CHARLESTON -- If someone asked your zodiac "sign" last night, and you thought you'd made a love connection, forget it. It was probably all wrong.
Thousands of South Carolinians this week are discovering they may have gone to bed as a Gemini or Leo, only to wake up as a Taurus or a Cancer.
And if you were born between Nov. 29 and Dec. 17, brace yourself. You're now something you've probably never heard of before: an Ophiuchus (picture a guy in a toga wrestling a snake).
A re-thinking of the astrological signs spread across the Internet this week after a Minneapolis astronomy professor said the zodiac as we know it is out of whack.
Parke Kunkle said in a newspaper story the evolution of the Earth's wobbly orbit means we're no longer aligned in the same position under the stars as when the sign table was conceived eons ago.
For example, instead of the sun "being in Capricorn" for the 30 days or so we'd previously thought, it might actually be in Sagittarius, etc., across the calendar. In some cases, the dates are nearly a month off.
By correlation, the days that each zodiac sign is active would have been lengthened, or compacted, to make room for Ophiuchus, the 13th symbol.
North Charleston psychic Cynthia Armstrong said she didn't think the new star-sign lineup would be readily accepted locally, given the strong ties most people possess to the sign they were born under.
"Your sign, it's a label, it's personal and it's you," she said in her office off Ashley Phosphate Road. "To change, it's a little upsetting." At least 31 percent of Americans believe in astrology, a recent Harris Poll said.
Armstrong was the only one of about six local spiritualists who could meet for a face-to-face interview Friday about the zodiac. Others said their schedules were too busy or that they were out of town, while one said she didn't allow her photograph to be taken because a camera would steal her "energy."
Kunkle readily admits there is nothing ground-breaking in what he said. The Minneapolis Community and Technical College teacher told the media this week his assertion is based on "2,000-year-old information" that astronomers have known about but never bothered to fixate on.
Dr. Jon Hakkila, chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the College of Charleston, agreed. "There is nothing new here in our understanding of how the heavens work," he said. "This is sensational, rather than new."
At least three points are at play, Hakkila said. First, is "the makeup of the zodiac is and always has been somewhat arbitrary because the definitions and boundaries of constellations have changed many times over the centuries," he said. Also, the sun's path through the constellations has gradually shifted, and the definition of the zodiac actually allows for a wider range of constellations "than just these 12 or 13."
Ophiuchus reportedly was kicked out of the zodiac lineup long ago because the ancient Babylonians felt more comfortable with 12 star signs.
While some astrologers say there's nothing in this week's report that warrants changing horoscopes, Armstrong predicts Charleston should see better times in 2011 than it did in 2010 for both men and women, no matter how the stars align. Especially on the jobs front, she said.
Horoscope Hang-Up: Earth Rotation Changes Zodiac Signs
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but still, the time our solar system stayed in Taurus is not even one month!
Re: What's your sign? You probably don't know?
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