Astrology is total nonsense

Sorry about your mom. I had a good friend who did charts too. I've looked at both sides. I had other friends who believe in astrology, wicca, dark magic, tarot cards, alters to Saints, etc. I respected those were their beliefs. I don't have to agree.

Spend your time on astronomy.

Interesting because it’s been said that the original bible was edited and reincarnation and astrology were taken out. I’ve Read that Jesus believed in astrology and reincarnation but the romans took those parts out.

If the gravity of a planet 300 million miles away (or a star 40 thousand light years away) can influence your life, then the gravitational pull of a 30 ton garbage truck driving down your street would probably kill you. Ditto imaginary forces like astral rays or whatever gobbledygook the astrologers barf up. Re full moon effects: Confirmation bias is real; start looking for red cars, and suddenly they’re everywhere. Your decision to look is to blame; manufacturers didn’t magically start making more red cars.

I did charts for about 5 years. I found it interesting and something that made me think outside the box. I always worked with progressed charts rather than birth charts in order to see what was happening now as opposed to what qualities one was supposedly born with. At times I hit the nail on the head with info that I certainly did not know. I also think that there is a certain amount of intuition involved.
So to me it is no big deal if people believe or disbelieve. I still have some favorite astrologers that I listen to their You Tube postings. I don't go out and plan my life based on what they say, I just take it as entertainment.
I will say that people answering this post with a comment that horoscopes are general and millions of people have the same ones is totally misinformed. A chart is done for a specific person not only with the date they were born but also the location and time. SO if someone is born at the very same moment as you and in the very same location, then their chart is like your. The newspaper stuff is just silliness but entertaining. According to them I should have met the love of my life and come into money at least 20 times in my life. LOL

Astrology is a bunch of crap like religion. A person's birthdate or astrological sign has nothing to do with what kind of person he/she will be.

Astrology vs History
In one corner we have Adolf Hitler, a man obsessed with astrology and convinced that he had a destiny to rule Europe.
In the other corner, we have Winston Churchill. A historian with a particular interest in his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough who defeated Louis xiv. A man that also thought he had a destiny to rule Europe.
WHO WON?

If your mother can scam the gullible for money and they are happy with the information they bought - all is fine.

I have casually paid attention to astrology, but like most things in my life I never went in ‘whole hog!’ I find it very interesting and see that some things have ‘added up’ over time! I have never been hurt by it, nor do I know anyone else who was hurt!

I don't believe it has any validity at all. However when I hear of the religious dingbats criticizing your mother I have a certain sympathy for her point of view. There is an argument (a very frivolous one ) that I sometimes use in favour of astrology when I've had a few drinks: the greatest cricketer in history, Don Bradman, was born on 27 August. The greatest billiards player in history, Walter Lindrum, was born on 29 August. I was born on 28 August. Therefore astrology is true. QED.

A different take than my other answer here:

A friend of mine has been an astrologer for decades and is certain that it works. She had even developed a system which she believed would allow her to predict events accurately enough that she would be able to profit from them, although I'm still under nondisclosure and not allowed to say which form of gambling was involved.

She had worked for years to perfect her system and was convinced she had a better than 90% success rate. She hired me to program the system and further test it. I told her up front I doubted it would work, and that she was basically wasting her money. She challenged me to take the job and try to prove her wrong.

It quickly became apparent to me that her "successes" had come from modifying the system to fit the data. Every time the data changed, the system required further modification. After over a year of paying me for some fairly sophisticated programming (i.e., over 8k lines of JavaScript), she ran out of money and ended the project. She still believes that with a little more effort we could have made it work.

I stand by initial statement that it was never going to work.

I think there could easily be something to the fact that many people born in certain seasons tend to share some broad personality traits, but as far as thinking the motion of heavenly bodies affect our lives directly it’s pretty easy to disprove and show how ridiculous that claim is.

Number 1 favorite thing I learned in college astronomy was the precession of the earths axis. You know how our axis is on a tilt, that stays roughly pointing the same direction in space as we rotate and orbit the sun. But the direction we’re tilted is actually slowly wobbling by a few degrees every couple thousand years. Which means that when these sun signs were assigned to the months a few thousand years ago, they were prescribing you the sign that the sun supposedly rose towards on your birthday.

Now however, those signs have all shifted because of the axis wobble, so that most of us should actually be the sign before the one we think we are. I was born oct 11 1986 which says I’m a Libra, but if you look at star mapping software for that date the sun actually rose in Virgo that day. So basically the whole past century people have been going on about how well their sign describes them but they were looking at the sign after the one they should be looking at.

Another startling fact from astronomy is this: the doctor who delivered you exerted a greater gravitational force on you than the heavenly bodies possibly ever could. So if you want to know your future might as well call the Ob/Gyn and ask him or her.

Also experiments get done all the time where people get given the wrong horoscope and they always equally praise its accuracy. It’s always written just vague enough like a long form fortune cookie so that anyone could relate to it. I have occasionally done my own I Ching reading and all that stuff is similar. It’s like a magic eye painting or a Rorschach test for advice. People will see what they’re looking for in it and as long as you don’t take it too seriously it can be fun. But no objective usefulness beyond that.

It's a fun diversion, which can also be helpful if the astrologer is wise enough to give good advice. But nobody should take it as real or scientific. It's as fictitious as religion is.

It's an amusement and not to be taken any more seriously than that.

my honest thoughts are that it is total bunk but fun to read in the paper. once you start believing in it and planning your life (or running your country) on it, then it's dangerous. nancy reagan's astrologer was running the united states for a while. THAT is frightening.

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I’m sure it’s fun to do and I have no issue with people doing it per se. I just don’t think there is a scrap of evidence that it is reliable and true. If there were it would be huge news.

"Nothing will offend me because I already question it" This is a very good insertion into your opening sentences because it immediately says that you have an open mind. So many people put off questioning because they do not want to offend.

You say that you have read science articles which defend Astrology and of course you want to defend your Mum. I have read things which say " A greater proportion of sportsmen/women are born at a certain season or month of the year" and then follow it with statistics. Can you send a link to another more"predictive" article that can be examined scientifically.?

Romeo felt some consequence yet hanging in the stars that would start with that night's revels.

He met his star crossed lover at that party--Juliet.

Never was a story of more woe, than that of Juliet...and her Romeo.

(Astrology makes great grease for story wheels, especially one about fate.)

Hahaha it's a joke

Harmless and stupid

Socially accepted insanity.

Do the stars effect our lives from the moment we are born? Yes. Probably not how you are thinking though. Newton's law of gravity shows pretty specifically how all stars affect us. the force of attraction between two bodies (i.e. contains mass) is equal to the universal gravitational constant times the mass of the two bodies divided by the distance between them squared. So the doctor, at the time of your birth, has an effective distance of 0 (significant figures matter, so if you are measuring in light years to the nearest stars or even mega miles to our closest neighboring planets) will exert more force on you than any celestial body, or even all of them combined, as it will be a divide by 0 thing.

I've yet to see any published, scientific papers that support the claim that the position of stars, galaxies (some "stars" in the constellations are really galaxies larger than our own) and other celestial bodies have on who we are and our life course. If you have any from reputable journals, I would be interested to see them as it would be 100% new to me.

Having studied physics and seen no evidence for or against, I suspend judgment.
Had I studied statistics, I might write a null hypothesis, test it, and accept it.
I have seen a few coincidences; a Sagittarian, I can get enthused and knock over a bottle of catsup.

I think it's a bunch of bull. There's a lot of generality in astrology so of course there will be some people who it affects as being "real". If you throw enough mud at the wall then some of it will stick.

I had a friend do a reading for me based on my birthday and time of birth and most of it just wasn't true in describing me or my personality. The same friend uses and advocates energy crystals. She swears by this stuff.

Horoscopes are just more generality. Millions of people have the same horoscope. It's like a fortune cookie message. If it reaches 300 million people then it's bound to have some resonance for a good portion of them.