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by Dhiraj Fernando

"Jupiter is in the fourth house, so the PA government will win the forthcoming Dec. 5 elections by an overwhelming majority."

"You!... will pass your final exams, join a prestigious firm, receive the salary you expect, build a large house, marry a beautiful girl and live happily ever after because Venus just walked in the door, and Uranus is aligned with my Mars."

You?.....er, you don't seem to have any prospects at all.....strange. You are an utter failure and will continue to be so. You are a lazy bum who finds waking up the most agonizing experience of the day."

That last one was about me, and had any astrologer said something even remotely to that effect, I would instantly and henceforth have believed in the accuracy of astrology, palm reading, tarot cards, guiji boards, crystal balls, tea leaf reading and,...... seances? No, I guess I'll stop short at that.

Astrology; the study of the movements and positioning of celestial bodies in relation to details concerning time in the life of an individual concerned and its supposed impact on his life, is surprisingly widespread and accepted as an accurate means of prophesying the future by a large percentage of the masses not only in this country but around the world.

The desire and the need to know the future, immediate and distant, is a natural human desire. The ability to foresee the future would have tremendous advantages in averting disasters and bringing fortune to anyone capable of doing so. Imagine being able to predict next week's winning lottery numbers, etc., or taking preventive measures to avoid Sept. 11 for example.

However, most astrologers don't claim to be capable of foreseeing such climactic events such as Sept. 11. The majority of predictions are of a mundane, banal, pedestrian nature, dealing with domestic incidents or an individual's personal progress through life, though some do attempt to predict events such as the outcome of an election.

The recent example of a prominent astrological newspaper predicting the PA party winning a majority at the last elections proved to be disastrously wrong and compelled the publishers to do away with a slogan on its cover that boldly proclaimed; " We never fail in our predictions". What proved utterly ludicrous was the explanation given for the failure of the prediction; Domestic economics.

However, some astrologers admit that a 50% margin of error has to be expected in most cases. If so, one needn't resort to the services of an astrologer to tell him that, for example; a political party has equal chances of winning or losing. That wouldn't be astrology, that's playing safe with the obvious.

How could any intellect believe that some distant cosmic event could affect the future progress of a human being on earth? Take for example the fact that any two of these pseudo-scientific astrologers given the identical data required for a prediction would give an absolute polarity of opposing views, proving at the outset that there is absolutely no scientific principle or standardisation involved.

Belief in this type of stupidity is immature and conceited. At least children have innocence as a defence.

The other asinine example that offends the average intellect on a daily basis are newspaper horoscope charts with each publication subscribing to the predictions of a different `expert' and therefore getting a panoply of predictions for the identical `star sign'.

Astrology, it can be argued has the ability to breed on human frailty.

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