The Problem of Precession
I don’t usually bother talking about astrology, because… well, because it’s dreadful guff. At least, the popular image of astrology as found in newspapers and magazines. The idea that, of a British population of 65 million, twelve groups of five million people will share the same personalities and have the same things happen to them each week is obvious codswallop.
On the other hand, astrology was once much more than it is today. Once it was a science – or at least, as near a science as older cultures generally got (which is often quite a lot nearer than you might think). Examine astrology in detail and you find a complex and detailed system designed to explain all manner of events – just one that doesn’t work.
Many people would object, and say that astrology does work, and that their weekly horoscope in Drug-Addled Whinging Sleb magazine does indeed accurately describe their circumstances. There are two reasons why this isn’t an indication of astrology’s effectiveness. The first is the Forer Effect.
The Forer Effect, named for psychologist Bertram Forer, describes the tendency of people to see specifics in the vague. A newspaper horoscope will offer statements such as “You merely need to keep on pursuing your precious goal until finally, you succeed” (Jonathan Cainer); or “For Sagittarians it’s vital to be true to yourself and today’s meeting of Venus and Jupiter brings rewards to those who live by their true nature.” (Debbie Frank*). And the like.
(Russell Grant today offers the following remarkably well-timed advice for those under the sign of Gemini: “If you don’t own a home, think about buying one”. Thanks, Russell.)
The Forer Effect is that mechanism by which people will read these nebulous, universally applicable statements and say “yes, that describes me”. Well, of course it does: you and everyone else.
But people will also argue that it’s silly to suggest that the workings of the Universe don’t have an effect on us. People – all life forms, in fact – do react to the goings-on in the skies. Everyone has acknowledged this: every culture has or has had a concept of “As Above, So Below”.
Well, first, I’m not arguing that the Universe doesn’t have an effect on us. I’m convinced it does, and can’t see how it couldn’t if, as physics suggests, every particle is gravitationally linked to every other; and if mass, and therefore gravity, can distort the very fabric of space and time, then as far as I’m concerned there’s no telling what the Universe might do. And besides, I’ve worked in a public service call centre, and, statistics and sceptics be damned, people do lose their marbles around the Full Moon. Anecdotal evidence worth nothing, I know, but my beliefs are shaped by my experiences.
That’s quite aside from all the scientifically accepted links like the tides, the seasons, and so on.
But do I, as a Scorpio, necessarily have the same personality as every other Scorpio in Britain, or in the world? Quite obviously not – but give us a vague enough ‘forecast’ and we’d probably all have to concede that, yes, we can interpret it in a way that suggests it’s relevant to us. It’s not the basic concept of astrology – the Universe has an effect on us – that’s the problem. It’s that someone can work it out before lunch and sum it all up in four lines of trite non-advice in a glossy gossip rag.
Still, I was thinking about astronomy while I was reading a book by Graham Hancock – thought-provoking if rather questionable scientifically – and it talked about the constellations of the Zodiac and whether their symbolism was passed down to various ancient cultures by an even more ancient culture.
Hancock’s claim that the Sphinx was built to represent – and align with – Leo, the Lion, has always bothered me, since there’s nothing about Leo that actually looks like a lion and so no reason why the ancient Egyptians should have shared the Greeks’ perception of that star group as a lion:
This look like a lion to you?
That’s one thing that bothered me. The other is that as it turns out I’m not, in fact, a Scorpio – even though astronomy says I should be.
Firstly, there’s no constellation called ‘Scorpio’. There is a scorpion constellation in the Zodiac, but it’s called Scorpius. My star sign is the only one that, pedantically speaking, doesn’t actually exist.
The constellation of Scorpius
There again, I shouldn’t worry too much, since it’s not actually my star sign anyway. I wasn’t, in fact, ‘born under the sign of Scorpi(o/us)’ – if by ‘born under’ we mean the Sun was in that sign at the time. (They call them ‘Sun signs’, as well.)
Actually, I’m a Libra. Look, this is where the Sun was at the time of my birth:
The Sun in Libra
So what am I to make of that? Using a desktop astronomy package perfectly adequate for modern astronomy but not really designed for venturing centuries into the past, I reckon the last time the Sun was in Scorpius on my birth date was sometime in the 1500s. If precession keeps moving the Sun around the Zodiac, do I go with it? Should I be reading Libra’s horoscopes now, or do the Fates recognise the importance of tradition and make Scorpius things happen to Scorpio people regardless of what the sky actually says?
(Sky images taken from the rather excellent Stellarium astronomy software, by Fabien Chéreau et al. Free HERE.)
—
* Astrologer To The Stars.
Leave a Reply