HOW ASTROLOGY WORKS - By JKS Astrology

ja7me · Mar 23, 2016

HOW DOES ASTROLOGY WORK? This is my take on it:

I am an engineer with an obsessive interest in astrology. I use my engineering skills to understand astrology. Let me explain how I think astrology works. To do this I first need to define what an engineer is:

The definition of an engineer:
‘is someone who is concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical, societal and commercial problems’.

I believe these skills are relevant to astrology. The fundamental basics of astrology is about observing patterns and cycles. Then correlating this with human behavior.

Engineering and scientific disciplines use the same process to solve problems. Many famous scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein would have observed patterns in the cosmos. They came up with a mathematical formula to explain the pattern occurring.

I believe the best way to understand astrology is to compare it to weather predictions. People many years ago would not have thought weather prediction to be possible. However, it just so happens we can today. We have come to realize there is some kind of order within the weather system. So it is logical to say why cant there be order to human behavior, I believe this order is called astrology!

Here are some things to consider:

* Modern human beings have been on Earth about 250,000 years.

* All life on Earth is forced to life by nature’s rules (i.e. change in seasons, weather, natural disasters, etc.)

* Overtime we become in synchronization with events occurring in space and the entire universe. We have to be in sync, as there is no choice!

* Because our solar system runs like clockwork, it is therefore predictable. As we are in sync with the universe, we are predictable.

* Predictability is increased when more statistical data is acquired. This is why weather systems are now predictable. Astrology will become more predictable once more statistical data is collected.

* This data has been collected since astrology began thousands of years ago. We now have the tools to collect this data more accurately. Unfortunately science is not interested in astrology, science could progress astrology massively.

I read an article a while ago. It was about predicting crime before it happens. They worked out crime could be predicted if there was enough information. A computer could collect vast amounts of statistical data (all linked to crime behavior). From that a prediction is made about where the next crime zone will be. A few other companies have been working on this theory too. I compare this to astrology.

Feel free to post your opinion on how does astrology work?

Feel free to visit my JKS Astrology Blog for more information like this.

Kind regards,

Jamie Slack
jksastrology.com

[this subject is much broader than Modern Astrology so moved to general Astrology Forum - Moderator]

Lilian35 · Apr 13, 2016

I used to read up on stuff like that when I was 14, 15 or around that age. So, I know a fair amount about it. I'm 27 now and I don't put any stock in it. Some people claim how eerily accurate it is to their own lives - but what you don't see is the years of priming your mind to look for certain traits in yourself.

waybread · Apr 13, 2016

ja7me said:
HOW DOES ASTROLOGY WORK? This is my take on it:

I am an engineer with an obsessive interest in astrology. I use my engineering skills to understand astrology. Let me explain how I think astrology works. To do this I first need to define what an engineer is:

The definition of an engineer:
‘is someone who is concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical, societal and commercial problems’.

I believe these skills are relevant to astrology. The fundamental basics of astrology is about observing patterns and cycles. Then correlating this with human behavior.

Engineering and scientific disciplines use the same process to solve problems. Many famous scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein would have observed patterns in the cosmos. They came up with a mathematical formula to explain the pattern occurring.

So far, so good. It's nice to see an engineer who doesn't dismiss astrology out of hand.

I believe the best way to understand astrology is to compare it to weather predictions. People many years ago would not have thought weather prediction to be possible. However, it just so happens we can today. We have come to realize there is some kind of order within the weather system. So it is logical to say why cant there be order to human behavior, I believe this order is called astrology!

Are you familiar with astro-meteorology? It goes back to ancient times. See, for example, Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos. Farmers' almanac long-range predictions are apparently based on this system. Also, people in ancient times as well as in more recent traditional societies had all kinds of weather-lore for short-term weather prediction. https://www.almanac.com/content/weather-predicting-do-it-yourself

But more to your point, weather prediction generally goes by probabilities, not absolutes. I live in a fairly remote part of the Canadian Rockies, where our nearest small town's 5-day weather forecasts seem to change daily, and then the weather itself can be different when it rolls up. Inland mountain weather in our climate is harder to predict than weather in a temperate coastal climate with lots of weather stations. (A cultural as well as a scientific parameter.)

Are you familiar with research in psychology (now often called behavioural science)? Generally they wouldn't expect all of their subjects in clinical trials to respond the same way. Which is why psychologists need to know statistics, i.e., probabilities. Then they have to consider what the outliers in their results are telling them. In astrology, we don't say things like, "Well, with Venus in Scorpio square your moon in Leo, you have an 80% chance of being the jealous type."

Here are some things to consider:

* Modern human beings have been on Earth about 250,000 years.

* All life on Earth is forced to life by nature’s rules (i.e. change in seasons, weather, natural disasters, etc.)

* Overtime we become in synchronization with events occurring in space and the entire universe. We have to be in sync, as there is no choice!

Well, yes and no. We have no choice about sheer physiological matters: the point at which a living human would freeze to death or die of dehydration, for example. We have to breathe to say alive.

But the difference between humans and, say, a barnacle, is CULTURAL ADAPTATION. Cold outside? I'll put on some warm clothes. Desert hiking? I'll wear a hat and pack extra water. A non-believer in astrology would see no link at all between her daily life and goings on in a distant star system. (And I say that as a Trekkie TNG.)

* Because our solar system runs like clockwork, it is therefore predictable. As we are in sync with the universe, we are predictable.

So pause here. Astronomers are still working out the why and wherefore of solar flares, and predicting ice ages. You're also making conclusions here based upon your second and third premises, which are problematic.

* Predictability is increased when more statistical data is acquired. This is why weather systems are now predictable. Astrology will become more predictable once more statistical data is collected.

Perhaps, but if your statistics do not show highly significant correlations, what then?

I would suggest that meteorologists are now better at forecasting long-range weather than their ancestors were in the past, but they are still often mistaken. Today one of my weather apps said we had a 50% chance of rain. Well, will it or won't it? I could flip a coin and get the same odds. Given that it either will or will not rain, a 50% chance of being completely wrong isn't a strong endorsement for the accuracy of weather prediction in my part of the world.

Moreover, you have yet to demonstrate that humans function like weather patterns. That is an assumption you haven't validated, and that few social and behavioural scientists today would accept. (And I'm not even speaking from a humanities or religious perspective: I won't go there.)

* This data has been collected since astrology began thousands of years ago. We now have the tools to collect this data more accurately. Unfortunately science is not interested in astrology, science could progress astrology massively.

Are you familiar with the statistical studies to date in astrology? These have not validated astrology's truth-claims. (You might start with the debate over the Gauquelin research.) Unfortunately, too few astrologers are familiar with social science research designs, and too few social scientists know enough about astrology to design a sensible study. I do hope these folks get together and design studies that meet both their considerations.

I read an article a while ago. It was about predicting crime before it happens. They worked out crime could be predicted if there was enough information. A computer could collect vast amounts of statistical data (all linked to crime behavior). From that a prediction is made about where the next crime zone will be. A few other companies have been working on this theory too. I compare this to astrology.

It would be interesting to learn what were the study's considerations-- and then crimes that were outliers in the data probably wouldn't be predicted by their model. Police departments for decades have been using GIS to determine crime locations so they know where to commit their resources. Your comparison may or may not be valid.

Feel free to post your opinion on how does astrology work?

It would be intriguing to think that a really beefy multivariate model could work.... but for a single individual, you would need to input a few thousand data-bytes. (Sign, house, degrees, aspects, angles, transits, progressions, and so on.) And then you still would be short of any type of causal mechanism of the type that functions in, say, neuroscience. In any type of social science study, you would need to define all kinds of personal variables, and determine multiple types of bias to eliminate, just from the get-go.

I'll give one example of the difficulties. Suppose we do a blind reading of the natal horoscope for a 30 year-old man, whom I'll call Mr. A, who has a fortunate-looking chart at birth. I might predict that A will have a fortunate life. But a more seasoned astrologer predicts just the opposite. Why? Because she notes some difficult transits during A's 12th year of life, and concludes that A probably suffered a serious head injury then, which turns out to be correct.

Or take Baby B who also has a fortunate-looking chart. But in a blind chart reading, or just transparently off the horoscope by itself, we didn't learn that B is a woman of colour who grew up in a highly segregated society, which denied her many opportunities despite her talents. So we have to qualify "fortunate" in the context of the individual's cultural environment.

In terms of how a birth chart plays out in a real life, it is only a potential, not a biography. You also have to account for change over time, external environmental factors, and then internal factors that are not intrinsic to the horoscope. A horoscope on its own does not tell you the person's sex or ethnicity, although these have huge impacts on how the person's life plays out. So what additional non-horoscopic data would you need to consider?

And noting (as some unscientific astrologers have done) that the sun is the source of life, the moon rules tides, and so on doesn't explain human behaviour at the level of specificity at which astrology operates.

For example, if someone has a second house ruled by Saturn, which happens to be squared by Pluto, I might predict financial difficulties-- even bankruptcy. But there is nothing "up in the sky" that transparently gives this information. Each planet, sign, house and sensitive point has multiple meanings.

And then whose astrology: modern western, traditional western, Vedic? They are not the same.

Feel free to visit my astrology blog for more information like this.

Kind regards,

Jamie Slack
jksastrology.com

Hey, thanks. And good luck with your research.

Lilian35 · Apr 15, 2016

Astrology is a vocabulary of psychological symbols rather than anything like a science. If something about someone strikes you as interesting, but you have a hard time putting it into normal words, you can ask them for their birth date and look up a natal chart.
Even though most of their planets and signs will have nothing to do with what caught your attention, somewhere in there, almost every time, is some combination of symbols which can help you to express what it is which caught your interest. In that sense I think Astrology is useful - if you already have an intuition of what someone is like, Astrology can help you express that intuition. But it cannot be used to make predictions, and that's why it does not qualify as a science.

david starling · Apr 15, 2016

I think "WHY ASTROLOGY CAN BE MADE TO WORK" is more appropriate. In engineering, terms must have precise definitions and clearly delineated sub-sets. So, first, "Astrology" must be fully described in a clear, accurate way, all possible variations included. Next, describe what is meant by "works"; and then, why it works for some and not others; and why, regarding those it does work for, in what WAY it works, variations included.
An analogy: An engineer studies a bicycle, and is able to describe mathematically HOW it COULD be MADE to WORK. But not whether a particular person will CHOOSE to utilize its potential; be ABLE to do so; or WHAT that person will use it for (i.e. transportation, competition-racing, or exercise). And, to be able to say "How Bicycles Could be Made to Work", many different bicycle models must be included in the study.
Whatever Astrological model is used, and for whatever purpose it's being used, it works for a particular Astrologer because that Astrologer MAKES it work. Here, in the Community, we talk shop. "This works for me, what works for you? How can I make this or that work better for me? Here's something I've discovered works for my purposes, you might want to try it out. Etc."
Bottom line: "How Astrology Works" and "Why Astrology Works" will vary from one astrologer to another. The "herding cats" analogy definitely applies!

waybread · Apr 16, 2016

Basically there are two sides to astrology: what's going on in the heavens, and then the human part of the story.

We can look at an ephemeris, whether tropical or sidereal, and say when a planet is going to be at degree X of sign Y. But what does this mean in a nativity?

If we say that the sun in Leo confers a lot of pride, then we have to define "pride" in an operational manner and somehow show that sun-Leos are more proud than people with their sun, or for that matter, any planet, in some other sign.

There is a huge job to be done on the human side of the equation. We would have to carefully define pride and a large number of human emotions (jealousy, low self-esteem, anger, resentment, optimism, and so on) to get at the way astrology predicts people's personalities based upon horoscope placements.

noraleader · Apr 16, 2016

how astrology works..

i was schooled in a rigorous, select academic environment with high expectations.. i work in dsp and in my 40s, though i dropped out of university, i believe i can express some intimacy with scientific method and analytical consideration.

"however" i also have a similarly intensive experience with intuitive, "nonlinear" abstract forms of expression and methodologies (this is how i get into aleatoric/procedural music technology..)

so i'll tell you something:

how astrology works?

any way it can, bro, any way it can.

like any form of vital manifestation, especially those subject to the distended hyperactivity of capitalism, astrology proceeds any way it can from conception to "practice" - it flops out, it explodes through diamond pressures of strata, it cultivates forth, it mutates wildly, it seems, it seethes.. you get the picture.

astrology mart, astrology fiesta, astrology donkeys yarbles in a dirty wheelbarrow, all of them are dot com and exist under the sun for a moment in time.

each with virtues and flaws, truths and deceptions, each becoming, each unbecoming.

there is an older animated piece called "allegro non troppo" which sets a depiction of evolution to "bolero", this abstract, protean expression of reality becoming, moving forward however it is able is suitable here..

it's like jianghu... here comes our noble schooled erudite warrior, trained for a quarter century in the precise use of the jian.. a beggar impales his eyes with a pair of hurled chopsticks in the dark and dumps him with one sweep of his crutch.. and is then decapitated by the marauding northern hordes.. meanwhile, they all are in trepidation of the rumored legendary one who does not follow the rules of nature but seems to bend them at whim, the mountain ripples under the faintest whisper of their throat.

ja7me · Jun 13, 2016

waybread said:
So far, so good. It's nice to see an engineer who doesn't dismiss astrology out of hand.

Are you familiar with astro-meteorology? It goes back to ancient times. See, for example, Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos. Farmers' almanac long-range predictions are apparently based on this system. Also, people in ancient times as well as in more recent traditional societies had all kinds of weather-lore for short-term weather prediction. https://www.almanac.com/content/weather-predicting-do-it-yourself

But more to your point, weather prediction generally goes by probabilities, not absolutes. I live in a fairly remote part of the Canadian Rockies, where our nearest small town's 5-day weather forecasts seem to change daily, and then the weather itself can be different when it rolls up. Inland mountain weather in our climate is harder to predict than weather in a temperate coastal climate with lots of weather stations. (A cultural as well as a scientific parameter.)

Are you familiar with research in psychology (now often called behavioural science)? Generally they wouldn't expect all of their subjects in clinical trials to respond the same way. Which is why psychologists need to know statistics, i.e., probabilities. Then they have to consider what the outliers in their results are telling them. In astrology, we don't say things like, "Well, with Venus in Scorpio square your moon in Leo, you have an 80% chance of being the jealous type."

Well, yes and no. We have no choice about sheer physiological matters: the point at which a living human would freeze to death or die of dehydration, for example. We have to breathe to say alive.

But the difference between humans and, say, a barnacle, is CULTURAL ADAPTATION. Cold outside? I'll put on some warm clothes. Desert hiking? I'll wear a hat and pack extra water. A non-believer in astrology would see no link at all between her daily life and goings on in a distant star system. (And I say that as a Trekkie TNG.)

So pause here. Astronomers are still working out the why and wherefore of solar flares, and predicting ice ages. You're also making conclusions here based upon your second and third premises, which are problematic.

Perhaps, but if your statistics do not show highly significant correlations, what then?

I would suggest that meteorologists are now better at forecasting long-range weather than their ancestors were in the past, but they are still often mistaken. Today one of my weather apps said we had a 50% chance of rain. Well, will it or won't it? I could flip a coin and get the same odds. Given that it either will or will not rain, a 50% chance of being completely wrong isn't a strong endorsement for the accuracy of weather prediction in my part of the world.

Moreover, you have yet to demonstrate that humans function like weather patterns. That is an assumption you haven't validated, and that few social and behavioural scientists today would accept. (And I'm not even speaking from a humanities or religious perspective: I won't go there.)

Are you familiar with the statistical studies to date in astrology? These have not validated astrology's truth-claims. (You might start with the debate over the Gauquelin research.) Unfortunately, too few astrologers are familiar with social science research designs, and too few social scientists know enough about astrology to design a sensible study. I do hope these folks get together and design studies that meet both their considerations.

It would be interesting to learn what were the study's considerations-- and then crimes that were outliers in the data probably wouldn't be predicted by their model. Police departments for decades have been using GIS to determine crime locations so they know where to commit their resources. Your comparison may or may not be valid.

It would be intriguing to think that a really beefy multivariate model could work.... but for a single individual, you would need to input a few thousand data-bytes. (Sign, house, degrees, aspects, angles, transits, progressions, and so on.) And then you still would be short of any type of causal mechanism of the type that functions in, say, neuroscience. In any type of social science study, you would need to define all kinds of personal variables, and determine multiple types of bias to eliminate, just from the get-go.

I'll give one example of the difficulties. Suppose we do a blind reading of the natal horoscope for a 30 year-old man, whom I'll call Mr. A, who has a fortunate-looking chart at birth. I might predict that A will have a fortunate life. But a more seasoned astrologer predicts just the opposite. Why? Because she notes some difficult transits during A's 12th year of life, and concludes that A probably suffered a serious head injury then, which turns out to be correct.

Or take Baby B who also has a fortunate-looking chart. But in a blind chart reading, or just transparently off the horoscope by itself, we didn't learn that B is a woman of colour who grew up in a highly segregated society, which denied her many opportunities despite her talents. So we have to qualify "fortunate" in the context of the individual's cultural environment.

In terms of how a birth chart plays out in a real life, it is only a potential, not a biography. You also have to account for change over time, external environmental factors, and then internal factors that are not intrinsic to the horoscope. A horoscope on its own does not tell you the person's sex or ethnicity, although these have huge impacts on how the person's life plays out. So what additional non-horoscopic data would you need to consider?

And noting (as some unscientific astrologers have done) that the sun is the source of life, the moon rules tides, and so on doesn't explain human behaviour at the level of specificity at which astrology operates.

For example, if someone has a second house ruled by Saturn, which happens to be squared by Pluto, I might predict financial difficulties-- even bankruptcy. But there is nothing "up in the sky" that transparently gives this information. Each planet, sign, house and sensitive point has multiple meanings.

And then whose astrology: modern western, traditional western, Vedic? They are not the same.

Hey, thanks. And good luck with your research.

Hi Waybread,

Wow, very detailed points there. Most of which I agree with. Apologies for this late response.

Yes I have heard of astro-meteorology, but unable to find a lot of information / research on this. It appears that Astrology as we know it was born from astro-meteorology. As the ancients would have tried to use celestial bodies to forecast weather.

Yes you are correct, weather forecast is not an absolute science, they are predictions. But this is how I view astrology, it is essentially a prediction. And the prediction is based on statistical data from patterns noticed in the past.

I like your point at the end:
'And then whose astrology: modern western, traditional western, Vedic? They are not the same'.

This is my answer to this:

What ever astrology system was used to collect the most statistical data over the years. Which I believe to be tropical astrology.

It does not matter about where the signs are in the sky, its all about the data from those positions collected over the years.

Kind regards,

Jamie Slack
JKS Astrology

Inline · Jun 14, 2016

ja7me said:
I read an article a while ago. It was about predicting crime before it happens. They worked out crime could be predicted if there was enough information.

A computer could collect vast amounts of statistical data (all linked to crime behavior). From that a prediction is made about where the next crime zone will be. A few other companies have been working on this theory too.

Yes, and wanna bet it's astrological data they're collecting....... :innocent:

Cap · Jun 14, 2016

Inline said:
Yes, and wanna bet it's astrological data they're collecting.......

...in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Cap · Jun 14, 2016

I don't think that anyone can come up with explanation of how astrology works while at the same time being firmly grounded in the philosophy of materialism. Only when we shift from materialism towards idealism, from a clockwork model to consciousness model of reality, we can start to appreciate wonders of astrology. This doesn't mean that scientific laws are not true, scientific laws can be identically applied in both models. What is different is interpretation.

Everything around us, including ourselves is 99.9999999999996% of empty space.

Any explanation of astrology based on materialistic principles is doomed to fail.

david starling · Jun 14, 2016

Cap said:
I don't think that anyone can come up with explanation of how astrology works while at the same time being firmly grounded in the philosophy of materialism. Only when we shift from materialism towards idealism, from a clockwork model to consciousness model of reality, we can start to appreciate wonders of astrology. This doesn't mean that scientific laws are not true, scientific laws can be identically applied in both models. What is different is interpretation.

Everything around us, including ourselves is 99.9999999999996% of empty space.

Any explanation of astrology based on materialistic principles is doomed to fail.

The materialistic, clockwork model anchors the ethereal, higher-awareness nature of Astrology. If you have only the former, you don't really understand Astrology. If you "throw the Clock away", you're not really practicing Astrology. They work together.

Cap · Jun 15, 2016

david starling said:
The materialistic, clockwork model anchors the ethereal, higher-awareness nature of Astrology. If you have only the former, you don't really understand Astrology. If you "throw the Clock away", you're not really practicing Astrology. They work together.

You cannot have it both ways, those two are polar opposites in philosophy.

Materialism - consciousness is in your head
Idealism - your head is in consciousness (and everything else, planets, laws of physics, universe)

Problem with your view is: matter is already ethereal in its nature. Everything consists of 99.9999999999996% empty space (this is not me making up random numbers, that's scientific fact). According to modern physics, as strange as it sounds, planets are not there when nobody's looking.

That being said, good luck to everyone with clockwork model attempts :lol:

david starling · Jun 15, 2016

Cap said:
You cannot have it both ways, those two are polar opposites in philosophy.

Materialism - consciousness is in your head
Idealism - your head is in consciousness (and everything else, planets, laws of physics, universe)

Problem with your view is: matter is already ethereal in its nature. Everything consists of 99.9999999999996% empty space (this is not me making up random numbers, that's scientific fact). According to modern physics, as strange as it sounds, planets are not there when nobody's looking.

That being said, good luck to everyone with clockwork model attempts

What does "clockwork model" mean, exactly?

Relative to Astrological readings?

Cap · Jun 15, 2016

david starling said:
What does "clockwork model" mean, exactly? Relative to Astrological readings?

Since this thread is about "how astrology works", what I mean by 'clockwork model' is not clockwork-like motion of planets around the Sun but scientific materialism also known as "clockwork model of the Universe" which essentially lost it's credibility 100 years ago, sadly it dies very slowly among general public.

ja7me · Jun 17, 2016

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to thank everyone for the comments so far. Some people may not believe Astrology can have a scientific theory. I believe there is one, but it has just has not been discovered yet.

I am surprised many Astrologers seem to learn astrology without considering why it actually works.

I have read alot about the history of astrology. It did start of very basic, but over the years it has been advanced until the model we have today.

It seems like the majority of 'scientific' astrology tests involve full natal chart analysis. This is a minefield as natal chart interpretations are compared with personality profiles. The data is therefore very subjective. Some people could agree with the data, while others wont.

Maybe we need to focus on the basics. Such as comparing just the sun or moon, with life on earth.

Kind regards,

Jamie Slack

It is important for astrologers to continue this trend.

Oddity · Jun 17, 2016

ja7me said:
I have read alot about the history of astrology. It did start of very basic, but over the years it has been advanced until the model we have today.

If this is what you came away with from reading the history of astrology, I need to ask what - or whom - you've been reading about it. I'm guessing it didn't involve any of the actual ancient, medieval, or even Renaissance guys.

ja7me · Jun 17, 2016

Oddity said:
If this is what you came away with from reading the history of astrology, I need to ask what - or whom - you've been reading about it. I'm guessing it didn't involve any of the actual ancient, medieval, or even Renaissance guys.

Hello Oddity,

Sorry, I know I was being a bit vague. Your right the history is very complex, and involves different civilizations, and different periods in time. And the history does date back thousands of years. I even wrote about some of this history on my astrology blog.

Although the very beginnings of astrology seem to be lost in history. It seems like the ancients would have first observed the positions of the sun and moon, then correlate this with weather and crops. Then eventually correlating this to human Behavior.

This is what I mean by trying to prove the basics of astrology. It seems like the scientific tests that have been carried out try and prove the system as a whole, rather than the basic principles of it.

Any scientific understanding of anything usually starts of with proving the basics of the thing you are trying to understand.

Jamie

waybread · Jun 17, 2016

Actually, there are some good books out on the history of astrology, from ancient times to today. A good place to start would be Nicholas Campion's 2-volume set on The History of Astrology.

JUPITERASC · Jun 22, 2016

ja7me said:
Hello Oddity,

Sorry, I know I was being a bit vague.
Your right the history is very complex, and involves different civilizations, and different periods in time.
And the history does date back thousands of years. I even wrote about some of this history on my astrology blog.

Although the very beginnings of astrology seem to be lost in history.
It seems like the ancients would have first observed the positions of the sun and moon, then correlate this with weather and crops.
Then eventually correlating this to human Behavior.

This is what I mean by trying to prove the basics of astrology.
It seems like the scientific tests that have been carried out try and prove the system as a whole,
rather than the basic principles of it.

Any scientific understanding of anything usually starts of with proving the basics of the thing you are trying to understand.

Jamie

Astronomical observation begins with the early civilizations of Mesopotamia
where prominent constellations (the patterns formed by stars in the galaxy)
are recognized and named soon after 3000 BC.
Similarly the sky-watchers of Mesopotamia identify the five wandering stars
which with the sun and moon form the seven original 'planets'
(Greek for 'wanderers') http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ac32

Within Mesopotamia the Babylonians, 18th century BC, are the first great astronomers.
The minutes and seconds of modern astronomical measurement derive from their number system.
The Babylonians realize that the sequence of constellations along which the sun and the planets appear to move
in their passage through the heavens
can serve as a yardstick of celestial time if divided into recognizable and equal segments.
They select twelve constellations to represent these segments,
many of them identified by the names of animals.
The Greeks later provide the term for the zodiac when they describe it as the 'animal circle' (zodiakos kyklos).
The zodiac links constellations with times of the year
and the constellations have their own links with the gods.
So scientific observation of star positions merges with speculation about divine influence.
The zodiac, as a concept, is of use to both astronomers and astrologers.

HOW ASTROLOGY WORKS - By JKS Astrology

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