“Religions are humanity’s attempts to talk to the weather” is perhaps one of the oldest spirituality jokes known, and is funny because of the element of truth in it. In the early days of mankind understanding and predicting the weather played a key role in our survival, along with the behaviour of animals and the yearly cycle of plants. So methods of predicting where good hunting could be found and the right time to plant plants for the best yield quickly became established. These were the early beginnings of predictive systems such as Astrology.
Astrology had its beginning in early farming communities which used the time of year when certain stars came up as a cue to plant crops, along with lunar planting. At first these were used mainly to predict when was the best time to plant and harvest various crops but, as more empiric observations were made, it began to be applied to other areas such as medicine and predicting the future. At first prediction was limited to the destiny of the country and its ruler, but as the art developed, it permeated society and within a relatively short time it was not only being used to predict events, but even when the best time was to start a project. Harkening back to its agrarian roots.
Even today with precession it is still a remarkably useful art. Precession is the Earth’s ‘wobble’ around its axis caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon on the Earth. Our planet is not completely spherical because of the molten rock under the crust. This, plus its rotation, has caused a bulge at the equator, and the effect of the gravity of the moon on this causes the Earth to rock slightly around its point of rotation. It takes 25,800 years to return to an original position or, to put it another way since the inception of Astrology in 600 BCE the area of the sky that the Sun appears to be in has moved from Pisces to Aries on March 11 rather than the traditional Aries start date of March 21.
When Astrology was first developed the beginning of Aries was connected with Ostara, and the Spring Equinox which was then almost a month earlier. Every two or three years during slow news or no news times this fact makes anywhere from a page three to page seven story, sometimes combined with the new ‘sign’ of Ophiuchus (Nov 29 to Dec 17) which the Sun appears to travel through in this era due to the precession. None the less many of the archetypal, personality attributes, and energy associations with the astrological signs and houses still seem to hold true with their original timings and dates. This has lead to some interesting speculation re the underlying reasons. Some mainstream scientists suggest that the traditional timings work well for personality attributes because of the different diets of the mother at different times of the year. This may be aided, amplified, or on an equal footing with the light levels during pregnancy affecting hormones of the mother and, in turn, the neurological and biochemical makeup of the developing foetus
A more Earth-centric idea that I have heard of from some Pagans to explain the usefulness of Astrology is that the various etheric, gravitational, and magnetic fields of the Earth, Moon, and planets have an effect on the psychology and physiology of people. Because these fields interconnect with each other they can work in the same way attributed to the energies of classical Astrology.
The Witch who was postulating this to me used the changes in his home- made colloidal silver as an example. He made it by a simple electrolysis process which he kept secret at the time, but now you can find the details on several sites on the internet. Each batch was different in taste and concentration although the same equipment was used each time. This the Witch put down to the phases of the moon and cited the work of Eugen and Lily Kolisko in the 1920s who noticed the effects of the phases of the Moon on silver chloride salts, especially at the times of lunar eclipses. They placed cylinders of special filter paper in dishes that held specific amounts of the silver chloride and found that the patterns of the capillary action of metal salts changed in repeatable ways corresponding with lunar events at the time. Further investigation with other metal salts using the same method showed that solar system events, involving the positions of various planets relative to each other and the Earth, were mirrored in the capillary action patterns.
Considering how earlier civilizations interacted with the world around them, both with metal working and agriculture it is probable that these are the energies that underpin astrology and make it so useful. Its influence on human and animal events is probably a combination of celestial and earth energies combined with the synchronistic effect of consciousness on a quantum level. Namely that the lunar and planetary energies affect sentient beings who, in turn have an effect on their environment through their conscious and unconscious interaction with it.
These explanations could well be the reason that, despite precession, astrology is still an effective tool for prediction, therapy, and magickal use. The interaction of celestial and local energy fields could also be behind the development of different types of astrology throughout the world as it would be attuned to the culture and metabolisms of that area. I have heard that research along these lines, particularly in the medical field in India and Russia to understand the bioplasmic/pranic causes of disease. Also why some procedures and drugs are ineffective or dangerous at certain times of the month, particularly those that involve blood clotting and loss which seem to be related to the lunar cycle. As the cultures with a more environmentally based worldview, come to occupy more of the world stage due to the rise of their economies, we could see evidence backed research showing how this works.