Reading Room · Fortune-Telling Methods · Method
How did astrology become everyday fortune-telling?
Astrology is a learned method of reading planetary and zodiacal positions for knowledge of the future and of human character. Its everyday form, the newspaper and magazine horoscope, took shape through early modern almanacs and twentieth-century Sun-sign columns, then reached mass audiences.
Facts checked on against 15 sources, 10 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| c. 750–600 BC | Babylonian astronomer/astrologers first divided the sky into zodiac signs, first into 18 and later refined into 12. Horoscopy emerged in Babylonia alongside the zodiac, a turning point that the Berlin exhibition says made the practice accessible to private individuals as well as rulers.12 |
|---|---|
| 2nd century AD | Claudius Ptolemy wrote the Tetrabiblos, which explored natal, horary and electional astrology and remained a primary reference for many centuries.34 |
| Middle Ages to Renaissance | Medieval doctors used planetary rule over the body, and popular astrological calendars gave advice on decisions by the sun's position in each sign, offering guidance to people without a king's resources.5 |
| 13th century | Thomas Aquinas answered whether astrology is a type of divination in the Summa theologiae 2-2.92–95, a response Rutkin describes as extremely influential for many centuries.6 |
| 1557–1586 | Indexes of prohibited books from 1557, 1559 and 1564, and Pope Sixtus V's bull Coeli et Terrae Creator of 1586, are the sixteenth-century examples Rutkin gives of the influence of Aquinas's response.6 |
| 1930 | The astrologer R. H. Naylor wrote a horoscope predicting the life of Princess Margaret shortly after her birth in 1930, and was then asked by a newspaper to write a regular column, where he invented Sun sign horoscopes.178 |
| 1960s–1970s | The New Age movement came with a heavy presence of the zodiac, and horoscopes could still regularly be found in the back pages of magazines in the decades that followed.9 |
| 2024 | Dr Rachel Moss reports renewed interest in astrology in 2024 after a dip in the 2010s, with TikTok trends suggesting its renewed popularity.5 |
Learned astrology and its critics
Early Western astrology was often conflated with astronomy and treated as a scholarly subject, with astrologers making celestial observations to create rules for divining future events on earth. Medieval Europeans believed the heavenly bodies directly affected their lives on earth.1011
Rutkin notes that knowledge and prediction of the future are primary goals in both astrology and divination, and that astrology is often asserted or assumed to be a type of divination. Rutkin describes the Middle Ages and Renaissance as the period in which a legitimate astrology was constructed.6
By the late 17th century astrology was considered pseudoscience, and Charles Mackay's 1869 Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds was strongly opposed to it.10
From almanac to Sun-sign column
A 2002 Washington Post column titled Today's Horoscope, written by Sydney Omarr, gave the Aries dates as March 21 to April 19, showing the newspaper format persisting into the twenty-first century.12
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
George describes horoscope as deriving from Greek words meaning an hour and to view, and says it first referred only to the Ascendant before meaning a whole chart of the heavens at birth.13
Raman's Astrology for Beginners says Hindu astrologers use Navamsa diagrams in interpreting horoscopes, and it describes the Hindu zodiac as differing from the Western zodiac by about 22 degrees, called Ayanamsa.14
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
Dr Rachel Moss says that in the Middle Ages astrology was regarded as a strand of astronomy and a reputable area of study, and that horoscopes were consulted to find the best days and times for treatment to begin.5
Historians recognise astrology's centrality to the intellectual life of the past, according to William E. Burns, editor of Astrology Through History, which covers its history from ancient Mesopotamia to the 21st century.15
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- Everyday fortune-telling grew from a learned tradition that already promised knowledge of the future: the zodiac and the horoscope made individual birth charts available, and almanacs and Sun-sign columns carried the practice to readers who could not consult a royal astrologer.251
- Accounts of astrology's standing differ: Rutkin's study treats Aquinas's answer as a long-lasting influence on how astrology was judged, while modern exhibitions classify horoscope astrology as esoteric and pseudoscientific.62
Not yet confirmed
- How did the Sun-sign column replace the older birth-chart practice for ordinary readers?
- Which printed almanacs first carried daily guidance to readers outside the courts?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- astrology.tv: A Brief History of Astrology | AstrologyTV | The AstrologyTV Team Astrologer | AstrologyTV. Read on · Reference
- smb.museum: Destiny in the Stars. The Beginnings of the Zodiac. Read on · Museum
- bornundersaturn.com: History of Astrology: Timeline and Famous Astrologers - Born Under Saturn. Read on · Reference
- mymodernmet.com: Mystical History of Astrology: From Ancient Zodiac Maps To Modern Horoscopes. Read on · Reference
- northampton.ac.uk: Today’s horoscope is…courtesy of UON’s Lecturer in History | UON. Read on · University
- brill.com: Is Astrology a Type of Divination? Thomas Aquinas, the Index of Prohibited Books, and the Construction of a Legitimate Astrology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in: International Journal of Divination and Prognostication Volume 1 Issue 1 (2019). Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
- nationalgeographic.com: What are the ancient origins of your zodiac sign?. Read on · Reference
- worldhistory.org: Western Astrology. Read on · Reference
- theatlantic.com: Why Are Millennials So Into Astrology? - The Atlantic. Read on · Library
- library.csun.edu: Astrology: Finding Meaning in the Stars | CSUN University Library. Read on · University
- getty.edu: Rising Signs: The Medieval Science of Astrology | Getty Exhibitions. Read on · University
- The Washington Post: Today's Horoscope - The Washington Post. Read on · Library
- Internet Archive: astrology books KP jyotish system. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: Astrology for Beginners - BV Raman. Read on · Primary text
- guides.monmouth.edu: Astrology - Occult Science - LibGuides at Monmouth University. Read on · University