Almost everybody now and again has concerns about the future. It seems a very human trait to ignore what is familiar and always there, like waitresses in my last posting, and to be concerned about what might happen some time in the future.

People spend fortunes using complex tools to try to foresee the cycles of the stock market for example. When it was discovered that the ups and downs of parts of the European grain markets corresponded almost exactly to the sunspot cycle of just over eleven years, there was an immediate response, and lots of money available to study cycles in nature. Very well off people in the know can take advantage of cycles that are unknown to the ordinary person. The multi-millionaire W Clement Stone, used cycle research to his great advantage, and financed such research.

On 7/2/2006 I posted A Matter of Time. in which I described how Deepak Chopra went to see a Vedic astrologer in India who picked out his horoscope written centuries before and stunned him with the accuracy of its current information.

Well, a great many of the kind of people who would read this blog from choice are among those who consider that the year 2012 is a kind of watershed in the history of Earth and those currently living on it. The Hopis and the Mayans and several other sets of people have ancient prophecies in which this date is, to put it bluntly, the end of time.

People who know that I have a scientific and mathematical background have often asked me how I can possibly believe in astrology. I usually reply that astrology isn’t something you believe in, it’s something you know about. Then we have a little discussion about what they think astrology is, which often focuses on astrology columns in magazines for women. I usually agree that nobody could possibly believe in what they think astrology is, but that isn’t what it is.

In honor of those sincere people who try to save me from this strange belief I offer these ideas, concepts, and facts about astrology. Let’s be clear from the start that there is no evidence whatever that will convince a person whose mind is made up in advance. This pre-judged attitude is quite common among a group of people who demand that scientific proof is required before we can assert anything. The same people usually consider that a completely negative attitude towards the unknown is being scientific. You probably know some yourself.

Many of you are Tarot enthusiasts and you are aware that the belt around the waist of the Fool represents the illusion of time by symbolizing the Zodiac.

Time is a man-made thing, a symbol to make us comfortable to explain that things seem to occur one after another in an apparent linear sequence. To explain this observed phenomenon we have invented time. Based on our heart beat the quartz clocks everywhere tick away, giving us the impression that time is flying past, and that we have less of it left than we used to have.

Deepak Chopra has done a lot of thinking about time and space and their apparent reality. He received quite a shock when he was persuaded by an enthusiastic friend to have his natal chart read, Southern Indian fashion.