may notice Ceres isn't on this chart either, by the way. Also, that horseshoe-looking cyan sign on my chart is my North Node. What's that mean? Has to do with the moon. Anyways, it's supposed to represent my destiny. It being in the sixth house is supposed to mean that my destiny involves the day-to-day, routine, and habitual. Whatever that really means. But then the modern planets instead describe a visionary.
My ultimate conclusion here, and what I want to, like... explain by doing this, isn't just that I don't get astrology. Although, I clearly don't. More to the point, I don't get how other people find this to be appealing. It clearly is a generator for about a million different traits and you pick which ones are important to you. That's where all this has been leading up to and what this is a system for. How has this persisted throughout millenia and in different cultures. It's entirely atavistic. Baked into the human experience. But why? Does our appetite for meaning and labeling so outstrip our capacity to just... actually connect with this?
There are people who get paid to do this. There are people who pay money to learn how to do this and get certified. There's a whole culture behind all this. And I just don't understand it.
EDIT: Oh, and as a postscript, of course I never find out what Yin, Yang, Learn, Share, or Suc have to do with anything.
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I guarantee you I can be Big Mad about at least the latter of those two things and astrology at the same time. I'm doing it right now!
My ex had a best friend who believed in witchcraft and astrology.
She convinced her I was too toxic to date because of my star sign. Good riddance.
I'm an aquarius male. No idea what that even means really. Something about water and being creative (i think).
She convinced her I was too toxic to date because of my star sign. Good riddance.
I'm an aquarius male. No idea what that even means really. Something about water and being creative (i think).
It's one thing to like astrology as just something you do for fun, but considering how most people don't even know what their actual Zodiac signs are because the dates being massively inaccurate, it's not something you should base your life around.
When I took an astronomy class, my teacher gave us all a program that allows you to see where the stars are and other stuff on a specific date and at specific time, which is basically the most accurate way to even find out your astrology sign.
My favorite past time in college was showing people their actual signs especially because most would flip as their whole life they thought they were x sign only to be y. (Same thing happened to me in that I thought I was a scorpio but I'm actually a libra.)
Then you have stuff like the 13th sign that is never considered in horoscopes and it all get's really laughable.
When I took an astronomy class, my teacher gave us all a program that allows you to see where the stars are and other stuff on a specific date and at specific time, which is basically the most accurate way to even find out your astrology sign.
My favorite past time in college was showing people their actual signs especially because most would flip as their whole life they thought they were x sign only to be y. (Same thing happened to me in that I thought I was a scorpio but I'm actually a libra.)
Then you have stuff like the 13th sign that is never considered in horoscopes and it all get's really laughable.
Oh yeah. That's another fun part of the software I mentioned in my diatribe which I didn't go over. It gives you *various* different ways to calculate your star chart. I think one of them is actually astronomical. You can have a tropical zodiac that's geocentric (which is what I posted), a sidereal zodiac that's geocentric (which is I think the astronomical view of the stars and directions), a tropical zodiac that's heliocentric, and a sidereal zodiac that's heliocentric (which I'm pretty sure just kind of describes where the planets were in relation to the Sun radially). They all give different values for everything. From the sidereal heliocentric zodiac, my Suc is doubled, for example.
That seems reasonable at least to me then because at least you are working with what is supposed to be your actual sign than some dates given to you randomly. XD
I'm an Aquarius.
Fun fact, Mikasa Ackerman is also an Aquarius.
I'm also an aquarius. This Mikasa fact makes me happy.
I have hundreds of astrology accounts blocked on Twitter
i have all the signs as blocked words on twitter (doesn't fucking help)
It's absolutely INSANE
i have all the signs as blocked words on twitter (doesn't fucking help)
It's absolutely INSANE
I had a similar experience. I thought I would go on an astrology forum for fun and ended up finding out that, yes, people take it very seriously and that to really get it, you need actual dedication that... yeah... im not doing that for something that isn't useful. But I think its wonderful that others find meaning and enjoyment out of it.Recently, I decided that even though I don't believe in astrology, I was going to try and learn more about it just because I couldn't understand astrological charts because they looked too complicated-- I hated the idea that something like astrology would be too complex for me to get, so I just kinda jumped into it. Additionally, it helps with reading certain historical manuscripts.
Anyways, having decided that I was going to get into this, I needed free software that could do astrological calculations. I found two. Astrolog and Morinus. Both do most of the same stuff but have slightly different advanced features. But guys. Guys.
Do yourselves a favor and check out the Astrolog Website. Really just... soak that juice in. IT'S STILL PART OF A WEB RING.
So anyways, having downloaded my chosen program from this Geocities of the Stars, I get to putting in my birth date and latitude and longitude.
And it's just the worst thing ever straightaway. What do you MEAN Yin and Yang?! What do you MEAN Learn and Share? I've only got two Suc? What's... is that an insult?
So the first thing I have to do is figure out what everything means. I know I'm an Aries, so I realize that being an Aries means your sun is in Aries. "Your" sun happening to be where the sun was at at the time. The same applies to every planet. So, and it took me days to figure this out, the first thing you have to do is figure out what planets are in what constellation. That's apparently super important. Then, you look at the house each planet is in. No, the constellations are not the houses. No, I don't know why. It has to do with the Ascendant, I'm pretty sure, which is that horizontal line. It's what constellation is rising in the east. The not-quite-vertical line is the midheaven, which isn't quite vertical because I wasn't quite born on the equator.
So the next important thing is figuring out how "your" planets interact with each other. This has to do with the angles that they have with each other. That's what all the lines in the center grid of the chart are. There's conjuncts, squares, sextiles, trines, and oppositions. My chart appears to have all of those. There's also semisquares, semisextiles, and so on, but those just pretty much mean "they don't do any of the above." So when they're three zodiac signs (or houses?) away from each other, they're square. When they're four, they're trine. When they're six, they're opposite, when they're two, they're sextile. Squares and oppositions are bad. Trines and sextiles are good. Conjuncts can be either or. You may already be able to tell where this is going.
So if you say you're an Aries, that means that you have Aries traits, right? Wrong. Because only your sun is in Aries. You have to determine what your MOON is in. My moon was in Cancer. That's your inward self. Aries and cancer happen to be... pretty much opposites of each other, since Aries is a fire sign (hence the red) and Cancer is a water sign (hence the blue) and both are cardinal, meaning they're serious about that. You may also note that that means that Aquarius, the sign whose name means "water," is an air sign. Yes.
You may notice I'm not actually mentioning what any of the planetary configurations mean. That's because it's impossible to determine past the seven classical planets and not even then. Sun in Aries makes you an impulsive, and willful born leader. Moon in Cancer makes you a sensitive and emotional person. But then other places say that makes you passive instead and a bit of a follower. So... which is it.
We haven't even discussed the houses. So each house is supposed to give an answer to a question as to who you really are. The first house is who you really are. So I'm... moon and mars in first house. Mars in first house is supposed to make you strong and athletic. My body is the House of Usher in its final days on a good day. I can't run for two minutes without my throat deciding it's got better things to do than letting me breathe. I'm double-jointed at the shoulders so I can't, on a physical level, lift as much as other people. And it goes on and on from there. I... what? It's not the only place that's like this. Sun conjunct Venus means I'm an excellent lover. Neptune conjunct Uranus in the 7th house means that my relationships aren't at all conventional and are bumpy.
All this aside, all the information on the Internet about what these things mean is vague at best and contradictory at worst. Like if you tried to get Derren Brown to cold read you while but you concussed him a few times. Venus in 10th house means you're a natural artist in one website. On another, it means you're not much of a loving person and are devoted to your career (LOL if anybody knows me).
Also, the writing behind the modern planets is weird as hell. If you look up any chart details about the Pluto formerly known as a planet, you'll basically get nothing but descriptions of you as some weird omega-tier psyker. It's... ridiculous. Every description of Pluto on your chart makes you sound like Paul Atreides. You know, that thing that's not a planet anymore. You may notice Ceres isn't on this chart either, by the way. Also, that horseshoe-looking cyan sign on my chart is my North Node. What's that mean? Has to do with the moon. Anyways, it's supposed to represent my destiny. It being in the sixth house is supposed to mean that my destiny involves the day-to-day, routine, and habitual. Whatever that really means. But then the modern planets instead describe a visionary.
My ultimate conclusion here, and what I want to, like... explain by doing this, isn't just that I don't get astrology. Although, I clearly don't. More to the point, I don't get how other people find this to be appealing. It clearly is a generator for about a million different traits and you pick which ones are important to you. That's where all this has been leading up to and what this is a system for. How has this persisted throughout millenia and in different cultures. It's entirely atavistic. Baked into the human experience. But why? Does our appetite for meaning and labeling so outstrip our capacity to just... actually connect with this?
There are people who get paid to do this. There are people who pay money to learn how to do this and get certified. There's a whole culture behind all this. And I just don't understand it.
EDIT: Oh, and as a postscript, of course I never find out what Yin, Yang, Learn, Share, or Suc have to do with anything.
My ex was super into this. She always wanted to know my birth time so she could chart my moon and rising sign.
the problem probably isn't that it doesn't use the scientific method. I think there are other claims to knowledge that aren't scientific - like ethics, theology, or psychoanalysis or whatever and I think those are useful. Maybe that's why I have some sympathy for those who believe in astrology.
All sorts of unscientific shit is thriving because of social media. I have friends who make decisions based on astrology, so I can't buy that notion that it's harmless bs.
Also there are SO MANY girls on dating apps who not only believe this shit, but base their choices on it, it's fucking insane.
Also there are SO MANY girls on dating apps who not only believe this shit, but base their choices on it, it's fucking insane.
Check out how different the zodiac becomes accounting for the precession of the equinoxes and using the sidereal mode (through the dramatically named NAVAMSA MODE):
Most people just do it for fun and don't believe in it or make actual life decisions based on it.
Some people actually believe in it and make important decisions based on it. This is bad in the same way listening to a psychic or believing in conspiracy is bad; harmful to yourself but largely just yourself. Certainly less bad than, like, anti-vax or bigotry or something.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan were heavy into astrology and made important policy decisions based on the advice of their astrologer so I feel like that should be a pretty obvious condemnation of treating astrology as anything other than a fun hobby.
Some people actually believe in it and make important decisions based on it. This is bad in the same way listening to a psychic or believing in conspiracy is bad; harmful to yourself but largely just yourself. Certainly less bad than, like, anti-vax or bigotry or something.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan were heavy into astrology and made important policy decisions based on the advice of their astrologer so I feel like that should be a pretty obvious condemnation of treating astrology as anything other than a fun hobby.
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