This essay was originally published on my Substack in February, 2025. The question of prediction, what we mean by this, and how we work with it, remains central to my approach of combining a psychological approach to astrology with ancient techniques.
There is a fundamental truth about astrology, which tends to become apparent at whatever stage you fully realise that it has a basis in reality. If, from the very moment of birth, the natal chart can tell us about the entire life of a person, then it must be – in some way – predictive. A brief survey of astrology’s history will show that for the vast majority of its 3,000 or so years, it has been regarded as such. And modern astrologers, too, acknowledge that astrology has that dimension. So, once we accept astrology’s inherently predictive nature, and we have some knowledge of it, the question becomes: how do we work with it? How do we incorporate knowledge of the future into our lives in a way that is helpful, healthy and conducive to healing?
Predictive astrology in historical context
From astrology’s origins in Mesopotamia it was used for prediction: the famous astronomical diaries recorded sky phenomena nightly for c.600 years prior to the 1st millennium AD and correlated them with human events for exactly this purpose. In Hellenistic astrology, in Indian astrology, and in medieval Islamicate astrology, it has been taken as a given that it was both possible and useful to predict the future with it. The Roman Emperor Augustus certainly seemed to believe it was possible (if not desirable) when he banned the use of astrology to predict a person’s death in AD 11.
For most of astrology’s history, then, it was a very powerful information technology that lay predominantly in the hands of the ruling elite. It was incredibly skilled and therefore costly work. For those exercising power and responsibility, we can understand the appeal of knowing in advance the outcome of wars, the success of crops, or the likelihood of an uprising. We can even perhaps understand, whether we agree with, the desire to restrict the knowledge and practice of it.
In medieval Europe, astrology was regarded with suspicion by the Church, although its validity was generally accepted. It was taught in the ancient universities and used extensively for medical and agricultural purposes. However, in its predictive form it was seen as akin to ‘fortune-telling’, which was forbidden, as for example in Leviticus 19:26: ‘you shall not interpret omens or tell fortune’. Although its continued popularity in the mid 17th century can be seen in the success of William Lilly’s bestselling Christian Astrology, astrology had by then lost academic standing due to its original scientific underpinnings (such as geocentrism) having been discredited. Finally in the UK, alongside fortune-telling and spiritualism, it was made illegal in 1824.
It is important to understand this as the context for the 20th century revival of astrology in parts of the western world (its practice having continued unbroken in India and other places). In the 19th century, the last time Neptune was in Pisces, spiritualism was highly popular and the theosophists brought versions of eastern thought to the west. Astrology was reinvented starting in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th, closely related to depth psychology which traces its origins back to Freud (also late 19th c). The subtly spiritual psychology of the polymath Carl Jung in particular, himself a practising astrologer, merged with astrology very effectively and psychological astrology continues to be widely practised.
The birth chart thus became understood as a map of the whole psyche, and the areas of life represented by the houses were seen as the individual’s perceptual experience (and sometimes objects of projection). Although Jungian psychology did not see the individual psyche as existing in isolation, there was nonetheless a shift towards focus on the individual. One consequence of this was that it allowed astrology to re-emerge from the shadows, conferring a degree of legitimacy to it: the emphasis was now on understanding the individual holistically, and understanding their past (especially the formative childhood years), but not so much on predicting their future.
At the same time, related with its increased popularity through the emergence of Sun Sign astrology in the popular press in the 20th century, astrology underwent a de-legitimisation. All of this brought astrology towards an odd sort of hybrid status we recognise today: practised professionally by serious psychiatrists and psychotherapists, as well as many brilliant and intellectually-inclined astrologers, yet at the same time consumed in highly simplified form by millions each day, and derided in mainstream rationalistic thought as a ‘pseudoscience’.
Prediction in modern astrology
In this context, we can understand why there has historically been some wariness towards astrology as a predictive tool. Nonetheless, as I will show with a few examples from influential practitioners, modern astrology does tend to acknowledge this – as well as advocate caution.
Richard Tarnas describes astrology as ‘archetypally predictive’, a phrase that for me well encapsulates its relationship with both symbolism and time. The planets and their energies relate to archetypes, as well as divinities. Mars, for example, is archetypically an embodiment of war, violence, anger and forceful energy. It is associated with concrete specifics, but unified by the archetype: for example, Mars rules knives, weapons and accidents, but also surgery, ironworking, the colour red, etc.
If Mars transits my Ascendant, perhaps I’ll accidentally cut myself. Or perhaps I will encounter an angry person with a knife. Or, possibly, I will just feel angry or frustrated for some reason. (The last time it did I was angry, for good reason, but that is another story!) We cannot be quite certain whether a transit will manifest more as an experience of the inner world, or as an external ‘event’ that is experienced as happening ‘to’ us. However, we do know the inner and outer are not totally separate, and if Mars is transiting the Ascendant we do know that something Martial will occur.
Leading psychological astrologer Liz Greene had this to say on the subject:
I am not in any way denying the value and long tradition of predictive work in astrology. But the two [psychological and predictive astrology] are not mutually exclusive. ‘Psychological’ does not mean only ‘inner’. Too many of us have had experience of accurate prognostications of a specific and concrete kind to pretend that the planets are not related to the outer as well as the inner world, or that it is impossible to predict certain kinds of events in certain situations.
It’s not uncommon to encounter stories, in fact, of astrologers later becoming astrologers after an astrologer predicted it – often to their disbelief at the time. According to Noel Tyl, famous American astrologer Evangeline Adams uncannily predicted a hotel fire in 1899. However, notably Adams also made some incorrect financial predictions, leading to many people losing a lot of money. So what are the ‘certain kinds of events in certain situations’ that Greene refers to? The example she gives is one where she hit upon the correct interpretation, mainly because the ensuing event happened to fit the symbolism perfectly in a relatively literal way.
Bernadette Brady in her book Predictive Astrology uses a dual metaphor of ‘the eagle and the lark’. For Brady, the eagle is the foundation of prediction. It soars on wind currents that have material reality, enabling it to survey the ground accurately. This eagle’s-eye-view is a descriptive, broad-brush, big-picture one. The eagle represents sound astrological technique, a level of interpretation built on consistent symbolic logic. The lark, whose song represents a more creative and intuitive form of interpretation, may hitch a ride with the eagle. But when it’s on its own, from the ground, without sight of the logically sound interpretation, its song may be beautiful, and may even prove accurate sometimes, but it is ultimately inventive.
One very old practice to ensure rigour is to combine techniques, which can act as multiple sources of testimony to what we see in the birth chart. I use a combination of timing techniques that work for me, and I look for the same theme coming up in multiple ways. For me, transits, solar returns, profection and secondary progression combine well to give a picture of any given stage in the life of the person. Other combinations, of course, speak more to other astrologers.
Living with astrology
So far, we have established that not only those practising traditional astrology, which was more oriented towards prediction of events, but also many more psychological astrologers, agree that astrology has something to say about the future. Regardless of whether you practise one or the other, or a mix like I do, we have a life to live and decisions to make. How, then, do we work with knowledge of the future?
For Greene, ‘we need to try to live as though we have the freedom to work with our transits and progressions on a psychological level. We may then have room to transform or alter future events, or deal more creatively’ with whatever arises. Richard Tarnas takes a similar view, noting that ‘the more deeply we understand the archetypal forces that affect our lives, the more free we can be in our dealings with them’. He also argues that ‘to the exact extent that we are conscious of the archetypes, we can respond with greater autonomy and self-awareness’.
It’s important at this point to address the human dimension of ourselves as readers of the chart – we who mediate its message and cannot entirely separate ourselves from it. Our inner lark is going to get carried away with its song sometimes. And since many of us find our way to astrology as a means for understanding our self, our life, and its events, including very traumatic ones, how do we deal with the natural anxiety we might feel when contemplating the future? Besides psychological work and treatment for the trauma or the anxiety itself, how do we approach astrological prediction with a spirit that does not exacerbate anxiety, or foster over-optimism?
I would like to borrow again, and build upon, insight from Tarnas, this time from a talk he gave to the Mayo School of Astrology online conference in April 2023. Asked what he would most wish people to understand at the outset of their journey with astrology, he said (among other things) that ‘the universe lets us know things on a need-to-know basis, but it does tell us what we need to know’. He said that we have been given an astonishing gift in the form of a window to the universe, and that in using it it is important to have faith: in it, in the universe, and in ourselves.
He was saying that we must honour the gift of foresight, and conceive it with an open mind, appropriate to the archetypal form in which we receive it. We have to approach it with humility and courage, and with compassion, regardless of whether we are reading for ourselves or for someone else. I personally have experienced both trepidation ahead of an event that turned out well, and crushing disappointment after pinning my hopes to promising astrological indicators. So now, as I navigate my life by the light of the stars, I try to remember where those particular rocks lie.
I think it does take humility to accept, in the face of its awesome power, that astrology doesn’t always give our finite human minds a clear vision of the future. And, when it does, seen through the lens of our hopes or our fears, sometimes that vision may turn out to be an optical illusion. It takes courage to be aware of, understand and acknowledge our fears. And it takes judgement to recognise them for what they are. Finally, as Tarnas said, we ultimately need to have faith in the universe. Sometimes, that can be the most difficult part. So, this is what I’ve learned to date: to try to always cultivate these qualities in my approach to astrology, and in this way I hope to keep its practice aligned with my healing journey, and at the same time show my gratitude to the universe for this incredible gift of being able to live in connection with the cosmos.
Notes and further reading
A good overview of the earlier history of astrology can be found at the beginning of Chris Brennan’s 2018 book Hellenistic astrology: the study of fate and fortune.
Some of the differences between traditional and modern approaches are discussed here and here, but there is a lot of discussion on the subject all over the internet. Personally, I think the extent of difference is sometimes overstated.
Books on prediction in astrology
Brady, Bernadette. 2022. Predictive Astrology: Tools to Forecast Your Life and Create Your Brightest Future.
Greene, Liz. 2023 [1st ed 2001]. The Horoscope in Manifestation: Psychology and Prediction.
Forrest, Steven. 2015. The Changing Sky: Learning Predictive Astrology: Creating Your Future with Transits, Progressions and Evolutionary Astrology.
See also Brennan (2018), listed above, for a detailed introduction to the use of Hellenistic astrology for prediction.
Referenced articles discussing prediction in astrology
https://www.astro.com/astrowiki/en/Prediction
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