Maybe they were afraid you'd use it in an MA puzzle!

Doh! OOps! I may have let the cat out of the bag!

I'm dissappointed that we didn't bump up the planet count to 12 - one for each sign of the zodiac - I'd be pissed if I were a Scorpio. Don't these astronomers pay attention to their charlaten roots - Bah!

Yeah, and the fun of watching astrologers explain how their charts aren't thrown off by the existence of planets not previously known to exist. Of course, they managed to incorporate other previously known planets (and previously unknown orbital structures as well) so I don't imagine it would have required much effort.

I think the moon is the "planet" associated with the astrological sign, Cancer. So 12 planets would actually be too many. It's been many years since I did any charts so I'm hazy on the details. (I grew up in the flaky Sixties, what can I say?)

The original proposal was to call Pluto and other smaller bodies, plutons. But the word was already in use as a name for Pluto in French, etc. My suggestion would have been plutette, I think it works better than planette. But I'm okay with dwarf planet. Mostly I'm just highly entertained by all the fuss this has caused. Over-excited scientists are a hoot.

I had no idea this thread was so fun!

Go Xena!

Actually, I don't think I've ever known astrologists to refer to any planets beyond Saturn anyway.

Besides not being visible when astrology was devised/decoded, I think the astral bodies have to have some energy effect on the Earth to affect us humans in the astrological sense. So they either have to be massive, like Jupiter, or relatively close like Mars.

The Moon, being the closest, and with obvious physical effects on the Earth and all people upon it (via tugs on our precious bodily fluids) would be the strongest astrological influence. As a Cancer (with Cancer rising no less), I can attest to this.


My higher brain functions tell me astrology is bunk. My 46 years of experience with other human beings tells me there's remarkably something to it after all.

But Pluto never mattered in astrology ... and I doubt CEGA 1896 would have either.




Still, I'm sad to see Pluto bumped off the list. I'll never stop thinking of it as a planet in my heart.

I'm embarrassed that I have this information in my head but I can't remember things I need to know to get by in the world today...I remember some astrology books that even referred to some as yet undiscovered planet because it was needed so that two astrological signs wouldn't have to share the same planet.

But all that seems moot because your astrological sign is dependent on what astrological section of the sky the sun was in at the time of your birth. (The actual constellations have rather inconveniently moved a bit in the past several thousand years.) After that it's what sign was on the horizon (your rising sign) and then which sign all the other planets were in (the moon being the most significant because it's so physically close). Oh, and let's not forget you have to consider which house each planet was in (twelve astrological "houses" that relate to different aspects of your life).

So many variables is what killed astrology for me because it soon became obvious that you could come up with enough stuff that you could interpret it all anyway you wanted. However I still wonder why my very Virgo-ish friend turned out to have most of her planets in Virgo. And it seemed to make some sort of sense that my rising sign Libra and moon in Cancer were what made me a rather unadventurous Sagittarius.

And the aliens who abducted me said it was all bunk.

And of course there is no single astrology. Whatever you want to be true you can find someone espousing. You can find many who do make use of the planets beyond Saturn.

And the physical pull of the sun is aboug 175 times stronger than the pull of the moon (the tugs on our precious bodily fluids) so the sun would dwarf the moon I'd imagine.

Or you could realize, for a variety of reasons, that astrology is pure bunk, with no basis in fact. Just sayin'.

I must say, that possibility never crossed my mind.