8 Popular Misconceptions About Astrology

24 Aug 8 Popular Misconceptions About Astrology

Today’s post on misconceptions about astrology is meant to share some things you ought to know about this ancient and powerful discipline that has been long misunderstood. I also hope that the post will allow you to separate this cosmic guide from fiction so you can use it to fulfill your destiny.

Without wasting any more of your time, let’s skip to the main section of the post.

Misconceptions about astrology

1. There are good and bad aspects, signs, or transits in astrology

This could not be further from the truth. Stereotypes tend to narrow one’s mind regardless of the subject; and astrology is no exception. The truth is, nothing is intrinsically evil or good in astrology. Like everything else, all things in astrology have a time and place, and their impact depends on the way you decide to use them.

Here is a great example. Saturn transits are usually caricatured as bad but Jupiter transits as good – even though planets can neither be good or bad.

As a ruling planet, Jupiter symbolizes expansion, growth, and ease. All sound like great things, right? But how lucky would you feel if your debt is the one that is expanding? Or perhaps your waistline? What if everything is coming too easy in your life and nothing is making you happy anymore?

As I noted a few sentences ago, it all depends on how the factor applies to your life.

Saturn, on the other hand, symbolizes commitment, patience, and discipline. Aren’t all these exactly what we need if we’re working toward our perfect bodies or getting married or building businesses (they all require patience, commitments, and daily discipline)?

The bottom line is, expansion isn’t always advantageous and restrictions aren’t always bad.

Most importantly, taking stereotypes in the realm of astrology to their extremes will only vilify certain sun signs. For instance, over the years, I’ve heard people claiming that Scorpios have a predisposition for evil and Gemini are two-faced? What a load of twaddle!

Some of the kindest people I’ve ever met are Scorpios and some of the honest I have known are Gemini.

2. Astrology insinuates that life is presupposed and we have no free will

I wish I could type a million NOs.

Astrology is a tool for self-knowledge that’ll simply act as a guide as you exercise free will in your life.

In fact, if anything, the only thing that stands in between you and your freedom is your complexes, demons, negative expectations, delusions, and blind spots; and the main reason you should study astrology is that it’ll allow you to master yourself as you go through life.

Remember, none of us can heal what we do not understand, and we cannot fight things we do not see. Astrology opens our eyes to what is there and brings enlightenment, which in turn opens the way to true free will.

That said, there is a question I receive a lot while talking about this subject with a lot of my students, “Then is there such thing as fate or destiny?”

Well, some external characteristics are certainly beyond our control. For example, your mom giving birth to you in a war zone or you being born a girl or boy. We don’t control all aspects of our lives and some things create powerful dynamics inside all of us. All we can do is chose what we do using these dynamics.

As Heraclitus of Ephesus son of Bloson said, “Character is destiny.” So here is a conclusion to this section – master your character and you’ll master your destiny.

3. Astrologers and psychics are pretty much the same thing

Not only is this an insidious falsehood, but it is also extremely damaging to the discipline of astrology, for the simple reason that it assumes astrology is nothing more than prophecies. It certainly isn’t. Another thing I’ve come across that closely aligns with this one is that astrologers spew out the first thing that comes to minds. They do not.

Both assumptions make nonsense of the tens of hours of painstaking study and work that astrologers put into data analysis before they can even utter the first word. A psychic, on the other hand, has the ability to deliver proclamations on the spot. How accurate are the results? Well, this always depends on how legit the psychic is or how great the astrologer is (the same way it applies when it comes to your car mechanic, counselor, dentist, or doctor.)

So, to recap, a psychic isn’t an astrologer, and an astrologer isn’t a psychic. One can create an entire career doing one but not the other. Are there astrologers who are also psychics and psychics who are also astrologers? Of course, there are. But the order of their titles is extremely important.

Let’s say you were a psychic and a doctor, capable of instantly telling what is wrong with my body after taking one look. Would you also take yourself through the trouble of running tests? Perhaps, just to be sure – but you would be a psychic 1^st and a doctor 2^nd.  The same applies to psychics who also use astrology skills to enrich their gifts.

By contrast, a doctor that’s also ‘extremely intuitive’ will always take a scientific approach first, and only use their intuition as a secondary method (or in non-threatening scenarios) when dealing with their patients directly. The same applies to astrologers who’re also a bit psychic.

Here is a simpler way to understand how the two are totally different. Doctors study their art for years (and sometimes even decades) before becoming doctors – and so do great astrologer. Psychics, on the other hand, are usually born that way.

4. There is a new, 13^th sign and so the zodiac has changed

If you have no idea what constellations are or their essence in the practice of astrology, I’ll elaborate on misconception number five. Now let us talk about this so-called 13^th sign.

I agree, the constellation Ophiuchus does touch the ecliptic (sun’s apparent path) with its feet trampling all over the Scorpion’s tail (both metaphorically and literally.) But what has this got to do with anything? We’re already wiser to differentiate constellations from the zodiacs.

Better yet, Babylonians weren’t blind.

Here is a great way to understand my train of thoughts. Would you ever think about adding a new, 13^th month to our calendar – or making certain months run for 10 days while others run for 60 – all because someone who knows nothing regarding calendars insisted on it? It is technically possible to make these changes, but would you make them?

Would you go on and add a 5^th season in the middle of winter simply because it tends to get slightly hot for four days? I guess your answer to both examples is a big, bold, NO.

We might have derived our calendars from observation, but they’re ultimately symbolic systems of measuring time – and so is astrology. Number 12 and all its multiples are extremely important in measuring time since time immemorial, and this also forms the basis of astrology with its 12 zodiac signs.

This brings me to the 5^th of eight misconceptions about astrology.

5. Constellations are the same as star signs in the sky

Well, no. And this is one of the grossest misconceptions about astrology. I’ll tell you what, star signs have been derived from their respective constellations, but they’re not identical to them.

For starters, every sun sign is exactly 30 degrees long – together creating a neat circle of 360 degrees. Nothing else of the sort naturally exists in reality.

If you study the sky, you’ll learn that constellations are all over the place. Virgo (not the star sign) spans across a huge swathe in the heavens because it’s one of the biggest constellations, whereas Capricornus is pretty small.

The sun spends around 40 days in the Virgo constellation, 23 in Capricornus, and a mere 7 days in the Scorpion: But none of this matters, because the zodiac signs are totally different from the constellations.

With that in mind, you may now be wondering, “Well, what is the zodiac?” It’s a giant clock.

The twelve sun signs that have been named after the stars are the twelve hours of this clock (all of the same length) and the dials are the Moon, points, planets, and the Sun. The main purpose of this clock is to evaluate the qualities of time and give them meaning.

6. Astrology must be wrong because it lumps millions of individual together in only 12 sun signs

If you’re well versed in the realm of astrology, then you know that astrology is far more than the star sign one was born under. We all have unique personal birth charts based on the positions of the Moon, Sun, stars, angles, planets, houses, ascendants, and many other facts.

As a matter of fact, our universe is so vast that you could analyze a single birth chart for hours, which is why I mentioned earlier that it takes the best astrologers tens of hours to analyze a single person’s personal birth chart.

That said, since I presume you do not have hours to spare, you can simply start with a computer analysis that’ll give you a synopsis, while you wait to visit a competent astrologer who’ll comprehend it all then begin to create a unique picture for you.

What’s more? Birth charts are so unique that twins will usually have their owns (since most of them are born minutes apart.) Not a lot of people are born in the exact moment and square foot, and that’s why astrology is unique for all of us. Here is a detailed guide on how to read a natal chart that you can check out when you are done with this one on misconceptions about astrology.

7. I was born on the cusp, so I must be both signs

I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re not. There is no such thing as someone being born on the cusp and no one is two signs at the same time because there are no cusps. Here is a simpler way to put it, I cannot be born in both Wednesday and Thursday. I was either born at 23:59:59 on Wednesday or 00:00:00 on Thursday, but never both.

What if you were born on the hour and day of the change-over from one zodiac sign to the next? That’s easy. Simply learn the precise location and time of your birth and you will find out whether you were born on ‘Wednesday’ or ‘Thursday.’

That said, I have come across a lot of people whose minds cannot be changed, and that is why I urge you to take some time and learn as much as you can about cusps in astrology. If I’m being fair, what will usually happen is that individuals who feel strongly about being one of the cuspers boast a whole cluster of planets in the adjacent sign – which means they are right in thinking that they might be both. But their sun is never on any ‘cusp.’

If need be, we can simply define cusps as the 29^th degrees of zodiac signs till the 1^st of their next ones. In the realm of astrology, we call these critical degrees, and while they do have meaning, it’s usually not in the way you may think.

Some astrologers believe that the closer you get to these edges, a small number of qualities from a different star sign might bleed through. But other astrologers tend to argue the opposite – that someone born on a critical degree is even more strongly to their sign, and not less. As they say, “not yet, not yet, – NOW!”

The bottom line? You are 100 percent the star sign you were born in.

8. Once you turn 30, you become your ascendant and stop being your sun sign

This list of misconceptions about astrology would be incomplete without this ridiculous astro-babble. It’s the most ridiculous I’ve come across so far.

There isn’t an expiry date on our star signs, and as for our Rising Signs (or Ascendants), we are pretty much them from birth. Our Ascendants are the faces we present to the world and the way we ‘meet’ life. Of course, we might become more seasoned at getting around life as we grow older, but that is as far as the simile goes.

We do not suddenly turn into different people.

In fact, if anything, it’s our Sun Signs that tend to remain hidden for a short while – particularly when our birth charts emphasize other features. For instance, kids tend to exhibit their Moon signs 1^st, because things such as aggression (Mars), thought (Mercury), taste (Venus), will (Sun), and others that complete our personalities take a long time to develop.

With that in mind, our sun signs are often the last ones to fully shine through because they represent our innermost selves and purposes in life, which implies that a person can spend more than a decade not feeling like the typical Cancer or Taurus as they get to know themselves.

As for Ascendants, they’re always visible and always there. They act like the frontispiece, the shop window, and the mask you wear so others can see you.

If you loved this article on misconceptions about astrology, I’m confident you’ll love this one on romantic compatibility in astrology.