What is astrology?
What is astrology?
Astrology & astronomy were a single discipline for thousands of years.
Until the 1700s, the study of the stars' motion (now known as astronomy) was the same as the study of the stars' effects (now known as astrology). Astrology places a human's lived experience into the context of an enormous, endlessly moving universe.
We begin with astronomy.
Back in school, you were taught the Sun was at the center of the solar system.
HELIOCENTRIC MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE
(SUN IN CENTER)
But until the 1500s, humans thought of Earth as the center of the solar system.
GEOCENTRIC MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE
(EARTH IN THE CENTER)
Both models accurately describe the motion of the Sun and the planets, so both are correct representations.
Heliocentric
What we would see if we were standing directly on the Sun
VS
Geocentric
What we see when we look at the sky from our point of view on Earth
Astrology views the sky from the perspective of Earth.
The zodiac is a ring of constellations at the same latitude as our solar system.
There are dozens of other constellations, but these are the ones that the planets appear to move through.
From the perspective of Earth, each planet appears to be in front of one of these constellations at all times.
Over days (or months, depending on the planet), each planet moves across the sky, appearing in front of first one zodiac sign, and then another. From our perspective on Earth, it completes one full circle once it has moved through all twelve zodiac signs, and starts back at the beginning.
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natal chart
The natal chart (a.k.a. birth chart) is a map of the universe at the exact place and time that someone was born.