Is Astrology Real?

I won’t lie to you, I follow more horoscope pages on Instagram than I’d care to admit.
I listen to Amy Demure and that angry horoscope guy who is always yelling. I look forward to the good things coming my way, and I dread all the retrogrades.

And yet, there’s a question that never quite leaves me.
We can laugh at it, dismiss it, mock it at parties. And yet…I will still sneak a look at my horoscope (I’m a Libra).

Is astrology true?

It feels both ridiculous and irresistible.
Ridiculous because modern science can map galaxies billions of light-years away, and irresistible because something in us still wonders if Mercury in retrograde is why the blender broke this morning.
We’re torn between reason and yearning, and that tension makes the stars glow all the brighter in our imaginations.

The Ancient Sky

Long before telescopes, before electricity, before city lights choked the Milky Way into submission, the sky was the greatest show on Earth.
Every night, ancient societies looked up and found not just stars but stories.

Babylonians tracked planetary movements on clay tablets around 2,400 years ago.
They noticed patterns like Jupiter’s cycle, Venus disappearing into the sun, and even eclipses returning with eerie accuracy.
The Greeks layered myth over math, birthing the zodiac: twelve constellations that stretched across the ecliptic.
Egyptians carved star charts on ceilings.
The Maya built temples where the sun struck corners only on solstices.

Astrology wasn’t a parlor game back then, it was survival.
If you could predict when the Nile would flood, when the rains would return, and even when a comet would cross the sky…you had power.
The stars were calendars, compasses, and sacred texts rolled into one.

And so the question of truth was never asked.
The stars were truth.

Astrology as Identity

Fast forward to today.
You can open an app, type in your birth time, and get a chart so complex it looks like it needs an IT department to decipher. Sun sign…rising sign…moon sign.
Houses, aspects, retrogrades.

Astrology now is less about when to plant wheat and more about who we are.
Aries gets labeled bold, Pisces dreamy, Virgos meticulous, Libras balanced, until they’re not.
It becomes shorthand, a way of making sense of personality, of the chaos that rules our world.

“Of course she’s a Scorpio,” I say to myself when someone cuts sharply with their words. (Hello my friends who shall remain nameless).
“He’s a Sagittarius, what did you expect?” (My ex-husband).

Is it truth?
Or a mirror we polish ourselves with, a neat little box to organize the world with?

The Skeptic’s Case

Science doesn’t leave much room for astrology.
Double-blind tests of horoscopes fall flat, and predictions rarely outperform chance.
No known force explains how Saturn, millions of miles away, could influence a job interview or my husband’s mood.

Astronomers note that constellations aren’t fixed, they actually shift over time.
The zodiac signs were drawn up over two millennia ago; the stars have marched on since.
Technically, many of us aren’t even the sign we think we are.

From a purely empirical standpoint, astrology collapses.
It fails the repeatability test, it fails causal logic, and it becomes (at best) psychology, not physics.

The Believer’s Reply

And yet, billions still believe, or at least dabble. Myself included.
Why?

Because astrology doesn’t just predict, it’s super comforting.
It offers some kind of explanation. In a world that feels increasingly random (wildfires, recessions, viruses, heartbreak) it gently offers the alternative solution that maybe things aren’t random at all.

Even if half the horoscopes contradict one another (the lunar eclipse today one of my horoscope readers said “manifest today” versus another who said “avoid new beginnings”) the act of reading them frames your choices.
They give you an external point to wrestle with, to rage against instead of the decisions you made in the past.
A bad forecast might make you cautious, or a good one might give you courage.
Either way, you’re thinking differently than you would have without it.

So is it the stars, or our minds in conversation with them?
Placebo in the form of stars instead of pills.
The power of suggestion maybe?
As a Sommelier sometimes all I have to do is say I smell peaches in a wine and suddenly everyone in the room agrees with me.
Are the stars someone else crying “peach” while I nod my head?

The Moon as Evidence

Here’s where things get interesting, because while science dismisses horoscopes, it can’t dismiss the moon.

The moon undeniably affects Earth.
It pulls tides, and its phases align with cycles of planting and harvest.
Some hospitals report surges in births near the full moon, though data is mixed.
Animals respond to its light, people report sleepless nights under its glow, and the werewolves also come out to play (okay, took it too far, but you get the point).

So if the moon (a celestial body hanging far away in case you forgot) has measurable effects on us, who’s to say other stars and planets don’t?

The skeptical reply: gravity weakens with distance, and Jupiter’s tug on you at birth is less than that of the doctor delivering you.
The believer’s reply: maybe it’s not just gravity, it could be resonance, radiation, something not yet discovered.

The truth is: we just don’t know.

The Pull of Wonder

So why do I keep circling back?
Why does astrology refuse to die, even in the age of particle accelerators and quantum mechanics?

Because we hunger for connection.
We want to know that our births weren’t random, that our heartbreaks have meaning, and that our choices fit into some grand pattern bigger than ourselves. I do at least.

Astrology offers a universe that isn’t indifferent but intimate…a sky that isn’t silent but speaking. A universe so big and vast, but also caring.

So even when we doubt, we look up at the sky, because wonder is always going to be stronger than certainty.

Stories Across Time

Think of how astrology has threaded through cultures:

Babylonia had priests reading omens for kings.

In Rome emperors refusing to act without their star charts.

China had court astrologers aligning dynasties with the heavens.

India has jyotisha still shaping marriages and business decisions today.

Astrology isn’t just a belief, it’s actual architecture.
It has built calendars, shaped rituals, and guided politics.
Even if “untrue” in the scientific sense, it has real power. Power to steer societies, to soothe those who life has lost all meaning to, and the strong power to endure for thousands of years.

My Own Belief

So is astrology true?

Here’s where I land: we can’t even fathom what effect the stars have on us.

The moon proves that celestial bodies can alter Earth in measurable, intimate ways.
Its cycles tug oceans and maybe even moods (I swear women’s cycles line up with the full moon). If our closest neighbor can do that, why should we assume the distant ones do nothing at all?

We don’t yet know what subtle forces ripple through space, what radiations stream from stars, what harmonies or dissonances we swim in.
Maybe one day science will name them all, but I doubt it.

But I do think it’s premature to shrug and call it coincidence.

I don’t believe every horoscope app, every retrograde meme, or every eclipse warning. I don’t think the stars micromanage us…but I do believe they matter.
That their existence, their rhythms, their distances, carry echoes we’re just too small to measure right now.

So is astrology true?

Not in the way a weather report is true, but not fake in the way a broken compass is false.
More like a song half-heard through a wall…sometimes we catch a note, or even sometimes we mistake the tune.
But the music is still real, even if we don’t yet know the lyrics.

I, for one, am going to continue to follow all my horoscope memes and projections on Instagram.
If you’re feeling skeptical at the moment, ask yourself why your ancestors watched the same sky for millennia.
Is it too impossible to believe the stars are still speaking, even if our ears aren’t yet tuned?

And if nothing else, remember this: the moon moves oceans.
You are around 60% water (I feel like Google changes this number a lot, but okay).
Let that thought settle…then look up.

Because whether or not astrology is true in the narrow sense, the stars remain our oldest companions even if we can’t see them as well anymore.
And remember that sometimes, the act of wondering itself is the truest thing of all.

Some of my favorite astrology/spirituality tools I’ve bought from Amazon include these Chakra stones (I bought 3 but this was my favorite), this meditation pillow, these essential oils, and this sage smudging kit.