Why isn’t astrology being taught in universities while astronomy is?

We know VEGETARIANISM is good for us and the planet

Here are two studies which say that a VEGETARIAN DIET is healthier –

Here are two which say that VEGETARIAN DIETS are good for the PLANET too in terms of reducing the carbon footprint.

But this is the reality is that we are producing more meat than ever before and its growing.

Source – Meat and Dairy Production

We know smoking is injurious to health

But the reality is we are selling more cigarettes than ever

We know a 30 minute exercise regime (daily) is good for us,

but we would never do it.

We know junk food is bad for us, but we gobble it up happily everyday.

What I am trying to say is – we (the human kind) are quite an funny lot (pun intended)

We do a lot of stuff that we know is injurious to us rather happily – smoking, alcohol, drugs etc.

We don’t do a lot of things in spite of knowing its good – exercise, vegetarianism.

I consider ASTROLOGY as one of those GOOD THINGS that we have not pursued as much as we should have as a society.

I am saying this knowing I will get a lot of flak from the scientific community and all those learned people who believe SCIENCE is PARAMOUNT and everything can be explained by science.

TRUTH be told science can’t explain everything. Science can tell you a person is alive or dead, but science can’t tell you whether the patient will live or die. SCIENCE can create all fancy techniques to create life (IVF), but can’t create life or assure that life’s created- even the most advance IVF technique’s is about placing the sperms and the egg in a petri dish and hoping that the sperm does its job. If SCIENCE was so great then why do IVF procedures fail.

Science can attach a heart-lung machine to the patient but can’t ensure the patient lives.

The way I see it, science started off as a tool to understand NATURE (physical / visible aspects of it).

It all started with our curiosity to understand day and night, the varying size of the moon, the eclipses. That’s the very basis of astronomy.

Once these were understood, the next step was to be able to predict it. People who managed to predict this were the SCIENTISTS of their times (in India we call them SAGES / RISHIS). They had access to the ROYALS of their times. So automatically the next step was to see if there was a way to predict the macro indicators of the kingdom – example will there be a drought next year, would there be an epidemic, would the kingdom have to get into a war, what would be the best time to start a new welfare project – this would be similar to Google MAPS telling you when you should leave your home to make it to the AIRPORT on time to board your flight.

This is called MUNDANE ASTROLOGY. In fact its still used in India. Such macro level predictions show up in what’s called the PANCHANGAM / ALMANAC. I have been aware that my mother would use the PAMBU Panchangam for checking the dates of festivals. This document would also have a brief description of the behaviour of the macro economic indicators for the year. These predictions would always be right on target.

The main reason for this is that that Unlike the western view of TIME, the HINDUS view time to be cyclic in nature. This was done after observing many yearly cycles. Years (SAMVATSARA) had a 60 year cycle – Samvatsara – Wikipedia. Each year had a specific set of macro predictions – which are true even today.

(This is very similar to what we humans do today – we wish to predict the STOCK MARKET, REAL ESTATE, ELECTION RESULTS, we also like predicting the rainfall, now a days there’s this new thing in the market called DATA SCIENCE – which is all about finding patterns to predict various things – sales units, revenue, cost, variable costs – you name it )

The next step was obviously about predicting the lives of ROYALTY – that’s how ASTROLOGY came into being. If someone managed to predict that SATURN took 30 years to go around the SUN & JUPITER took 12 months to do the same more than 5000 years ago, I would not be shy of giving then some credit of being the greatest scientific minds of their millennia.

To be frank, the subject is quite tough and pretty cryptic. It was not for the common man. Its only recently that (last 50–60 years) that it has spread because a few people managed to learn it (all thanks to books in ENGLISH by B V Raman) that were published in the 1930’s.

Does it work, it sure does. Simplest proof of that is that, the tradition has survived in spite of onslaught from the pragmatic logical thinking community of the world. There are people who practice it and there are people who benefit from it (otherwise why would someone practice). See the no of websites that would open when you type ASTROLOGY on google. Time is the biggest test for any subject and yes ASTROLOGY has survived it cause its still relevant and it works. It has worked for so many millennia.

In fact the the RAMAYANA has a detailed mention of LORD RAMA’s horoscope and the NAKSHATRA in which he was born (PUNARVASU nakshatra in CANCER MOON SIGN). Infact fact in olden days, LORD RAMA’s horoscope would be the 1st horoscope that would be shown & discussed with the students of ASTROLOGY.

Even MAHABHARATA has multiple instances mentioning about the planetary positions before the war.

So we can infer that ASTRONOMY & ASTROLOGY has been part of our culture & heritage since many millenniums,

We don’t want to let got of traditions that has benefited us for many millenniums and is still benefiting us.

We do loose our track once in a while but we do manage to find our way back once we realize the practical real world benefits of the same, then the world follows us.

For example this tradition of eating food on a banana leaf (which these days is restricted to marriages in south India and select hotels and restaurants in India). I remember, people would make fun of this even a decade ago.