Back in the days when we subscribed to a printed newspaper I would occasionally read the daily column on astrology. As I remember it, there would be a couple of sentences of generic prediction about how the day would unfold and perhaps a bit of advice for each of the astrological signs. The column had dates with the astrological signs so that a reader could determine to which sign that reader belonged. According to the charts, my sign is Gemini and my wife’s sign is Aquarius. I think I once read an article that had generalized personality traits associated with the various signs. Sometimes we would read the astrology column to each other and laugh at it. I never put any confidence in using it to make decisions or to predict how my day would actually unfold. Astrology has never appealed to me.

Not long ago I watched an interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. The astrophysicist is a very effective and entertaining communicator and I usually learn a little bit about science from listening to him. In this particular interview he was dismissing astrology as a pseudo science. Among the things that he said is that the Zodiac shifts in relationship to our planet. It shifts about one degree every 72 years. That means that the constitutions of the Zodiac are not in the same positions that they were when the astrological system was established. An example given was that a the summer solstice used to occur in Cancer but now it occurs in Gemini. The latitude lines named “Tropic of Cancer” and “Tropic of Capricorn,” named for when the sun crossed those lines at the solstices, now might be called the “Tropic of Gemini” and the “Tropic of Sagittarius.” The conversation with Tyson was interesting while I was listening, but I didn’t retain much of the information because the bottom line is that I don’t pay attention to astrology and don’t care about it. Whether or not my astrological sign has shifted one constellation over is not something that captures my attention for very long.

The ancients paid attention to the movement of the planets in the night sky in part because in a time before many technologies there was time after dark when people were awake. It was natural to look to the skies and to observe patterns of movement. In an agrarian society, leaning the cycles of nature is critical. Knowing when to plant crops, being able to predict rainfall, temperature, wind, and sunlight were essential skills for survival. In times before the development of scientific method, there were no distinctions between “true” science and “pseudo” science. People made observations and recorded them. Conclusions drawn from their observations sometimes were accurate and sometimes were not. Astrology has its roots in that prescientific time, perhaps as far back as two or three thousand years before our common era.

The tools and information for observation that we have were not all available in ancient times. There were no telescopes. Different people had different observations because some had better eyesight for distance vision than others. Observations were not very precise. Over many generations, however, understanding of the patterns of the movement of celestial bodies began to grow. Somewhere around the first century BC people began to observe a common optical illusion that makes planets appear to reverse direction. If you recall being a passenger in a car that is passing another car on the freeway, sometimes it will appear that the slower car is going backwards from the perspective of one riding in the faster car. The car isn’t actually going backwards, it just appears to be doing so from the perspective of one riding in the faster car. That same process occurs with the movement of planets.

Beginning today, the planet Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, will appear to be going backwards. Astrologers call this phenomenon retrograde. People who pay attention to astrology have been making a lot of posts about the phenomenon, offering advice and predictions about today. Supposedly technology is more likely to have problems and not function properly when Mercury is in retrograde. Astrologists predict that life will have more obstacles during this time. For those who are strict followers of astrology plans should be put on hold. For them it is a bad time to start a new job or begin a new venture.

The effect of astrological predictions on me is that sometimes I seek to engage in the opposite behavior just to prove that the observed phenomena has no impact on my life. Just as I would go out of my way to behave differently than the predictions in the newspaper astrology column, I have a desire to start something new today just to prove that an optical illusion in the observance of the motion of Mercury has no effect on me whatsoever.

I’m not sure what I am going to do. Social media advises against technology purchases, but I have all kinds of tech and have no need of making any purchases in the near future. I guess I need to think of some new project to launch, but I already have so many projects going that it doesn’t seem practical. My list of unfinished projects is pretty long and I could easily spend the next few days just catching up on projects that have already begun.

Besides doing the opposite is just another way of taking astrology seriously. What I really intend to do is to ignore the phenomena, which is not quite possible because I have read a couple of articles about astrology and planets in retrograde. After all, today, as Mercury goes into retrograde, I’m writing an essay on it. That is hardly ignoring the phenomena.

So this August my advice to you is that I have no advice for you. A minister is a poor person to consult for technological advice in the first place. I’m not very good at financial, legal, or medical advice, either. If, however, you enjoy looking at the night sky, give Mercury a glance. You might be able to observe a bit of celestial illusion. It is not really going the other direction. All of the planets in our solar system rotate around the sun in the same direction. We’re all in this together.