Cousin Ricky Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Harmony and understanding Sympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derisions Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the mind’s true liberation Sometimes it takes a blunt declaration for the obvious to stick. Having taken an informal course in celestial mechanics from a professional astronomer (who has an asteroid named after him!), I was aware of the precession of the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox is a very scientific concept. It is the intersection of the ecliptic with the planar projection of the Earth’s equator, in the direction of the ascending node. Because this ray originates on Earth, it appears to us as a point. At the dawn of astronomy, this point was in Aries, and is therefore also known as the first point of Aries. However, it didn’t take long for the ancient Greeks to discover that this point moves. During the common era, this point has been in Pisces. We are now near the end of the Age of Pisces—or as the song says, near the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Back around the turn of the century, people were talking about the Age of Aquarius. With all this renewed discussion, I wondered what all the fuss was all about. What does it mean to be in the Age of Aquarius? I started Googling (AltaVistaing?) the topic, but I couldn’t find anything meaningful. Finally someone else posted a question to the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur: I was searching the web for the exact date of the beginning of the 'Age of Aquarius' and, wouldn't you know it, I found myself overwhelmed by zillions of pages of all manner of psuedo-scientific gobbledy-gook. One response came: That's because the phrase "Age of Aquarius" IS a "psuedo-scientific goggledy-gook" term; it has no "scientific" meaning.[1] My search was suddenly over. Captain Obvious still has a job. P.S. One of the last gasps of my dying faith was an attempt to explain to someone why I believed in God but not in astrology. Well, yes, astrology was against my religion, but I couldn’t actually say that because it would clearly be begging the question. Besides, I couldn’t very well use my religion to justify one of its teachings at a time when I was struggling to personally justify the religion itself. [1]Of course, there is a time when the first point of Aries passes into the constellation of Aquarius: in 2597 CE. To scientists, this is useless trivia. Nevertheless, this is according to constellation boundaries formalized by scientists during the 20th century, with no input from astrologers, and therefore should have no meaning to astrologers either. Being irrational, though, some astrologers have started including Ophiuchus as a zodiac sign, based on imaginary lines drawn by people who hold astrology in contempt. Who knows what they’ll do with the discrepancy between the 1960s and the 2590s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cousin Ricky Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 BTW, Dr. Hulkower was the first atheist I got to know while I was aware of his atheism. I had a physics professor who was an atheist, but I didn’t find out he was an atheist until long after I graduated. So much for the stereotype of the angry, proselytizing atheist professor. I had also met someone earlier who didn’t believe in an afterlife, but I never got to know him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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