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How does Astrology really work???? The Causal Mechanism of Astrology
- Aleena Glinski
- Feb 5
- 18 min read
This blogpost is a transcript of a YouTube video I released on 7/22/25, so if you'd like visual and audio support for this content, enjoy the video below:
Contents
Intro
There are a lot of people who can describe what astrology is, but I am yet to hear anyone actually try to get to the bottom of how it really works. What is the causal mechanism behind astrology? How is it that planets, distant rocks floating in space, somehow have an impact on our personality and our destiny?
My name is Aleena and I'm a full-time professional astrologer, yoga teacher, and artist with a physics BS and a passion for psychology. In this video, I'm going to explain the evolution of human thinking on this matter from ancient to modern understandings of time, the planets, and the nature of the universe, and my own take on how we can make sense of astrology, integrating modern scientific and psychological understandings. But if you want to skip straight to my theories, you can also check out the table of contents above.
History of Astrological and Astronomical Understanding
To really wrap your head around how this works, I think it's extremely enlightening and insightful to go through the history and evolution of how humans have conceptualized the stars and the universe over time.
Where does astrology originate from? Where did Astrology come from? How Astrology started.
As far back as we can tell—as far back as written language goes that we have observed—we have 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets of people recording movements of the stars and planets and events that take place on Earth or had taken place on Earth. This was the origin of omen astrology.
Originally, people didn't understand how to predict the movements of planets. They were only observing. An eclipse happened and the king died, and this was the way that the astrological omen astrology was written. About 800 years after that, we see there are astrological universities, and Assyrian kings have court astrologers, and people have started to figure out how to predict the movement of planets. The entire evolution of astronomy and our scientific understanding and mathematical predictions of the movement of planets was for astrological reasons: for us to be able to predict things that would happen on Earth based on what we were seeing in the sky.
4th Century BCE understanding of how and why Astrology works
In this time—in these multi-millennia before Christ era, 2,000 B.C.E. to about 400 B.C.E.—people either understood generally the stars to be gods or that the gods had imbued the planets or these wandering stars with their energy. People were motivated to observe and learn what this correlation was because their primary purpose was to serve and appease the gods through observing the movements of the planets and the stars. This is how people could learn about the gods' intentions and communicate with the gods. It's my guess that people had been doing this probably even before 2000 B.C.E. I imagine even before written history, people had probably been observing the stars and trying to find correlation to things that were happening on Earth.
This is the most basic premise of astrology from around 400 B.C.E. We have this translation of a cuneiform tablet called a Diviner's Manual where they articulate their Babylonian understanding of astrology. It reads: "Sky and earth together produce omens, each separate, not divided. Sky and earth are connected. A sign which is bad in the sky is bad on earth. A sign which is bad on earth is bad in the sky. Each separate but not divided."
This is such a fascinating way to articulate and understand astrology, which maybe you've heard the axiom "as above, so below," or maybe you've heard of fractals and this idea that there is similarity across scale—that there is a bigger macroscopic picture and our smaller microscopic picture in this universal scale, and that they are similar to each other. Maybe the sky world to them was like a different dimension or a mirror realm, but there was some way in which the sky world was separate but not divided.
Planets assigned to the Greek Pantheon of Gods
It wasn't until around the 4th century B.C.E. that we have the Greek pantheon of gods assigned to the different planets. That was around Plato's time, and it was actually Plato's students who assigned different Greek gods onto the planets. We had Mars as the god Ares, Saturn as Kronos, and Venus as Aphrodite. This was their understanding of the planets at that time.
However, around Plato's time, philosophy actually started to evolve a little bit. Plato was shifting understanding into this more abstract philosophical range where, rather than understanding these energies as gods, Plato had this idea of Forms or Platonic Ideals, where he conceptualized this other realm of perfected forms. For instance, all humans are an imperfect reflection of this ideal human form that exists in this other realm. We could conceptualize the planets this way as well.
Platonic ideals as a framework for understanding planetary energy in Astrology
The difference in understanding Mars as an embodiment or power from the god Ares and a Platonic ideal or form from Plato's philosophy is that understanding the planets as gods would lead them to be more human and imperfect. They have their flaws. But in this conceptualization of Plato's forms, it was more that this energy is an archetypal energy that is the perfect version of anger, aggression, war, and violence energy. There is some ideal form that is the essential essence of what Mars's energy is. That is a slightly evolved version of understanding planetary energy.
Carl Jung and Archetypal Psychology as a framework for understanding planetary energy in Astrology, but where do they come from?
Fast forwarding a couple of millennia, we have Jung, Carl Jung the psychologist, who gave us archetypal psychology and depth psychology. He was also the person who coined terms like introverted and extroverted, intuition, and synchronicity. These are all concepts from philosopher and psychologist Carl Jung. He took Plato's forms and gave them a new, even more nuanced understanding. Carl Jung came up with this idea of the collective unconscious: that there are archetypal forms that are present in all humans across cultures and across nations. This is why there are similar mythological figures even from peoples who don't share a common history. He considered these to be like the psychic counterpart of instinct. Where there are biological impulses to do things like eat, fight, and nurture, there are also psychological impulses such as to embody this archetype of the Hero, the Lover, or the Mystic.
For Jung, these primordial archetypal forms that are present in the collective unconscious across cultures come to us through dream symbols and also that we project outward into religious figures and onto physical symbols. They, for him, may also have their own autonomy. These may be beings that have their own will and volition that carry out through us; that we can be possessed by these archetypal energies; that they can live out their volition through us if we don't become aware of them. Many astrologers are also Jungians and really resonate with this notion that the planets are like archetypes. We can think of the energy of Mars and Venus and Jupiter as archetypes that play out through our psyche.
This was how astrology came back into the public sphere: through this psychological lens. Astrologers started to limit the realm of astrology to only the psychological—that we could understand the birth chart as a map of the psyche and the planets as archetypes that imprint upon us at the time of our birth.
Contributions to the decline of astrology
Somewhere in here along the way in this history, of course, astrology fell out of fashion. People were not really respecting or practicing astrology so much in the past few centuries. There were many different reasons for this.
Christianity vs Astrology
Christianity, of course, was not a big fan of astrology. The logical conclusion of astrology, if you follow through to its premises, is that your life is fated to some degree; that there is a degree to which you lack free will. Christianity is very much of the belief that you can be saved from your destiny. This was part of the hallmark that made Christianity so popular: because Christians could sell you the idea that you are not actually fated; that if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you can be saved from your fate. That was a big part of astrology losing popularity over the centuries.
The scientific revolution and the evolution of scientific thinking on time and the universe
Importantly, of course, there was also the scientific revolution. This started with Copernicus, who was a late 15th-century, early 16th-century scientist. Copernicus gave us the heliocentric model of the universe. This was very difficult to receive for astrologers. Prior to Copernicus, people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Then we learned and understood through the Copernican revelation that the Sun is in fact the center of the solar system, not the Earth.
Copernicus and the heliocentric revolution
Astrology gives us symbolic understanding from our perspective. The science of astrology is that the way the planets look from our perspective here on Earth is affecting us. This was incoherent with the idea that the Sun was the center of the universe. For instance, from our perspective, a retrograde is when it looks like a planet is moving backwards in the sky. But of course, we understand that planets do not actually move backwards in their orbits; they only move forward. It's only our perspective—our place in alignment with the other planets relative to the Sun—that we have these visual experiences that seem like planets moving backwards but are actually not.
This was the beginning of the scientific revolution and humanity's attempt to become more objective. We learned and understood that we are not the center of the universe and there is an objective reality that exists outside of us, and our subjective experience can be flawed. This was a big shift for people.
Kepler’s theory of elliptical orbits and “the music of the spheres” as a theory for how Astrology can still be valid in a heliocentric world
Following Copernicus, we had Johannes Kepler, who gave us the understanding of planetary movements as elliptical rather than spheres, which was what Copernicus originally conceptualized. Kepler was actually an astrologer. He thought of planetary influence as coming from something like harmonics. In the same way that you can understand the vibration of a string on a guitar creating a sound, the movement of the planets around the Earth and the Sun create some sort of felt frequency that is the energy that they are imbuing into it. This was Kepler's theory of the Music of the Spheres. He connected these astronomical harmonies to astrological influences. This was not a discrepancy for him, although I believe that he no longer considered retrogrades and such because, from this perspective, you could still understand planetary influence as the mechanism for them conveying their influence to us. But it would not make so much sense as far as our visual understanding of the planetary movement versus the way that they are actually moving in space around us.
Newton’s Gravity and his issue understanding the causal mechanism behind it (where does the force of gravity come from?)
Following Kepler, we had Newton, who gave us a theory of gravity which explained in even more detail with more accuracy the movements of the planets around the Sun. Newton did not believe in astrology. But if you think about it, the theory of gravity is just as perplexing as astrological theory. It's confusing to think of how a planet could possibly give us different archetypal energies, affect our personality and our destiny. It's also equally confusing to me to consider how a rock floating through space exerts force at a distance. How is it that the Earth is pulling the Moon? What is the causal mechanism behind that? This was also an issue for Newton. He is quoted as saying that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one another is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. He was quite disturbed and perplexed by this.
I think it's important to note that even in scientific thinking, it is quite normal to first observe the way things are working and later come to understand the causal mechanism. This is the way that gravitational theory worked, thermodynamics, and so many things. It's not actually necessary to understand why and how things work in order to make effective technology and predictions. We can go a very long way without getting to the bottom of how things really work. In fact, you'll notice that any point in history that you choose, if you move forward about 100, 200, or 300 years, you'll find that the way that people conceptualized things at one point becomes laughable at a point in the future, and we understand things in an entirely different way and our previous understanding seems childish.
I think it's important to adopt an attitude of humility towards ourselves now as well because I think it's easy in the present moment to privilege yourself and your perspective and to think that we have the most advanced and certain understanding. But I feel confident that in another 100, 300, or 500 years, we will probably find our current understanding of the nature of the universe laughable. So let's keep an open mind.
Einstein’s theory of spacetime
It wasn't until the advent of quantum mechanics and general relativity that we started to really dig into the nature of time and the causal mechanism behind forces. Time in Einstein's theory of general and special relativity is something that can be dilated. Einstein had this concept of time dilation where he figured out that if you are traveling close to the speed of light or near a very massive object like a black hole, time actually starts to slow down. In our scientific understanding of time, we are at a point where we can see that time is not one-dimensional and linear. It can stretch and shrink. But there's still no subjective quality to time. We only understand time in this quantitative way. In fact, since the scientific revolution, we let go of any sense that we should try to integrate any qualities or subjectivity into our understanding. We prioritize this objective look at things, which quantum mechanics actually eventually came to challenge.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Quantum Mechanics
When we get to Heisenberg with Einstein in the early 20th century, we have this revelation that we cannot know certain quantities simultaneously. Essentially, the act of measuring a particle necessarily alters its ontology—the nature of the thing that you're observing. Our active observation and measurement affects how much we're able to understand about the particle itself. This is the uncertainty principle: that when you try to measure the position and momentum of a particle, the more you know about one, the less you know about the other. Although quantum mechanics gave us this particle-wave duality—that a particle can also be understood as a wave and waves can also be understood as particles—we cannot observe them to be both simultaneously. Observing the particle-wave collapses its nature, and it becomes a particle once we observe it specifically, the more we narrow in on its position.
Further developments in Quantum Mechanics: Force Carriers, quantum field theory
To get into the actual understanding of the causal mechanism behind forces, our understanding of the universe is that there are these four fundamental forces. We have the electromagnetic force, the nuclear strong force, nuclear weak force, and the gravitational force. But how do these particles—this matter—how does the force actually get exerted? Where does that strength come from to pull things in? How does the Earth pull the Moon towards it, seeming like this big blob of mass? Where does the pull come from? Quantum mechanics gave us this theory of force carriers. The way that quantum mechanics understands how force is exerted is through an exchange of particles in the quantum field. For instance, the force of gravity is carried out by gravitons. The force carriers of the electromagnetic force are photons. You can think of the force as an exchange of particles in this field, or you can think of it as wave disturbances in this quantum field realm.
We have observed photons and the force carriers of the strong and weak nuclear force. But we have yet to really get a grip on gravitons. Those have not yet been empirically observed. Although we have observed gravitational waves, which is a big deal for suggesting that gravitons probably do exist, but because gravity is so much weaker than these other forces, it's hard for us to observe. But maybe someday we'll figure that out.
That pretty much takes us up to the present. It's been a while since I was studying physics, so if I am missing something, feel free to let me know in the comments.
My Theories
Now, how can we take this understanding of what we know to be true in modern times and apply it to astrology to make some theories for how astrological forces are conveyed into our lives? I have three different theories, from the more mystical to the more psychological to the more scientific.
Mystical framework for the ontology of Astrology
I think that the original understanding of planets as gods and there being some kind of being—maybe it's not anthropomorphic, maybe it's one of these autonomous psychological forces that Jung conceptualized, maybe it's other-dimensional beings—who knows? But there could be some force that is higher than us that is indeed imbuing the planets with some archetypal energy that is felt through our subjective observation of the planets from a distance. I think that this more religious spiritual understanding could still hold in modern times.
But if you're not into the spiritual religious understanding, I think there's still a couple more ways we could try to make sense of this.
Psychological framework for the ontology of Astrology
From a psychological perspective, if we go back to Jung and his understanding of the archetypes, another thing that Jung came up with is this notion of symbolic projection. This is the idea that we can project meaning into objects and symbols. You might think of the American flag, for instance. This is a symbol that has lots of projected values and emotions into it. So much so that people will fight and die for the flag. A very powerful illustration of how this works is also found in the placebo effect. For instance, if you are given a pill—and many studies have empirically validated this—and told that it will have a certain effect and you believe that, then you can actually see people heal with the effect that they were told the pill would have, even if there's nothing in that pill. This is an example of the pill as a symbol that we project this meaning and value onto that then actually does materialize.
This symbolic projection is not just a delusion. It can have a measurable impact. You can actually change your life through this power of symbolic projection. This is much of psychology as well. In the way that psychology works, we can change our lives through this power of belief. Attaching a specific symbol to that belief gives it more power. Considering this human ability to project onto symbols, I can also imagine how perhaps over the course of at least 4,000 years and probably much longer that humans have been projecting onto planets, onto the stars. It's conceivable to me that we could actually give the planets that power, that meaning, even if maybe originally it was delusion or not really true, or maybe we were just noticing correlations but that's not really a causation. But if you keep looking for it and you keep seeing it, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eventually, it becomes true.
Given the fact that humans have been doing this for thousands of years collectively across cultures all around the globe, I think that makes that symbolic projection extra powerful to the point where we can use these symbols to enact changes in our lives through understanding things like astrology. However, because it's been happening for so long, it seems like this system of symbolic thinking is actually working regardless of if you understand it. But it's my belief that if you do become aware of it, then you have more control over how different things manifest because it is symbolic. It's not specific. It's archetypal in its nature and ability to predict.
If you take this Jungian approach, you could also consider that this could be more mystical as well, where maybe this symbolic projection is not just humans making this up and passing it down over millennia, but maybe there is some a priori spirit essence being archetype that is coming through us that is influencing certain planets. It's not that we just made up this energy of Mars and projected it onto the planet, but that perhaps this energy of Mars and the god Ares and things like that is something that was already laden in human psychology and our psychological impulses or instincts that we then projected onto the planet.
I think astrology is an extremely powerful tool to relate to these energies so that they don't overtake us unconsciously. Astrology as a practice of self-awareness and awareness in general and our ability to separate from these instincts, these impulses, these energies that can sometimes consume people—that distance, that ability to become aware, is extremely powerful for being able to take action and control of your own life.
Astrology explained scientifically
And then if you wanted to take this all the way into the scientific, you might conceptualize that perhaps we've only been looking into forces and force carriers that relate to the physical material world. But maybe there could be psychological forces. Maybe there could be this kind of martial energy. Maybe there's a particle that could correspond to this impulse towards love, towards justice, towards war, towards structure. Maybe these planetary energies, these essential natures, could somehow also have their own particles, their own carriers, their own quantum fields.
Similar to how there is a biological structure—if you have certain DNA, then you will have a certain form, you will become a monkey or a snake or a person—perhaps depending on the configuration of these archetypal energies, maybe this is something like consciousness: that the way that different particles are constructed within our imprint or nature can also give us these different archetypal energies, these personalities, these destinies. I think you could also probably understand the universe having some sort of fractal nature. The nature that we have is a reflection of the nature of the universe and there is some sort of correlation between our own nature and these inclinations and the structure of the universe that does seem to be reflected in the planets for us. Maybe there's even larger scale versions of this when you consider solar systems revolving around stars within stars revolving around black holes. Maybe there are different layers and octaves of these energies that manifest at different scales that we are all just a reflection of in some way.
Above all else, what seems apparent to me is that science is lacking in its understanding that time is not just a linear one-dimensional unit, but that time also has a quality. It is obvious that the physical embodiment you have affects your experience—whether you are a snake or a turtle or a bird or a person, the physical manifestation that you have will affect your life. Also, the moment in time that you come into the world has a significant effect on your life. This seems obvious if you think about the life of someone from Boston in 2020 versus the life of someone from Mesopotamia in 1500 B.C.E. It doesn't seem implausible to me that the time—the specific moment that something comes into the world—has something to say about the nature of that thing for the rest of its life. Your nature is not just physical in the manifestation that you have, but also a reflection of the specific point in time and space that you came into the world.
Astrology gives us a way to measure and predict the subjective quality that time takes. It's something that is always evolving, which is why astrologers are always necessary and it will never be completely understood because culture is always changing. Therefore, we need to re-understand the way that astrology works during different time frames because the culture of today is very different than the culture 3,000 years ago, and the language we have today is very different than the language we have 3,000 years ago. Astrology is also a language and needs to be translated and re-understood throughout the course of time.
Conclusion
I would love to hear what you think about all of this. If this made sense, if there were certain things that you thought made more or less sense, if you have any thoughts you'd like to add to the conversation, ideas that you've come up with for how these things might work or reasons why you don't think they do, let me know.
If you resonate with my line of thinking and my way of understanding astrology, know that I offer astrology consultations and I'll link my website if you'd like to book a natal reading with me. I do 60-minute readings where we go over the birth chart as a symbol of who you are, understanding your general personality structure, potential strengths and weaknesses you might have. I also do 90-minute readings where we get into all of that and also talk about timing, the future, what you might expect coming up in the next year, in the course of your career, indications for what your focus of your life's work might be, how we can use things that have happened to you in the past to predict what might happen in the future, and the different cycles you find yourself in and when you can expect certain things to shift.
Feel free to book a consultation with me below if that sounds interesting to you. I'll also link my yoga page if you're interested in trying any of my guided meditations or yoga asana practices. I have lots of free resources on my other channel, Prometheia Yoga. I plan to do a series on the planets, the zodiac signs, and break down more of the system of symbolism and the all of the permutations that astrology creates and the way that infinitely complexifies the archetypal manifestations that we all exist as. Or if you have a specific question that you would like me to answer—something that I didn't get into or you thought was interesting but I didn't really explain well enough—let me know and maybe I'll make a video about it. Thank you so much for being here with me !
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