From Georg Feuerstein, et al., In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (p. 211):
Astrology is traditionally considered to be effective not because of any actual physical influence of the planets or stars upon the human individual or collectively, but because of the preestablished harmony between macrocosm and microcosm. In other words, astrology is deemed an expression of the inherent generative mechanism of Nature, which we can grasp, to some extent, through the theory of correspondences or equivalences [i.e., through sympathetic-magical thinking].
From Moti Ben-Ari’s Just A Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (p. 85-8):
The word “planet” means “wanderer,” because these apparently star-like objects were observed to move relative to the immense number of other stars, which just rose and set together. Once upon a time, it was believed that there were only five such planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—because only these can be discerned by the unaided eye….
As for the constellations, they have no physical meaning whatsoever. A constellation is simply a two-dimensional projection of a subset of the bright stars in a three-dimensional sector of the sky. Individual stars in a constellation may be thousands or tens of thousands of light years distant from each other, and they may be of widely differing sizes and temperatures, because a small, weakly radiating star may appear bright and thus significant simply because it is relatively nearer….
From a vantage point in the universe “off to the right” of our position [on Earth, observing the Musca Borealis constellation in Aries, i.e., the Ram], you might still be able to see Sheratan and Hamal, but the other two stars would be out of your field of view. Ascribing “Ram-ness” to these four unrelated stars is totally arbitrary and meaningless, unless you believe that the Earth is a privileged vantage point. But that puts you back into the pre-Copernican dark ages.
The number of constellations and their boundaries is totally arbitrary. The arbitrariness is reinforced when we note that people of other civilizations (for example, the Chinese) saw a different number of constellations and gave them entirely different forms and meanings….
The definition of a constellation is based upon ancient observations performed with the unaided eye; now that telescopes have been invented, the projection of the region of space attributed to a constellation will contain hundreds or thousands of other stars that could not have been observed before its invention. There is no a priori reason to assume that these stars have less influence on our lives than the ones that are interpreted as forming the constellations simply because they were easy for the Greeks and Babylonians to see.
Since the stars are moving with tremendous velocities, the two-dimensional projection changes over time, so the constellations are not an “eternal” characteristic of the universe….
And that, you see, is why the claim that astrology “works” through sympathetic-magical “correspondences” rings even more of a death-knell for the validity of that art, than if known or yet-to-be-discovered forces were involved. (Ben-Ari successfully debunks those other possibilities, on p. 89-92.) Because, if the positions of the stars (and thus the shapes of the constellations) are changing, there cannot be a constant set of “correspondences” in pattern between any constellation or zodiacal sign, and the traits or behaviors of human beings supposedly being influenced by that sign.
The most basic and central concepts of astrology turn out to be a remnant of the Earth-centered worldview that was demolished by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo hundreds of years ago, yet the “theory” of astrology does not take this new knowledge into account.
Of course, the seeming predictive validity of astrology is all just the Forer effect anyway….
The five planets mentioned above, plus the sun and moon, constitute the seven heavenly bodies, each of which gives its name, directly or indirectly, to one of our days of the week: Sunday is the day of the sun, Monday the day of the moon, and Tuesday the day of Tiw (the Anglo-Saxon counterpart of the Roman god of war, Mars). Wednesday, then, is Wotan’s day (a corrupted form of the day of Mercury), while Thursday is Thor’s day. (Thor was the Norse god of thunder and the sky, akin to the Roman god of the sky and of rain, Jupiter. In German, Thursday is “Donnerstag,” or “Thunder Day.”) Friday is the day of Freya (she being the Norse goddess of love, cf. Venus), and Saturday, finally, is Saturn’s day.
There are also seven stars in the Big Dipper, which itself circles rather magically around the North Star, while even pointing to the latter (in a line along the two stars in its ladle).
If you wonder where the “magical” nature of the number seven came from, and why it is so prevalent in religion and mythology, those two natural phenomena (i.e., the visible planets, and the stars of the Big Dipper), visible to everyone in the northern hemisphere regardless of their latitude, are more than sufficient to account for that. (There is no “South Pole” star; but there is, conveniently and not coincidentally, the Coalsack Nebula in the same position, which appears as a starless “hole” in the southern sky. So, although people in the southern hemisphere didn’t have the seven stars of the Big Dipper to find magical “correspondences” with, they still had the seven heavenly bodies.)
Even with no knowledge at all of anatomy, it’s easy to pick out the following major regions of sensation in the body: one’s sexual organs, a full bladder, an empty stomach, the beating of one’s heart, the vibrations of one’s voice, the eyes which are our primary means of gathering information about the world, and the fontanelle opening at the crown of the head, observed in newborn children (and associated in sympathetic magic with the North-Star “hole” in the hemispheric “cranium” of the sky).
Those easily discernable regions correspond closely with the seven chakras. And indeed, there have been numerous attempts in recent centuries to locate the chakras at the endocrine glands, and/or centers of the nerve plexuses along the spine:
It is noted by many that there is a marked similarity between the positions and roles described for chakras, and the positions and roles of the glands in the endocrine system, and also by the positions of the nerve ganglia (also known as “plexuses”) along the spinal cord (branching to plexuses by endocrine glands or organs), opening the possibility that two vastly different systems of conceptualization have been brought to bear to systemize insights about the same phenomenon. By some, chakras are thought of as having their physical manifestation in the body as these glands and their subjective manifestation as the associated emotional, mental, and spiritual experiences. (Wikipedia)
And since the axis of the (serpent/tree/river/spinal-symbol) Milky Way always passes close to the North Star (in exact line with the literal World Axis) which the seven stars of the Big Dipper point to, it would have been very natural, by the “theory of correspondences,” for the spiritualities of pre-scientific societies (esp. in the northern hemisphere) to associate seven “stars” or chakras with the human cerebrospinal axis.
Of course, pre-scientific people had no idea why the North Star was stationary in the sky, while all of the fixed stars rotated like clockwork around it. (Literally like clockwork, completing a revolution in 24 hours, so that the Big Dipper’s rotation around the Pole Star can be used to tell time.) On the contrary, since even the most complex ancient Grecian models saw the universe as being composed of concentric crystal spheres revolving around a stationary Earth, they had no idea that North Star appeared to be stationary in the night sky precisely because of the Earth. But, would that not have made that “still point” all the more magical? To be singled out in the sky for no apparent reason … while being so near to the serpentine Milky Way.
Astrology sometimes do work and it can also predict the personality of a person.“~
my sister do believe very much in astrology. maybe the stars might have something to do with our futures,,’
i read a lot of atrology stuffs on the internet because i believe so much in astrology~-”