458 - X-Strologer

As often, I merely added the text on a copyright free image, 

and this entry's another long one 2,317 words 13,720 characters

The time has arrived to disclose to you, readers, that after several years of growing disinterest into a very popular topic, I have totally quit on... astrology. 

Indeed, I was exposed to this topic in my father's religious cult, where belief system was a mix of all religions, alongside new-age pseudosciences, including astrology. As a kid, I found it fascinating and I became obsessed learning it. At first, it seemed to hold some explanations on my inner world, my personality and events I was going through. As my life conditions in the cult were horrendous, I thought that astrology would have answers and bring me hope of improvements ; the ultimate wish was to escape this cult, its hold and my father's grasp over my life, my thoughts, emotions, actions, behaviors, and to break away from his planned future, to build one on my own terms. 

As a kid, this interest helped hon my mathematical mind, and opened the door to precision-oriented research. It had also become an ice-breaker and I got noticed, which held a positive effect against the feelings of isolation and disconnection from people, because of my conditions in the cult. 

However, this attention wasn't necessarily genuine interest of people towards me, but towards what 'knowledge' I could impart from astrology. Most of my friendships were guided by a weird toxicity: I craved attention, and thought I was getting it ; I felt someone cared, out there, in the scary, monstrous, un-believing world, until I realized that I wasn't an actual friend, but a tool. In this, I was also toxic, in seeking validation where none should have been : I thought I was smart and that's why people came to me with questions. It appealed to my young ego, to showcase whatever knowledge I had learned in this field called astrology, and the cognate mathematical calculations, which I'd pushed farther than anyone I'd known at the time, to a maximum form of precision and used this tool, obsessively, and unhealthily, for a long period. 

In my quest of a better life, of escaping the nightmare of a prison that the cult was, astrology had become a crutch I'd lean on, trying to find a ray of hope and light, out there, farther away : could I see it shine through a crack in this long, dark, dreary tunnel that was my life at the time? 

This crutch didn't help me walk for myself ; my path was chosen carefully by mathematical equations of astrological concepts... I relied on astrology to take, or postpone, any decision, from trivial ones to life-changing ones, from buying a small, unimportant object, to finding a person to entrust my very life to, by confiding in them and taking the risk of my words being forwarded to my father, and receive an ultimate punishment for my betrayal. 

Eventually, I did get out of this cult, but the real help wasn't astrology. A classmate who was my best friend was one help. The other was my paternal grandfather, the person who told me the truth and gave me the actual hope of escaping my conditions and reuniting with my mother. These two persons are the reasons that I am still alive, and managed to fulfil the dream and hopes of escape. 

So, after over a decade of harrowing experiences, I finally got back to my birth country. As the years passed, with some limited help from my first psychotherapy, a lot of personal work in deconstruction and deconversion from my cult beliefs, I gradually stopped believing in each of the magical thinking ideals that I had been indoctrinated with.

First, the existence of god and his cohorts of angels etc were put to doubt, and eventually expelled out of my brain. I became an atheist. Second, the idea that the Universe was a living being, representing and a part of this god, with ulterior motives, and personal interest in each human and other living being in it, with intelligent design and personal guidance of each individual, wherever they existed, was put into doubt. As I pondered about it, I came to the conclusion that there is no Universe= god, but a universe or perhaps universes (multi-verse theory), but not with any kind of involvement in us, we simply exist, the universe/s and us (humans, animals... most likely also other lifeforms elsewhere). 

The universe doesn't try to guide us, doesn't send us messages. It's not organized to create a link between star's and planets' positions to correlate to our life, detailed in its events from birth to death, passing through childhood, puberty, adulthood, and living studies, work, romance, marriage and parenthood, before declining into the tomb. After all, there are only two constants in life : birth, and death. Everything in-between can be experienced in parts or not all, and astrology actually doesn't explain every single difference - even in my long  years of 24/7 astrology based research, I found more contradictions than empirical proof of veracity and exactitude. Those were, in effect, the first elements which had sewn the seeds of doubt. 

The very theory of astrology is put the test by science. Astronomy alone totally contradicts it, and that's where various schools of astrology, trying to merge the two into one science and explain it all come to light. Indeed, precession of the equinox VS tropical VS sideral or vedic astrology, VS nodal or draconic, not to mention different ways of calculating houses and how the sky should be divided and seen... How far, in degrees, should planets be seen as having a relationship that has a meaning in the building blocks of a personality, or its life events... How do these combinations act have a myriad of tentative interpretations, each of them sharing an individual, and subjective ways of thinking, partially based on the culture we are born into, the religious belief system we adhere to, or refuse to be part of... Symbols vary over time, and differ between cultures. There is absolutely nothing objective and uniform. 

In fact, the symbols associated with the planets, based on Greco-Roman mythology for the most common form of astrology is so far from the reality that we know of the planets themselves, that all of these symbols should be automatically debunked. For example, astrological Venus is associated with Attraction, Love, Relationships, Art Beauty & Harmony ....

In reality, Venus sucks. Its global temperature is as hot as an oven, ranging from 820 degrees to nearly 900 degrees F. The average surface temperature is 847 degrees F, hot enough to melt lead.  The atmospheric pressure is 90 times Earth, which means we'd be crushed unless we had really sophisticated gear to withstand this pressure, as well as the heat.

Additionally, it rains sulfuric acid on Venus. Wind speeds on this planet go up to 85 m/s (300 km/h; 186.4 mph), at the cloud tops, which circle the planet every four to five Earth days. These wind speeds, however, vary in extremes, in either short periods of 24 hours, or as long as 255 days... Nothing on Venus is beauty (unless the beauty of the fascinating nastiness), and if it's harmonious, it's not in human terms...  Every part of the surface of this planet would kill you. 

Everything we know about this planet alone is contrary to the symbols our ancestors came up with for this planet, named after a deity, whose own myths are also quite brutal and not just beauty, harmony etc...  

Examples of differences between each planet symbol to the various myths about its namesake, and all contrasted to the reality of conditions on these planets would lengthen this entry, so I'll let you find them for yourselves, just open two tabs, one for astrology symbols and a planet, and the other for it's conditions as known by science. 

Furthermore, the zodiac is nothing but an imaginary association of how some stars that aren't even close to one another, physically, appeared, perhaps, as some animal or creature or person, amalgamated into a term, called a sign, by various peoples and cultures in our past. The zodiac actually uses only a portion of the sky ; it uses 12-13 signs for constellations that are made up by the appearance of relationship between a certain number of stars forming a shape, given symbolic meanings by our ancestors, in the quest of understanding the seasons they were experiencing, the world around them, and the universe as they could see and comprehend - which grew massively with the advent of modern astronomy and the telescopes... 

Instead of 12-13 signs and their 12-13 associated constellations as seen in astrology, the sky known by astronomers is comprised of 88 constellations - and in any case, pertain only to our vantage point from Earth. Turn around to live elsewhere, the sky and its appearance would change RADICALLY. Over half of these 88 constellations , as recognized today by the IAU - International Astronomical Union - are attributed to ancient Greek, which itself consolidated the earlier works by the ancient Babylonian, Egyptian and Assyrian civilizations. In those ancient cultures, astrology was birthed from astronomy, superstition and the wish to appease angry deities, for prosperity, good weather and crops. But, it was also limited to an elite, who studied it, an elite at the service of royalty - and a bad or false prediction would mean the royal would get their seer/astrologer a death penalty... The rest of the population was vastly illiterate and was taught things by word and had to obey orders, based on whatever readings the royals had received. Astrology was and still is a divination system, based on symbols more than the actual scientific positions of any star, planet, asteroid/minor planet. 

There are so many schools and types of astrologies, even pure symbolic ones that don't rely on the sky for their time-divisions into signs, showcasing the human need and quest to understand, which is fine in itself, but where adhering to astrology for decisions and making life-altering changes in paths, from careers to romantic interests and hobbies, taking away from the person what is most important in being a person : the freedoms of thought, and making their own choices, without this crutch can be a dangerous ally to use, walking in sinister alleys... 

All this to say that there is no shred of actual, scientific proof that any relationship between an imaginary position as calculated universally and based on empirical knowledge, instead of a bunch of individual ways and personal biases and imaginary associations of each symbol to a personality trait, a life event, a choice to make, a compatibility percentage and so on... 

Astrology is solely based on personal interpretation and the far distances between sky bodies and Earth and why it should work is explained only as 'what is above, so it is below', with the added 'the universe is guiding you, it likes you, so follow its orderly system if you want to live'. Well, those are the same magical thoughts as those of 'the secret' aka 'manifesting' - the system where a mere thought alters your reality... Where, in truth, those who do manifest their success, this is based on their efforts, commitments, and some outside elements such as local economy... 

In magical thinking, if you didn't think strongly enough, the universe didn't hear you and thus didn't provide the manifested reality you wanted... or it knows better than you what you need, so it refused to give you what you asked for, and is patiently awaiting for you to realize this, and correct your request of it...  In the same way, if something happens according to your astrological calculation, and interpretation of symbols as your personal grid of symbol associations, you're a good astrologer... But if you missed it, it's not the fault of astrology nor the universe, you simply miscalculated or didn't follow the right school of symbology... See where these (astrology and manifesting)  are connected and are so similar ?! They are both based on the premise that the universe is out there, caring about you, wanting your well being, and all you have to do is listen and make it so... 

In those aspects, astrology and 'the secret/manifesting' are the same as prayer and belief in any deity, past or present, and this is where you can find the commonalities with those past cultures : a mere system of superstition, belief in supernatural (because the natural isn't fully understood), and that someone or many some ones, out there, care but also want something back from us: be it adoration, prayers and/or sacrifices (monotheistic, abrahamic, each have these in various shapes and quantities), do this or else you and your descendants will pay for your sin, or be it sacrifices (numerous and graphic in polytheistic systems, where specific deities have dominion over specific aspects of life ; sacrifice a plant, a baby, child, girl, woman, and/or animal to this deity, and you'll receive its protection, better weather, crops, success in love, you'll find a job... ). 

Why ? because # superstition and # lack of knowledge and understanding, so there must be xyz out there... And in the process of deconstructing from my cult-indoctrination, I have also let go of those xyz, in profit of critical thinking, which led me to all those conclusions, thus pausing a near 3 decade interest in a matter of weeks, and then, in turn, completely stopped, and moved away from astrology. It has now been over a decade since I halted this interest ; I stopped re-installing my various software, and started to donate or sell my books, to get some of my invested cash back into my pocket. 

As you'll see in upcoming entries, astrology isn't the only pseudoscience I gave up for critical thinking, but I prefer to divide the topics, because otherwise one entry would be far far too long, and this ends an already lengthy one, so thank you for reading me.