Fine, tell me if this needs to be moved somewhere else.
Zodiac signs are popular as you know, and although I myself have never put my nose to the task of sniffling them, I'd like to know if they are wrong?
I mean is it wrong to look at what Cancer, etc means?
Being a younger, wild person it would be a fun topic for me with my friends, so I'd like to know your opinions as Catholics.
Okay, another thing, I really heartily don't approve of some trad's highly negative, doom and dirt comments which they seem to take happiness.
So please answer me, but I kindly ask you not to put too much darkness on the whole tale.
Thank you very much.
The predictions using the Zodiac signs in newspapers etc., are harmless in that we know they are made up by some chancer pretending to know the future. Nobody actually takes them seriously. So by all means have a good laugh. There is however a serious side to astrology, one you might like to read to understand the Catholic side of the matter.
From the Earthmovers:
‘The story which the Zodiac unfolds in the course of the year lies in the meanings of these names given by God to each of the stars in its forty-eight constellations when He set them in order in the beginning, making of them, as the Psalmist says: “faithful witnesses in heaven” (Ps. 88:38) of His plan for the world… Put in proper order, beginning not with Aries as now deployed, but with Virgo, and ending with Leo rather than with Pisces, the Zodiac foretold in the stars the story of the Incarnation, the Redemption and the world to come long before the Bible was written. Virgo is of course the Blessed Virgin and Leo is Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, universal Lord of Creation. (This incidentally, provides the answer to the mystery of the Sphinx which, having the head of a woman and the body and tail of a lion is therefore simply a representation in stone of the ancient Zodiac).’ ---Solange Hertz: The Sixth Trumpet, Remnant Press, Minnesota, 2002, p.11.
It comes as no surprise then – in the context of that great battle of principalities and powers resulting from that martial decree of Genesis 3:15 - to find occult interference with the Zodiac of Holy Scripture. Their pagan astrology asserted that earthly spirits, ghosts and other agents joined the heavenly angels and all began to influence planetary formations in a manner that, they said, had a direct effect on human behaviour and our destiny depending on where these cosmic bodies are within the zodiac belt. This way the astrology ‘signs’ became the object of fraud, superstition and the occult, with men and women claiming to read prophesies and messages from the ‘gods’ in them. So, just as the signs in the stars were hijacked for diabolical purposes, an astrology that became a useless occult belief system for vast numbers of people throughout the last few thousand years even to this day, so too would God’s astronomy be hijacked and replaced by one that would also be used to serve the occult forces on earth. The Catholic Church of course, absolutely rejects the idea that the sun, moon or planets could actually influence or predict one’s present or future behaviour. The Church teaches that men have free will and that God alone knows the future. Such a notion as the position of stars or planets being able to determine the destiny or behaviour of men is anti-Christian.
Let us now trace the history of this occult use of God’s constellations in the Zodiac. Just as nearly all peoples ceased to worship the true God in pre-diluvian times, so too did men after the Deluge lose faith in the God that saved their ancestors in the Ark and began to adore and personify as gods the sun, moon, stars, thunder, lightening etc., with emphasis mainly on the sun as God, the giver of life. This cult of course, was assisted by Satan to reflect two of his greatest inabilities by proxy; (1) to mimic the light of the Trinity for himself, and (2) to compensate for his most abject failing, his inability to generate.
‘The sun thus deified and personified was made the theme of allegorical history, emblematic of his yearly passage through the twelve constellations. The zodiac is the apparent path of the sun among the stars. It was divided by the ancients into twelve different parts, composed of the clusters of stars named after “living creatures,” typical of the twelve months….
The sun, as he pursued his way among these “living creatures” of the zodiac, was said, in allegorical language, either to assume the nature of or to triumph over the sign he entered. The sun thus became a bull in Taurus, and was worshipped as such by the Egyptians under the name of Apis, and by the Assyrians as Bel, Baal, or Bul. In Leo the sun became a lion-slayer, Hercules, and an archer in Sagittarius. In Pisces, the fishes – he was a fish – Dagon, or Vishnu, the fish-god of the Philistines and Hindoos. When the sun enters Capricornus he reaches his lowest southern declination; afterwards as he emerges from that sign the days become longer, and the sun grows rapidly in light and heat; hence we are told in the mythology that the sun, or Jupiter, was suckled by a goat…The beautiful virgin of the Zodiac, Virgo, together with the Moon, under a score of different names, furnishes the female element in these mythological stories, the wonderful adventures of the Gods. These fables are most of them absurd enough if understood as real histories, but the allegorical key being given, many of them are found to contain profound and sublime astronomical truths. This key was religiously kept secret by the priests and philosophers, and was only imparted to those initiated into the MYSTERIES. The profane and vulgar crowd were kept in darkness, and believed in and worshipped a real Hercules or Jupiter, whom they thought actually lived and performed all the exploits and underwent all the transformations of the mythology. By these means the Priests of Egypt ruled the people with a despotic power.’ --- Robert Hewitt Brown: Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, D Appleton & Co, 1882, p.7.