Astrology

Astrology is a form of divination: it tries to forecast events on Earth and in people's lives by observing and interpreting the Sun, the Moon, the planets and the fixed stars. Those who follow it believe that understanding how the heavens influence earthly affairs allows them to predict, explain and even shape the fortunes of individuals, groups and nations. In the modern Western world, horoscopic astrology is the most common form of divination.

Millions of people around the world place some trust in astrology, whether they follow Western astrology, the Chinese zodiac common in East Asia, or Hindu astrology in South Asia.

Description

Key terms

• Divination is the practice of seeking the hidden meaning or cause of events, and sometimes of foretelling the future, by various techniques. It is found in every civilisation. Astrology is the form that reads its signs in the sky.
• A birth chart (or horoscope) maps the positions of the planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac at the moment of a person's birth or conception. Casting such charts is called genethlialogy.

Branches of astrology

According to Britannica, astrology's first purpose was to tell a person about the course of their life from their birth chart, and genethlialogy supplied the basic techniques for everything that followed. Several other branches grew from it:

• General astrology links major moments in the sky, such as equinoxes, eclipses and conjunctions of planets, to social groups, nations or humanity as a whole.
• Catarchic astrology asks whether a chosen moment is a good one for starting a course of action.
• Interrogatory astrology answers a client's question from the state of the heavens at the moment the question is asked.

Fate, free will and the divine

Astrologers have disagreed deeply about fate. In its strictest form, astrology pictures a wholly mechanical universe with no room for divine intervention or human free will. Other astrologers treat the heavens as showing only trends and tendencies, which divine or human will can change. In Hindu practice the planets, the navagrahas, are regarded as powerful deities, and people commonly walk around them and make offerings (puja) to them in temples. This question matters for anyone giving or receiving a reading: whether a chart is taken as fixed fate or as a set of tendencies changes how a forecast should be heard.

The Chinese zodiac

The Chinese zodiac follows the Chinese lunar calendar. Each year of a twelve-year cycle is given one of twelve animals (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig), and each animal carries a personality linked with that year and with the people born in it. The animal changes at Chinese New Year, which falls between 21 January and 20 February. The animal cycle is combined with the five elements (wuxing) of earth, wood, metal, fire and water to allow more specific predictions. Where the Western zodiac is based on months named after constellations, the Chinese sign changes from year to year. Many countries in East and South-East Asia have adopted the Chinese zodiac, often in a form of their own.

What the evidence says

Research has looked more at why people believe in astrology than at whether astrology works. A 2022 scoping review found that belief in astrology was associated with factors such as thinking style, the wish to confirm one's sense of self, and stress. As noted above, astrology is widely considered a pseudoscience today.

Scope

What it includes

• Birth charts based on the positions of the planets and zodiac signs at a person's birth
• Forecasts for nations or groups, the choice of favourable times to act, and answers to clients' questions
• Systems from different cultures, including Western, Hindu and Chinese astrology

What it is not

• Astrology is not astronomy. For much of its history it was treated as a science, but today it is widely regarded as a pseudoscience at odds with the findings and theories of modern Western science.
• Astrology is not mediumship. Spiritualist bodies describe mediumship as giving evidence that life continues after death, not foretelling events (see Within Spiritualism below).

Traditions and lineage

Mesopotamia

Astrology grew out of the celestial omens recorded in ancient Mesopotamia. The cuneiform omen series Enūma Anu Enlil was begun under the first dynasty of Babylon (18th to 16th centuries BCE) and finally compiled early in the first millennium BCE; most surviving tablets come from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (7th century BCE). The omens were meant to warn the royal court of coming disaster or success. Because they were read as signs rather than fixed fate, the official interpreter, the bāru, could advise the king on how to avoid misfortune.

Greece, India and Europe

Parts of the Mesopotamian omen tradition reached Egypt, Greece and India while the Achaemenid dynasty (559–330 BCE) ruled Persia. The Greeks added the casting of horoscopes, and the system then passed through Hellenistic, Egyptian and Islamic science to Europe. The theory that sets astrology apart from simple omen reading comes from Hellenistic philosophy. Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer of the 2nd century CE, included omen material in his astrological work, usually called the Tetrabiblos.

In India, the oldest surviving Sanskrit work in this tradition is the earliest version of the Gargasamhita, from about the 1st century CE. Later compilations include Varahamihira's Brhatsamhita (about 550 CE). Orthodox Christianity and Islam strongly opposed the strictest, fully deterministic form of astrology.

China

Earlier scholars suggested that Chinese astrology was influenced by Mesopotamia, but 21st-century research suggests it developed independently. Sources date the Chinese zodiac variously to the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE) or the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), and it was firmly part of Chinese cultural life by the later Han dynasty.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Spiritualism and astrology are often found side by side, but they rest on different ideas. The religious historian J. Gordon Melton writes that what sets Spiritualism apart from other psychic groups is its emphasis on survival after death and on mediumship. He places astrology, with numerology, palmistry and the reading of tarot cards and tea leaves, among the arts of divination that belong to the wider occult field.

Spiritualist bodies draw the same line from the inside. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States says its mediums are not fortune-tellers and that predicting the future matters very little, and the Spiritualists' National Union in Britain says mediumship exists to give evidence that life continues after death, not to foretell events.

The distinction also has a history. In 19th-century America, local Spiritualist associations licensed their mediums, ministers and lecturers partly to protect them from local laws against fortune-telling. Writing about Sydney in 1981, Paul Gillen noted that Spiritualists were sensitive to being accused of "fortune telling" because of its link with legal persecution.

At the level of ordinary members, the anthropologist Deirdre Meintel found in a Montreal Spiritualist congregation that most people used astrology, tarot or crystals now and then but kept them separate from their spirituality.

In Australian Spiritualism

The Victorian Spiritualists' Union names astrology, with clairvoyance, reincarnation and healing, in the wider field it is concerned with beyond spirit communication. In 2017 the Blue Mountains Gazette reported that the Church of United Spiritualism of Australia, proclaimed in 1975, offered numerology, astrology and meditation in its services.

In his 1981 study of Spiritualists in Sydney, Paul Gillen observed that Spiritualists tended to be drawn to popular kinds of divination such as astrology, palmistry and tarot, although at the church he studied flower reading was the main one. He also noted that psychics who give readings are not necessarily Spiritualists, and that most of them identify more closely with other movements, astrology among them.

A Spiritualist perspective

Astrology is an old and serious art with its own learning, and a Spiritualist teacher would treat it and those who practise it with respect. It is not, though, part of mediumship. A medium's work is to give evidence that life goes on after death; an astrologer's work is to read tendencies from the sky. A birth chart and a message from the spirit world are different things, and keeping them apart protects both the sitter, who deserves to know what they are receiving, and the good name of mediumship.

Many Spiritualists enjoy astrology in their own lives, as the studies above suggest, and some churches have offered it. That sits comfortably with Spiritualism so long as each is offered honestly under its own name. Good practice applies to any reader: don't frighten people with dark forecasts, take care with anyone who is grieving or vulnerable, gently discourage anyone who seems to be coming back compulsively, and remember that Spiritualism teaches personal responsibility. The stars may describe, but the choices remain ours.

Astrology in Australia

In Western Australia, the state's Consumer Protection agency notes that many clairvoyants run their businesses with little controversy, but it has warned about scammers offering "psychic" readings. Its advice to anyone paying for a psychic or clairvoyant service is to find out the total cost and exactly what they will receive, to ask about conditions and any ongoing or hidden costs, and not to be pressured into further readings, ceremonies or payments.

Safety and good practice

Western Australia's Consumer Protection agency advises people to be very wary of any psychic or clairvoyant who tells them they are in danger, unlucky or cursed, because the solution on offer is likely to be a scam. People who have lost money this way can contact WA ScamNet.

The 2022 scoping review also found case studies describing excessive use of astrology and fortune-telling services ("fortune-telling addiction") as a possible behavioural addiction, with symptoms such as distress and cravings; the authors called for further research.

Related modalities

• Tarot
• Numerology
• Palmistry
• Biorhythms
• Psychic reading

Further reading

• Chopping, Lanie. "Commissioner's blog: Beware the misfortune tellers". Consumer Protection, Government of Western Australia, 2020, updated 2024.
• Das, A., M.K. Sharma, H. Kashyap and S. Gupta. "Fixating on the future: an overview of increased astrology use". International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2022.
• Gilbert, Robert Andrew. "Divination". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Pingree, David E. "Astrology". Encyclopaedia Britannica.