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Astrology, in its traditional form, is a type of divination based on the theory that the positions and movements of celestial bodies (stars, planets, sun, and moon) at the time of birth profoundly influence a person's life. In its psychological form, astrology is a type of New Age therapy used for self-understanding and personality analysis.
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The most popular form of traditional astrology is Sun Sign Astrology, the kind found in many daily newspapers which publish horoscopes. A horoscope is an astrological forecast. The term is also used to describe a map of the zodiac at the time of one's birth. The zodiac is divided into twelve zones of the sky, each named after a constellation which originally fell within its zone (Taurus, Leo, etc.). The apparent paths of the sun, the moon, and the major planets all fall within the zodiac. Because of the precession of the equinoxes, the equinox and solstice points have each moved westward about 30 degrees in the last 2,000 years. Thus the zodiacal constellations named in ancient times no longer correspond to the segments of the zodiac represented by their signs. In short, had you been born at the same time on the same day of the year 2,000 years ago, you would have been born under a different sign.
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Traditional Western astrology may be divided into tropical and sidereal. (Astrologers in non-Western traditions use different systems.) The tropical, or solar, year is measured relative to the sun and is the time (365 days, 5 hr, 48 min, 46 sec of mean solar time) between successive vernal equinoxes. The sidereal year is the time (365 days, 6 hr, 9 min, 9.5 sec of mean solar time) required for the earth to complete an orbit of the sun relative to the stars. The sidereal year is longer than the tropical year because of the precession of the equinoxes, i.e., the slow westward shift of the equinoctial points along the plane of the ecliptic at a rate of 50.27 seconds of arc per year, resulting from precession of the earth's axis of rotation. Sidereal astrology uses the actual constellation in which the sun is located at the moment of birth as its basis; tropical astrology uses a 30-degree sector of the zodiac as its basis. Tropical astrology is the most popular form and it assigns its readings based on the time of the year, while generally ignoring the positions of the sun and constellations relative to each other. Sidereal astrology is used by a minority of astrologers and bases its readings on the constellations near the sun at the time of birth.
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One of the common arguments in favor of astrology is the fallacious argument from popularity and tradition: astrology is believed by millions of people and it has survived for thousands of years. These claims are true, but are irrelevant to the "truth" of astrology. The ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians engaged in astrological divination some three thousand years ago. By 450 B.C.E. the Babylonians had developed the 12-sign zodiac, but it was the Greeks--from the time of Alexander the Great to their conquest by the Romans--who provided most of the fundamental elements of modern astrology.
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The spread of astrological practice was arrested by the rise of Christianity, which emphasized divine intervention and free will. During the Renaissance, astrology regained popularity, in part due to rekindled interest in science and astronomy. Christian theologians, however, warred against astrology, and in 1585 Pope Sixtus V condemned it. At the same time, the work of Kepler and others undermined astrology's tenets.
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