Astrology FAQ

What is Astrology?

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Astrology is a type of divination based upon the idea that information, usually either about the future or about a person's personality, can be discovered through an examination of "heavenly bodies" - stars, planets, the moon, comets, etc.

Astrology can be divided into the following types:

Mundane Astrology

Also known as "natural" astrology, this is the form which was originally developed in Babylon. Unlike the astrology which we commonly see today, it was not at all concerned with predicting the fates of average people. It was instead used as a device by the state for advising the rulers on what they should do, what the weather would bring, what would happen to the nation, etc. In some places where mundane astrology was dominant, like China and Rome, it was the exclusive property of the emperor - anyone trying to use it privately could be subject to execution.

Any time astrology is used to make predictions about the lives of leaders, nations, or other large groups of people, it is still known as mundane astrology. It may not happen too often today, but it can still be found in various supermarket tabloids where famous astrologers make predictions about what will happen to the president or to the country. This type of astrology, being the first, also established the lists of correspondences and influences which are used in other forms.

Horary and Electional Astrology

Both of these forms of astrology were most popular in the Renaissance, a time when astrology experienced a massive upswing in popularity despite traditional church opposition and disapproval. In these cases, the client is not seeking to learn more about their character or general fate, but instead is seeking to have some very specific question answered.

Questions can range from some simple and immediate need, like where to find a lost ring, to some concern about the future, like when the best time might be to get married or set out on a trip. When dealing with the former, it was specifically called "horary" astrology and the term "electional" astrology was limited to questions about future dates and events.

In these cases, the astrologer does not normally use a chart based upon the time the person was born (natal chart), but instead a chart based upon the time when the question first occurred to the client or, in the case of electional questions, based upon a chart of the expected celestial positions for the date of the proposed event.

It may seem obvious that such a form of astrology would not last very long because the number of failures would mount so quickly and clearly. However, at the time the field of statistics had not yet developed, and people were much more willing to accept on faith the idea that astrologers' failings were not due to the invalidity of astrology, but rather simply to the mistakes of individual practitioners.

Although horary astrology is almost never found today, electional astrology can still seen as people ask when they should marry or when they should embark on some new endeavor. This is often done today through a process known as "progression." A chart of future dates is made up by starting with the client's birth chart and then "progressing" forward one day on the chart for each year in real time. How the position of the stars forty days after a person's birth can affect the time they should get married forty years after their birth is anyone's guess.

Natal Astrology

Also known as "judicial" or "genethlialic" astrology, this is the form which was later developed by the Greeks out of the original astrological ideas they borrowed from the Babylonians. It is also the form which is generally known as astrology today. This involves using stars and planets to forecast the fate and divine the character of particular individuals, all primarily from the state of the sky at the time of a person's birth (thus the name "natal").

Through and through, astrology relies upon basic assumptions of traditional magic. The so-called cosmic influences on human behavior, human personality and earthly events are deduced entirely from the principle of analogies - for example, being born under the sign of Taurus the Bull leads a person to having "bull like" personality characteristics, like being stubborn and tenacious.

Working from the principle of analogy - like affects like - is one of the oldest and most fundamental principles of traditional magic which humanity has ever developed. The belief that like affects like is the principle behind the magic of voodoo dolls, alchemy, reading pig entrails, homeopathy, and much more. Evidence of beliefs in such magic can be found in the oldest cave paintings which still exist. Images of game animals are not only portrayed as being taken down by hunters, but there are physical gouges on the walls which suggest people took actual spears or other weapons and attacks those same images.

Other ways to express this principle of sympathetic magic include: whatever is "writ" in the heavens is "mirrored" on earth; humanity is a "microcosm" which only reflects the "macrocosm" of the universe.

Most people's contact with astrology is through "Sun Sign" astrology, the type normally found in newspapers where astrologers pretend to tell people what their day is going to be liked based upon the zodiac "sign" they were born under. Such newspaper forecasts first appeared to mark the birth of Princess Margaret, sister to Queen Elizabeth. A London newspaper wanted something different to say about the royal birth and so ran a column about "what the stars have to say" about the new princess. Thus was a tradition born.

Contemporary astrology as most people understand and practice it, both in its simple and in its complex forms, was first developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the second century CE in his book Tetrabiblos. In this work Ptolemy brought together as much astrological thinking as he could and systematized it into something approaching a coherent whole.

A person's "Sun Sign" is the zodiac name assigned to the region of sky in which the sun appears when a person is born. In addition to this sign, and just as important to modern astrology, is a person's "ascendant." This is the "sign" which is rising in the east when a person is born. Another common part of a person's horoscope is the influence of various "houses." Houses are twelve equal regions of the sky and a planet, the moon or the sun in any one of them is believed to impact the course of a person's life or character.

A person's "sign" tends to be correlated with a wide variety of things: personality traits, health problems, career prospects, physical traits, and more. One of the most common uses of these signs, aside from people planning their day, is to see what other sorts of people they are compatible with. The assumption is made that, if certain traits characterize certain signs, then particular signs are more compatible with each other, while other signs are less compatible.

Of course, even astrologers themselves will sometimes admit that the whole notion of sun signs is problematic. For example, astrologer Prudence Jones wrote in the Astrological Journal in 1996:

[The zodiac signs] rest on shaky foundations from the modern point of view. How in heaven do twelve 30 degree sectors of the ecliptic, measured from the vernal equinox but named after now-far-distant constellations, impart any qualities at all to the planets, houses, parts and nodes which we view against their backgrounds? Do they do so in fact, or is this wishful thinking? Some astrologers justify the signs (taking, usually without explanation, the sun in the signs as their exemplar) as shorthand for seasonal characteristics. But this implies that their order should be reversed in the southern hemisphere, which seldom happens. And what, in any case of horoscopes for equatorial latitudes, where seasonal change is minimal, but where, of course, astrology was invented?