A new year . . . a new set of resolutions (or the old set recycled) . . . a rumbling uncertainty over what lies ahead.
So what do the stars hold for 2009? When a newspaper feature offered an astrologer's answers last month, I idly checked out her predictions for Gemini.
Alas, my "flirtatious ways" are in danger of getting out of control.
I'll be "tempted to get involved in affairs".
Wrong and wrong.
Hang on, though! My wife is also a Gemini. That sounds like double trouble.
Little wonder that "lifestyle stress will be making me/us ill".
Not all is lost, however: the stars promise that "financially I shall prosper off others' mistakes".
Now, there's a change. So far in the global meltdown it's others who have been prospering from mine.
Why do some people take this astrological gimcrackery seriously?
It must have a following, or secular newspapers and magazines would not devote regular corners to it, as if the disposition of the stars and planets really was decisive in choosing a mate, guiding a business, determining health.
It is especially ironic that there are those who scorn religion as a load of superstition, yet give credence to the notion that lumps of rock and gas whirling through space are swaying their personal lives in some way.
That is superstition gone to seed. In ancient times it was different.
People took for granted that the gods wrote portents in the heavens - that's what the star of Bethlehem was all about - and that each planet and constellation exerted an influence on human affairs.
Venus was about love, Mars aggression, and so on.
In reality, they were projecting human qualities and aspirations into the celestial world, and then discerning those same qualities on the rebound.
Belief in multiple gods and influences seemed logical in such a system.
In monotheistic faiths such as Christianity the projections were unhitched from the stars and relocated within the vision of a single all-powerful and all-knowing God.
But old beliefs die hard. Some notions and practices rooted in previous world views persisted. Others were subtly Christianised.
The number 13 gained a stigma all its own, and Friday the 13th in any month doubled the foreboding.
There were 13 around the table at Jesus' Last Supper, for example, including Judas who betrayed him.
As for Friday, Christian mythology speculated that Eve tempted Adam with the apple on a Friday, and that Friday was the day of Noah's flood.
Jesus was crucified on a Friday.
Objectively, Friday the 13th does not deserve its ominous ring, yet uneasiness remains widespread.
Such superstition is a whole world view away from the kind of religion that gives an honoured place to the intellect (not all religion does).
Theologian Lloyd Geering makes that clear when he describes superstition as "a belief or practice for which there is no longer any rational basis, because it has survived from the cultural context where it could be deemed reasonable".
Contrast that with contemporary definitions of religion as "a conscientious concern for what really matters and a total mode of the interpreting and living of life".
In such religion mind and heart go hand in hand: a person's cultural knowledge, emotions, reason and search for meaning, are all in harmony.
Faith then gathers up the best factual knowledge about the world in a particular era, blends it imaginatively with the best current understanding of the word "God", and moulds both into the way people of faith interpret and live their lives.
That explains why, as biblical and secular knowledge expands, the religious convictions of past ages need to be rethought and re-expressed to fit the world we live in now.
What seemed logical or defensible in the past, but is no longer so, must then be discarded.
If that does not happen, redundant beliefs will persist as superstitions "standing over" people (that is what the Latin superstitio means) as a lingering sense of dread, guilt or false hope.
Faith must always be free to evolve.
It is altogether too facile, then, to equate superstition with religion. Yes, there are religious people who are superstitious.
But the popularity of horoscopes in our secular culture shows they do not have that on their own.
Indeed, the decline of Christianity in the West over the past 150 years has opened the door to a variety of superstitious substitutes, old and new, and a host of astrological soothsayers jostles to fill the vacuum.
Good religion offers hugely more than that.
Ian Harris is a journalist and commentator.
