The 'Your Sign is Wrong' hoax is back

This time, on page one of The New York Times. The whole thing started as prank, and continues to be one. You can safely expect to see it everywhere. Learn the history and background in this post.

Now, from the Old Gray Propaganda Machine Itself

The “Your Sign is Wrong” hoax is back. Now, it’s made it all the way to page one of The New York Times. I can barely bring myself to read this article from today’s newspaper. If you see any new hideous whoppers, please, drop them into the comments. (Actually, they do quote an astrology historian — shocker.)

Top line is, astrology is symbolic, not mechanistic. It’s a story, like a poem about a cat, but slightly more complicated. (Unless you have a very sophisticated cat and write long poems.)

Bottom line is, this is a prank that mainstream news reporters like because they, too, get to take a swipe at astrology. It’s related to the “thirteenth sign” hoax, though sometimes they appear together, and sometimes they show up independently.

I don’t have time today to do another rewrite (oh well, if you don’t count taking an hour on this letter), trying to make it simpler. But I do have two past excellent articles, linked below. And the larger point is, this does not change anything about you or your chart.

My tropical Sun is in Pisces, and my sidereal Sun is in Aquarius. My tropical Moon is in Aquarius, and my sidereal Moon is in Capricorn. This is extremely basic astrology, and it tells you a little about me. Any point or planet located in the first 23 degrees of any sign will go back one sign when converting from tropical to sidereal.

Preying on Public Confusion

Here is my original article from 2011 as published, featuring excellent interviews with Rob Hand and Jonathan Cainer. Here is an expanded version with additional details from March of 2024. Both of those interviews are great fun.

Then various “astrologers” and scifi authors have also picked up on the theme. However, newspapers, which seem to have a disdain for astrology, love to run with this every few years just to mess with astrology fans.

Astrophysics is complicated, though there are some fairly easy principles that this issue is based on. Yet most people’s fear of looking at a technical topic, combined with the housefly mentality of our times, and general skepticism of scientific knowledge, does not make things any easier.

There Are Two Zodiacs

To sum up, there are two zodiacs, one based on the stars (sidereal) and one based on the seasons (tropical). The one based on the seasons (the one we both usually use) has a 24,000 year cycle within the one based on the stars. This is called precessional movement.

All but the most meekly educated astrologers understands this issue: the sidereal position of the first day of spring (and all the seasons) moves about 1 degree every 70 years. So in our era, the first day of spring (the sign Aries, i.e., the Aries Point or Sidereal Vernal Point) aligns with the constellation Pisceus and in about 300 years it will reach the first star in constellation Aquarius. Hence, the “age of.”

Non-astrologers are pretending that astrologers somehow do not know about precessional movement — the drift of the seasons through their relative positions in the sky based on the Earth’s wobble. If you think that the Age of Aquarius is dawning, this is why. That much is real.

Feel Free to Circulate These Articles

Again, here is my original article from 2011 as published, and below is an updated version with fun introductory materials. Take an hour and study these if you care about the issue. You will have to actually think, but not so much. And both Cainer’s and Hand’s interviews are worth the price of admission — two good friends of Planet Waves.

Otherwise, hey, you read it in The New York Times. It must be true.

Time to get a grip!

With love,

Your faithful astrolover,