What is meant by astrology?

What’s your astrological sign. Everyone knows what his or her sign is. Even if you’re not a believer that the position of the planets at the exact time of your birth is an indicator of your personality and can determine events that happen to your throughout your lifetime, you’ve certainly met someone who does believe. At the very least, it’s harmless club conversation, a way to get to know someone. But is there something to it. Are horoscopes just hocus pocus. Or do they truly predict the course of events in your life.

Astrology is one of the earliest sciences known to human history. There are astrological records that originated in Babylon in 1645 BCE. Other cultures, such as Egyptian and Greek developed timekeeping and calendar methodologies. From the time man began to observe and track the world around him, he’s also contemplated his own relationship to the earth, stars, planets and elements around him. Astrology may have one way that earliest civilizations helped define their place in the cosmos. They perceived it as being greater than themselves; not something to be conquered, but to be understood.

While in modern times astrology is seen as new age and not as credible as sciences like astrophysics or chemistry, at one time it was as credible a science as any other. Astronomers like Galileo and Copernicus were also practicing astrologers. With the evolution of more quantitative sciences, astrology’s influence and position began to diminish. It enjoyed a resurgence in the 1930’s with the birth of England’s Princess Margaret. The London Sunday-Express ran her astrological profile, and that event was the origin of the modern daily horoscope in the newspapers.

Everyone who’s read a really good astrological profile of himself has to admit there are some uncanny coincidences.  Can we really pretend we’re so knowledgeable of the universe that we can reject the discipline of astrology. Maybe Shakespeare had something there when he wrote in Hamlet, *There are more things on heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.*