Let me start by saying that I am no astrologer. I couldn't interpret a natal chart to save my life. But I have had a fascination with astrology since I was a toddler. I actually new my zodiac sign, which people say to indicate their Sun sign, before I knew my home address.
(This did not make my kindergarten teacher happy, btw.)
What I have come to understand over the years is that astrology can be eerily predictive. Even if you can't understand why it works, it is simply too consistent to be mere chance. There is something there, albeit is something that most of us are not taught to understand.
In cultures where observation across millennia is how knowledge is devised and accepted as "truth," all that is needed is to track the locations of recognizable stars and planets and correlate with events. If you do that long enough you can probably come up with a reliable predictive system even if you don't know why it works. But I've been educated in the age of science, so I need a bit more.
So here's a little wild speculation for you, and I invite yours as well in the comments.
How it Might Work
You are an electromagnetic being.
Seriously. You are.
If you don't believe me, consider how a heart monitor works. It doesn't actually measure the physical contraction of your heart muscles to tell the doctors if your heart it still beating. It measures the electrical signals that tell your heart muscles to contract, then assumes that if the signals are being sent, the muscles must be contracting. (Occasionally someone dies because that is an inaccurate assumption.) Your heart is the largest center of electrical activity in your whole body, with your brain coming in a distance second. This is why a strong electrical charge to the heart can either stop it or restart it.
Now go back to your high school physics. Remember that law that basically says that wherever electrical current is flowing a magnetic field is generated? Well, it applies within the human body just like it applies to the rest of the world.
You are an electromagnetic being. As such, you are affected by electromagnetic fields and their fluctuations. You are also mostly made of water and are very much affected by gravitational forces.
Consider the moon and the tides.
Now that's universally accepted as astral bodies affecting physical matter here on Earth, because how can you deny it? We each get 365 chances every single year to observe it, and it is easily and incontrovertibly observed with the sense we trust the most, our vision. So we accept this one. Now really it is a composite of the Moon, the Sun and the Earth's gravitational fields interacting, but the Moon has the greatest influence in the situation.
So we accept that astral bodies can affect physical matter here on Earth. Apparently it particularly affects anything that is composed of lots of water. Hmmm.
So electromagnetic fields, gravitational fields, all these coming from these huge astral bodies and affecting these tiny little watery electromagnetic bodies.
So maybe the position of all this relative to where we are located at the time we first pop out into the world and start developing a relationship to the world that is independent of our mother for the first time, maybe it leaves some sort of imprint.
Maybe there are consistent patterns to how the position of say a dozen different astral bodies affect our body's electromagnetic field. And maybe the combination of gravitational fields from all these planets also does. So we get this imprint in those first few hours after birth that sets us up for some predictable patterns going forward.
Choice vs Determinism
Now my understanding of astrology is that it's predictive of influences, but that we still get to create a life on our own terms. It may be easier to default to certain patterns if we're being unconscious and reactive, but self-aware choice is always an option if we bother to take responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings and reactions. But a lot of people are running on autopilot much of the time, so astrology tends to have a pretty good predictive track record.
Well again, this is just idle speculation. But I'm really curious to know what you think, especially if you really know astrology and how it really works.
(photo source: pixabay)