Were astrological predictions accurate before telescopes were invented?!
Question: Assuming you believe in astrology, were predictions made prior to the invention of the telescope accurate? Because the planets Uranus and Neptune weren't known before then. Also, there are tons of stars and deep space objects that can only be seen with a telescope....presumably they would affect our future too. I don't believe in astrology personally, but I'm curious as to what astrologers and believers think about this matter. Was the invention of the telescope as great for astrology as it was for astronomy?
Answers: Assuming you believe in astrology, were predictions made prior to the invention of the telescope accurate? Because the planets Uranus and Neptune weren't known before then. Also, there are tons of stars and deep space objects that can only be seen with a telescope....presumably they would affect our future too. I don't believe in astrology personally, but I'm curious as to what astrologers and believers think about this matter. Was the invention of the telescope as great for astrology as it was for astronomy?
You raise a question that offers interesting debate for some... but the thing that you need to think about first when considering astrology is it's *prehistoric* beginning: humans dependent upon the environment for sustenance, needing to learn how to know when to plant crops, when certain animals would be available for hunting, etc. By observing the apparent motion of the lights in the sky, we learned how to master our environment by unlocking the natural calendar. As we became more sophisticated, acquiring math and writing, we were able to make more sophisticated observations...
Astrological predictions were definitely accurate before telescopes...
One common mistake people make today is the result of how isolated we've become from the natural cycle of the seasons--which has taken place largely due to the wide-spread use of clocks and watches during the Industrial Revolution when we, as a species, moved away from an agricultural lifestyle. This common mistake is the notion that new astronomical discoveries somehow change the "effect" of astrology. What new astronomical discoveries allow us to do, firstly, within astrology, is discover new, regular patterns in existence that we haven't especially noticed before--at least we'd not been able to connect the pattern to a finite entity.
The very first astrological predictions involved things like when a species of plant would bloom, and later, when a girl would get her first menses. These predicitions were so accurate that you find yourself sitting before a computer. If we'd not been able to get those first things right, we'd not have been able to survive to invent written language!
The same way the earth takes 365.25 days to orbit the sun, all the other planets have more or less fixed orbits. Venus does this interesting little thing (as observed from earth) that take place roughly every 8 years from any given point in time, but which eventually diverges as another cycle converges...
For many people, the first major crush takes place around 8 years of age... then we have "sweet 16" ...then age 24... think of these ages in terms of love/relationships... whether Venus is directly "influencing" these events, or it just so happens that Venus has a motion that coincides with life events of people is not a question astrologers have much concerned themselves with--however, that timing exists for everyone, roughly, give or take a few weeks or months.
The serious event of coming of age near age 30 coincides with the Saturn return...
There are hundreds of these planetary aspects that coincide with standard life events... probably more like thousands. This is the foundation of astrology, and a good understanding of this primitive basic is absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to be a legitimate astrologer.
Sometimes the invention of the telescope has proven more problematic for astrology because it gives people more things to argue about, especially as so many people claim to be astrologers who really haven't studied astrology, proper, and it becomes more and more mixed up with a bunch of charlatans and scammers... think about psychiatry in the 19th century... man, what a bunch of bs that was. Really, even now there's plenty of people with PhDs in psychiatry that are total quacks.
Sooooooooooooooo.. the telescope allows us to observe more objects that moved along regular paths, which allowed us to draw more coincidental cycles which could be quantified, so it enriched astrology... at least a few hundred years ago... these days, it often only seems to give more people who can't even figure out how to calculate their state sales tax something to argue about that they didn't understand at the start.
These people who talk about cusps being a blending of two signs are an easy example. Astrology is determined by the math of the apparent zodiac--a planet can *not* be in two signs at one time. That "blending" claim is something that's developed relatively recent, and clear proof that while a standard timepiece (a watch or wall clock) easily available to the masses may help us advance in some ways, in other ways it allows us to become so isolated from our origins, people begin to think of discreet, tangible bodies as somehow mystical and amorphous. I mean, I'm all about Heisenberg, but there *are* certainties in *some* systems that *are* easy enough to observe! :)
Finally for those who imagine it's impossible to predict specific events, I implore those people to try to think for a moment about those prehistoric times--in the beginning it was just as "impossible" to know when a girl would begin her menses. A pattern was observed in nature, and there was no knowledge of endocrinology to explain it. The fact that a legitimate astrologer can read a chart to accurately predict certain behavior or events may not be so much "psychic" or magic, but simply an intuitive grasp of environmental synergy which we, as a species, do not yet have the understanding to intellectually grasp.
The "Pisces are like this" stuff is a modern day parlor game with little genuine connection to astrology proper. I do not recommend anyone seek out or rely on people who speak in such terms for astrological guidance.
no theyre just fun...compatibility is true
see astrology.com for free scopes
A good and obvious question. There is no way really to find out any accuracy then and now.
Astrology was, in its beginnings, a genuine search for knowledge——an attempt to find, in the configurations of the stars and planets, some meaning for humans that might enable them to ascertain something about the future, as if that future were written, obscurely but gloriously, in the heavenly patterns that nightly present themselves to observers.
Only five planets——Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—— were known to the early observers. Since they were named after gods and were believed to represent the actual bodies of the gods, the movements of those objects against the background of mythical figures represented by the constellations seemed important. It was that relationship of god to “sign” that was the basis for the notion that the fortunes of humanity were to be found by examining the night skies.
There were two divisions to astrology at first. Horary astrology dealt with measuring motions of the stars and planets and thereby predicting their configurations. This division eventually grew into astronomy. Horary astrology was essential for performing the second type, judiciary astrology, the popular aspect that offered——and still offers——predictions and trends to the clients.
There were other problems the ancient astrologers had. Making it a wonder how they did they do it. Calendars and clocks were not correct. A cheap LCD watch that costs a two dollars is far more accurate than any clock made in the past. Time zones did not exist and had to be made by man. No GPS that you need nowadays. Also before more modern times, birth records were not kept for most people. The upper classes maybe, (they were the ones that could afford fortune tellers) but for others it just was not necessary. As long as the goverment got the taxes, it did not matter.
Astrology uses science but is not a science. If there were forces from undiscovered planets, why didn't the astrologers detect them before they were found? Being discovered by astronomers, (a legit science) astrology had to make up attributes for the new planets and assign them. This would have happened last in the 1930's with Pluto. There are also moons of the outer planets that are larger than Pluto. Why don't these have an affect if distance and size don't matter?
Astrology changes only when it's convenient and profitable.