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this article is about the strong belief behind astrology's powers and abilities, and the fact that its just modern psychology that has made it unrealistic and fake today.

One major red flag that had caught my attention right away was the articles use of the word "ancient" multiple times. This article relied heavily on the basis that astrology was used during ancient times to accurately chart and relate life events from the sky to what was occurring down on earth. The article had stated that it was only the modern use of "mushy" "feel-good" horoscopes that were false, and that they played on our emotions, however during ancient times it was far more accurate. This was a major red flag for me as they were trying to lure the readers in to think that since this has been around for a long period of time that it must be accurate. Another red flag  I found was the red herring of the overall article. The article has a lot of ancient dates and places that these "ancient" techniques were used that were generally distracting from the topic at hand without any sort of proof of what was being said.

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It's time to speculate about what 2018 will bring. Condemned by science and denigrated by much of society, you might think that astrological predictions are fluffy woo-woo that won't help you navigate the year ahead. But that's not because astrology itself is inaccurate. It's because astrology has been ruined by modern psychology.

Astrology's contemporary flavor has a closer relationship with the social science of psychology than the observational science it used to be based upon. If we can set modern judgments aside and learn the language of the ancient astrologers-a language that is now newly available due to the recent revival of classical texts-we may discover lost insights.

Looking to the stars

The ancients looked to the sky for clues about why things happened in the material world around them. Astrology had its heyday in the Mediterranean in the Hellenistic period, an era that took place between the 3rd century BC and the 1st century CE. These ancient astrologers based their interpretations on centuries of observations recorded by the Mesopotamians who came before them. They kept careful records of astronomical phenomenon, looking for correlations between what happened in the sky above them and the material world around them.

Today, modern psychology has cast astrology as a fantastical way that people of the past project the workings of their minds onto the environment around them. This interpretation leaves far too much wiggle room for astrology to simply sound like affirmations of what people want to hear about themselves and think about the world. Even worse, the nurturing approach psychologists take has polluted modern astrology with watered-down interpretations that seek to protect their clients. Even if an astrological configuration spells trouble, the modern astrologer will describe it as an "opportunity for growth," as if they were a patronizing middle-manager. Where is the trust in that?

When we had more time to look at the sky, what knowledge was possible to unfurl that's hard to access now? With the feel-good, pop-psychology variety of astrology growing like fungal spores throughout the millennial covens of the internet, both believers and skeptics are cause for concern. The New York Times recently claimed that the "astrology boomlet owes as much to the dynamics of the modern internet as it does to any sort of cosmic significance about the millennial's place in the universe." But dismissing all of astrology outright undermines the insights that ancient practitioners may have had-insights that are impossible to access from our concrete jungles, perpetual digital connectivity, and space exploration. When we had more time to look at the sky, what knowledge was possible to unfurl that's hard to access now?

For over 16 centuries, we haven't really known what ancient astrologers wanted us to practice. But in the past 20 years, traditional astrological texts have been translated into modern languages for the first time. These texts come from the same scientists who produced the first analog computer and principles of geometry that we still use today. Modern astrology may be overrun with mushy hocus-pocus thanks to conflations with psychology, but newly accessible ancient astrological methods could produce a revival in the power and credibility of the craft.

Horoscopes, star signs, and other inventions

Don't relate to your sign? That might be because sun-signs astrology is a recent creation designed to appeal to mass audiences.

Pop astrology was born in the late 19th century during the boom in new-age exploration, and was then fueled by developments in psychology in the 20th century. The notion that your sun sign indicates your character was popularized by esotericist Alan Leo in England in the 1890s. He was part of a group called the Theosophical Society that scoured spiritual traditions of all sorts looking for wisdom that would help society get to the next stage of development. They called this era the 'New Age'. Leo justified his simplification of astrology as serving humanity's spiritual betterment. His writing garnered enough of an audience to provoke several legal battles in the 1910s for unlawfully practicing fortunetelling.

The sun-sign approach to astrology continued to grow in popularity through newspaper columns in the first half of the 20th century and boomed when New Age went mainstream in the 1960s. Historian Nick Campion notes that "sun-sign astrology domesticated the universe" at a time when astronomy discovered that our galaxy was one small dot among billions in a perpetually expanding universe. When modern science was making humanity look smaller and more insignificant than ever, people found it reassuring to think of their personalities as being reflected in the stars.

Carl Jung placed astrology on par with mythology in explaining the workings of the human psyche. And it wasn't just the pre-hippy folk: During this time, Carl Jung also began exploring astrology. Jung, who created the psychological categories of introversion and extroversion and formed the basis for the popular Myers-Briggs personality test, placed astrology on par with mythology in explaining the workings of the human psyche. He regularly referenced astrology in his books published from the 1920s through the 1970s, offering a legitimate point of reference for astrology to those who wouldn't touch the theosophical new-age mania with a 10-foot pole.

Modern astrologers today still reference Jung's interest in astrology as a sign of its legitimacy, even though Jung himself said that there was no causal relationship between what happened in the stars and what happened on earth. As far as he was concerned, it was all just in our minds. In the hands of the new-age movement, Jung's prognosis reduced astrology into hokey pop psychology, fun to consume but about as substantive as sugary breakfast cereal.

Out with the old

People who claim that astrology (as practiced in its current form) is based on thousands of years of tradition are wrong. Until recently, explorers of modern astrology didn't even have proper access to the classical astrological texts on which their predictions were based off.

Originally, astrology flourished in the Hellenistic period alongside various sciences like mathematics, medicine, and engineering. When the Roman empire fell in the 5th century, Hellenistic texts of all kinds were scattered and fragmented over the millennium as their standing with Christian and secular European society fell in and out of favor. Ancient astrology looked to be delegated to dusty Greek attics.

In the late 19th century, a group of German linguists stumbled upon previously unpublished fragments of Hellenistic astrological texts. The discovery set in motion a 50-year task of collecting as many of the overlooked texts as they could find in libraries across Europe. The fragments filled 12 volumes, but they didn't bother to translate any of it from the original Greek. In the early 1990s, a group of astrologers decided to translate this and other classical works in the hopes that they would recover something worthwhile. They called the effort Project Hindsight and styled themselves after Renaissance intellectuals reviving the lost art of ancient algebra. In an interview on The Astrology Podcast, Robert Hand, a respected figure in modern astrology who played a central role in Project Hindsight said, "as far as I'm concerned, the modern system [of astrological planets] is bullshit." Once he could finally get up close and personal with the ancient texts, Hand scrapped the beliefs he held for decades about how to do astrology.

After a decade and a half of translation work, Project Hindsight claims to have revived the old astrological methods. And the results are complicating astrology's modern love affair with psychology. No longer a folksy way to look at our individual personality and character, astrology as we know it is getting pushed aside and being replaced by older techniques of looking at why real-world events happen.

In with the new

Traditional Hellenistic astrology brings a rigor and harmony to astrology that modern methods washed over. The modern system flattened the houses, which describe worldly matters like money, love, and career, into the zodiac signs of the star constellations. (The ancient texts never conflated the two.) Prying these important pieces of astrology back apart clarifies how the ancients related movements of the heavens with events on earth. Compare this to new-age psychological astrology, which over accentuates internal matters of the mind and spirit, opening up far too much room for confirmation bias. Modern astrology also hastily assigned outsized influence to the newly discovered planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto without the centuries of observational data that the Hellenistic astrologers were working with.

New-age psychological astrology, which over accentuates internal matters of the mind and spirit, opens up far too much room for confirmation bias. One of the greatest sticking points where traditional and modern astrology diverge is destiny. Hellenistic astrology describes a causal relationship between the movement of planets and stars and the material world on earth. The ancients also believed in the notion of fate. Fatedness runs counter to our modern notion of free will, and therefore many find traditional astrology unpalatable. However, we do not need to believe in a fatalistic view of planetary movements to revive some insights in the work of the ancient astrologers who espoused them.

The influence of modern psychology isn't all bad. Astrologer Demetra George, who was an early subscriber to Project Hindsight's translation initiative and is now a leading figure in traditional astrology, points to the modern interest in introspection and "interior life" as illuminating parts of astrology that were foggy to the ancients. Now, modern psychology can enrich those parts of the astrological tradition.

Astrologer Wonder Bright, a former student of George, thinks modern astrology's counseling approach is also a positive contribution to the art. The client/astrologer encounter takes on overtones of a therapist/patient relationship, even when traditional astrological methods are used. "Modern counseling methods," says Bright, "are a boon to the astrologer and probably account for the large percentage of women studying and practicing astrology nowadays, which would have been unthinkable in previous centuries."

The feminist potential of a modern/traditional astrology mash-up helps drive the popularity of Chani Nicholas, who publishes a weekly sun-sign column on her website. Her writing carries strong feminist and social-justice overtones, hitting on the zeitgeist of the moment not unlike what Alan Leo did in his time over a century ago. Her audience is devoted and growing, with a regular readership reaching over 1 million people.

While people can now preach openly about crystals or sound-vibration healing and only get a single eye roll, those who look to astrology for answers are still in the proverbial closet. When I told people that I was preparing an article on the topic of astrology, colleagues who I assumed would have no connection to the topic at all asked with hushed excitement, "Do you read Chani, too?"

Traditional astrologers, it's time to come out into the light.

Predicting astrology's future

The revival of traditional astrology is still in its early days. As with most discoveries from antiquity, it takes time to integrate findings into existing knowledge. Take the Antikythera mechanism for example, the earliest known analog computer that dates from the Hellenistic period. Archeologists recovered it from an ancient shipwreck in 1902, but new insights about what the stunningly advanced device could do were still being published as recently as 2008-and that's with full scholarly and institutional support to study it. Computers, even ancient ones, aren't taboo like astrology is.

Astrology is a practice. It only comes alive through use. If we're too skeptical to use it, we won't be able to access whatever the ancients might have been on to. "We need to learn the language of the doctors of that time and be a little less dismissive so we can learn a little more from them," says microbiologist Freya Harrison, who along with Viking historian Christina Lee recently discovered that a medieval concoction could effectively kill MRSA, an antibiotic resistant "superbug" that has killed more people annually than AIDS during major outbreaks in the US.

Traditional astrology, with its wealth of ancient texts, deserves the same respectful suspension of disbelief as other old-world scientific fields. The first step? Leaving the conceits of modern psychology behind.
You can follow Ida on Twitter. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Astrology isn't fake-it's just been ruined by modern psychology

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Condemned by science and denigrated by much of society, you might think that horoscopes and star signs are fluffy woo-woo that won't help you navigate the year ahead. But that's not because astrology itself is inaccurate. It's because astrology has been ruined by modern psychology.

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Decoding the Stars: A new Look and Astrology Video

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Decoding the Stars: A new Look and Astrology Video

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In this video they are documenting how they are now using a new "scientific" approach at astrology, and adapting new techniques to determine further accuracy of the stars.

In this video Appeal to Authority is evidently used as they speak about the mans quantum physics degree, and the use of another professor to back up the information that is being told. During this interview there was no real evidence to support that science relates back to astrology, they only displayed big words, and confusing matters that apparently correlate back to the truth, and relevance of astrology. using titles such as "quantum" and "algorithms" to draw in their audience that science is truly behind this research.  Again they use ancient wisdom, as a way to demonstrate that it has been around for many many years, however greatly lack evidence.

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Decoding the Stars: A New Look at Astrology

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I decided to research my own horoscope for the year by looking up my result on astrology.com

I fully believe that astrology is a pseudoscience because of its lack of evidence, it’s generalized predictions, and it’s sole reliance on confirmation bias. Confirmation bias “ is the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.” This astrology reading is a clear example of how certain individuals could reach for examples in their lives that could possibly relate in someway to what is being described. Reading through my astrology forecast, it was evident how easy it was to relate individuals emotionally charged issues to what was being generally described. Astrology certainly plays a huge role in emotional connection as a result.

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Anyone who knows you well knows that you hold your cards close to your chest, Scorpio, and that isn't likely to change in 2018. You can't transform...

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In this article the author explains in detail her emotions and own personal experiences with astrology, and why we still believe in something that so clearly is there to manipulate us.

as I read through the article there were numerous red flags that were laid out in her own personal experiences. As she stated she went to an astrologer to receive answers and guidance since her emotional breakup, and all she did was charge her an enormous amount of money in return for a very general "hit" which she no doubt was hoping confirmation bias would confirm. During this article she clearly states how astrology is used to manipulate people, and play off of their emotions, and in one circumstance even convinced a believer to miss out on a record deal since the "stars" had told him not to. This article aligns very clearly with my belief in the falseness that is astrology, and hearing her first hand accounts of the inconsistency just confirms it further.

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Every few months you have an explanation for everything amiss in your life, especially pertaining to technology. Mercury in retrograde has became the default explanation of what's wrong with our world. One astrology-based consultant lists what not to do when this cosmic trickster is dancing in reverse: Don't start a new job. Don't close a deal. Avoid traveling. Don't buy anything.

Such astrological theorizing is the New Age equivalent to conspiracy theorists that believe Obama is coming for their guns: stock up on rations, barricade your doors and hide in the dark. Certainly this sort of advice is extreme, however; there must be something to astrology, right?

Interestingly, Mercury's retrograde is an illusion. The planet's rotation slows down and gives the appearance of moving backwards, while in reality it's still soldiering on, just at a slower speed. This optical trick is a perfect metaphor for what astrology does to our brains: it gives order to a seemingly random universe. That doesn't meant it's real, however.

The last time Mercury was messing with us, I noticed two different Facebook friends discussing recent break-ups. At the moment I was in a heart-wrenching tussle myself; it seemed so gratifying to assign the blame to a distant nemesis in the sky. Yet I also observed that three other friends started relationships and were quite happy. While the above consultant might wag his finger I realized that I was simply gravitating towards others in the same state of mind I was in. Ignoring conflicting evidence is making other people's lives a part of my reality, not accepting that things are always in flux, planets be damned.

While most people (I know) who read daily horoscopes treat them as nothing more than cute fodder, others are more manipulative (and manipulated). A music producer friend, for example, missed getting a record deal with a Hawaiian singer not because he wasn't qualified, but because the artist consulted a planetary map and decided he could not step into a studio that month. People's imaginary yearnings often have real economic, emotional and social consequences.

Matthew Remski's recent article on his time practicing Vedic astrology put this neurological trend into perspective. As he writes,

Astrology's confluence of romance, intuition, nostalgic longing and archetype-driven poetry is so not worth the epistemological bullshit it costs. At best, it is a rich engine for psychic exploration. At worst, it capitalizes upon every cognitive bias we have to serve magical thinking and the power imbalances of unacknowledged projection and transference. Between these two extremes, it provides thin gruel for a burning world.

Human beings are by nature reactive. If we were proactive animals, global warming, for one, would not be a contested topic today. A broader range of Americans would be taking steps to counteract the trend. It's a paralyzing conundrum: those who believe in an invisible deity responsible for the planet's well-being refuse to 'believe' that our planet is getting warmer because they cannot 'see' it. How can we really pick the invisible things we don't believe in, or worse, only give faith to those for which there is absolutely no evidence of?

Such is the same in astrological idealizing. We pick out trends that fit our narrative only after they've occurred. Then we write them into the story. False guestimates are forgotten, or excused as some further plot destined by the stars. A Vedic astrologer might help you pick the 'best date' for your wedding, but if the marriage dissolves into a divorce, well, that too becomes part of the 'plan.'

Our ancestors developed pattern recognition as a survival technique. An ear at one end of the bush and tail at the other meant run. If you planted a seed in spring, then by fall you'd harvest the bounty. Today our planet rarely demands of us such pressing needs, and so that cognitive trend is exploited by charlatans using clichéd rhetoric to neatly knit the fabric of existence to tell a story we want to be told.

After suffering my first heartbreak in my early twenties, I consulted one such astrologer-psychic to make sense of my life. I knew going in the advertised ten-dollar charge would not hold. She needed the night to consult her dreams after looking over my chart, which of course cost $125. I begrudgingly ran to the ATM in hopes that an answer would magically appear in her somnolent inbox.

I returned the next day to find out that someone was trying to manipulate me. Who was it, she asked? No one. I had no enemies at the time of my life, a trend I try my best to maintain. There must be someone, she replied. Nope. Ok, in any case, she was going to give me a series of baths that I must take for the next six nights to rid myself of that dark karma I'd been carrying. Total cost: $700.

Even if I had the money at the time in my life, I would not have paid. This is certainly at the more extreme end of astrologically-inclined moneymaking, but the entire system does everything it can to remove us from being present with our situation. Instead of dealing with our own insecurities, fears and uncertainties, we turn to the cosmos for a reason. And there is certainly no dearth of folk ready to offer one up.

Perhaps the best response I've heard to this mindset was given by actor/writer Seth Macfarlane last week. Having discussed the random nature of the universe in his new show, 'Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,' starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Maher asked him how he replies when someone says to him, 'You know, everything happens for a reason.' Without missing a beat, Macfarlane replied,

This was not the coffee that I ordered.

Image: Jule Berlin/shutterstock.com

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Every few months you have an explanation for everything amiss in your life, especially pertaining to technology. Mercury in retrograde has became the default explanation of what's wrong with our world. One astrology-based consultant lists what not to do when this cosmic trickster is dancing in ...

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In this picture, it shows an image of a key with the term "success". what this image means to me is the persuasion and manipulation that astrology can hold over certain individuals.

Red herrings as it relates to astrology in general, is a major red flag when it comes to mind with this image. It shows a number of images and symbols that are essentially irrelevant information which can prove very distracting, and convincing, specially with the symbols of success. Astrology focuses on the mystical energy of the stars and how this magical connection relates back to our lives and how we can predict what is coming. Astrology plays on individuals emotions, and when success is displayed in this image we are unawarely encouraged or swayed to listen, whether there is any real evidence to support its truth or not.

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In this image, it demonstrates a lot of confusing images, symbols and words, which somehow achieves a prediction for day to day events.

Astrology as a whole demonstrates an extreme overload of information, which can mislead the reader into believing what is being told. When astrologers use all these symbols and meanings, we as the reader can see that there has been some extensive apparent research done and what is being told must carry some truth as a result. We need to take these images, and these words with a grain of salt, and not just always assume that quantity is much more substantial than quality.

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In this image it displays a very clear example of the emotional connection that astrologers use to draw people in, and convince them of the emotional success it can provide them by showing an image of love and astrology.

Modern astrology as it is used today has changed considerably as I do my own research. In ancient times, the stars were used as a matter of survival and adaption, however now as that use in our modern society fades, we look to the stars for emotional assurance. As our needs change astrology must to remain relevant, and that to me is a major red flag. When somethings use is changed so drastically to remain used today, then is there any truth that remains to it? Everyones lives and path are drastically different than another, and we must use caution in relying our lives on a general prediction based off of the month that we were born into.

Astrology can not possibly predict when you will find your husband to a precise date and time, but instead they provide very general and nonspecific information, with hope to get a "hit". although this means of assurance can prove comforting, I strongly believe that we make our own future, and to not let these control you or shape your decisions as a result.

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In this video a younger person by the name of Kendall tries to explain or simplify the basics of astrology by reviewing birth charts.

In this video she states that astrology is very "specific" however any reading that I have received, has not been very specific and quite generic/ very open to ones own interpretation. One of the biggest red flags I had observed during this video was her trying to sell her viewers all natural essential oils before she even got started with any sort of explaining. this right away lead me to believe that she was creating this video specifically for her own gain which many astrologers or psychics do. She starts the video off by saying she is going to simplify astrology however, her use of big words like mutilated or fixed, and not explaining what that meant just ended up confusing me. Because she is so young and modern, she can seem very convincing to young adults as to if she believes as should I but none of her examples actually back any sort of truth or real life examples.

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REAL Astrology Explained Simply | How to Read a Birth Chart!

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In this video I decided to follow Kendall again, and look more specifically at my birth sign and see if there is any truth to what she says or if I can relate.

Again right off the bat Kendall decides to try and sell her fellow viewers a scorpio "t-shirt " since its their birthday". She demonstrates major red flags by trying to sell us on her products to make money. She goes on about how scorpios are very spiritual and religious, where I have never been interested or had a belief in those views. She goes on to explain that scorpios are truth seekers, where in my opinion I believe that in some way aren't we all? she then goes on to contradict herself by saying we lie and then we don't lie. Her overall prediction is much to general, and coming from her previous video which explained such specifics it has left me less than impressed. Overall I believe she is there to gain money and fame and not here to teach us any sort of value or potential gain in life.