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Astrology
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Snapshot: "Astrology" Kyusei habitat, Jinvanco System, 3250 AT
"So you're a Leo? Interesting. You seem like a Leo" Castor grins at me. We're at the local bar on the spinward neighborhood of Kyusei hab and he's playing with my fingers. It's a bit too dark and warm, like the drinks here tonight , but the music is good.
I raise my eyebrows a bit, my translator meshes with his and explains to me that he was referring to a "star sign". I sip my drink to buy time as I download an explanation of what that implied. "I mean sure. I'm the one gathering friends. I'm usually organized. Detail oriented. But you don't really believe this stuff do you? We're not even in SolSys.." I was beginning to wonder what I'd gotten myself into. His hands -were- nice though...
"Those old ways adapt easily enough to our star system, even if it's a binary. Just makes everything more interesting. We might not have Jupiter or Mercury here but we have Nuvjaptari, Famawan, Jinvanco...
So when exactly were you born?"
I tell him the date and time.
"Ahhh. Yes! That's good! You're a Leo Nuvjuptari rising, given the relative positions of the planets and suns. That means this year you'll be making yourself open to new experiences and adapt in ways your old self would never consider"
I give him a skeptical look but he persists-
" It's just a bit of fun really, a good way to find compatible people." He winked. "I'm a Famawan retrograde with a Jinvanco ascending, which means I'm passionate and outgoing and direct. That one certainly seems to be true"
Somehow I had noticed this.
He smiles as if reading my thoughts "and I'm very compatible with Leos. My exoself's been helping me become the Jinvanco ascending that I'm born to be, with psychoware nudging me to the right personality with magnetic fields and balance of neurostimulants or whatever. "
Ok... this wasn't so bad after all. "Well that makes sense. I'd considered integrating one of those horoscope add-ons to my exoself but it seemed a little.."
"Woo-ey? Too involved with crystal healing, fake transapients and dolphin mysticism? Don't avoid letting a healthy little bit of personality shifting happen because your birth psyche doesn't align to the local planets at the moment. Either way we should find some way to ...align"
Castor's been looking at my beard, or lips the whole time. I laugh at him.
"I was about to download that astrology add-on until you made that -horrible- pun"
"See! See! Nuvjuptari rising right there! You have a sense of humor somewhere in that head of yours! With a little help from the add-on you'll be acting like one in no time!"
"Screw it. Let's do this" I grinned.
I hadn't intentionally altered my personality like this for a while, even for personal growth, but I was pretty sure I'd have this energy with him with either version of myself. "Nuvjuptari rising" Dima or regular Dima. It would be an interesting month or six...


Astrology is an ancient memeticity, dating back to Old Earth, that teaches that knowledge of worldly events and the personalities or choices of sophonts, or societies can be understood by analogy with the motions of the celestial bodies. For most of history since the interplanetary age, modosophont subcultures, cults, and religions have used these beliefs in practices of altering, or aligning their personalities and mental architecture to Astrological systems, or 'horoscopes' using a DNI/exoself, therapy, or some form of life coaching. Physicalists and materialists are unanimous in denying the validity of the supernatural aspects of astrology, although some hyperturings inhabiting engineered star systems have reportedly shown an interest in it.

Historians have found some evidence dating back to the Bronze Age of astrological beliefs centered on old earth in the Sol system, and records exist of various heliocentric and relativocentric schools of astrology began appearing from the late Atomic Age onwards, though they did not incorporate any body or mind modification practices.

During the early First Federation Lisa Descartes Greenfield of Chadey habitat, Vesta, took this further and, building on Arberry's work, formulated a Galactocentric Astrology where the influences of nearby celestial bodies are accounted for. The horoscope is in principle determined by all objects in the universe but only those exerting more than a certain "spiritogravity pull" dependent on distance, size and type are counted, the rest are modelled using a mean field approximation (producing general influences corresponding to constellations).

A further development was relativistic astrology (both special and general, the first dealing with fast travel and the relativity of time measures, the later taking the spirit transference effects of wormholes into account). The meaning of different bodies are discovered using various investigative protocols, whose exact interpretation and results have been the main source for school formation and debate in galactocentric astrology.

Most sapients who accept astrology in the present era adopt a galactocentric approach or use charts local to their star system and some subcultures take as canon that the archailects of sephirotic empires manipulate entire cultures to align with astrological phenomena.
 
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 31 December 2007.

updated by Dfleymmes march 2020
 
 
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