Now that you know a little bit about the ancient lore of studying the stars, you may still be asking yourself, "Why should I believe this stuff?" Ask yourself that question again, after you check out these AstroFacts:

• In 1798, Goethe wrote that astrology is connected with the true sense of poetry, or "some vast cosmic unity." He believed that the "heavenly bodies" had a great and decisive influence on the weather and plant life.
• Astrology was practiced as a noble art among scholarly men during the Renaissance, and was even offered at college alongside art, science, theology, poetry, architecture, business and politics. It was considered a "highly intellectual pursuit," and students had to learn to read Latin, Greek and sometimes a third language to interpret charts; they also had to know math well to chart the positions of the planets.
• In America, founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin all had personal astrologers.
• Famed financier J.P. Morgan was advised on many business decisions by astrologers, and even Einstein said he believed in the "cosmic religious sense" underlying all scientific research.
• Dr. Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) studied astrology as an ancient art and believed in intuition and archetypes. He created natal charts for 400 married couples in an experiment, concentrating on the placement of the sun and moon for the husbands and wives. He found the most frequent combinations were the husbands' and wives' moon in the same sign (conjunction). Jung recognized the numerous parallels between psychology and astrology, and even employed professional astrologers to draw up charts to help diagnose his patients' basic characteristics.
• Statistics and studies show that after a solar flare, road accidents increase sometimes as much as four times the average. This indicates the direct influence the Sun has on our lives.
• It is now an accepted fact that the planets are all magnetically and electrically charged. Jupiter and the earth, at least, are known to emit radio waves.
• John F. Kennedy was warned by a handful of astrologers and psychics of the dangers of his assassination.
• Renown astrologer William Lilly accurately predicted both the Plague and the Great Fire that devastated London in 1665 and 1666.
• In 1932, electrical engineer John H. Nelson found that radio disturbances were caused by magnetic storms when two or more planets were in conjunction, or in a 90 degree or 180 degree angle to the Sun. This allowed scientists to predict radio disturbances within 93 percent accuracy from the positions of these planets.
• Dr. Rudolf Tomaschek, a physicist and astrologer, studied 134 major earthquakes and found that the positions of planets Uranus, Pluto and Jupiter played a role in these natural disasters.
• Czech psychiatrist Dr. Eugene Jonas has found that the moon affects a mature woman's ability to conceive, the sex of the child, and the viability of the embryo.
• In his studies of the mentally ill, Dr. Leonard J. Ravitz of Duke University discovered marked changes coinciding with the phases of the moon in both normal and insane people. The more disturbed the patients were, the more the moon affected them. This especially showed on the night of a full moon--the fuller the moon, the more unrest among the insane.