Lost In Translation …

My favorite scene while watching The Lion King as a child was the one where Simba Timor and Pumba are laying down face up after a glorious feast starring at the sky. In that Scene as many will remember Pumba asks, “Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?” and Timon gives some bizarre explanation about fireflies and ironically Pumba says “I always thought they where balls of gas burning billions of miles away.” As a child this didn’t make much sense to me but watching the same scene now and realizing the truth behind it makes me realize how underrepresented this lesson really was. Astrology in a sense falls in the same category. People don’t fully understand or really give credit to all the science and history behind it.

Many people tend to forget that Astrology and Astronomy are inter-linked and go hand in hand. One emerged from the other and somehow through out time, along the way got under minded and forgotten in translation. “Astronomy is the study of the universe and its contents outside of Earth’s atmosphere” and from that “Astrology attempts to study how those positions, motions, and properties affect people and events on Earth” says Maria Temming writer for Sky and Telescope in her article Astrology vs Astronomy: What’s the difference?. However, the connection that people are forgetting to make is the one in between. The word Astrology comes from the Greek word Astrologia, which means star study. People are not realizing that that from astronomy, astronomers study the position, motions, and properties of these celestial objects and from these positions comes astrology. As a matter of fact, up until the late 1600’s before Isaac Newton came along astrology was still considered part of “mainstream” science. Astrology can be traced back and was first evident and acknowledged by the early civilization of Mesopotamia. Where it was them the first to realize the formation of different constellations and soon named them. It was here that astrology really emerged and branched off. If the early “sky-watchers” of Mesopotamia could not help but to notice such formations of the stars, moon, sun and other celestial objects as written in History of Astrology how is it that today’s society forgets to make such important connection? How is it that we do not take astrology seriously or realize that science behind it?

Astrology’s history is so rich yet today so poorly remembered. What a lot of people are forgetting is the strong relating science that it emerged from. When we think of astrology we usually simply think of a crazy, eccentric, overdressed man or woman playing with tarot cards speaking gibberish. However, the science and amazing history behind it tends to be forgotten. I recently asked my girlfriend “What do you think know about astrology and its history” she simply replied “Honestly I just read my horoscope for the day. I am not aware of the science behind it. It all for fun anyways.” With such response I couldn’t help but to realize that sadly somehow the history and science behind astrology has been forgotten or in a sense irrelevant to todays society.