As you might imagine, it's unlikely that I'd ever quote an astrologer, but there's one today worth quoting. In a column today (updated daily, so it will soon disappear), the British astrologer Eric Francis speaks with delightful candor:
[A] horoscope column is made of the writer's thoughts, not those of the reader. If you identify with something that's said here, it's a glorious kind of divine coincidence called a 'synchronicity'. It hints at the possibility of an intelligent cosmic order, which may just mean two minds thinking along the same basic wavelength at around the same time. Yet as far as I'm concerned, you're free to take or leave anything I say about you, or for that matter, anything else anyone says. If the stars vibrate with one message this week, it is: know what is true for yourself, and honour it.
I disagree with Francis only on the matter of timing: knowing what is true for yourself and honoring it is important every day and every week.
What is so noteworthy about Francis's remarks is that he makes them at all. There is no reason to think that there is anything to astrology; in fact, the St. Louis Post Dispatch has a disclaimer that runs atop its astrology column: "NOTE: Horoscopes have no basis in scientific fact and should be read for entertainment, not guidance." What the paper doesn't say -- what no paper ever says -- is that much which is presented as scientific fact also has no basis in scientific fact. Much of the conventional wisdom as to matters scientific and medical has no more to back it up than do predictions of the future based on the positions of the stars.
The astrologer Eric Francis has come out and said it about his pursuit. This is one time when the scientists, the politicians, and the news media could learn much from reading the astrology column.
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