How Does Astrology Work?
Perhaps the answer lies less in the stars and more within us
My wife believes strongly in astrology.
I don’t.
I regard astrology, at least in its claims to predict personality, events and destiny from planetary positions, as a pseudoscience. There is no convincing, reproducible scientific evidence that the position of Saturn or Jupiter at the moment of my birth determines my personality or what will happen to me decades later.
And yet, I find astrology fascinating.
Not because I believe it predicts my future, but because so many perfectly intelligent, rational people find their astrological readings astonishingly accurate.
So rather than simply dismissing astrology, I find myself asking a much more interesting question:
How does astrology work?
Perhaps not astronomically.
But psychologically.
Are horoscopes describing
me
— or simply describing a human being?
Are horoscopes describing
meHuman beings are extraordinarily unique.
And extraordinarily similar.
We all experience love and loss, confidence and insecurity, success and failure, courage and fear, ambition and disappointment. We want independence, yet crave companionship. We can be rational one moment and intensely emotional the next.
Even apparently contradictory traits coexist comfortably within the same person.
I may be cautious about money and adventurous on a motorcycle. Someone may be formidable professionally but deeply vulnerable in an intimate relationship. An introvert among strangers may become the loudest person in a room full of close friends.
Now consider an astrological statement:
“You value your independence, but close relationships are extremely important to you.”
Most of us would recognise ourselves.
Or:
“You are generally confident, although at times you question your own decisions.”
Again — who doesn’t?
These statements aren’t necessarily wrong.
They may simply be too universally right.
The Barnum/Forer effect
Psychology has a name for this phenomenon: the Barnum effect, also called the Forer effect.
Psychologist Bertram Forer famously gave his students what they believed were individually prepared personality assessments based on a test they had taken.
In reality, they all received essentially the same description.
Yet the students rated these supposedly personalised assessments as remarkably accurate.
Why?
Because broad, plausible statements can apply to enormous numbers of people while still sounding deeply personal.
Astrology is particularly well equipped for this.
A birth chart offers planets, signs, houses, aspects, conjunctions, nakshatras, dashas and interactions among them. One feature can signify caution while another signifies adventure. One suggests emotional sensitivity while another suggests inner strength.
The resulting description can therefore say:
“You are emotionally sensitive, although you possess considerable inner strength.”
It sounds wonderfully perceptive.
And probably describes several billion human beings.
We participate in making predictions accurate
There is another fascinating process at work.
When someone gives us an apparently personalised statement, we search our own life for evidence that validates it.
An astrologer says:
“Your early forties were a period of significant transition or difficulty.”
Immediately, I search my autobiography.
Did I change jobs?
Did somebody fall ill?
Did I have financial problems?
Did a relationship change?
Did I move home?
Was I dissatisfied professionally?
Given a sufficiently broad period and sufficiently broad prediction, I will probably find something.
The astrologer supplied the statement.
I supplied the evidence.
Then confirmation bias and selective memory take over.
If ten predictions are made and three turn out to be uncannily accurate, those three become the story we tell our friends.
“You won’t believe what my astrologer told me!”
The seven misses quietly disappear.
We tend to see ourselves in what fits — and ignore the rest.
Human lives themselves follow patterns
There is another reason astrology can sound remarkably insightful.
Human lives aren’t random collections of unrelated events. They follow broad biological, social and psychological patterns.
Childhood dependence is followed by increasing independence. Education gives way to work. Relationships form. Families develop. Careers rise, stagnate or change direction. Parents age. Children become independent. Bodies change. Priorities evolve. Eventually achievement begins competing with questions of meaning and legacy.
At different stages of life, therefore, certain experiences are simply more probable.
Tell somebody in their twenties that important career and relationship decisions lie ahead and your odds are pretty good.
Tell someone in their forties that responsibilities and priorities are changing and you are unlikely to be completely wrong.
Tell someone entering later life that meaning, mentoring, legacy and mortality may become increasingly important, and you have probably made an intelligent observation.
It may have nothing to do with Jupiter.
It may simply mean you understand human life.
We don’t particularly like randomness
Perhaps astrology also satisfies something deeper.
Human beings seem uncomfortable with the idea that important things can happen for no reason at all.
When something goes wrong, an explanation is comforting.
“Saturn is going through a difficult house” may sometimes be psychologically easier to accept than:
“I made a bad decision.”
And perhaps easier still than:
“Nobody did anything wrong. Something bad simply happened.”
Astrology converts randomness into narrative.
The problem has a cause.
The difficult period has a beginning.
And, importantly, it will have an end.
There is tremendous psychological comfort in being told:
“This too shall pass.”
We are rather selective about causes
There is an amusing asymmetry in how human beings explain events.
When something goes wrong in our own lives, we readily recognise circumstances — bad luck, inadequate opportunity, difficult people, poor timing or perhaps an unfavourable planetary period.
When somebody else succeeds, we can quickly notice their advantages — wealthy parents, connections, education, opportunity or plain luck.
But when we succeed?
Our hard work, perseverance and ability suddenly become much easier to recognise!
Psychology describes related tendencies through concepts such as self-serving bias and attribution bias.
Astrology can provide yet another sophisticated vocabulary for these very human tendencies.
Could astrology have functioned as ancient psychotherapy?
This possibility fascinates me.
I offer it not as established history, but as a hypothesis.
Imagine visiting an accomplished astrologer hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Why would you go?
Probably because something was troubling you.
Your marriage was difficult.
Your business was failing.
Your child was unwell.
You were frightened.
You faced a decision.
You didn’t know what the future held.
The astrologer listened.
Asked questions.
Studied your chart.
Placed your difficulties within a larger narrative.
Then perhaps said:
“This is a difficult period, but it will pass.”
“You possess the strength to overcome it.”
“Don’t make an impulsive decision now.”
“Be patient.”
“Things should improve.”
What happened in that room?
Perhaps nothing astronomical whatsoever.
But something psychologically important may have happened.
Someone listened.
Chaos acquired structure.
Fear acquired an explanation.
Helplessness acquired direction.
And uncertainty acquired hope.
In modern language, elements of that interaction resemble supportive counselling, reframing, reassurance and motivational conversation.
Perhaps some accomplished astrologers were, consciously or unconsciously, excellent psychologists.
And then come the remedies
Indian astrology adds another fascinating dimension.
An astrologer may not merely identify a difficult planetary period. He or she may prescribe a remedy:
Perform a ritual.
Recite a prayer or mantra.
Visit a temple.
Observe a fast.
Feed animals.
Donate food.
Give money to the poor.
Help somebody in need.
From a scientific perspective, there is no established reason why feeding a hungry person should change Saturn’s position in the sky.
But psychologically and socially, quite a lot may change.
The distressed person is no longer merely waiting helplessly for fate to unfold.
They are doing something.
Ritual creates structure.
Prayer may create calm and reflection.
Repetition can focus attention.
Charity redirects attention from one’s own suffering toward somebody else’s.
Helping another human being can create meaning, connection and a sense of usefulness.
And perhaps most importantly, a prescribed action restores something that anxiety and misfortune frequently take away:
a sense of agency.
The planets haven’t moved.
But the person has.
That may itself have therapeutic value.
Predictions can even help create their own future
Suppose an astrologer tells somebody:
“The coming year is favourable for professional growth. Take opportunities when they appear.”
The person becomes more confident.
Applies for a job they might otherwise have avoided.
Speaks more assertively.
Takes a calculated risk.
Gets promoted.
A year later:
“The astrologer predicted it exactly!”
But what caused the outcome?
The planets?
Or did the prediction alter behaviour?
This is the territory of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Unfortunately, the reverse can happen too.
Tell someone repeatedly that this is a dangerous period, that relationships are threatened or business will suffer, and anxiety itself may alter behaviour and decisions in ways that increase the likelihood of problems.
Words can influence futures even when they cannot predict them.
That places considerable responsibility on anyone who claims to foresee another person’s life.
Then what really determines who we become?
My own model is much simpler.
I think our lives emerge from the interaction of four broad forces.
1. Genetics — the tools we receive
We arrive with biological equipment we never chose.
Genes influence our appearance, temperament, abilities, vulnerabilities, disease risks and countless other tendencies.
Genes don’t completely determine our destiny.
But they certainly influence our starting point.
2. Environment — where we are placed
Nobody chooses where they are born.
Country.
Family.
Language.
Culture.
Wealth or poverty.
Peace or war.
Parents.
Nutrition.
Education.
Social expectations.
A person with identical genetic potential placed in two radically different environments may live two radically different lives.
Our environment doesn’t necessarily determine our destination.
But it certainly determines much of the terrain from which we begin.
3. Experience and chance — what happens along the way
Then life starts throwing dice.
A teacher notices us.
We meet somebody.
A parent dies.
An accident happens.
A job application succeeds.
An opportunity unexpectedly appears.
A book changes our thinking.
We happen to be standing in exactly the right place at the right time — or the wrong one.
Some of the most consequential events in our lives were never planned.
They simply happened.
And afterwards, because human beings are storytelling creatures, we weave them into a coherent narrative and call it our life.
4. Volition — what we do with what we have
This, to me, is the most interesting variable.
We cannot choose our genes.
We have little control over our early environment.
We certainly cannot control chance.
But somewhere along the journey we develop varying degrees of volition — the capacity to act upon what we have been given.
We can learn.
We can unlearn.
We can leave an environment.
We can develop a skill.
We can recognise a weakness and compensate for it.
We can change careers.
Change habits.
Change relationships.
And sometimes even change how we respond emotionally to circumstances that once controlled us.
Our freedom is never absolute.
But neither are we merely passengers.
Perhaps one of the great journeys of life is the gradual expansion of that small territory over which we genuinely possess agency.
So is astrology useless?
I don’t think so.
Something need not be scientifically predictive to possess cultural, psychological or social value.
For thousands of years, humans have looked upward while trying to understand what happens down here.
Astrology may be one of humanity’s oldest systems of pattern recognition, storytelling and meaning-making — an elaborate language through which people explored personality, relationships, uncertainty, suffering, fate and hope.
Perhaps at various times it also served functions now partly occupied by counsellors, psychologists, mentors and coaches.
That is enormously interesting.
But recognising astrology’s possible psychological value does not require accepting its astronomical claims.
Pattern is not causation.
And comfort is not evidence.
Perhaps astrology is best used as a mirror
A horoscope may sometimes function rather like a mirror.
A mirror doesn’t tell us who we are.
It simply gives us something to look at.
An astrological interpretation can prompt useful questions:
Am I actually like this?
Why did this statement resonate with me?
Why did another irritate me?
What do I value?
What frightens me?
What patterns keep recurring in my relationships?
What could I change?
Those are excellent questions even if Mars had absolutely nothing to do with them.
The danger begins when reflection becomes surrender.
“My horoscope says I cannot do this.”
“Our charts don’t match, therefore our relationship cannot work.”
“My planetary period is bad, therefore failure is inevitable.”
At that point, a possible instrument of reflection has become an excuse for surrendering judgement and agency.
And that, to me, gives astrology far more power than it deserves.
Here are your tools. Now do what you can.
My own philosophy of life is somewhat different.
I sometimes imagine that God — or the Creator, Nature, the Universe, whatever name one prefers — hands each of us a box of tools.
The boxes aren’t equal.
Some receive extraordinary tools.
Some receive damaged ones.
Some receive very few.
Then we are dropped somewhere on Earth into circumstances we didn’t select.
Rich or poor.
Peace or conflict.
Opportunity or deprivation.
Health or disease.
Along the way, chance keeps changing the landscape.
And perhaps the Creator then simply says:
“Here are your tools. Here is your situation. Now do what you can.”
That idea appeals to me much more than destiny permanently written in the sky.
We don’t choose the hand we are dealt.
We don’t control every card that arrives afterwards.
But we retain some say in how we play the hand.
So I will continue to enjoy astrology.
I’ll discuss it.
I’ll read my horoscope.
I’ll marvel when something sounds uncannily accurate.
I’ll probably argue about it with my wife.
And I’ll remain fascinated by the remarkable psychological machinery through which it seems to work.
But when it comes to deciding how my life unfolds, I would rather accept the uncertainty, use whatever tools I have, learn a few more along the way — and take responsibility for whatever part of the journey is actually mine to influence.
Perhaps the stars can provide an interesting story.
But I would rather not hand them the pen.
