What is Astrology?

Astrology is a system of interpretation that links the positions and movements of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars with events and traits on Earth. It is often used to create horoscopes or birth charts, which astrologers interpret for personality, relationships, and possible life patterns.

How it works?

A typical Western birth chart uses the date, time, and place of birth to map where celestial bodies appeared in the sky. Astrologers commonly interpret four elements:

• Zodiac signs: the 12 signs, such as Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc.
• Planets: associated symbolically with different parts of life, such as communication or emotions
• Houses: 12 chart sections associated with life areas, such as work, home, and relationships
• Aspects: the geometric angles between planets in the chart

For example, a newspaper horoscope usually relies only on someone’s Sun sign—the sign the Sun was in at their birth—rather than a full chart.

Astrology versus Astronomy

Astronomy is a scientific field that studies celestial objects and the universe using observation, mathematics, and testable theories. Astrology is a divinatory or symbolic practice: it claims celestial patterns can indicate or influence human affairs.

Astronomy and Astrology grew out of the same ancient sky-watching traditions, then separated into very different fields.

Shared beginnings

In ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, China, and elsewhere, people systematically tracked the Sun, Moon, planets, eclipses, and seasonal stars. Those observations served practical purposes—calendars, agriculture, navigation, and timekeeping—but were also used to interpret omens and predict the fates of rulers or nations. What we now call astronomy and astrology were therefore usually intertwined rather than distinct disciplines.

For example, Babylonian observers recorded planetary motions carefully partly because they believed celestial events could signal events on Earth. The need to make such forecasts encouraged long-term, increasingly precise observations of the sky.

How they diverged?

Over time, the observational and mathematical side developed methods for testing ideas against measurements. Especially during the Scientific Revolution, astronomers such as Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and later Isaac Newton helped turn the study of celestial motions into a physics-based science.

By roughly the 17th and 18th centuries, astronomy and astrology had become separate pursuits.

Historically, even figures now celebrated as astronomers—including Kepler and Galileo—practiced astrology in an era when the boundary was not yet clear.

The important qualification

It would be misleading to say astrology simply “became” astronomy, as though modern astronomy validated astrological claims. Rather, a single older tradition split:

• Astronomy retained and improved the measurement, mathematics, and evidence-testing.
• Astrology retained claims that planetary or stellar arrangements determine personality or life events.

Why people use it?

People may engage with astrology for self-reflection, cultural or spiritual tradition, entertainment, or a language for discussing personality and relationships. Those uses can be personally meaningful, but they are different from treating astrological readings as evidence-based forecasts.

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Astrology is a symbolic system that studies the positions and movements of the Sun, Moon, planets, and other celestial points and interprets them as reflecting patterns in human personality, experience, relationships, and cycles of time.

The word comes from Greek: astron (“star”) + logos (“study, discourse, or account”). In its broadest sense, astrology is the attempt to understand correspondences between the heavens and earthly life.

The central idea

Astrology is based on the principle that the heavens can be read as a kind of symbolic clock.

For example, an astrologer might interpret:

But planets are only one part of the system.

A useful formula is:

Planet = What
Sign = How
House = Where
Aspect = How the different forces interact

So, for example, Mars in Capricorn in the 10th House could symbolically describe assertive or ambitious energy (Mars) operating in a disciplined, strategic manner (Capricorn) particularly in career, reputation, or public life (10th House).

The Zodiac

The Twelve Houses

The Birth Chart

A natal chart, or birth chart, is essentially a map of the sky calculated for a particular date, time, and location of birth.

It shows where the planets appeared within the zodiac and houses at that moment.

One of the most important points is the Ascendant, or Rising Sign—the zodiacal degree rising on the eastern horizon. Opposite it is the Descendant. The Midheaven (MC) relates particularly to public life and vocation, while the Imum Coeli (IC) represents the opposite, foundational end of that axis.

Lines drawn between planets represent aspects, angular relationships such as:

Astrologers interpret the entire configuration rather than treating each placement independently.

Astrology is much bigger than Sun-sign horoscopes

Newspaper horoscopes represent a very simplified form of astrology. Historically and presently, astrology contains many specialized branches.

Natal astrology examines an individual’s birth chart. Mundane astrology studies nations, governments, wars, historical periods, and collective events. Electional astrology attempts to choose favorable times for beginning something. Horary astrology constructs a chart for the moment a specific question is asked. Synastry compares two birth charts, while medical astrology historically associated planets and signs with parts and functions of the body.

There are also substantially different astrological traditions.

Western and Vedic Astrology

Two major traditions practiced today are Western astrology and Jyotiṣa, often called Vedic astrology.

Western astrology generally uses the tropical zodiac, which anchors the zodiac to the seasonal cycle beginning with 0° Aries at the March equinox.

Jyotiṣa generally employs a sidereal zodiac, accounting for the precession of the equinoxes through an ayanāṃśa. Consequently, someone’s Western Sun sign and Vedic Sun sign may differ.

Jyotiṣa also contains systems that don’t have exact Western equivalents, including nakshatras (lunar mansions), dashas (planetary periods), divisional charts such as the Navamsha, and concepts such as Atmakaraka.

Chinese, Hellenistic, Persian, Arabic, Tibetan, and other cultures developed additional astrological traditions.

Astrology, Astronomy, and Science

Astrology and astronomy were historically intertwined. Ancient and medieval astrologers needed sophisticated astronomical observations and mathematics to calculate planetary positions.

Eventually the disciplines separated.

Astronomy became the scientific study of celestial objects and physical processes—stars, planets, galaxies, gravity, cosmology, and so forth.

Astrology interprets celestial configurations as meaningful in relation to terrestrial and human experience.

Under contemporary scientific standards, astrology is not considered an empirically established science: controlled studies have not established its central predictive claims to the degree required by modern science. That is distinct from saying astrology has no historical, philosophical, psychological, religious, or symbolic significance. It has played an enormous role in the intellectual histories of many civilizations.

The deeper philosophical idea

At a more esoteric level, astrology doesn’t necessarily have to mean that Mars physically causes you to become angry or that Saturn shoots limitation-rays at Earth.

Many philosophical and occult approaches understand astrology through correspondence rather than straightforward physical causation:

The pattern above corresponds to the pattern below.

This is closely related to the Hermetic principle popularly summarized as “As above, so below.”

In that interpretation, the cosmos and the individual aren’t completely separate systems. The macrocosm and microcosm reflect one another. The planetary configuration therefore functions more like a symbolic representation of a moment in time than a mechanical chain of physical causes.

This is one reason astrology historically became intertwined with Hermeticism, alchemy, Qabalah, magic, mythology, medicine, and divination.

And this leads to an especially interesting distinction: astrology and Tarot can both be treated as symbolic languages, but astrology begins with an astronomically calculated moment, whereas Tarot begins with a synchronistically selected arrangement of symbols. Both can then be interpreted as maps of patterns rather than simple fortune-telling devices.