Is Your Future in the Stars

Is your future in the stars?

This question has been asked for millenia by scientists and laymen alike. Once closely aligned with the study of astronomy, astrology is the belief and study that the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies guide what happens on earth.

Specifically, astrologers believe that stars and planets guide and predict actions of individuals based on when they were born and which stars and planets were moving in the heavens. Astrologers believe your future is in the stars.

Many different schools of astrology exist, but the tradition of western astrology focuses on predictive trends based on horoscopes and astrological charts. A horoscope or astrological chart is a two-dimensional representation of the positions of the sun, moon, and planets from a particular place on earth.

The predicted movement of those bodies affects what will happen on Earth; consequently, a trained astrologer can predict how those movements will affect an individual's life, as well. With knowledge of a person's birth date, time of birth, and location, an astrologer will predict a person's future based how the stars and planets were aligned and how they are expected to move during the person's life.

There is quite a bit of controversy surrounding astrology. Many scientists decry astrology and horoscopes as "pseudoscience," or a discipline with no true scientific basis. While the studies of astrology and astronomy were once one and the same, they began to diverge during the Scientific Revolution.

In large part this separation was due to careful experimentation, which many people believed disproved the claims of astrology. However, many astrologers maintain their core beliefs and purport that the truth lies in the movements of the heavens. They believe in the greater connection between people on Earth and what happens around them.

In the end, a lot of people use astrology for fun. They find novelty in astrological readings (in which an astrologer draws up a person's horoscope and makes predictions) or in simply reading the horoscopes each day in the local newspaper. While there is controversy surrounding the understanding of astrology, with a bit more study you can decide for yourself, is astrology real? You can determine if your future is in the stars.