How Adding a 13th Zodiac Sign Affects Your Astrology Forecast

The Earth's Wobble & the Zodiac

by Gwynne Mayer
 
     I am sure you have heard all the news of the “earth wobble” changing your sun signs and therefore I have had scads of e-mails and calls in this regard. Not to worry. Astrology has never been an exact science and has never aligned itself perfectly to “astronomy” ...A good astrologer reads the ‘whole chart’ based on time of birth and speaks to the ascendant first, the moon and other planets aspecting as well. Sidereal Astrology practiced in the East as in India, etc. is based on a different method moving your Sun back 23 degrees as well as other planets and changes most people’s signs. The wobble effect may have more to do with children born after this rather than now. I have never been a sun sign astrologer, but instead, in my monthly reports have encouraged you to read your ascendant and moon first before you read your sun sign. I pay close attention to where your sun has progressed and it moves a degree for every day after your birth date.

     I am 68 years old, born August 16, 1942 and my progressed Sun is in Scorpio. So you do not remain as you were born, but rather the planets move accordingly day by day and other planets are discovered that we then find correlations to behavior....I suggest you keep with the current paradigm and remember that you are not ONLY your Sun Sign but a myriad of many planets and asteroids that navigate around your birth date. What will become of this Wobble, we will see....in the future....So those of you pregnant and planning on having children, it will probably affect them. I will keep up with this on my website Gwynivere and encourage you to go there as time goes by. 
 
You rule your chart...and the stars, they don’t rule you.....Affirm your self will and keep the faith.

Gwynne


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And then there is a take on the same subject from Rob Brezsney of Free Will Astrology and his friend Eric Francis of Planet Waves Astrology.

Here We Go Again with the "Zodiac Is Wrong" Scam

by Rob Brezsny

News Flash: The zodiac isn't wrong. Your sign isn't changing. Ignore the misinformation.

(In addition to this article, see my astrological colleague Eric Francis's response.)

     You might also want to check these corrective stories in The New York Times and The Daily Beast where I'm Quoted.

     Every year or so, another astronomer erupts into the mainstream media with a portentous announcement about how, due to the precession of the equinoxes, the astrological signs are no longer aligned with the actual constellations. Often the supposed 13th constellation, Ophiuchus, is also invoked as a further proof of how delusional astrologers are.

     What it means, according to these experts, is that astrology is invalid. Most of the people who think they're Tauruses are actually Aries. Most Scorpios are really Libras. And so on.

     That latest offering is from Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society. "When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces," he speculated, "it's really not in Pisces." His supposition hit the Internet recently, on Gawker and the Minneapolis Star Tribune among other places.

     I understand that scientists like him would prefer not to lower themselves to the task of actually doing research about how astrology works. But if they're going to question its foundations, they should at least learn it well enough to know what they're talking about.

     Here, briefly, is the lowdown on what certain astronomers are too lazy to find out for themselves.

     The astrological signs are not defined by the constellations you see in the sky. In antiquity, when both astrological and astronomical thinking were based on insufficient data, the names of the constellations happened to be paired with the astrological signs. Today, those pairings are no longer in sync: Astrological signs do not line up with the constellations in the same way they did way back then, due to the precession of the equinoxes.

     Modern Western astrologers understand this perfectly. It's irrelevant to their work because the information upon which they base their hypotheses does not involve a study of distant stars or constellations. Rather, their data have to do with the movements of the planets in our own solar system within a zone of influence defined by the relationship between the Earth and Sun.

     The key demarcation points in that relationship are the equinoxes and solstices. At the Northern Hemisphere's vernal equinox, which occurs on about March 20 of each year, the Sun enters into the sign of Aries. At the Northern Hemisphere's summer solstice, the sun enters into the sign of Cancer. The locations of the constellations are irrelevant; the "influence of the stars" isn't considered.

     To reiterate: Western astrologers don't work with stars or constellations. Their focus is our solar system. They study the patterns of the planets and the moon as they pass through 12 zones defined by the relationship between the Earth and sun. Those zones have the same names as constellations because of a historical quirk, but they are unrelated to the constellations.

     When Parke Kunkle triumphantly says, "There is no physical connection between constellations and personality traits," as if he has finally stamped out the delusions of us astrologers, he doesn't realize that we agree with him completely. We don't deal with constellations.

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