In the past week I wrote about five different types of superstitious people. While I was writing these entries, I wondered if I should include believers in astrology in this enumeration or not. In the end I decided not to and rather write a separate diary entry today in which I explain you the situation of astrology in India.
India is just a very religious country and religion has presented a lot of superstition as facts which is why many people are profoundly confused about them, not sure whether they are true or not. Many people have understood that the old traditions and beliefs of their parents and grandparents are not always right but they often have doubts and the same is true for astrology. People have been doing this for ages, there must be something true about it, or not?
The Hindu religion has been busy for centuries, telling people that astrology is not just something that you believe but that it is based on a calculation, on facts and that it is a science. This has led to the situation that nowadays people may laugh about the superstition of the unlucky black cat but take it very serious if an astrologer gives them a warning about an unlucky day in their horoscope.
I already told you about the ‘muhurt’, the right timing for certain projects and I also wrote about the increasing number of caesarian births that are performed at an exact point of time so that the child has a good birth horoscope. The problem is that people really believe that this is not only a religious superstition. They believe it is really a science.
Just to clarify matters for those who are confused: astronomy is a real science that observes the movement of the planets and due to which we know that the earth turns around the sun, how many planets there are in this solar system and which stars are where to be seen from the planet earth.
Astrology on the other hand is the prediction of events in the future and the idea that the constellation of planets and stars has an effect on your personality and your life. Astrologers believe that they can calculate, with the help of the planets, what times in your life are good for love, which are good for business and of course also when it is not the right time to certain things. Obviously, there is also always the solution available when something doesn’t fit. That is where the business starts and there are astrologers everywhere in India and the normal religious person will use his services whenever there is a bigger decision. If you start a new business or buy a new house for example, you consult your astrologer. When your baby is born, you get his or her birth horoscope done and you always act according to the astrologer’s suggestions.
You can imagine that astronomers are not very happy about being confused with astrologers and they have tried to go against the popular belief that astrology is a science – with no success: in 2011, the Bombay High Court reconfirmed a decision of 2004 that astrology was a ‘trusted science’ and could be taught in universities. So you can have a degree in superstition, in future telling, in a fully baseless calculation which is supposed to reveal the secrets of your future!
Yes, India works a bit differently and superstition is even something that you can study. Astrology is the example for it and unfortunately it will still take a long time until people realize that it is only nonsense.
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