Astrology Isn’t Real

“I don’t believe in all that,” I say to my good friend Caitlyn. “But why not!” She says. I continue to say, “I just don’t see how it connects to our personal selves, and everything I read is so general. If you’re an Aries then you’re labeled as rude, like it doesn’t make sense.” Caitlyn is really into astrology, I’ve known her my whole life and she has always believed in it and claims it’s real. She gets upset whenever I change the subject because I simply do not care for it. I swear we always have the same short conversation every single time. Caitlyn then whispers to me softly, “That hurts my feelings, you know I’m passionate about astrology yet you always put me down”. At this point, I feel bad for making her feel that way. I mean I didn’t mean to, it’s just how I feel it. I tell her it’s just confusing and that some of it doesn’t make sense. I apologize and she asks if I wanted to learn more about it, and how maybe it’ll change my perspective on things. I agree only because I feel bad but thought to myself, why not? She goes on and on, and explains how we are not only assigned to one sign, but in fact we have three signs. She asks me my birthday and the time I was born. I told her, “March 14, 6:24 in the morning.” She goes on her phone and puts my info in on this app, and tells me my signs. “You’re a Pisces, Scorpio, and Pisces. You have Rising and Moon signs along with your zodiac sign and sometimes you’ll act and behave like your Moon or Rising sign more than your actual zodiac sign, which most people don’t know.” As Caitlyn says this to me, I sit in shock. I’m truly astonished by this new information. I ask her to tell me more.

A short video from a famous Youtube channel titled, “Astrology Origins and The Zodiacs Explained “ goes into great detail about astrology’s history and how it came to be. The video was published on November 19, 2020 so it is pretty recent. The Youtube channel was created in 2018 and is named “Myth Stories — Animated Legends” where they go into detail about myths from the past that are still present in our modern times. The authors are unknown but I know it is a group of people that collaborate together to make these viral videos. A quote that I found interesting in the video was, “Greek people thought that the ruling constellation in the sky brought with it a certain character and so it affected the general mood of the months it reigned and also the personalities of those born under them. Greeks then added further mythological tales behind each planet and constellations, this is Horoscopic Astrology” I found this quote interesting because it’s exactly how we think of the horoscopes and the zodiac signs today. Each zodiac sign holds a specific personality trait or assumption about people based on when and where they’re born. I thought it was cool to understand where horoscopes originated from, because it’s all over social media today. The video then goes on to explain that astrology was replaced by astronomy and then after that, it had been recategorized as a pseudoscience when we discovered that the earth rotates around the sun, and not the sun rotating around us. Pseudoscience is a collection of beliefs or practices that are set up to look for evidence to support its claims. I believe this is an important resource to start with to really understand if astrology is real or not.

The 2nd edition of Parapsychology edited by David Groome and Ron Roberts in 2017, explores the challenges and limitations of scientific investigations. The book provides a range of research from religious beliefs, paranormal, reincarnation, and more. There is no wrong or right answer in the book, it simply provides more insight and further understanding of specific topics, and it’s up to the readers to make up their own mind about it. The ninth chapter in the book is titled “Astrology” and it indeed brought a lot of insight about whether it’s real or not. A quote from the chapter that I found helpful was, “One possible motive for accepting the tenets of astrology so uncritically is that most people seek an understanding of their lives, and an insight into the minds of other people.The rather limited knowledge offered by psychologists is not enough for many people, who find it frustrating to have no satisfactory framework which enables them to understand other people.” This stood out to me because it makes a lot of sense. People read their horoscopes every day, and ask other people for their zodiac signs so they could know and understand more about them. Sometimes people share their zodiacs to talk about themselves and share what kind of “traits” they have according to their signs. If astrology isn’t real, it’d be upsetting to those who think they know everything about everyone. The chapter had mentioned that there is no scientific evidence to prove that astrology is real, but that there will always remain a possibility that there are valid astrological effects.

The netflix series “Explained” digs deeper into topics and issues that affect people’s everyday lives. The show premiered on Netflix on May 23, 2018 and was produced by Vox Media. The show consists of two seasons, and astrology was the topic for episode 7 in the very first season. The episode starts with the narrator going back into history about the topic, and how it affects people daily. I felt like this episode contributed a lot to my research because it brought to my attention a lot of new ideas and theories based on astrology. The episode had explained that astrology couldn’t be tested by the scientific method, so therefore it isn’t science but it still very much affects the lives of people who believe in it. At the 12 minute mark in the episode, the narrator had said, “That people who feel less in control of their lives are more drawn to astrology and see themselves more in their horoscopes. And that the positive outlook that you can get from reading a horoscope can even make you perform better on cognitive and creativity tests.” This led into the placebo effect, that belief in something can be enough. I thought this was very interesting because it’s like people rely on their horoscopes to feel better about themselves. This brought a new perspective for me because I never thought of it that way. To me, people just read their horoscopes for fun or when they’re bored but now there’s a deeper meaning to it. Another remark in the episode was that people believe in their horoscopes because of another psychological effect called the Barnum effect. The Barnum effect basically says that people can see themselves in ANY horoscope that is presented to them, and see themselves very easily in them. This stood out to me because even if astrology isn’t considered real, it still affects a lot of people psychologically.

Personally, I believe in astrology and at the same time I don’t. My zodiac sign is Pisces, and we’re known to be sensitive. I actually am very sensitive and I care for others more than myself. I feel like my traits do relate to my sign but at the same time everyone else can be sensitive like me as well no matter what sign. For horoscopes, I think it depends where you are reading it from. There are a lot of fake websites and pages, but I feel they could be too broad. If you resonate with your horoscope, great! If not, it’s not a big deal. I read horoscopes sometimes when they pop up on my TikTok page, or Instagram. I’ll relate to it sometimes but most of them I don’t. So I believe in it but kinda don’t. Something that I don’t like is when people use their sign traits as excuses for their actions. I see it all the time on social media and it makes me annoyed. For example, if someone yelled at me and made me cry, they’ll say I’m only crying because I’m a pisces. Like I understand some traits are automatically assigned to one’s zodiac, but I hate hearing those types of statements. “He killed her because he was a Sagittarius”, it doesn’t make sense to me to use someone’s sign to justify their actions. I only don’t believe in it because there’s no evidence claiming it’s real, but I feel like there are a lot of factors in one’s zodiac signs that we need to learn more of.

Works Cited

“Astrology Origins and the Zodiac Explained | Explore Mode & Myth Stories Collab.” Youtube, uploaded by Myth Stories — Animated Legends, 14 Nov. 2019, https://youtu.be/3w12iExbxeo .

Groome, David Ron Roberts. “Parapsychology | Taylor & Francis Group.” Taylor & Francis, 3 Nov. 2016, www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781315689678/parapsychology-david-groome-ron-roberts

Vox Media. “Explained: Astrology.” Netflix, uploaded by Netflix, 23 May 2018, www.netflix.com/title/80216752.