Chinese Astrology and 2009: Part I (of IV)

I originally did this four-part series in a build-up to Y2K, and followed it with updates in '03, '05 and '06. All of which showed my accuracy to be at least as good as that of The Weather Channel.

Granted, The Weather Channel doesn't predict astrology, just weather. They do marginally better at the latter than the former.

I don't do so good at either, but like a politician who thinks he/she can manage the auto industry better than the private sector, I can delude myself and keep trying.

So here I goes agin...with the New Year underway, the Chinese Astrological New Year is near upon as well. Granted, not everyone I know believes in that kinda stuff. After years of emails from Astrology.com, I'm not much inclined to go along with a lot of it, either. I mean, if they're so psychic, whey are they bothering to get me to go to a website they oughta know I'll never visit?

Still, focus groups and poll studies indicate a lot of crap, including that a large number of folks take astrology seriously. So has the history of Man.

What is astrology? According to one impeachable source, astrology is "a belief in the occult influence of the heavenly bodies on human affairs". It is a mix of human and natural observations, coupled with astrological observations. It is a centuries-old practice of trying to divine present and future events. It has roots in astronomy, meteorology, mathematics, philosophy, mythology, mysticism, extraincremenetalsupercalifragalisticinstrumentalationism, and a sign of probably too much drug and alcohol use in the 1960s. It's also an opportunity for a sharp entrepreneur to create and sell those entertaining placemats to Chinese restaurants.

Originally, astrology was linked to astronomy and regional religions. Over the centuries, astronomy developed in some Eastern venues, a separate identity as a recognized science, and religion developed a separate identity as a spiritual science, and future something for the ACLU to campaign against. Meantime, astrology failed to attract recognition as a formal science in the Western world, achieving more of an occult following and status as a divinatory art, rather than as a recognized science with good pick-up lines at Grog-Oh's Watering Hole.

Astrology refused to be so easily dismissed, however: modern Western astrology can trace it's theoretical and practical roots to the ancient Chaldeans and Babylonians, dating around 2,000 BC. Astrology served these civilizations in an attempt to make practical applications to human affairs from astronomical observations and calculations, especially regarding agriculture and sports betting.

Astrology was a vital agricultural tool back then, in that the movement of the sun, moon, stars and planets, and their correlation to times for crop planting and harvest, were crucial to the survival of ancient civilizations. From these beginnings, later civilizations developed the calendar and the collander: one for keeping track of the seasons, and the other for straining veggies.

Astrology went in different directions, East and West, at some point. In the West, astrology went on to gain popularity during the 13th Century, when courts of royalty began including jesters, whom sometimes doubled as royal astrologers and press secretaries. Among the more famous of Western practitioners of astrology was Nostradamos, the one time court physician to Charles IX of France. His quatrains, publised by Weekly Old World News in 1555, have been widely studied and repeatedly cited as the foreteller of a variety of major events in the centuries since.

Cynics like me are are quick to note that Nostradamos never picked a correct Superbowl or Powerball winner, but I digress.

Eastern practitioners stayed more traditional, as will be noted in Part II.

Two key components of astrology are the zodiac and the horoscope. The zodiac is defined as "an image symbolized by a series of mythical beings or animals, representing specific celestial constellations". This image is further described as "an artificial belt, encompassing the constellations on the celestial sphere, extending 8 degrees on either side of the ecliptic". To put it more simply, I have no idea what I just quoted.

The zodiac is subdivided into 12 (or 13) equal sections, which bear the name of particular zodiacal signs. Each section is "traversed successively by the sun in its annual motion, constituting one calendar year". This, I can understand without simplification.

Depending on one's birth sign within the zodiac, one would inherently have or display traits attributable to one's specific sign. In Western astrology, there are 12 such recognized signs, with a disputed 13th sign according to a few practitioners. In Eastern, or Chinese astrology -- on which I'll begin to focus in Part II -- a different set of 12 animals are represented.

In the West, the standard 12 signs of the zodiac are Aries (the Ram), Taurus (the not-yet-bankrupt Ford), Gemini (the pre-Apollo capsule), Cancer (liberal ideology), Leo (a former writer for US News & World Report), Virgo (the Virgin), Libra (the French bra), Scorpio (a bad-tempered land crawdad), Sagittarius (the aging problem), Capricorn (Goat with bad hooves), Aquarius (sung by the Fifth Dimension) and Pisces (a fish seeking PETA protection). And for those who believe in the controversial 13th sign, there is Gorkus (two buzzards colliding in midair). For those believing themselves born under this sign, I can simply say it sucks to be you.

More on the Chinese version of astrology and horoscopes in Part II.