Ophiuchus revisited: Now wait just a minute



The Pizza Model

Pretty much everyone agrees that Ophiuchus has, indeed, been a known constellation right along.  Nevertheless, many adamant astrologers are still insisting that this mighty serpent-wielder be discounted.

Why is that?

According to one such astrologer, Dr. Craig Martin, the addition of Ophiuchus would imbalance the popularly-accepted astrological model in which each sign of the zodiac has the “same amount of ‘sky’ assigned to it.”  Twelve signs make it mathematically easy to divvy up a planetarium-like universe into segments of 30 degrees each.  Thirteen (besides being the proverbial “unlucky” number) would just make it that much harder to teach third-grade astronomy.



With Ophiuchus in the mix, Virgo gets to have 45 days, whereas Scorpio only gets to have seven.  Not fair… hints Martin.  He then specifically states:  It’s like saying, ‘let’s change the clock…’

But is it really?  The clock is a human invention, whereas the heavens are not.  Besides, people do mess with the clock on a regular basis.  It’s called “Daylight Savings Time.”  And the calendar?  Same difference.  There are lunar ones, solar ones, religious ones, secular ones – and still they are regularly being adjusted

in order to account for what’s really going on up there.



Besides, who ever said that Life is fair (in the human sense)?  Or that fair means anything even close to equal?

Shoehorning the vastness of Everything into lowest-common-denominator fractions might not be the shortcut to enlightenment that it seems to be.  Even pizza slices differ – why shouldn’t astrological ones?

Resources

http://glo.msn.com/relationships/zodiac-shock-1534099.story?GT1=49006

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/culture/110113/zodiac-signs-astrology-ophiuchus

Copyright January 16, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved