Must the astrologers know astronomy?

Question

Pandits say to predict correctly a true astrologer must have good knowledge of Astronomy.Is it necessary?Most of the so called astrologers do not seem to have any idea of astronomy.Then how can one have belief in their predictions?

Answer 1

That would be like chiropractors knowing about medicine.

I can't imagine many astrologers understanding much about detecting planets at 100 lightyears away, or knowing where the sun is in its lifecycle, or understanding why cepheid variables are so important.

Answer 2

Astronomy and astrology were once one science. Even the great Sir Isaac Newton was an astrologer. Then in the Age of "Reason" (eighteenth century), the idea developed that such far away bodies could have no effect on our tiny little selves, that astrology was bunk, and let's have it all for the new "science" of astronomy.

Well, it was a bad idea. In a way...

Astrology affects people not according to the actual placement of the planets, stars, and points in the sky, but in how their mathematical alignments can be interpreted. Astronomy just looks at the sky, ignores mathematical alignments, and goes its merry, boringly scientific way.

I know a bit of astronomy, and I can point out planets, the Sun and Moon of course, and a few constellations. But no where when I view the heavens do I see aspects, Ascendants, Midheavens, houses, or any other very crucial tools that come from reckoning planets and house positions.

I have been an astrologer for 40 years and more, and I know that astrology works without astronomy, and that the mathematical relationship between points and planets are what I work with, not the great loveliness above in its own cut and dried mathematics of existence.

Astronomy hasn't got enough romance!

Answer 3

Human beings have always been curious to know their future. Whenever someone is in difficulty and cannot easily come out of it, he wants to know whether the days of his misery will come to an end at all. And if yes, then when? When one invests a great deal of time, effort or money into some project, it is natural to wonder whether that investment will bear some fruit. There have always been people around who have successfully predicted future events. Their methods have been different - some people can simply look into the future, some use tarot cards, some draw up an astrological chart which we call horoscopes, some read the lines in the palms of people. One cannot deny that future has been accurately predicted many a times and by many a people. Each successful prediction proves that it is indeed possible to correctly predict future.



In the ancient times, astrologers were held to be in great esteem by the people. There was no difference between astronomers and astrologers. In fact, astronomy and Astrology were not considered to be two different subjects. Many will be surprised to know that most of the renowned scientists of the past, including Sir Isaac Newton, were astrologers too. In ancient India Astrology was known as "Jyotish Shastra" which included predictive Astrology as well as what we know as astronomy. Needless to say that the astrologers of that era were all great mathematicians too. An accomplished astrologer was called "Trikal-darshee" : one who could see past, present and future. It would perhaps not be an exaggeration to say that Astrology was considered to be the foremost branch of science.

Slowly over a period of time this subject came into disrepute.

Anyone, who will study Astrology with an open mind, cannot dismiss it as something without merit. It is an easy task for astrologers to correctly tell certain things about a man, such as his physical characteristics, diseases he is likely to get afflicted with, his temperament, his overall success in life in terms of money he earns or fame he achieves, the nature of his profession etc., simply by looking at his correctly drawn horoscope. It is in the matters of details and the timing of events that astrologers tend to go awry. What is needed is a fresh approach to the subject. Brilliant minds should take it up for study, correct some anomalies and misconceptions which this science has acquired over the long past. Then only this subject can regain its rightful place as a serious and important branch of knowledge

Answer 4

A good astrologer wil have a good knowlede of astronomy. It's all tied in with the movements and positions plantets and moons are in. You can't be a good astrologer if you have no idea where the planets are! A good reading will include details down to the minutes and degrees of the plants.

Answer 5

The science of astronomy is not largly based on the positions themselves of the moons and planets, but rather mass medium and structure. it constitues gravatational aspects, physics and chemistry, hardly the concern of any astrologer, being a science of people and their relationship to the stars. as far as knowing and predicting plantes are concerned, most astrologers have a beginners level knowledge of planet tracking but for the most part we rely on our trusty lexicons, books that let us know predicting positions by the astronomers themselves, but the astrologer is the one who interprets the MEANING behind it, tracking the planets is a very small part of astrology and astronomy for that matter

Answer 6

For just a moment, let's say that there is some force from the planets that can affect us here on Earth. What could it be?
Our choices are limited. Planets are big balls of ice, rock, metal, and other stuff. Their ability to affect us is weak because they are pretty far away. As far as we can tell in science, there are only four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and two forces called the strong and weak force. Those last two only work (more or less) on the nuclei of atoms and subatomic particles. It's hard to see how they could affect us on a macroscopic scale (the strong force weakens so rapidly with distance that it's essentially gone by the time you're a few billionths of a meter from the source!).

So we're stuck with either gravity or electromagnetism. Let's look briefly at both.

We know quite a bit about how gravity works on large scales, scales like that of the solar system. Basically, the gravity of an object depends on two things: how much mass it has, and how far away it is. The more massive an object, the stronger its gravity. The closer it is, the more its gravity affects you.

That's all well and good, but we really need to put in numbers to analyze it. Why? Because, for example, Jupiter has about 25,000 times the mass of the Moon. That's a lot! But it's also about 1500 times farther away than the Moon at its closest. Which number wins in the game of gravity?

In this case, it's distance, by a long shot. I won't go into details here, because I already wrote up a page about gravity and the planets. But the bottom line is that at best, the gravity from the planets in our solar system is a tiny fraction of the Moon's. So if gravity were the force behind astrology, then the Moon would dominate all the planets combined. Yet it doesn't in any astrologer's horoscope.

So it's not gravity. Could it be electromagnetism?

Gravity depends on mass and distance. Electromagnetism (or just EM) depends on electric charge and distance. The problem here is that most large objects don't have an electric charge! Electric charges come from charged particles like electrons and protons. But opposite charges attract each other so well that it's very rare to find one without the other nearby, which means that a planet is electrically neutral overall.

Some planets, for other reasons, do have magnetic fields. But these fields are only strong near their home planet. Jupiter's field is immense, but Jupiter is so far away it has no real effect on us. Furthermore, the Sun is far and away the largest EM source in the solar system. Its magnetic field directly affects us; when there is a gigantic flare, or other explosions on the surface of the Sun, vast streams of charged particles are sent sleeting out. These can interact with the Earth's own magnetic field, causing havoc (in 1989, such an event caused a blackout in Quebec). So if anything, the Sun should be the only source of astrological effects. However, astrologers tend to ignore it or still give the planets the lion's share of the astrological effect on us. Either way, the planets' combined force is miniscule compared to the Sun's. If EM is the force behind astrology, the planets could be safely ignored.

If gravity were the driving force of astrology, the Moon would dominate, but it doesn't. If EM were the driving force, the Sun would dominate, but it doesn't. We've run out of forces!

Astrologers' only hope is to posit some other force, unknown to science. However, that hope is bleak indeed. Why?

As far as we know, every force weakens with distance. An object farther away has lesser force on you than something closer. Yet astrologers claim that all the planets have equal (or at least comparable) effects, so nearby Venus and distant Pluto both exert some sort of measurable tug on you (at least, measurable in the sense that they can affect your life somehow). This means, by the astrologers' own claims, distance must not be a factor with this force. Obviously, mass mustn't either, or else Jupiter would dominate the planets, and poor tiny Mercury would be left out.

But this cannot be right! What about asteroids? These are chunks of rock and metal that also orbit the Sun along with planets. Most asteroids are closer to Earth than the outer planets (not that distance matters to astrologers, remember?), so they should have some effect. The problem is that there are many, many asteroids. My friend Dan Durda has calculated that there are a billion asteroids in the solar system larger than 100 meters in diameter. That's a lot of rock! So why don't astrologers include them in their horoscopes?

And it gets worse for astrology. Astronomers have now found about 150 (now over 230) planets orbiting other stars. These are very distant, certainly, but hey! Distance is no issue. So therefore these planets must affect us too. Now, these are only the planets we've discovered so far. Given how many we've found, and what kind of stars they tend to orbit, it's reasonable to assume that there are billions (billions!) of such planets in our galaxy alone. They're everywhere! Why don't astrologers include them in their horoscopes?

Here's another way to think of it. Astronomers (the real scientists) can determine that the planets are out there due to their real effects on their parent stars. If these planets affect us, as they must according to the astrologers' own set of rules, then why don't astrologers predict them? Why didn't any single astrologer 50 years ago say "There must be planets around other stars, because we can see it in our data!"? They didn't because they can't. Their "data" are meaningless. Again, by the rules used by astrologers, all those planets would simply overpower our own solar system planets, washing out their effects as simply and profoundly as the sound of a nuclear explosion would overpower a whisper.

Remember, and I keep repeating this because it's important-- this is playing by the astrologers' own rules. Either there is a known force, and we can show it doesn't work for astrology, or it's some unknown force that doesn't obey the laws of physics, in which case asteroids and extrasolar planets would dominate astrology, washing out the effects from our own solar system planets.

So it can't be a known or unknown force. That leaves nothing. Astrology doesn't work.

Answer 7

Since astrology is only based on the planets in our solar system and the zodiac belt, basic knowledge of the above surely can't hurt.

Answer 8

I am an astrologer. I know where to look in the sky and when they are there, I can point out Venus or Mars or Jupiter... but it really doesn't matter...

Do you need to know printing in order to read a book?


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