How Does Astrology Work?

Great Debates
1

Let me first state that I am not intending a dicussion of whether Astrology works or not. Personally, I don’t believe that it does.

But, my wife does beleive in it. She is quite convinced that the angle of the planets seems to influence all things great and small in this world. We often get into discussions and it’s obvious that we will never agree.

Anyway, let’s assume for this thread that the position of the planets at the time of our birth does influence the paths that we take in life.

How does it work? I guess I’m addressing just those people who do believe in and understand Astrology.

Is it the planetational gravity that affects our bodies like the moon affects the tides?

Is is some kind of cyclic thing like biorythms?

Does it have to do with magnetic or electric fields?

Perhaps it’s related to light, in that there are seasonal differences in light levels.

What physical reasons are there that the positions of planets billions of miles away could affect whether or not today is a good day for finding true love?

My wife doesn’t have any idea why it works, she says that she doesn’t need to know why it works, only that it does. She says it’s like driving a car–she doesn’t need to know how a car works to use it.

2

The best theory that I have heard is that seasonal differences in diet (both in pregnancy and developing children) translated into differences in personality. The positions of constellations were just a handy way to keep track of that.

Not sure if I believe it or not, but it makes more sense than objects millions of miles away somehow influencing my winning the lottery.

3

I am a former astrology devotee.

The way it “works” is,
there are 12 houses in YOUR chart. Not allof thema re 30 degrees, but the circle is 360 degrees.

The second house deals with money.
So if say Mercury is in your 2nd house, this means something will happen with money to you.

Also planets can be oppostie each other or sqaure(square is not good) or trine.
This affects things also.

Hope that explains!

4

How does it work?

Well, gravity is out because that is WAY too weak to affect us on Earth.

Magnetic and electric fields associated with the planets yield even weaker forces than the gravity.

There are absolutely no physical reasons that the positions of planets billions of miles away could affect whether or not today is a good day for finding true love. Psychological reasons are questionable at best.

So how does it work? It makes vague predictions as vanilla pointed out. Something with money will happen? Since when is that not a prediction that can come true?

5

Astrology essentially boils down to string theory. As we’re now learning, all matter (including atoms) is composed of short conical objects called “strings” (rods would have been a better name–in fact, early researchers like Schroedinger likened the “strings” to hair or fur; hence his analogy involving a cat). These “strings” weave together and tie everything in the universe together at a subreal level. When something as massive as another star moves, the strings that bind it to the rest of the universe subtly shift. For the most part, this change isn’t detectable except in advanced particle accelerators, but, as any homeopathic accupuncturist (they’re the only kind that use needles small enough to notice the effect) can tell you, this shifting of the fabric does have an effect on the chi of the human body. This effects the affect of the mother on the birth day, which translates directly into the disposition of the child.

And my point is: ones you disregard reality (e.g., by assuming astrology is real) it doesn’t really matter what the explanation is

6

Sorry - I’m not one of them.

But I took this up with a guy who professed to be quite serious about Astrology. Boiling several hours of discussion down to its essence, the answer (according to him) is that the mechanism is never addressed. If you’re a believer, the answer is “It just does.” Astrology concerns itself with what has or will (dare I say “might”) happen. It simply doesn’t get into why.

Of course, not all the believers will say this. If you ask “Why should I avoid Virgoes this week?” they’ll tell you it’s because of where Jupiter was 3 months ago (or some such). But you’ll eventually press them for exactly how Jupiter causes these effects, and the answer will be (in so many words) “It just does.”

Mathematician Raymond Smullyan was once asked by a woman at a cocktail party “Do you believe in Astrology?” His answer was: “No, I’m a Libra, and Libras never believe in Astrology.”

7

I will try to explain this is simple terms, but I am greatly oversimplifying things here. There are cosmic cycles, of certain powers beyond human understanding. These cycles guide the stars; the stars themselves are but place markers. The waning and waxing of these powers have a considerable influence on many beings; to a lesser degree they impact humans, exerting some influence on their personality and luck.

I think I will explain more when The Stars Are Right. :smiley:

8

How does something that doesn’t work, work? Well, since it doesn’t work, there’s no answer to that question.

Try to pin an astrologist down to a single cut-and-dried connection between the stars and our lives. Born in a certain sign means this. Born on a certain date means that. Anything. Since there are always an abundance of contradictions to even the most general statements, they have no such propositions. There is always a statement with a built-in excuse for it not working. Take two children born in the same hospital at the same moment, and very different personalities, the astrologist is ready with an explanation. So while our birth location and time are supposed to “mean” something, they don’t mean anything. In other words, astrologists CLAIM NOTHING. There is NO BELIEF that astrologists or people who follow astrology consider to be hard and fast. Imagine any other system with such a following that has so little to say for itself. It’s such absolute crap that even the astrologists know it.

9

If I had to pick something, I’d be most inclined to go with the theory of seasonal diets and maybe temperature.

Yet, I think I have to agree with the majority in that even the advocates of Astrology have no idea what mechinism makes it work. At best, there are vague cosmic cycles that we cannot comprehend.

To me, that’s pretty much the problem with the whole concept; if no one can present any plausable reasons why it works, how can people use the system to get any kind of results that can be expected to be accurate?

Anyway, thanks for the responses.

10

Astrology is a fancy random number generator that is used as input to a story-telling mechanism. Tarot works on the same principle. The symbology (in both cases) provides a starting point for the fortuneteller to tell a story about the client. Whether the story is true or not is of little import; the purpose of the story is to encourage the client to engage in self-reflection.

Astrology developed out of the human predilection to notice patterns (even when they’re not actually there), combined with (as noted above) the fact that there actually are (or at least were) patterns related to birth season. Also, astronomy (as a means of timekeeping) was a critical skill in early agricultural societies, as it provided the means to know when to plant crops. The justified veneration of astronomy gave weight to astrology as a predictive discipline. After all, if the town astrologer has correctly predicted the right time to plant the wheat now for ten years running, perhaps his other predictions are good, too.

11

This may have been true before Kepler and Newton, but it is not correct to say that we don’t understand the “cosmic cycles” today. In fact, we understand them quite well.

Here’s the issue: there were two different ways of looking at the cosmos before Newton: one was the Aristotlean way (the way of the materialist philosophers) which said that what happened in the celestial sphere and what happened in the terrestrial sphere were governed by different “laws” and “cycles”. The other way was the astrological way whose main argumet was that these “laws” and “cycles” of the heavens actually affected us in ways that were beyond our control (in other words, the celestial sphere’s laws affected human beings in ways that were not “physical” but rather in incomprehensible fashions).

Newton showed that astronomical cycles followed the same laws as those we experience here on Earth. In other words, both the stuff of the celestial sphere and the stuff of the terrestrial sphere operate under the same physics. If you accept Newton, there can be no “cosmic powers” controlling us because the same forces that affect the stuff up there affect us down here in predictable and understandable ways that are decidedly NOT astrological but rather physical. Both the Aristotlean conceit and the astrological conceit are utterly decimated.

And before anybody makes the audacious claim that Newton was a secret astrological admirer, they should read this.

12

when come back bring whoosh :slight_smile:

13

I love it! That’s really funny. The sad thing is, if you expand this into a book, you’d probably make a fortune.

14

Astrology “works” by rules of manipulation of facts of date, time, and place, just as spritualism "works’ by belief in the priest, preiestess, and/or practicioneer. Just believe and follow their lead, and pay the fees.

A mule and his funny are soon parter!

“Beware the Cog”

15

** JS Princeton**, you deny the power of the stars?? When the Stars Are Right, I will show you how influential they can be! :wink:

16

I believe (and I’m pulling this out of some rather dim memories) that the ancients and medievals had a belief that went “as above, so below.” In other words, the world was a series of patterns, something you might loosely relate to fractals (very loosely) the patterns would all mirror each other and the patterns in the heavens would mirror the patterns on earth below. Thus one could gain insight and foreknowledge of earthly events by studying the heavens.

In other words, the had a completely different metaphysic than we moderns do. Its wrong to analyze early astrology by looking for a physical causal relationship through which the stars influence events. Its rather that the stars are commenting on events, or perhaps that both the stars and society were driven by the same hidden cause.

The Chinese in particular spent a great deal of time studying the heavens and not all of it was wasted. A search of ancient chinese astronomical records reveals precise dating of supernovae, or “guest stars,” as they called them. By looking at supernova remnants and dating them by Chinese records, modern astronomers have gained some insights into the nature of these stellar catastrophes.

I hasten to add that I don’t actually believe in astrology. I’m simply explaining what I know of the ancients world view. Even some of the ancients didn’t believe it either. St. Augustine railed against it, though more because it contradicted the Christian doctrine of free will, rather than its scientific implausability. Nevertheless St. Augustine used a number of arguments which would be familiar to the modern skeptic. The one I remember is when he pointed out that people born on the same day and place had vastly differing lives.

17

Not very well.

18

Sounds like you might be talking about “sympathetic magic,” or some such variant. And while it’s ancient, it’s hardly defunct; it’s the same thought process that leads people to believe, even today, that the hard-sticky-up rhinoceros horn can be used to produce a hard-sticky-up dong.

“Give me money. In return, I will gently stroke your psyche like it’s a purring housecat. A mutually enjoyable relationship.”

19

Astrology ‘works’ by being decidedly unscientific. To try to find some scientific underpinning is futile at best. The scientific process relies on falsifibility-- any proposition must admit to the possibility that it is false! Any and all propositions in Astrology ( and all other psuedo sciences) can be shown to be true, and furthermore, few readers will ever come out and say they were, are or could be wrong. It is part of the scheme… never admit you are wrong. There is always a grain of truth in general statements.

20

The “Effectiveness” of Astrology: In point of fact, there is very little evidence suggesting any validity to even a properly constructed horoscope, and the newspaper columns “work” by being so general that on any given day 10 or the 12 signs will contain a vague prediction that more or less “hits” what you will experience in the course of a day. Suppose, for example, you have a commute taking the best part of an hour, and your horoscope addresses “travel” on a given day. If you’re inclined to believe those daily horoscopes, you’ll match the forecast to your commute – if it said “a pleasant, easy trip” you’ll see that in the fact that fewer cars are on the freeway than usual and it’s flowing well; if it says “beware of delays” you’ll match that to the slowdown and snarl as you pass an accident.

It’s worth noting that people who do believe in astrology and practice it “ethically” have a formula: “The stars impel; they do not compel,” and what their intent is, is to give guidance about what influences one may expect to have to deal with. Also, most serious astrologers look on the newspaper daily horoscope with the same disdain as the rationalist who rejects astrology completely.

I hasten to state that I have no use for the stuff, but did read up on it 30 years ago, and retained a lot of what I read.

Why It Was Ever Thought to Work: The ancients and medievals tended to try to identify connections between things: the Sun, for example was paralleled to the god Apollo, to gold, to the sanguine temperament, to the “element” fire, and so on. Hence the placement of the moveable heavenly bodies was thought to influence individuals, particularly as they were located at the time of one’s birth – the single most significant event in everyone’s life.

A “Proper” Horoscope: Addressing the OP question as though it were a GQ, here’s a rough summary of what an astrologer would do in casting a (natal genethliacal) horoscope. This is not intended to suggest that it actually means anything, but to describe the process, much as one might quote an alchemist’s formula for “edible gold” to respond to a question about it.

One first determines the exact date and time of a person’s birth. The time of day is highly significant, as explained below.

Using appropriate references, one then determines the placement of the ten “planets” (eight true planets, omitting Earth, plus Sun and Moon), and the point on the ecliptic that was just rising on the horizon as you were born. This point is your ascendant. The three most significant influences on your life astrologically, according to the theory of astrology, are your Sun sign, your Moon sign, and your ascendant. These govern your personality – how you relate to the world; your individuality – your inner self; and a generalized influence over all your affiars, respectively. Then each planet affects a particular aspect of your personality (in the modern sense), Mercury governing your intellectual bent, Venus your love life, Mars your temperament, Jupiter your charisma and leadership/followership skills, and so on.

Based on your ascendant, the ecliptic is divided into twelve houses, each of which has a particular meaning, starting at what’s setting at birth (first house is the last 30 degrees that has just dropped below the horizon, seventh house is 30 degrees beginning with the asendant, and so on).

Each planet is then identified as being in a particular astrological sign (the signs are 30 degrees of the ecliptic corresponding roughly to the constellation after which they’re named) and in a particular house. Jupiter in Capricorn in the fourth house has a quite different meaning from Jupiter in Capricorn in the tenth house.

Each planet “governs” one or two signs, which means that the planet in that sign is reinforced, having a stronger influence than otherwise. There are also locations that weaken influence.

One then determines if the placements have any relationship to each other. Conjunction – within a few degrees of each other --has one effect; trine – about 120 degrees apart – another; opposition – about 180 degrees apart – a third; square – about 90 degrees apart – yet another; and quincunx – about 72 degrees – still another. Some reinforce, others cause conflict, some weaken influence, some strengthen it.

The net result is a detailed set of generalizations about one’s personality and what one can expect to encounter in terms of effects on one’s life. My Mercury in Libra, for example, means an interest in the law and a tendency to see both sides of the picture on any question.

One can then progress the horoscope to a given date – today, for example – and see what the relationships of the planets and signs on that date have to the natal horoscope, making again predictions on what influences will impact the individual at that time.

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I hasten to add to all this that insofar as I know there is nothing supportive of all this stuff – there is effectively no scientific validity to the “influence” garbage that is key to the "theory of astrology, and the predictions that result are either (a) invalid, (b) so general as to be meaningless, or © logical but not astrologically founded.

For an example of the last, it’s an absolute truth that more Leos enjoy having their birthday parties at the beach than do Capricorns – but this is not proof of something astrological, but founded on the seasons and on the fact that most people live in the Northern Hemisphere.

I believe that there have been studies that took well-constructed natal genethliacal horoscopes of people whose lives are well known and compared them to the real lives, with the result of marginally above raw chance predictive accuracy.