There are several trends in astrology but its main task remains as always the prediction. The detractors of astrology usually ask "how it works". This question gets astrologers of the entire world into a tight corner, but as one of them has said: “it is not our task to explain how does this happen, our task is to measure what happens”. Suppose that scientists discover a new kind of solar radiation, which affects the behavior of every organism on Earth. Will this discovery explicate astrology? It will justify it for those who ask for an explanation of this kind. The astrologer will keep counting how many people with Venus conjunct Neptune in their nativity have an increased artistic predilection, because this is his/her labor. Thomas Edison said: "it was not necessary to understand how electricity worked but just that the lights came on when the switch was turned on."
Physical scientists
invoke the Aristotelian “observation and experiment” but thanks
to the observation Aristotle came up to the conclusion that the Earth
is the center of the Universe and due to the experiment Maxwell spoke
about the ether. How the observation of the subatomic level is going
on after Heizenberg? Most of the contemporary primary particles are
simple mathematical quantities. Laplace added the “t” to the
Cartesian coordinates, Einstein added the “t ' ” to the equations of
Laplace but the nature of Time is still unknown to them, who
supposedly are the most competent to grasp it.
Astrology is an attempt of the human mind to grasp the time in its completeness, past, present and future. In a way more rational than its adversaries think, because this art has always used something that the scientists accepted only after the theory of general relativity: the interconnection of time and space. The contribution of Einstein was a mathematical ratification of something that human mind was exercising since the beginning of astrology. The Assyrians first realized that time and space are part of the same interrelated flow of existence. It is generally accepted that they divised a system for measuring the circle in divisions of 360 degrees, a degree of space being symbolically equal to one day of time. They also divided the sky into 36 sectors, grouped in three zones of twelve sectors each, a system perhaps related to the alternative year of three seasons each consisting of 120 days. Such was the foundation of the theory of the astrological ages which the Greeks were to perfect. This ingenious art has been applied for thousands of years and its weaknesses are rather due to incomplete observation (what people can see) than to its rationale.
Physicists say: we cannot reverse the arrow of time because causality will be reversed, too. Nevertheless, time and causality in the astrological thinking were always interwoven, represented by the same planet (Saturn), that is to say the same letter of this particular language. Astrophysicists are the tenors of the choir, as in the distribution of the cognitive objects they have inherited sky. Some of their accusations are contrary even to their accepted scientific truths. All of them come with the arrogance acquired by the scientific impetus of the last centuries and they seem to forget that has not always been so. For many more centuries other needs of humanity were covered by the metaphysical religion and humanity made moral strides during that period. You would not read this article if there wasn't a feeling that beneath the coating of knowledge the human race has acquired, there lies another reality not entirely reachable through logic, scientific method or laboratory measurment. We sense the presence and effect of cosmic forces and tides that influrence the world in which we live, even reaching down occasionally to touch us individualy, but these always seem just outside the span of our coscious minds, just below the horizon. Part of our race memmory, our race heritage, is this awareness of something important "below the horizon"; not knowable at the conscious and rational level, but nonetheless, "there".
In conclusion I would like to cite an extract from Sepharial's New Manual of Astrology: "The Zodiac is a pictorial history of the evolution of the Universe, and a synthetic diagram of human progress through the ages. One cannot but pause to wonder and admire, when considering the wisdom of that man who first conceived the idea of writing this stupendous record of our race in the starry heavens. There the moth and dust of time had no advantage, nor could the busy hand of man reach there to mar the sacred records with excisions and interpolations. A star that originally belonged to the head of the Dragon would remain his vulnerable point for ever, until the time should come when the record was fulfilled, and the wounded heel should bruise the serpent's head. Kristna might change to Hercules and to St. George, and each of the great heroes who are depicted as closing with the dragon or the serpent in the struggle for life, would find his place in the history and mythology of the nations; but the stars would remain unchanged, and all the musings of the poet, the reasonings of the philosopher, and the calculations of the searcher of the skies would not avail to move one star from the bright mosaic of the Zodiac. So the record was set there, and so it has remained to this day. Therefore the zodiacal signs form the ground plan of Astrology, and the specific nature and power of each sign have to be thoroughly known before the modifying influence exerted by the several planets can be estimated with any degree of accuracy."
Exalted or commercialized, banned or exorcised, astrology has survived for thousands of years and there are no signs of an eminent downfall; on the contrary, nowadays it seems flourishing. For some, this is a herald of the age of Aquarius. To my opinion, all this hassle is characteristic of the latest stages of the age of Pisces we live in.