What’s Your Sign? Changes in the Zodiac Have Little Impact

Were you even aware of the fact that the Zodiac now has 13 signs, not 12? Seems that astrology has had some issues right from the start; Orphiucus, the snake holder was tossed out because the Babylonians only wanted a dozen. For those who put great stock in the power of the stars over their lives, this revelation may be quite upsetting, but most people simply won’t care.



Nothing New Around the Sun



The truth is that there is actually nothing new about the presence of Orphiucus. There are actually many different systems of astronomy, and he does appear in some of them. What actually happened is that Professor Parke Kunkle from the Minnesota Planetarium and Space Discovery Center spoke with a local reporter regarding the accuracy of the Zodiac system and how precision can affect the horoscopes astrologers produce. The story then took on a life of its own.



The changes can be to some degree attributed to the fact that as the earth moves around the universe things start to line up differently. Add to that the wobble in the earth’s orbit while the stars move predictably all the time; they no longer appear where they did 2000 years ago when the current astronomical charts were created.



Orphiucus has been a character, if you will, in sidereal astrology for a very long time. Other astrological systems have different representations. Culture plays a large role in any such system, and the fact that the Western world is only just catching on to the possibility that there may be more than one way to interpret astrological data is not exactly a huge surprise.



Want to Change your Sign?



For those who follow astrology there has been a great debate over what to do with the "new" Zodiacal calendar. The general consensus has been that for those born before 2009 their signs should remain the same. Those born after should use the new charts.



The real question is "does it matter?" For most people the answer will be, no. Long dismissed as a pseudoscience, astronomy remains very popular. It is up to the "true believers" to decide how they will deal with the news.



Michael Rupkalvis works with the LedBulbsandLights website. The site features a variety of different types of environmentally-friendly LED products, including 4ft tube LEDs and other LED lights.