What is Astrology?
Put simply, Astrology is the method by which a total stranger (the astrologer) may detect how you tend to perceive the world, over time. The signs, planets, and aspects combine to give an individual a filter through which he will view his circumstances and react to them. The configuration of the natal chart is the base from which we start our life and from which all further growth will spring. The transits, eclipses, and progressions alter that base and present challenges to our perception of the world and ourselves. The base never changes, but because of the aforementioned events we CAN act differently than our natal chart would at first suggest. It is the task of the astrologer to determine not only how we are prone to responding to the world, but also how we are likely to respond at this moment in time. Take a normally mild-mannered man who lets negativity slide off his back, for instance. He was raised by a good and loving family and more importantly perceived it as such because he
Astrology is the study of the positions and movements of planets (such as Mercury and Mars), asteroids and other celestial bodies, and luminaries (the Sun and Moon) in order to gain extra insight into a person’s life. Astrology applies to everyday life in many ways, the most common application being the reading of a Birth Chart. A Birth Chart is a specific diagram or map that is made by an astrologer for a particular person and is a visual representation of the planets and their relationships to each other at the exact time of a person’s birth. Birth Charts can be used to identify key weaknesses and key strengths of a person’s character. They can calculate potential problems in areas such as career or love and can also guide a person into correcting mistakes and choosing the right path. Another familiar application of astrology is in the more general daily or weekly horoscopes, which predict how the day or week ahead will develop according to the calculated movements of the planets.
That question is tough, actually. There are lots of flavors of astrology. Sun sign, Vedic, archetypal, natal, Horary… the different kinds of astrology seem to outnumber the stars in the sky. Some of the claims they make are inherently contradictory (some say the moment of birth is important, others say it’s the month, etc.), but they all operate under a very broad working assumption: there is some sort of force from the heavens that influences us here on Earth. There are lots of different attributions for this force (some say gravity, some say electromagnetism, some say a force that cannot be measured), but it all boils down to the planets and stars having an effect on people. If there is an effect, and it’s real, it can be measured. That’s pretty much by definition. Maybe it’s not directly measured on an individual basis; maybe there is only a statistical effect. In other words, the effect cannot be shown for an individual, but only for groups of people (like saying that I cannot kn
2. Origins Mesopotamia Egypt 3. The world view of astrology in the Hellenistic era On the empirical foundations of astrology in ancient times 4. The practice of astrology in the Roman era 5. The astrology of the present Esoteric astrology Psychological astrology Empirical investigations 6. Astrology in other cultures 7. Astrology and Christianity History Present 8. Where does astrology stand today? 9. Is astrology true? Bibliography Preliminary remarks In hardly any other area of religious studies today does so much disagreement prevail as in that of astrology. What does astrology have to do with religion? Does it not belong rather to the field of the wrongly understood natural sciences, particularly to astronomy? These questions are often asked when one speaks of astrology. These are then followed by further, rather practical questions as well: is astrology really founded on experience, as followers claim, or is it not rather based on a naïve and false observation of the heavens, long
Astrology is the scientific study and application of language of the heavenly bodies. These heavenly bodies determined on the basis of Astronomy and mathematics, are mapped in the form of a horoscope. Their specific locations in the horoscope indicate specific happenings in the case of individuals, of multitudes and of geographical regions. Whether the Sun, the Moon, the planets and stars themselves influence the terrestrial phenomena, or they only indicate such phenomena by their various dispositions, is immaterial. What is important to us is that variations in their disposition determine variations in the events on the earth; the correlations are only too strong to be brushed aside by critics of Astrology.
