Astronomy Or Astrology?

Astronomy is the science of everything outside our planet’s atmosphere, from solar system objects to galaxies and beyond. Astronomers (people who study astronomy) use research and observation to help them understand what is out there, the physical properties of those things, their relationship to each other, and what it all might mean. Astrology, on the other hand, is not a science, but rather, a practice of interpreting the position of stars and planets in relation to time and events on Earth. It is a form of fortune-telling with a scientific “gloss.”

While astronomy and astrology are not the same, you’ll often hear them used interchangeably. Astronomy, however, is a purely scientific endeavor that seeks to understand the universe using no other means than its physical laws. Astrology, on the other hand, claims to use the positions of the sun and moon, planets, and stars to predict future events or behavior based on the individual’s date of birth. The two have separated since the Enlightenment period, when astronomy became the domain of no-nonsense, data-driven observations and verifiable predictions, and astrology was reduced to the realm of new-age superstition where considerably less educated future predictors use glass crystals and simplistic star charts.

Traditionally, astrology was a metaphysical science that presupposed the ‘law of correspondence’-as above so below-in which the ‘greater’ (stars in the sky) mirrors the ‘lesser’ (human activity) and thus predicts it. The ancient Egyptians used the star constellations to explain natural phenomena like ocean tides and menstrual cycles; the Greeks expanded on this cosmology with a sophisticated system of planetary correlations and predictive techniques that could be applied to specific moments in human history.

Modern Western and UK astrology is not as mystical as it once was but it has retained a spiritual outlook that co-exists with profane individualism and highlights dissonant modernity. There are a number of astrological practices which posit different combinations of symbolic possibilities, for example ‘judicial’ astrology focuses on personal affairs and the self, while ‘natural’ astrology relates to worldly events such as weather, natural disasters and war.

The scientific approach of astronomy lends itself well to a practical application of astrology. For example, the physics of gravity and tidal forces is sufficient to show that, if the astrological sign for a woman who is giving birth is Cancer, the obstetrician has six times the gravitational pull and two thousand billion times the tidal force of Mars (figures worked out by Roger Culver and Philip Ianna in their book Astrology: True or False, 1988). The same goes for the astronomical principles of planetary conjunctions, solstices, and other astrological events. This article argues that these can be interpreted as signs of potential change, indicating trends or directions which may either be altered by divine intervention or by the free exercise of human will. The ‘glimmerings of the starry kingdom’ offer a glimpse of possible futures and, in this sense, are indeed prophetic. This is, in fact, the central theme of astrophysics.