Review of What Science Says About Astrology. By Carlos Orsi. Columbia University Press. 232 pp. $26 (paperback).
In his book City of God, Saint Augustine (354-430) launched an attack on astrology, which had been popular among Greeks, Romans, and Muslims for centuries. “What scope is left to the judgment of God, who is Lord of both stars and men, in relation to the deeds of men,” he asked, “if a celestial necessity is assigned to those deeds?” As Christianity became the established religion in the Roman empire, pagan practices, including astrology, were stigmatized and sometimes punished by death.
Astrology’s Popularity and Modern Appeal
Astrology waxed and waned in the ensuing centuries. In the early 20th century, Carlos Orsi indicates, astrologers pivoted from predictions about the future to “character analysis and psychological counseling,” imparted by the positions of the planets, sun and moon at the precise time of an individual’s birth – and “the queen of pseudoscience” became immensely popular.
Valued at $12.8 billion in 2020, the global astrological market, with its daily horoscopes in newspapers and on computers, and personalized readings by “professionals,” is expected to grow to $22.8 billion by 2030.
In What Science Says About Astrology, Orsi, a journalist, provides a history of the phenomenon, an explanation of its appeal, and an analysis of the harm it does. His book is immensely informative and entertaining.
Orsi supplies a slew of studies demonstrating that astrological emperors and empresses have no clothes. An analysis of ten million couples, for example, revealed no astrological effect on compatibility or incompatibility. Other studies show that people born at the exact same time and in the same locality do not have the same or similar personalities. And horoscopes based on the same birth chart differ dramatically from astrologer to astrologer. Gilding the lily, Orsi points to one well-known astrologer who predicted a year of peace in Europe a few months before World War I broke out: and another who declared that the reign of Queen Elizabeth II would be brief.
Why Astrology Remains Popular Despite Scientific Refutation
Orsi then provides a compelling explanation of the enduring popularity of astrology. Whether a personality analysis comes from a psychologist or an astrologist, he indicates, patients and clients are likely to find something of themselves in it, appreciate a mix of mostly admirable and a few undesirable traits, and embrace their “diagnostics, therapies, and theoretical commitments as valid and useful.” Even subjects who identify themselves as skeptics tend to judge a mostly-favorable report about them as accurate and adopt a more favorable attitude toward astrology.
Experienced astrology professionals, Orsi emphasizes, recognize the importance of their relationship with clients and know how to impress them: appear confident; gear comments to the relevant age, income bracket, education level, race, and gender; listen and observe; elicit information by framing statements as questions; pore over the birth chart; be empathetic and dramatic; tell clients what they want to hear.
Challenging the Therapeutic Value of Astrology
Orsi is deeply skeptical of claims that astrology “can work as a therapeutic ‘myth’ like any other, generating good outcomes in the hands of a competent and empathetic practitioner.” Astrology, he reminds us, has no basis in reality. By downplaying logic, evidence, and critical thinking and relying on arbitrary pronouncements about good or bad hours and days for decisions related to health, love, finances, and professional advancement, the “method” leaves subjects vulnerable to manipulation and delusions they may act upon.
One of “humanity’s longest-lived attempts to make sense of the universe” and find patterns in nature, astrology, Orsi concludes, “belongs now in museums and history books, not in our daily lives.”
www.psychologytoday.com
