What do masses billions of miles away have to do with the personality you were born and raised to have?

Answer

First of all, I don't consider the behaviour we have learned growing up our "personality". I only consider the behaviour you exhibit naturally, without any outside influence as "personality". That narrows it down an awful lot. Psychology as well as human biology - more specifically genetic research - recognises a difference between "nature" and "nurture". "Nature" being your genetic heritage, "nurture" being the outside influences on your behaviour. Depending on the Astrologer, some will recognise and incorporate that difference as well; however, those Astrologers are few and far between.

A natal chart is an Astrologer's tool to determine one's personality. The word "natal" implies that this personality was given by birth, meaning that outside influences - "nurture", education etc. - can still alter the behaviour of that person even though their personality remains the same. So often a person with a certain natal chart, will behave differently from what the natal chart says about their personality. Hence, it would be wise to consider their environment, family traditions, culture a.o. when determining the personality and behaviour of someone on the basis of the position of certain objects in the heavens at the time of their birth.

Second; the notion that constellations - or the actual star signs - influence our personality is a case of semantics. A constellation is defined as being a collection of stars connected into a shape or form, after which it is named. In fact, none of the stars inside that constellation are connected; not in distance from our solar system, nor in radiation... not in anything. They are simply the result of man's dire need to find patterns and name them, to make travelling during the nighttime easier and to make it easier to locate new objects - like planets and asteroids - and detect them again afterwards.

Constellations have changed names quite often throughout history. None of the previous names for any constellation within the zodiac, had any relation to the attributes of the animal that is represented in the constellation at this time, nor do the Astrological signs have any attributes similar to the attributes of the animal - or object, or person - represented by the constellation it is named after. And that is just it; they are not influenced by the constellations, they are named after them. But why do they carry the exact same name?

... That is the result of the discovery of something called precession of the equinoxes. In short, this event characterises the Earth's "wobble", which causes a certain point on the Earth to cover a full 360° until coming back to it's original position. The event was discovered in 4 B.C.E. and it was then that the starting point - called the Vernal Equinox, or Vernal Point - was positioned in the beginning of the constellation of Aries. In those days, it is believed that 12 signs were known in Astrology. The first one recieved the name of the constellation Aries, and the ones that followed recieved the names of the - then known - constellations that followed. In modern western Astrology, the beginning of an Astrological year is still the day when the Sun covers that Vernal Point that also signifies 0° Aries.

So in a sense, you are right about the implication you made with your question. Stars have nothing to do with determining your personality. Not even in Astrology. Our own planets and other intra-solar objects, however, do...

None of the used objects in our solar system, have a distance of over a billion lightyears from the sun. They are all relatively close compared to the nearest star in our universe. So theoretically it would be more likely for planets and other objects within our solar system to exert more influence on humans and other living creatures on Earth, than any of the stars ever will. How they might exert their influence, is impossible for us to know at this time.

There are few experiments on the influence of certain planets on our being - one of them is the influence of Venus on certain natural behaviour of new-borns during Venus' positions in relation to the Earth, and radio interference. Nothing about this experiment can be found on the internet so I cannot provide any details. However, the results of that experiment reveals that there might be a certain radiation influence from the intra-solar objects on our being at our time of birth. Besides those few-and-far-between experiments on Astrological influence on our personality (in case you didn't know, Astrology is a taboo when it comes to scientific experiments - it is to be avoided at all costs unless the experiments prove it wrong), there is not much we can go on.

All we can do, is determine what kind of influence it is most definitely not, and then wait for new scientific breakthroughs to find out which other influences they could be. And repeat this trial-and-error system until we find what it really is. Not until we know everything there is to know about everything there is to find out, we can dismiss Astrology as a figment of our imagination. We are far from uncovering the Universe's secrets and have a long way yet to go... an eternity of way to go, until we reach our final destination of all-knowing. All there is for us to do until we reach that destination, is theorise and hypothetise.

In doing so, my theory is that the planets and objects in our solar system exert an unknown influence on our upper layer of atmosphere. In its turn, the layers below all react to that influence until that chain of reactions reaches the Earth's crust and that we ourselves eventually react to that certain chain of reactions - from every object in our solar system - and that that reaction is the beginning of our personality. Genetically, you could say that the chain of reactions triggers a position in the genes for every physical and mental appearance, to dominate over others.

First answer by Fed. Last edit by CelticRose. Contributor trust: 5 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 64 [recommend question]

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