This isn’t the first time astrology has had a moment like this, and it won’t be the last. For thousands of years, the practice has existed in various forms. More recently, the New Age movement of the 1960s and 1970s included a heavy dose of astrology. (Some refer to the New Age as the “Age of Aquarius,” referring to the 2,000-year period after the Earth’s passage through the Aquarius sign.)
While astrology didn’t go completely in the decades between the New Age boom and nowyou could still read horoscopes in the back pages of magazinesit “got back to being a little bit more in the background,” says Chani Nicholas, an astrologer in Los Angeles. “Then there’s something that’s happened in the last five years that’s given it an edge, a relevancy for this time and place that it hasn’t had in 35 years.” The millennial generation has taken it and run with it.
Many of the people I spoke to for this article felt that, while the stigma surrounding astrology still exists, it has faded as the discipline has gained traction in online culture, particularly among young people.
“We’ve seen a reframing of New Age activities over the last two years, very much tailored toward a Millennial and young Gen X component,” says Lucie Greene, global director of J. Walter Thompson’s Intelligence Group, which studies and predicts cultural trends.
Broadly’s horoscope traffic, according to Callie Beusman, a senior editor, “has increased very dramatically.” The Cut’s president and editor-in-chief, Stella Bugbee, claims that a typical horoscope article on the site received 150 percent more traffic in 2017 than the previous year.
Astrology is well-suited to the digital age in some aspects. If you feel like plunging into a Google-research rabbit hole, there’s a low barrier to admission and practically infinite depths to plumb. The availability of more detailed information on the internet has given this cultural wave of astrology a level of sophistication. There will be more jokes about Saturn returns and less “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” questions. lines for a pick-up
A quick refresher: Astrology is not a science, and there is no proof that one’s zodiac sign has anything to do with personality. However, the system has its own logic. The positioning of the sun, moon, and planets within 12 parts of the sky, known as the zodiac signs, is given significance in astrology. Even if you’re not an astrology fan, you’re probably aware of your sun sign, the most well-known zodiac sign. It’s determined by the position of the sun on your birthday. However, the position of the moon and each of the other planets at the time and place of your birth adds more shades to the portrait of you that your “birth chart” paints.
Horoscopes are designed to tell you what the planets are doing right now and in the future, as well as how all of this influences each sign.
Susan Miller, the popular astrologer who developed the Astrology Zone website, describes the planets as a cocktail party. “You could have three individuals chatting at the same time, two people arguing in the corner, and Venus and Mars kissing.” I need to figure out what’s going on in those monthly talks for you.
“Astrologers are continually attempting to break down these massive concepts into manageable chunks of information,” Nicholas explains.
These days’ kids and their memes provide an ideal setting for astrology.
Astrology uses the planets and zodiac symbols to express complex ideas about personality, life cycles, and relationship patterns. That shorthand also works well online, where symbols and shorthand are frequently used.
Bertram Malle, a social cognitive scientist at Brown University, wrote me in an email, “Let me say first that I consider astrology a cultural or psychological phenomenon, not a scientific one.” However, “full-fledged astrology,” which goes beyond newspaper-style sun-sign horoscopes, gives you a powerful vocabulary to describe not only your personality and temperament, but also your life’s obstacles and prospects. To the extent that one just learns this vocabulary, it may appeal as a rich method of reflecting (rather than explaining or forecasting) human feelings and life events, as well as identifying some potential coping paths.
In times of stress, people frequently consult astrology. According to a short 1982 research by psychologist Graham Tyson, “those who contact astrologers do so in response to pressures in their lives, notably stress related to the individual’s social duties and connections.” “Under high stress, the individual is willing to employ astrology as a coping mechanism, even though he does not believe in it under low stress.”
Millennials have been the most stressed generation since 2014, according to American Psychological Association survey data, and they are also the group most likely to claim their stress has increased in the past year since 2010. Since 2012, Millennials and Gen Xers have been much more anxious than previous generations. Since the 2016 presidential election, Americans have been experiencing greater stress as a result of the political turmoil. According to the APA’s 2017 survey, 63 percent of Americans are “extremely concerned” about their country’s future. Reading the news stresses out 56% of individuals, with Millennials and Gen Xers being substantially more likely than older people to say so. Political infighting, climate change, global problems, and the prospect of nuclear war have all been prominent in recent news. If stress makes astrology look more appealing, it’s no surprise that more people are interested in it now.
In This Article...
Is it true that astrology is a science?
Astrology has not been shown useful in controlled research and lacks scientific validity, hence it is classified as pseudoscience.
Why is astrology considered a science?
Astrology may appear scientific in some aspects. It employs scientific understanding of celestial bodies as well as scientific-sounding instruments such as star charts. Some people use astrology to build expectations about future events and people’s characteristics in the same way as scientific theories do.
Is astrology a science or a math?
Astrology is not regarded as a scientific discipline. Astronomy is a branch of science that is employed in the practice of astrology. The movement of numerous stars and planets on the horizon is the subject of astronomy. It is taught as a branch of mathematics and is taught as a Science topic.
When did astrology become a pseudoscience?
Many facets of human history, including worldviews, language, and many aspects of social culture, have been influenced by astrological beliefs in correspondences between celestial observations and terrestrial happenings.
Astrology extends back to the 3rd millennium BC among West Eurasian peoples, with roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and interpret astronomical cycles as signals of heavenly communications. Astrology was considered an academic discipline until the 17th century, and it aided in the development of astronomy. It was widely accepted in political and cultural circles, and some of its notions were applied to conventional fields like alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. Emerging scientific notions in astronomy, such as heliocentrism, undercut the theoretical underpinning of astrology by the end of the 17th century, causing it to lose its academic standing and be labeled a pseudoscience. Predictions based on these methods have been demonstrated to be inaccurate through empirical scientific study.
Who is the inventor of astrology?
Jones stated, “This is possibly older than any other known case.” “It’s also older than any of the written-down horoscopes from the Greco-Roman period,” he said, adding, “we have a number of horoscopes written down as a kind of document on papyrus or on a wall, but none of them as old as this.”
The discovery was presented in the most recent edition of the Journal for the History of Astronomy by Jones and StaoForenbaher, a researcher at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb.
Forenbaher told LiveScience that the crew was working near the entrance of a Croatian cave in 1999, a site well known to archaeologists and residents of the surrounding hamlet of Nakovana who simply named it “Spila,” which means “the cave.”
Nobody realized at the time, however, that the cave featured a part that had been locked for over 2,000 years. Forenbaher’s girlfriend (now his wife) dug under the rubble and discovered a broad, low passageway that ran for over 33 feet in the dark (10 meters). “The unique King Tut experience, arriving to a spot where nobody has been for a couple of thousand years,” Forenbaher said of passing down the corridor.
When Forenbaher entered the cavern, “there was a very thin limestone crust on the surface that was splitting under your boots,” indicating that “nobody had gone there in a very, very, long time,” he added.
The researchers eventually discovered that it had been blocked off in the first century B.C., presumably as a result of a Roman military effort against the locals.
The archaeologists discovered a phallic-shaped stalagmite, as well as countless drinking containers deposited over hundreds of years and something more. “These very small bits and pieces of ivory came out in the course of that dig,” Forenbaher explained, “and we didn’t even recognize what we had at the time.”
The group got to work. “It took years to piece them together, find more bits and pieces, and figure out what they were,” Forenbaher explained. They ended there staring at the ruins of the world’s oldest known astrologer’s board.
Archaeologists aren’t sure how the board got inside the cave or where it came from. The Babylonians developed their own version of horoscopes around 2,400 years ago, which is where astrology began in antiquity.
Then, around 2,100 years ago, astrology went to the eastern Mediterranean, where it became popular in Egypt, which was ruled by a dynasty of Greek monarchs at the time.
Jones explained, “It gets transformed very much into what we think of as the Greek style of astrology, which is really the present type of astrology.” “The Greek style of astrology is the foundation of astrology that spans the Middle Ages, modern Europe, modern India, and beyond.”
The ivory used to produce the zodiac images dates back to 2,200 years, just before the advent of this new kind of astrology, according to radiocarbon dating.
The location of the board’s manufacture is unknown, though Egypt is a possibility. They believe the ivory came from an elephant that was slain or died in the area around that period. Because ivory is such a valuable commodity, it would have been preserved for decades, if not a century, before being utilized to make the zodiac. These signs would have been adhered to a flat (probably wooden) surface to form the board, which could have featured other features that did not survive.
It could have been loaded onto a ship sailing through the Adriatic Sea, a vital trade route that the cave overlooks. Illyrians were the people who resided in Croatia at the time. Despite the fact that ancient writers had a negative view of them, archaeological evidence reveals that they interacted with surrounding Greek colonies and were a vital part of the Mediterranean civilization.
An astrologer from one of the Greek colonies may have visited the cave to make a prediction. A consultation in the cavern’s flickering light would have been a powerful experience, if not particularly convenient for the astrologer.
Jones commented, “It doesn’t sound like a very practical site for performing horoscope homework like calculating planetary placements.”
Another hypothesis is that the Illyrians acquired or stole the astrological board without fully comprehending its use. The board, along with the drinking containers, would have been presented as an offering to an unknown deity worshipped in the cave.
“This astrologer’s board could have shown up as an offering along with other exceptional items that were either bought or robbed from a passing ship,” Forenbaher speculated. He noted that the drinking cups discovered in the cave had been chosen with care. They were made in another country, and only a few cruder amphora storage vessels were discovered with them.
“It nearly appears that someone was bringing out wine there, pouring it, and then discarding the amphora away because they weren’t good enough for the gods, or to be deposited in the shrine,” Forenbaher said.
The phallic-shaped stalagmite, which may have formed naturally on the site, appears to have served as a focal point for these offerings and rituals held in the cavern. Forenbaher cautioned that all stalagmites appear phallic in some way, and it’s difficult to know what significance it had to the cave’s inhabitants. “It had to mean something significant,” he said.
“This is a spot where goods of local importance were deposited with some type of supernatural power, transcendental being, or whatever.”
What was Jesus’ take on astrology?
I believe that God created astrology as a tool for us to better understand ourselves and to use as a spiritual tool. Numerous bible texts, in my opinion, support astrology. As a Christian, I try to remember what Jesus said. “There shall be signs in the sun, moon, and stars,” Christ predicted in Luke 21:25, referring to the importance of astrology. He explains the value of astrology with his pupils, as well as how it might be used as a sign of his return. Why would Jesus provide us this critical knowledge if we are not intended to understand the energies of the planets and signs, and if he was actually against it? Just as the three wise men knew Jesus would be born under the star in the sky that led them to him lying in the manger, Jesus warned us that when he returns, there will be signals in the sky.