About Astrology

It is sometimes fun to read about horoscopes and find out about your astrological sign. A good friend told me that though she reads them but she doesn't really believe. I remember reading a passage from Saint Augustine's Confessions, where he asks a wise man who had spent his life learning about astrology:

When I asked him to account for the fact that many true things are foretold by astrology, he answered me, reasonably enough, that the force of chance, diffused through the whole order of nature, brought these things about. For when a man, by accident, opens the leaves of some poet (who sang and intended something far different) a verse oftentimes turns out to be wondrously apposite to the reader's present business. "It is not to be wondered at," he continued, "if out of the human mind, by some higher instinct which does not know what goes on within itself, an answer should be arrived at, by chance and not art, which would fit both the business and the action of the inquirer."

To put it simply, it was the sheer force of coincidence that plays a large role in the course of things. If a man picks up the work of a poet, some passage may strike him as magically appropriate to his own situation, though the poet had entirely different things in mind as he composed. It would not be surprising if some deep prompting in the mind, emerging from the subconscious, should resonate with the reader's situation and outlook, by coincidence, not by consultation.

So like my friend advises, it's fun to read but there is no need to be too into it.