Astrology.....Your opinion

Off Topic
21

Astrology, the Tarot, Runes, and the I-Ching (pronounced Yee-Jeeng) are very interesting things. While there are a group of magicians who try to debunk a lot of this stuff, there are many more who use the fields to perform, or just do the “psychic” thing.

My interest lies in how the psychology of it works. And I actually believe that it can help people. The information is set up so it does fit any situation, and this is further enhanced by a practiced human interpreter who defines it based upon a situation or question.

The most helpful thing about it is that it causes people to think in ways they would not have before. And it is this little shift into a thought process that is not analytical, which produces a more creative answer to a problem.

So in a way I actually think it does work, but not in the way many might.

One fascinating thing is that if you do a card trick, but use a Tarot deck instead of a normal deck, people suddenly start believing what you did is real. You can sometimes get that reaction just from a deck of cards, but a Tarot deck just multiplies the chances of getting that reaction.

Many of the people who are into this do believe it. Of the magicians who do psychic performances, they all tend to say that you should only get into the field if you really want to help people. I was fascinated to find out that the success rate of psychics is the same as psychiatrists. And if they are as successful, but charge a lot less then a psychiatrist, then I can’t see a problem with it.

One big thing that makes this work is the fact that people are more alike then they want to admit. You probably think that there is something unique about you. That you are different then everyone else, that for some reason you are different, and possibly special in some way. That while nobody seems to notice, you are unique. Yet most everybody feels this way, and does not realize that it is the same with most people.

Also it is easier to get seemingly intimate details then most realize, and the more human intervention the better and more accurate the details.

And in response to some of the statements made, Astrology only really deals with the planets around the sun. All other stars only mark out the sky, so actually they are all still there, but all charts are actually off by one “sign”.

Also a trained “psychic performer” can get intimate details from a person without the person saying a word, and people usually are very talkative with psychics. It is different then you might think, and there is some advanced psychology going on with some of the more advanced performers. You would not believe how good they can be.

I am trying to discuss this without giving out too many details, after all I am under oath to protect secrets. Anyway have fun and go call Cleo, the Jamaican psychic born and raised in LA.

22

There was just a study published in Britain that should have debunked this nonsense once and for all. It followed a bunch of people born within minutes of one another who are now in their 40s (not sure on the age), and tested them to see what sorts of similarities they had in personalities, preferences, careers, etc. Supposedly these people should have been quite similar, as they all shared the same star patterns (to give space to the counter argument, astrologers have argued that even the slight differences could yield big changes, but how many working astrologists actually get data on the precise minutes of one’s birth?) – the facts showed no statistically significant correlations between the people.

23

So if Jupiter is aligned with Saturn and Pluto, the Earth is aligned with the moon and Mars, and Uranus hurts, will my penis grow?

24

FYI
for those who believe in astrological signs, your about one month off, or one sign ahead. it’s all due to precession. 2-3k years ago when the signs were developed from the stars in the sky, the stars were in differnet locations as they are now. it takes 35k years for the wobble to correct it’s self. DOH!

25

I’m an Aquarius. I’m cool.

26

Carl Sagan summed it up well. First, he hypothetically assumed that the planets and stars could influence you some how at your birth. Okay, how can celestial bodies affect you? The obvious answer was gravitational pull. But the effects of gravity are also based on distance. In that case, the “gravitational pull” of the doctor that delivered you had a greater effect on you than the planets.

27

OK for those of you who do not believe here is a true story you can try to explain away.

2001 august - moved to new jersey to work for an insurance company. met a girl at work one day and had lunch. nobody at this company knows who I am at this point. she asks me if I want to hang out at her friends house so i said ok. we go over there that night, she tells me that this girls mother is a light worker/healer and she can give readings. I didn’t really believe in such things at the time and certainly wouldn’t have paid to ever go to one. but she was like want her to give you a free one? I skeptically agreed. The girls mother was up watching tv in her bedroom. I still had not even set eyes on her. the girl told me to give her something that I carry on me all the time like a neclace or a ring. or a wallet. I gave her my wallet which had my drivers liscense two credit cards a gnc card and a AAA card and twenty something bucks. ok so she takes my wallet into this woman and I still don’t know anybody, I just met this girl today and her friend a few minutes ago and still not met her friends mother. so we go in her room and hang out for about 20-30 minutes watch tv and stuff. this woman comes in the room looks at me and says boy you’ve got a lot going in your life. I almost crapped right there. She explained to me how she saw a small feminine angelic being who moves me. she couldn’t explain further but she said that it will definately happen. a few months later I was informed that a girl I had hooked up with back home was pregnant with a little girl and it was mine. I put my notice in a MOVED back home for my little angel. ok that was point one, specific and came true very shortly. she also told me that a very reocurring vision she had of me was of me running. she wasn’t sure if it meant that I am the type of person who runs from everything like responsibilities or problems or that I actually run alot. well some of you may know from other posts I was a very succesful high school and college runner. I ran cross country and track and all through those years 6 to be exact running was my life. it was all i did or cared about. know I know that many people run but the way she described seeing me running was exactly the way I used to invision myself running. she described me as running swiftly and strong, which were the exact thoughts I would have when I ran. It was what I based my whole style on. that was point two. she told me that an older male in my family had a red american muscle car and that she saw it with right front end damage. My father has a 1991 red mustang gt convertible. he hasn’t wrecked it yet and I hope that doesn’t come true, but she was at least right on half of it so far. she had other things too but they were smaller things.

sorry for the long post but this really happend to me.

28

vegita
nice story, but she didn’t get any of that from your astrological sign. sounds like she was more of a psychic.

29

The planets don’t control me…my genitals do.

30

Ok, here is a true story by an immensely skilled magician who died recently. I am doing this by memory.

The magician was in a bathroom when he noticed a hat on the floor. He picked it up and took it to a coat checkroom. He was asked if he saw the person lose it, and said no. But he could say that the person was a well dressed man about half a foot shorter then he was, wore thick black glasses, was balding, wore his hat jaunty style, was in his mid 50’s, was inebriated, and rather chubby.

He waited around and the person did eventually show up looking for his hat. He matched the description exactly. (I left out a couple things that don’t come to mind right now.)

He then went into detail as to how he knew what he did. And sorry but I cannot go into how he did this, but this was his way of practicing so he was at the top of his game for performances where audience members brought items up on stage and he told detailed information about the item, and the person who owned the item.

By the way this is called psychometry. (sy-com-uh-tree)

31

It is bullshit.
And to Michelle, if we are not supposed to read it don’t you think that probably we couldn’t? (which we can’t).
Oh, and Fitone, yeah religion is bullshit as well for exactly the reason you said.

/Jacob

32

Read “The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan. It spends a lot of time on Astrology, and also on alien abduction. He talks about how astrology has changed over the years.

He also goes into experiments with hypnosis and how they’ve (through asking leading questions) implanted memories in people leading to after the fact “mass hallucinations” (researchers could get two people to believe the same thing happened when it didn’t). They could do this without hypnotizing as well.

It is a great book whether you believe in it or not. It is about how it is important to want to discover the truth but also question.

33

Reading these posts has changed my mind about astrology.

Okay, no it hasn’t.

cough, cough-bullshit!

in my humble opinion

34

yes my story was about a phsycic but it was to prove a point that maybe there are things that are there that we cannot detect. Or that some of us cannot detect. I suggest that some of you skeptics try this excercise out. In a dimly lit room sit about 10 feet away from a white or nuetral color wall. hold your hands out in front of you and spread your fingers. like you would grab a basketball on both sides, slowly close your fingertips toward eachother without touching them. pull them apart and move them up and down. You should be looking at the space in between each fingertip and the opposing hand one. sit and do this for about ten minutes and by that time you should see something I won’t say what you should see because some might see it just because I said it. so tell me if you saw anything and i’ll explain further after a few have tried it. well that is if anyones bored enough to try it at all. :wink:

35

I think there is something to it. There are very, very few people who have the gift for it. I had read a prediction by a Hindu spiritual advisor once, based on birth-date and year. I thought, at first, bullshit. Then when everything predicted came true, I had to rethink my position. There are to things you must realize about it though, first, it is a very low-level of spirituality. Almost like a computer; data in → resulting data out. Second, like I said before, very very few people truly have the gift, so beware. Most of them are quacks, which is why most people say it is bullshit, so did I at one point. By the way, I am a religious person, so my point of will piss-off most fundementalists, but my experience was empirical. So I won’t look evidence in the face and say “bullshit”. I did nothing to shake my Christian faith, it actually strenthened it.

36

Nate, Are all aquarians that cool,

37

Okay, fair enough, pat.

I probably haven’t given it the in-depth research it deserves, but the unbelievable number of quacks out their that have been found to be fakes later, has tainted my desire to research it, and strengthened my skepticism.