Was astrology not just a misadventure?

If we trace the history of astrology, we find that its roots are soaked in the craving of the men to know — what sort of things, were expected to happen in their life.

So they looked up at the stars and, first of all, evolved a technique of mapping the relative position of the sun and the moon across the ecliptic of the earth by dividing the ecliptic into twelve segments calling them — First House, Second House and so on.

Next, they picked up seven geocentric planets of the earth and arbitrarily prepared a chart of the things related to our life, each House shall be controlling and started collecting information regarding the impact these planets assert on our life while cruising across each House, depending on our “Ascendant Sign”.

It came as a matter of great relief to them to learn that once they knew which planets occupied which House at the time of the birth of someone; they could ascertain their location at any age of the man.

So, they came up with the idea of preparing a “Natal Chart” mapping the location of various planets at the time of the birth of people.

Later on, it dawned on them that their system did not explain why we face uncalled-for obstacles in a row in our life. So they came up with the idea of adopting the ascending and the descending lunar nodes also as two of the planets to explain why we get stuck up in our life due to unforeseeable obstacles. Keeping in mind the sort of panic these nodes used to spread, they named them Rahu and Ketu after the names of two demons and started telling people what sort of life they could expect to lead, using the data gathered by them on the impact various planets cast on our life, assuming that the principle, “If some person has same Ascendant Sign, has same planets occupying the same Houses as the people from whom they should have collected the data related to the type of things that happen in the life; same type of thing should happen in their life as well if so, as should have happened in the life of the people from whom they ought to have gathered such data” to hold good for one as if it had to be a “universal fact of life” .

Of course, such criticisms as “How any planets or stars which are trillion and trillion light-years away from us may at all relate to the things that happen in our life or even what they are composed of?” — do not stand to any arguments since astrology is an exercise of finding out whether we can establish any link between the two regimes — “the location of the planets in the sky” and “the events that may take place in our life depending on their relative locations”, only.

The least, how far they are or what are they composed of whether — helium or lithium or anything, whatsoever.

But all the same, it calls for looking into the reason — why, even though it did not take us as long as five thousand years to have developed even supersonic and hypersonic jet planes, the fact that we have not been able to have developed a fool-proof version of astrology even after having worked on it for as long as five thousand years, clearly reflects that either it should have been only a misadventure or there had to be something amiss.

I think — it was not only a misadventure; it was also a misconception that we could have developed a system that should have given us 100 per cent correct results.

There are lot many things that do not fall within the domain of astrology though such things also impact our life, apart from the stars.

Some things that do not fall within the domain of astrology

A most glaring example of what gushes beyond the domain of astrology is the Holocaust we witnessed due to anti-Semitism during the regime of Adolf Hitler involving incarceration of the European Jews by pushing them into Concentration Chambers by the Nazis to have ensured that they would have met their demise.

Could their horoscopes have given any hint, for as many as six million of them — that they qualified to have been tortured in such an inhuman manner?

I hope, you won’t say — “Yes”.

More than the horoscopes of the poor Jews — it was only the horoscope of Adolf Hitler that should have explained such Holocaust.

It is something that, outright, belies the basic premise of astrology that it should be possible to cast a horoscope that may tell us everything about our life.

Now take the case of about a million tourists who should have been swept away into the bowel of the oceans, due to the Tsunami waves that had struck the beaches of Thailand in the year 2004.

Stars could not have provided any explanation.

Such things have no link with astrology.

Such things relate to seismology and deforestation, not — astrology.

It is next to impossible that only such people would have gone holidaying whose horoscopes should have told that they were going to get swept away while holidaying.

Take the case of the people who got burnt in the flames that should have swallowed them when two jet planes had struck the Trade Towers of New York in the year 2001.

Do you think only such people should have been working in the Trade Towers who should have had such planets in such of the “Houses” that should have pointed to their having met such a fate?

I am sure — your answer has to be a big “No”.

Case of the people who lose their life due to cyclones or due to earthquakes and floods etcetera is also much the same — not, any different.

We have to make a compromise that such incidents are out of reach of the archetypal astrology and think of developing a new version of astrology that covered these types of things also, besides.

The fact is, the way the alchemists could have known whether a piece of lead (or a piece of iron) could be converted into gold or silver or not, the astrologers couldn’t have known whether astrological predictions had any face value or not.

The alchemists abandoned the project of converting the base metals into noble metals because not only they — even a layman could have told whether iron or lead got converted into gold or silver or not; but not so in case of astrology, as explained below.

Suppose, you visit an astrologer and ask him to tell you some “auspicious date” for starting a new business that would ensure that you did not encounter any hell-bound problems and he even gave you a date and you even started the new business on such date but you confronted too many uncalled-for obstacles. So, you decide to revisit the astrologer to tell him about it but he tells you that if you would have started your business on some other date, you would have confronted much bigger problems.

Just imagine — can you ever dispute him or whether he was taking you just for a ride?

It is this smokescreen only that has protected astrology from having got washed off just as a “misadventure”.

And if you want to know for yourself — “yes” or “no”; look at the following photo.

It looks, as though, they have made up their mind to break up. Supposing it to be so — try to answer the question, “Do you think, if they would have got their horoscopes matched, they wouldn’t have seen this day of discord?” assuming that they wouldn’t have got their horoscopes matched before their marriage.

I know some of the couples who got married even though their horoscopes did not match and they had been strongly advised by their family astrologer not to tie the nuptial knot but they never looked back and are still leading a seamless life.

As for whether anything may be amiss, we know — what they thought of to have been a “universal fact of life” was something they heavily missed upon.

It was, by no means, a “universal fact of life”.

It also came under the radar of the “law of probability” according to which, it was not necessary that there should have not been even a single streak of exception.

So, the law of probability explains it all — why though we get even such results that keep us astonished for years; erroneous results also peep in.