Reading the Sky: One of Our Oldest Forms of Reading

Many people think of astrology as a way to predict the future. Its beginnings were more practical.

The people of ancient Babylonia looked upward to measure, rather than merely to divine. The positions of stars indicated seasons and the times for sowing and harvest. The calendar was written in the sky. Astrology is a distant descendant of that practice of reading the heavens.

Reading the sky could be called one of humanity's oldest forms of reading. Before writing, people turned stars into stories. A lion, a scorpion, a maiden: they drew lines across the night sky and filled them with myth. They could not help gathering scattered points of light into meaningful shapes.

Why, then, has astrology survived after its role as a calendar has passed? Perhaps because it can be a mirror for looking, rather than a device for predicting. Constellations and planetary cycles offer a vocabulary for viewing our temperament and present situation from a little distance.

I do not think stars move our destiny. But the habit of looking up and thinking about ourselves may be no bad thing. As quiet reading, rather than prophecy. On the next clear night, I would like to put accuracy aside and simply read the sky.