Star Signs – one of the most intriguing things in life for many people is trying, and not being able to, set their life on a specific path. Many believe that hard work and dedication will (eventually) lead to positive results. Others think that faith and prayer can also help. And of course there are those that simply have no idea if one can actually ever influence how our life and objectives will turn out in the end. Is it luck, is it destiny, is it God? Or should we be paying closer attention to the ‘signs of the universe’?

Do star signs really hold the key to our destiny?

Does a random fact such as the day when we were born have a real influence on our day to day and can we improve our chances of ‘getting things right’ by paying closer attention to what these dates symbolise, to our Star Signs?

For the non-believers it can be understandable if they have spent all of their lives working hard (and praying) for that promotion, that ideal job, to pass that exam, get good grades, to earn more money (to win the lottery maybe), to finally being able to work for themselves… or whatever it it may be that each one considers ‘happiness’, it may be understandable to be confused or even lost if these things never seem to get closer, regardless of the amount of prayer or hard work one puts in.

And, Ironically I myself am in the category of those that (tend to) believe that we are actually capable of influencing the course of our own lives and achieving all of the things that we aim to. However, the weirdest thing happened to me when I was reading up articles on astrology and star sings while writing this post. I had initially been inspired to look more into astrology when I recently had a ‘sign’ while visiting a very close person in hospital.

There may really be higher forces out there…

A close friend had been taken into hospital in a very bad state and was in extreme pain and the doctors had NO idea what was wrong. One day during a visit my friend was having a particularly bad day and did not want to see anyone, just wanted to be left alone, so eventually I left. On my way home I saw a painting hanging high on a wall in a central area of the hospital. I had seen that painting many times before without paying any attention to it but for some reason that day I kept looking at the painting. It was very colourful and full of child-like drawings of the most varied things.  Eventually I spotted my star sign and my friend’s star sign drawn close to each other on the painting.

The curious thing is, I had gone past that painting sooo many times that week and had never even  noticed it. As I left the hospital, on my way home I had a text message from my friend saying he was sorry that he asked me to leave and that he did really need support as was having a stressful day. When I got home, for some reason I decided to look up both  of our star signs for that day.

The Sign

Mine said: “A friends of yours needs to talk but has difficulty expressing himself in words (…) stay present and take your time to understand what is going on behind someone’s words”. His said: “You feel you need to clam up and stay away from the world”. This incredible coincidence got me thinking, did I actually get a sign from ‘somewhere’ letting me know I needed to stay close? And, do the star signs actually tell us something about ourselves and how the stars and planets affect our lives? I was inclined to believe that the answer to both of these questions was yes.

But… the weirdest twist to this whole episode was yet to come, today, I came across an page on the BBC website entitled “Which stars were you really born under?” Well… apparently most of us, around 86%, according to the article, were actually born under a different constellation to our star sign! So I have always ‘been’ an Aires and my friend a ‘Cancer’ but apparently this is wrong. So how was the painting right then and how did the predictions for those two star signs matched exactly what was happening to us at the time, what does it all really mean?

According to the BBC article “The dates of the ‘star signs’ were fixed, over 2,000 years ago, when the zodiac was first devised. Then, they corresponded to the constellation of stars that appeared behind the Sun on the day you were born. But an astronomical phenomenon, known as precession, means that the constellations have drifted since then”.

If you (still) believe in star signs and want to learn more about the history of Astrology, have a look at the information on the American Federation of Astrologers.