There's nothing that makes me cringe more than standing in a bar and hearing the words "so what's your sign?" Not only because this has to be the worst pick up line ever, but because IT'S WRONG.
Yes, you read that correctly. You're not just a Leo or a Capricorn or whatever you are. Take it from someone who knows a little bit about astrology.
Now I know what you're thinking "I am so a Pisces! That's what the newspaper told me!" Well, I'm here to tell you the newspaper was sort of wrong.
Long story short, Christmas break of my freshman year I was bored and found some astrology articles online. I had always thought it was a joke because there is no way that being born during a specific time of the month can impact your personality. And to an extent this is true and I'm about to break it down for you.
We all sat through astronomy during high school and we all know that the solar system exists. There are more astral bodies than just the sun, Earth, and the moon and this is the same in astrology. What you read in the newspaper is what astrologers refer to as your "sun sign" but you also have a "moon sign," "mercury sign," etc. Interesting, huh?
Let's break it down further:
There are two well-known systems in astrology: Western & Vedic. Western is what we are familiar with and Vedic is used in various parts of Asia.
There are 10 planets that are used in Western astrology and they are the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (even though NASA may not agree about poor little Pluto).
These 10 planets can each be located in one of 12 signs, these you know from the horoscope column but just in case, they are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.
Example: You could have your Moon in Taurus but a friend can have their's in Leo, even if you were born a few days apart
Now it may get pretty tricky. The chart below is in a circle shape. It is divided into 12 pieces, these are called "houses." Where your houses are dependant on what time you were born. The start of your first house is called your "Rising Sun" or "Ascendant." Houses and signs are not perfectly aligned and can overlap.
To put it all together, each planet symbolizes something while each house describes a certain area of your life and the sign it is in tells you about the way it is expressed.
Example: Your Jupiter is in the Fourth House in Sagittarius. Jupiter brings about good luck and increases the size of things. Because it is in your Fourth House, which represents family and the home, this means you may have a large family and/or home. With all of this being in the sign of Sagittarius, which is a fun-loving and adventurous sign, your family and home will most likely be that way as well. Overall, you have the potential to have a large, exciting home and/or family.
From the chart above, you can see a number of colored lines. These are aspects.
The aspects are formed when planets are a specific number of degrees apart. This means that the two planets involved in the aspect impact one another, whether it is positive or negative depends on what aspect is involved.
"Opposite" is when two planets are about 180 degrees from one another and this can sometimes be a bad aspect, but some planets make it better than others. This applies to the other important aspects which are the Trine, Sextile, Square, and Conjunction.
Overall, astrology is just a summary of what you could be. It does not represent what you HAVE to do but instead what you have the potential to do. Human beings have free will and obviously can make their own decisions. Sometimes, certain aspects or placements of planets may contradict one another but people are filled with contradictions.
I never believed in astrology until I learned what it was actually about and, while I don't use it to make any life changing decisions, I've always liked learning about different belief systems.
So now that you know a little bit more about astrology, maybe next time someone says that they're a Scorpio and they "just can't help being crazy," you can just walk away and laugh.
