Something Completely Different:

You fall into majik too easily.Well that is what makes you christian so I guess it's to be expected.

I had studied astrology while in college between 1972/3 and 1975. I got started out of curiosity, mainly trying to find out why everybody backed away very carefully when they learned of my sun sign, Scorpio, but would never tell me why.Along with learning the symbolism of the signs, planets, houses, aspects, etc, I learned how to cast charts (for lurkers' sake, basically a horoscope ("view of the hour") is a graphical representation of the ecliptic when in the northern hemisphere looking south -- what's above the horizon is visible and what is below isn't). Of course, except for the sun (whose position is what we base our calendar on) you need an ephemeris to find the planets' location.Once I worked out the equivalence of the astrological and astronomical coordinate systems (sign and declination vs. hours of right ascension (RA) and declination -- basically, astronomers switched from signs to RA because of telescopes, though the sign of Ares is still used to mark the Vernal Equinox), I could answer fellow astronomy students' pressing questions about where a particular planet was; eg, "Professor, where's Uranus?".I also learned each planet's orbital period and how to mentally visualize planetary motion. That came in handy one Cub Scout camping weekend at a Scout camp in the mountains on the edge of the desert. While that promised excellent viewing for star gazing and an astronomy lesson (can't get a view like that in the city), the moon was out. However, I performed some rough calculations from which I concluded that the moon would rise about 45 minutes later each night, so I knew that we would have some star gazing time on the final night. We could even watch the satellites crossing the sky.Of course, testing the system led me to realize that it didn't actually work. That taught me a valuable lesson about working with the supernatural, that there is no way to develop a dependable system based on the supernatural. Instead of the simplistic system most people falsely assume astrology to be, it is a very intricate system with a very rich symbology for describing personality traits and relationship dynamics -- eg, one of my books is by a psycho-therapist, Psychologie und astrologische Symbolik. In that way, it's very much like a theology which also has to extrapolate via intricate logic from some basic premises, all with no means of testing and verifying your conclusions *. Like how even that most intricately constructed theology will crumble when any of its premises are shown to be false, the intricate system of astrology crumbles with the failure of its basic premise, "As above, so below." It just simply does not work.BTW, that was about a decade after I had already left Christianity because reading the Bible had revealed to me that I just couldn't believe that stuff. I'll save my comments about clueless astrology debunker for another message.Also, of late I've been considering adding a page or two on astrology to my web site, including the procedure for casting a chart, once I reconstruct the procedure for myself.
  FOOTNOTE *:
The QM course (Quartermaster, the Navy rating involved in ship's navigation) articulated an analogy which I had long known about and which describes the situation with theologies, astrology, and other systems of extrapolation with no means of testing and verifying results.DED reckoning is a basic navigation technique in which you take your heading and speed and current position and extrapolate where you should be after a given period of time, usually a few hours (basically, rate time = distance). The problem is that there are several factors that you cannot take into account which will throw you off course such that you end up not quite where you expected to be. And the longer the time period the more off course you get.For that reason, standard practice (pre-GPS) would be to step outside and take readings in order to perform a fix on your actual location. This would be done at least a few times a day, with each new fix serving as the starting point for the next DED calculation.The problem that I see with systems such as theologies is that they lack the ability to perform a fix and so cannot make any corrections when they drift off course. Same as I found to be the case with astrology.

A radical Christian believes in astrology. Guess it just shows the susceptibility of some minds.

You are right. Many books contain elements of truth. The Bible supporters never claim that the Bible alone has the truth, except when speaking of Jesus Christ. Many books contain truths. Astrology was evidently how the Magi found the baby, according to scripture. Faith used to study all the esoteric religions, so astrology is still in her database. One could argue that this proves susceptibility and even gullibility but it is, as you say, a trait prevalent among believers. We don't like employing critical thinking too much. You never want to slay the sacred cow if it is the only source of meat you have left.

I'm guessing that the reason you are still intrigued by astrology is because there is math involved...thus the belief seems amusingly probable. The math involved in a Trinitarian doctrine simply doest add up...I mean...1+1+1=1 ??

I'm a Cancer.

Libra here!I may take your test 'for fun' at some point. Because I agree with the fun part of it.
However, right now I simply don't have the time - and may for get about it when I do. So... it may not happen But - I'm a mother fucking Libra!!Do Libra's swear today? I haven't checked...

Sorry if my deleting so much of this thread is a problem for anyone but as I wrote in my OP this IS sin to me and I can't just let it stand.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I must say I'm completely amazed to find out that you of all people studied astrology. ...Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Too much discussion of astrological stuffEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And I'm immune to chemo.

What? I hope that's a joke.

Hello? It's an on-going joke: "I'm a Cancer."

Yeah I got that, but I'd never heard of being immune to chemo so I thought there might be a real side to it. Sorry, I should have realized it was just a joke.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Why should that be? Knowledge is knowledge. If you want to find out about something, then study it. You should never be afraid to study something. Even if your intent is to refute something, you must first study it to learn what it really is and what it really claims.Sadly, I find especially with creationists that they are terrified of learning what evolution really is and says. I've even had creationists adamantly refuse to even consider studying evolution because "that would require me to believe in it." Complete and utter nonsense! The goal of education is to learn about and to understand the subject matter, not to compel belief in it -- when the US Air Force taught us NCOs about Marxism and Communism the goal was most certainly not for us to become Marxists or Communists! In stark contrast, the goal in religious education is indoctrination which compels belief in the the doctrine being presented. Fundamentalists' ignorance and confusion about the goal of education is one of the hurdles in trying to reason with them.IOW, there should be no reason for you to refuse to study evolution. The meaning of the houses should have been presented along with the meanings of the planets and of the signs. Basically they represent various areas (I wanted to say "aspects", but that word means something else in astrology) of life with each house being associated with a sign; eg, First House with Ares, Second with Taurus, etc. The aspects (ie, angular relationships between planets) are used to indicate whether the influence of those planets work together (eg, conjunctions, 60° ) or in opposition to each other (eg, opposition, square).Declension is what you do to nouns and adjectives in inflected languages (eg, Greek, Latin, Russian, German) -- in his "The Awful German Language", Mark Twain quotes a Californian as saying, "I'd rather decline two drinks than one damned German adjective!" Declination is the angular displacement north and south of the Celestial Equator. They're given in most ephemerides, but I don't recall them being used in a chart; instead they're of more use in knowing where to look for that planet or fixed star in the night sky.For lurkers' sake as well as my own in trying to reconstruct the procedure (especially since I no longer have my class notes from 45 years ago). I haven't tried to write any of this down for about 45 years, so you might be able to help proofread it for me:

1. Convert the standard time to local sidereal time (I need to work on this part and to verify it) -- you will need to use local sidereal time for all the planetary position calculations:
   1. Determine if daylight savings was in effect and, if so, correct for it. We had reference books listing when DST was in effect and where. It used to be a krazy patchwork in which some states did or didn't and some counties did or didn't and that could change from year to year.
   2. Convert standard time to local solar time. With the location's longitude, calculate how many degrees it is from its Standard Time Meridian and add or subtract the correction (I'll have to reconstruct which way that works). The conversion factor of degrees to time is four minutes of time per degree.
   3. Convert local solar time to local Greenwich time. Basically, since all the entries in the ephemeris are for noon GMT (nowadays UT), you need to translate local time to GMT.
   4. Convert local GMT to local sidereal time. As I recall, take two adjacent sidereal times from the ephemeris (they're for noon on those days) and interpolate. Sidereal time changes by about four minutes per day since the earth moves about one degree along its orbit per day.
2. Use local sidereal time to interpolate the positions of all the planets. Most planets won't move too much except for the moon which can move about 11 to 15 degrees (nearly half of a sign) per day.
3. Put your houses in order . Ie, set up your chart with the longitudes of the dividing lines between each house. Once you have done that, you can place the planets on the chart. There are a number of ways to do this of which I can only think of two at the moment:
   1. Equal Houses. Place the sun -- basically, the layout of a horoscope is analogous to a clock and the sun's location is the sky is the basis of daily time. Set the zenith (ie, the meridian) to the local sidereal time (LST -- that's the definition, after all) and then label all the other cusps in intervals of two hours -- eg, if the meridian's LST is at 13:34:48 (23°LIB42'), then the next cusp will be 23°SCO42' and the next one 23°SAG42' and so on. This is basically the method you describe having used though I don't know how you set the first cusp.
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      I would use a simplified form of equal houses to sketch a star-gazing horoscope. I would set the meridian to the viewing time, convert that to degrees within that sign, and then all the cusps to two-hour/one-sign increments/decrements from that. Then I would place the planets without interpolation (eye-ball accuracy).
   2. The Right Way. Using a Table of Houses (kind of like a log or trig table) and the latitude, you look up the longitudes of all the cusps. I never learned the theory behind it, which is supposed to be based on spherical trigonometry, and this is the part of the procedure that I'm most hazy about. I think that this is most important if your interpretation depends more on the houses.
4. Place the planets in the chart.

A few years ago I downloaded some ephemerides to use to tell where the planets are for star-gazing purposes. For example (again, for lurkers' sake): So if you go outside tonight and the sky is clear, before 8PM (2000h -- add an hour if you're on DST) you might be able to see Mars setting in the west. Unfortunately, it's on the other side of the sun right now, so at that distance and due to the inverse-square law it will be quite dim and you probably won't be able to see it. Mars is much easier to see when it's in opposition to the sun because that places it much closer to us, thus greatly reducing the effects of the inverse square law. That won't happen again until Summer 2020.Venus is currently a Morning Star, but it's fairly close to the sun so viewing's not good but still possible. In August 2019 it will become an Evening Star again and should reach greatest elongation (about 60° separation) in the Winter according to my quick estimation (I should probably write a simple program to figure that out).At 8PM, the moon will be out and about 30° to the east of the meridian (the meridian is due south from your position; when the sun crosses the meridian that's noon, hence the ante- and post-meridian time designations). Jupiter should be about 30 to 40 degrees to the east of the moon. The moon is waxing but still a few days away from being full.Saturn should be rising in the east, but I've always found it a difficult one to spot with the naked eye. Venus, Jupiter, and Mars (in opposition) are the easiest.I got all that just from those lines in the ephemeris, plus looking ahead for future developments.That thing about spotting Jupiter reminds me of an Ensenada cruise. A group of us went to the Lido deck at midnight for some auto-dog (soft-serve ice cream). One of the women asked me where the moon was, since we couldn't see it out any of the windows. I asked her what phase it was and she said it was full the night before, so my answer for where it was was to point straight up (good within less than 20° ). We had to go out into the pool area to see it since the superstructure was blocking our view, but there it was where I said. I also knew that Jupiter should be to the east, so I looked towards shore and it looked like a police helicopter was approaching us with its searchlight on. I had never seen Jupiter appear so bright. Truly amazing.Edited by dwise1, : Jupiter's east, not west, of the moonEdited by dwise1, : Had to eliminate a stray smilie. Hate those things almost as much as I hate Clippy