Is astrology a science?

No. Astronomy is a science. Astrology aligns more with the humanities.

Science is best used as a method to investigate what is material and precisely measurable. I appreciate and acknowledge the importance of science, but not everything in life can be approached through rigid empiricism. Astronomy is quantitative, whereas astrology is more qualitative. The human experience cannot easily be quantified.

Astrology is more comparable to nonscientific disciplines such as language, politics, literature, law, philosophy, music, design, ethics, history, etc. Like these subjects, astrology has a systematic set of rules, but there are qualitative elements that make it impossible to measure through quantitative means.

Why don’t I relate to my sun sign?

Sun signs are an extremely watered down version of astrology popularized by pop culture. There is a time and place for them, but people are much more complex than just their sun sign description. You need to look at your birth chart in it’s entirety (or at least get to know your Moon and Rising signs).

Is astrology a threat to my free will?

No. You are still responsible for your actions and astrology in no way removes personal agency.

However, the subject may impact your outlook on determinism vs free will. In a society where people think that with enough positive thinking and hard work, they can get whatever they want, suggesting anything otherwise typically brings about negative reactions. Astrology involves entertaining a level of determinism that most people are not comfortable addressing.

Through personal observation, I have come to the conclusion that yes, some things in life are probably predetermined. On the contrary, we have no way of proving that everything is predetermined and that our choices don’t matter. Since we probably will never have a definite answer, we have to at least live as if our choices do matter.

Do the planets affect me?

Not necessarily. Theoretically, astrology is reflective, not affective.

Astrology doesn’t cause anything to happen; it’s reflective of what is happening.

A clock is a helpful analogy. When the clock shows that it is 6pm, it is just showing us what time it is. It isn’t causing the time to be 6pm.
(Fun unrelated fact: Modern day analogue clocks actually evolved from astrolabes)

Skeptics often dismissively say “correlation doesn’t equal causation”, but, ironically, most astrologers never claimed it to be causal in the first place.

Why do you think astrology is important?

In the modern age where we have light pollution, cell phones, skyscrapers, and other distractions, we don’t really look at the stars anymore. We don’t notice the movement of the “wandering stars”, moon, and other shifts in the sky. To the ancients, who didn’t have the same distractions, the stars were much more relevant to daily life. When we look up (especially those of us who live in the city), we might see an airplane or two and then we quickly go back to scrolling through Instagram. When the ancients looked up, they saw a vivid sky with constellations that were associated with myths and divine inspiration.

I think this disconnect with the natural world plays into why there often is a modern day resistance to astrology. Maybe if we turned our phones off, spent more time in nature, and slowed down to reflect, we might find more meaning in the stars. (and in life in general)