who can even believe in this stuff?

how, how can such vague descriptions of just twelve types of people enthrall so many?

even worse, how can such a large number actually believe in astrology, that it’s not just entertainment at best, as if the planets can have any notable causal effect on us?

as if the signs matched the constellations — don’t they know of ophiuchus?

what a sad state of our times; climate change, rising authoritarianism, a global pandemic, and people are still turning towards some ancient mumbo jumbo woo woo pseudoscience for relief? or worse, shelling out money to charlatans to justify their bad behavior?

this is not the time for delusions.

well.

if you agree with the above, i am sorry to inform you: you have delusions.

you are a victim of astrology fake news.

perhaps you don’t mind; after all, there’s many reasons for rejecting astrology, so who cares if your particular reasons are off?

but then perhaps you do; perhaps you wish to do more than tear down strawmen and perpetuate the smug-heckling-by-ignorant-skeptic trope that effectively insulates astrology from good critique.

fortunately i have a cure.

don’t end up like this guy. modified. source: masterclass.com

1. the constellations have changed

the first record of the standardized twelve-sign zodiac comes from fifth century bce mesopotamia (p. 216) when the zodiac more-or-less matched the twelve constellations along the sun’s ecliptic path. however, due to the wobbly rotation of the earth’s axis, the celestial sphere appears to move one degree every 72 years. in the two millennia since its creation, the constellations have shifted about 24 degrees — but the zodiac hasn’t. additionally, two constellations have moved into the ecliptic with the standard twelve, suggesting there should now be fourteen signs of the zodiac — checkmate, astrologists.

all true, but the thing is, i’ve yet to meet an astrologer who doesn’t know this; astrologers knew about the procession of the equinoxes back in the second century bce. further, many astrologers have minded the drift and use the associated sidereal zodiac, but most in the west have used the tropical zodiac since around 350 bce (p. 220). it still bears the names of the constellations, but it can be better understood as tied to the seasons, the solstices and equinoxes, than the constellations; aries begins with the march equinox, cancer with the june solstice, and so on.

seasonal associations are based on the northern hemisphere. modified. source: lunarplanner.com

it’s worth noting that even the sidereal zodiac, despite more closely aligning with the constellations, is tied to particular fixed stars and divides the sky into twelve equal signs, quite unlike the unequal sizes of 44° for virgo and 20° to cancer.

the zodiacal ages, like the hypothesized move from the age of pisces to the age of aquarius, are the one astrological concept that tracks the constellations, but it’s got troubles: estimates for the age of aquarius’s beginning range from CE 1447 to CE 3597 (p. 489–95), most thinking it happened in the 20th century, but with a wide range support from the 18th century up through the 24th (p. 489–495). this leaves the ages firmly in the realm of speculation, and outside of central theses to astrology.

so please, please, stop bringing this stuff up. it feels like explaining the difference between weather and climate.

it’s open season on people wearing this stuff though.

2. there’s more than 12 types of people

so the zodiac signs aren’t the constellations, but that still leaves us with a reductive model of personality. myers-briggs has 16, astrology has 12, but either way you have a short list of reductive stereotypes for making facile judgments about people. in contrast, a scientific understanding of personality shows its best understood as a dynamic and changeable (within limits) set of traits linked to but not determined by genetic and other physiological factors.

but again, you’ll find no surprised astrologers with this one, because only pop astrology and superficial reads of it suggests otherwise. astrology is about the sun and the twelve signs, sure, but it’s also about the moon, the planets, their positions relative to the horizon and midheaven (the houses), and the angles between everything (the aspects), minimum. if anything, astrology suggests a near-infinite diversity of types of people, not just a few.

but let’s dig into sun sign astrology.

its origins are commonly traced to alan leo, a british theosophist involved in the revitalization of astrology in the late 19th century, following its decline in the 17th. focusing on the sun as the primary astrological factor, he moved away from the event-centered concrete predictions of classical astrology towards more general character analysis. this precedent was taken up by richard harold naylor in the 1930s, inventor of the horoscope column, and is still largely followed today in the west.

since then, the humanistic accessibility of sun sign astrology columns have made them ubiquitous; even blue-chip media gets in on the action. at best they’re fun to read and make for funny memes, but any astrologer worth their salt knows their limits.

for one thing, if you were born at night, classical astrology suggests the moon says more about you than the sun (p. 190). even more damning, horoscopes aren’t even based on one’s sun sign! to write a horoscope, astrologers place the sign in question on the left side of their chart, a representation of where celestial bodies appears to rise over the horizon. they then describe life for that sign based on where the sun, moon, and the planets subsequently fall.

with cancer on the horizon, the sun is high in the sky; with capricorn, its hidden below the horizon. these differences are big in astrology, speaking to one of its central pillars of interpretation, but sun-focused it is not.

fortunately, many pop horoscope writers acknowledge this and note that they are discussing the sign that is rising in your chart, suggesting a sun sign focus only if your rising sign is unknown. unfortunately, most fans and skeptics alike have yet to get the memo. so here it is!

this could be us but you playin’. source: reddit.com

by extension, any scientific study or test of astrology that looks at sun signs as a basis of inquiry is likely to not find much there there. as chani nicholas told vox for netflix’s explained, “horoscopes themselves are like a gateway drug … obviously they’re not going to be incredibly specific because [astrologers are] writing one horoscope for one twelfth of the population.”

a drug, eh? we’ll look more at horoscopes in part two of this series. for now, there’s one more debunking to debunk.

3. there is no causal mechanism

as carl sagan notes in cosmos, the attending doctor at your birth has more gravitational effect on you than the planets; electromagnetism likewise drops off heavily in its effects across the vast distances of space. there are still significant mysteries to unravel about the cosmos — the true nature of gravity, the solution to dark matter and energy — but no suggestion of a fifth fundamental force for astrology to turn to. without a plausible causal mechanism, how could astrology possibly work?

who knows? regardless, the absence of a known causal mechanism is insufficient in itself to dismiss astrology as a practice. if we were to extend this logic, we could not have lodestone compasses before understanding magnetism, evolution without mendelian inheritence, or, as carl sagan noted in response to the “objections to astrology” manifesto, continental drift without mantle convection (p.302–303). of course the gap between these proposed theories and their accumulation of evidence was a lot shorter than the many millennia astrology has had, and the burden of proof should lie with exceptional propositions like, say, celestial correlations to earthly events, but there are stronger bases for rejecting astrology.

it’s worth noting that astrology has thought about this problem for a while: do the celestial bodies cause, or merely signify?

if only it were so easy. source: badastronomy.com

until the 1980s and 90s and the recovery and translation of many ancient astrological texts, causality held sway in modern astrologer’s minds, following ptolemy’s cosmology in the tetrabiblos. as the one old book without a broken transmission, it was believed to representative of ancient astrology’s philosophy and techniques — which it’s not (p.103). in his defense, ptolemy likely saw the need for astrology to conform to the natural sciences, which historian nicholas campion argues helped astrology survive into the renaissance despite its condemnation among christians as divination (p. 147). ptolemy emphasized a causal relation between the perfect motions of the sky and messy flux of earthly events, creating a system of hot, dry, cold, and wet effects by the planets on the ‘sublunar realm’ and its four classical elements of fire, air, earth, and water.

clearly he was off the mark. nonetheless, through the 20th century and astrology’s modern revitalization, there’s been many attempts by astrologers to follow in ptolemy’s footprints and come up with a causal mechanism. fortunately there’s no longer talk of cosmic rays but other dubious takes still persist.

sure, there’s no shortage of correlations between lunar cycles and the natural world, but no evidence of its effects on humans. the human menstrual cycle matches the lunar cycle, but it doesn’t for other animals. the fact that the moon influences the tides, tides are water, and so are humans makes a bad but too-often recited trope of causality.

there are, however, two scientific observations that do partially dovetail with astrology:

the first is a twist on the oft-mocked concept that forces from the planets effect us directly, instead suggesting that the planets cause tidal effects in the sun, influencing the solar weather that interacts with earth’s electromagnetic field, which then effects the earth. this is backed up by evidence that suggests alignments of venus, the earth, and jupiter are likely responsible for the sun’s 11.8-year sunspot cycle and other solar events, along with observations that it’s awfully close to the 11.86 synod cycle of jupiter and saturn. this is linked to climate changes and, more speculatively, economic cycles.

source: http://thecanadianinstituteforappliedastronomy.yolasite.com/

further, astrologers have recently taken to studies that suggest the season of one’s birth influences health outcomes; scientists are still puzzling out why, but the effects of light exposure on the development of the circadian rhythm is highlighted as a likely mechanism. however, what this does for suggesting a potential physicalist mechanism may contradict standard zodiacal qualities assigned to the seasons and suggests physiological variations based on one’s place of birth that likewise deviate from astrological theory.

buuut maybe not? i’ve also found two references to correlations between occupations and times of birth, which correspond a bit more with astrological predictions. unfortunately, the articles provide little information and i’m still trying to get my hands on the source material.

this leaves us with some of the planets effecting the sun, which somehow effects fetal development, which somehow effects life outcomes. it’s something, but leaves out much of astrology.

for a full dose of skeptical vaccination, i think it’s worth reviewing two commonly cited speculations for a robust causal underpinning of astrology, both extending concepts described above:

first comes from michel gauquelin, a statistician and prolific researcher on astrology in the late 21st century. he found no correlations between standard astrological systems and reality, but did (?) find a correlation between certain positions of venus, mars, jupiter, saturn, and the moon at one’s birth and particular types of professional eminence. the controversy of his work centered on the mars effect and athletes, which was, in theory, the most objective. unsurprisingly, the debate was still incredibly messy; accusations of skewed and unreliable data were levied at gauquelin and replication studies alike. confirmatory results were suppressed and leaked, only to be found in error. decades on, it’s a sad record of bad blood between science and astrology that shook the latter’s community. as philosopher paul feyerabend put his response to the “objection to astrology” article, “it is interesting to see how closely both parties approach each other in ignorance, conceit and the wish for easy power over minds.”

on the left, the statistical results. on the right, its relationship to the astrological houses. modified. source: theastrologypodcast.com

gauquelin’s work highlights the angles of the sky that astrology cites as places of prominence, but their difference from standard delineations is similar to that of the tropical and sidereal zodiacs. also, this is just correlation; the record of its reality still isn’t settled, but appears weak.

next let’s turn to percy seymour, astronomer-turned-astrological theorist whose theories extend gauquelin’s research and the scientifically-established tidal force effects on the sun. in brief: the gravity of mercury to neptune pull on the sun, particularly when these astronomical bodies are aligned, in opposition, or at squares, causing disturbances that effect the solar winds. along with the moon, these winds cause fluctuations in the earth’s magnetosphere, and therefore effect worldly events.

in particular, given the prevalence of animals tuned to the earth’s magnetism, percy believes the solar system partially shapes our destiny “not altering what we have inherited genetically but are labeling our basic inherited personality characteristics,” with long-term planetary cycle patterns coming from “the phenomenon by which the fetus is phase locked to specific cycles.”

the effect of earth’s magnetosphere on on us surface dwellers is dubious but unknown. nonetheless, if all of the above can be proven as intimations of astrology’s causal mechanisms, parts of all four major pillars of astrology are validated, but it doesn’t bode well for the majority of the elegant interlocking systems that make up the practice. divinatory reading of the sky and geocentricity is out. pluto’s astrological power is in question. astrology wouldn’t explain much about the human condition, becoming a modifier of genetics, not an all-encompassing explanation.

it could all be moot, however; many astrologers have already moved on from mechanistic explanations.

there is a growing consensus among astrological sophisticates *ahem* that this emphasis on physical causality has been a bad call, particularly following the controversies around the mars effect. many astrologers instead believe we should return to an idea of acausality, to look at the celestial bodies and their movements as corresponding to, but not compelling, earthly events, even adopting the definitively unscientific label of divination. these ideas are exemplified in concepts like carl jung’s synchronicity, or the analogy the planets are like clocks of a hand indicating the qualities of time, a recapitulation of the hermetic maxim “as above, so below.”

but this is of course supposes a radical departure from the physicalist scientific worldview, flirting with quantum woo and an ontology that can be hard to swallow.

we’ll look into that in part two.

tl;dr

so where does that leave us? hopefully with no one bringing up the shifting constellations as disproving astrology ever again, nor believing astrology reduces everyone to twelve types of people, or that an absence of a causal mechanism is reason enough to abandon the practice.

the worst of the fake news on astrology can be left behind us, but there’s a good amount still ahead.