Astrology is an extremely ancient art, certainly studied by the ancient Babylonians and probably by the Sumerian civilisation before them. It is based on the maxim “as above, so below”, a belief that the microcosm (small-scale things on Earth) are reflected in the macrocosm (large-scale things in the Universe). This concept occurs in many natural phenomena - for instance, your body (large scale) is coded by DNA (small scale) in every single one of your cells. A tree (large scale) consists of a trunk and branches, and the branches themselves consist of twigs. A branch of a tree, with all its twigs, is a smaller scale copy of the tree itself.

Astrology maintains that events on Earth, and in particular part of your make-up as a human being, correlates with the positions of planets in the sky at the time you were born. Many scientists claim that there is no known effect that could do this, and this is true - there is, as yet, no known mechanism to explain this correlation. I don’t claim to understand how astrology works, but I believe that it does, and I would like to think that science will understand how it works eventually.

Astrology looks quite complicated, using lots of strange symbols (called “glyphs”) and drawing up obscure looking wheels (called “charts”). To get an idea of what astrology is, have a look at my Astrology Primer. If you want to learn more about astrology, try my Getting Started article too.

Contrary to popular belief, astrology isn’t fatalistic. It won’t solve all your problems, but I see your birth chart as being akin to a roadmap, which can help you identify easy and rough patches and let you get on with the real job of living your life to the full. Your chart is unique to you – newspaper “horoscopes” give the same interpretation for a twelfth of the world’s population based purely on your Sun sign, but in fact your birth chart is far more complicated than that and a real chart takes all of your planets into account resulting in a far more detailed picture.