Astrology

Astrology is the basis of the pseudoscience, which asserts that it may provide insight into earth and human affairs via observation of the locations and motions of heavenly bodies. At the very least, astrology has been practised since the second millennium before the common era (BCE). Its origins may be traced back to calendrical systems that were used to forecast changes in the seasons and to interpret celestial cycles as signals of heavenly messages. The majority of cultures, if not all of them, have placed a significant amount of importance on what they have observed in the sky. Some of these cultures, such as the Hindus, the Chinese, and the Maya, developed intricate systems for predicting terrestrial events based on observations of celestial bodies. Mesopotamia around the 19th–17th centuries BCE is where the origins of Western astrology can be found. From there, it went to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Arab world, and finally Central and Western Europe. Western astrology is one of the oldest astrological systems that is still in use today. The majority of professional astrologers rely on horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person's personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects.

Throughout the majority of its existence, astrology has been regarded as a learned practise and is widely practised within academic communities. It has also often been studied in close conjunction with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. It is referenced in a number of works of literature, ranging from those written by Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to those written by William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca. It was present in political circles. However, throughout the Age of Enlightenment, astrology fell out of favour as a valid field of scientific inquiry and eventually died out entirely. Researchers have been able to successfully challenge astrology on both theoretical and experimental grounds, and have shown that it possesses neither scientific validity nor the ability to explain anything. This trend began toward the end of the 19th century, when the scientific method began to be implemented on a large scale. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical stature, and widespread confidence in it has generally decreased, until a comeback began in the 1960s. This resurgence began in the decade of the 1960s.