Is astrology predictive?

I think the idea that ‘astrologers can see the future’ has done us nothing but harm. We cannot see the future! Probabilities . . .yes – that's why our predictions are often correct. Questions and issues, certainly – there is the heart of our craft.

– Steven Forrest

The question whether astrology can predict events is something that bothers many modern practitioners although it was settled by great astrologers like Dane Rudhyar long back when he wrote:

 “Astrology deals with potentialities — even of events. For any astrological configuration might refer to a great variety of actual facts. Astrology deals with potentiality of meanings; it is the art of giving valid meanings to every phase of our existence — our existence seen as a whole from birth to death. To make of it a predictive science (and the very function of any science is to predict what will happen when this and that factor come together in clearly defined circumstances) is to deny its essential character and validity”.

The elements of a horoscope are symbols. The function of mythology  connected with these symbols is to present an image of the universe that connects the transcendent to the world of everyday experience.  A horoscope is, therefore, an organization of symbolic images and narratives of the possibilities of human experience. (some what parallel to a wave function of modern physics as we see in the next para).

In quantum mechanics, the Schrodinger equation (or the wave function) serves a similar purpose like the ancient myths. It contains all the future possibilities of a physical system. A wave function collapse is then a phenomenon in which a wave function, initially in a superposition of several possibilities, appears to reduce to a single event after interaction with an observer. This implies that nature is fundamentally stochastic, i.e. non-deterministic.

On my blog site regular readers will have seen several examples of how the same planetary configurations amidst the same stars gives rise to several possibilities taking place all over the world. What makes the difference? It is really dependent on human free-will. The interaction of the observer with the “wave function” of star images so to speak is what gives rise to an event.

Traditionalists might still give examples where predictions turned out to be right. But let us remember that it is not sufficient to get a few predictions right. Do we know how many predictions were wrong?  As statistically trained Serennu points out in her twitter feed:

Serennu Astrology‏ @serennu May 23

Interesting fact: Out of 10 coin tosses, you need to predict 9 correctly in order for the result to be statistically significant.