Is Astrology Magic?
I. A simple initial answer: No, astrology is not magic
As with many questions, the answer to ‘is astrology magic?’ depends on your perspective.
At a very simple level, we could say: no, astrology is not magic. In our view, as held by many contemporary practitioners of astrology and engaged with by many consumers, there is nothing inherently magical or out of the ordinary about astrology as popularly practiced.
For all kinds of historical and cultural reasons, magic has a bad reputation. Many people who might ask the question ‘is astrology magic?’ might do so from a position of fear or worry, out of a desire to distance themselves from magic or to reassure themselves that they are not involved in something forbidden. People within certain branches of Christianity, Islam, or other religions, for example, might worry that their own or a loved one’s involvement in astrology might violate cherished rules and norms.
For anyone asking the question from this sort of perspective, the rest of this article is probably not relevant to your interests, and you can content yourself with knowing that most casual engagements with contemporary “Western” astrology do not involve anything that departs from a typical non-magical experience or worldview. Although some people may feel a sense of wonder or other feelings when reading a horoscope or having someone read their chart, there need not be anything magical about this, and one cannot accidentally do anything magical or supernatural by casually reading about astrology or simply dabbling in its practice.
II. Delving a little deeper: Troubling the initial ‘no’
Much of astrological practice is not magical, as most would define it, and moreover, some people even take for granted that not only astrology is not magical but is antithetical to magic. Some contemporary astrologers see what they do as scientific or at least continuous with science, and many are at pains to ‘legitimize’ astrology by placing it on an ostensibly firmer theoretical or empirical position that would invite institutional recognition or popular prestige.
Here we part ways with those who deny astrology’s connections to magic. The early astral omen systems of Mesopotamia, the stellar timekeeping of Egypt, and the systematic logic of Hellenistic astrology all developed within a worldview that did not distinguish science, magic, and religion from one another in the compartmentalized and oppositional way that they are firmly separated within many modern worldviews deriving from the legacies of European colonialism, Christianity, and post-Renaissance industrialization. What we would now differentiate as science, magic, and religion all shared aims and techniques within these cultures up in very recently, historically speaking. What we call astrology was a cornerstone of not just the technique but the very cosmology of science, magic, and many religions.
The very question “is astrology magic?” only makes sense within worldviews that have either already stripped away the magical from what can be acknowledged as real (i.e., scientific), or have fearfully cast magic into the corner as lesser, dangerous, or false (i.e., not true religion).
Because the borders of the magical have been so coopted, condemned, and policed, to even ask the question “is astrology magic?” reflects the legacies of worldviews that would require one of two outcomes: either (1) the answer must be ‘no’ and therefore astrology would be rendered safe and sanitized; or (2) if the answer is ‘yes’ then it would mean that astrology would need to be condemned as dangerous, irrational, or fraudulent.
We suspect that if you have read this far, your own interest in this question probably reflects some uncertainty about your own worldview. You have lived at a time when the promise of science to solve all societal problems has instead resulted in existential threats to our planet’s climate, the development of weapons that could render the planet uninhabitable, and the invention of tools initially intended to mimic human intelligence that promised widespread access to many once-gatekept capacities but that now threaten to disenfranchise millions and accelerate dangerous wealth consolidation in the hands of a very few (to mention just one of the externalities of for-profit large language models). Instead of granting greater freedom and leisure, the contemporary Western worldview has seemed to result in a felt sense of alienation, disconnection, and despair.
Amid all these disastrous consequences, perhaps, in asking the question “is astrology magic?”, you might have been looking for a little hope.
III. Toward a magical astrology, which is to say, a relational astrology
At Idola Stellarum we practice astrological magic, which is a very specific branch of magic. In addition, however, we also consider ourselves to thinking with and practicing a specifically magical astrology. Although astrological magic is not easily accessible to many—astrological talismans tend to be expensive, and learning how to safely and effective perform celestial petitions or make astrological talismans requires years of learning and practice—magical astrology is accessible right here and right now.
You do not need to buy anything—ever, from us or from anyone else—to practice a magical astrology or live within a magical astrological worldview.
In this sense, the answer to “is astrology magic?” is: absolutely yes, it can be, if you step into a way of relating with astrology and the world that makes it so. Magical astrology is not a what but a how. An astrology that is magic is, for us at least, a relational astrology. To explore and deepen this idea, we would like to share some excerpts from Pallas K. Augustine’s book, The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home, published by Idola Stellarum, and in particular from the chapter entitled “Manifesto: Toward a Relational Astrology,” wherein Pallas offers others practicing astrology in this more magical way words of support, recognition, tension, and connection:
“Articulating a Relational Astrology as a uniquely positioned way of practicing [astrology] is a discursive move that brings to the foreground the values that guide our astrology. Saying ‘relational astrology’ allows our allegiance to the Earth, spirit, soul, connection, magic, and to each other to be at the forefront of our practices. Relational astrology is a bit of an oddity amid the many differentiated branches within ‘Western’ astrology, the majority of which define themselves by technique.
—Pallas K. Augustine, The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home, pp. 43-44.
Upholding values as defining of one’s astrology is dangerous and risky. Astrology is widely considered the tool that serves, not one who is served. Despite the many technique-forward traditions, every astrologer’s technical approaches reflect and enact their values, reveal their allegiances and relationships, whether they realize and admit it or not. Relational astrology does not only acknowledge the astrologer’s position in the world as worthy of definition but celebrates their unique, complex, perfect web of interconnections created through relationships among the many spheres—above and below—that make them the astrologer they are. Relational astrologers serve astrology—its magic and possibility—as its readers, priests, devotees, allies, co-conspirators, and dance partners.
Relational astrology is a corrective to the violent extraction of magic and spirit from astrology, of astrology from astronomy, of witchcraft from medicine, of the terrestrial-celestial connection from science—disconnections perpetuated not only by empire invested in disenchantment but also by astrologers themselves who decide to gain favour within materialism rather than reckon with the ways a more relational astrology may be real and true and just.
Relational astrology is magic.
Relational astrology is an astrology in which magic never left. Relational astrology is an astrology of community kitchen witches across millennia reading the stars over healing tea crafted with plants grown and served in tandem with their celestial spheres. Relational astrology is an astrology of the dirt and sky. Relational astrology sidesteps the argument between objective and subjective interpretations of the chart by calling out the fallacy that the distinction even means anything when one is living in their moment. Relational astrology is an astrology from and for those of us who work intimately with people, with plants, with animals and spirits and deity and ancestors and angels. Relational astrology reveals the chart to be no mere map nor puzzle nor snapshot nor individual personality but the World itself.”
IV. Reclaiming a magical worldview
For those interested in the ways astrology and magic overlap and intersect, we believe that a magical astrology—a relational astrology—can be a crucial aid in the process of reclaiming a worldview in which there is a single, unified world rather than a fragmented, compartmentalized world in which pieces are and must be kept separate—science vs. religion, mind vs. body, fact vs. value, determinism vs. freedom, mechanism vs. meaning, etc. This is in a sense an ethical project, and one that requires breaking down certain ways of seeing the world and rekindling perspectives and skills that have been devalued and lost in the contemporary workd.
“Re-placing astrology in its proper location in history and culture necessitates not validation amongst other desouled and colonization-borne disciplines, but re-entangling astrology with the life of the people, reconnecting the astrology of people’s lives with magic and religion for those who have lost and need them. As more astrologers [in and impacted by the “West”] (re)claim the roles of clergy, theologian, exorcist, and oracle, the haunting of astrology becomes undeniable. Navigating the mysteries necessitates skills, many of which have been devalued and even denied. Direct spirit contact with celestial spirits of the realms of planets and stars is a fact within the rising wave of contemporary astrology.
—Pallas K. Augustine, The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home, p. 42
Astrological magic and practices of planetary and stellar relationship make the sky accessible even to those who can’t access dark skies, including those with vision impairment. Practitioners of polytheism and witchcraft are a groundswell, spearheading the integration of spirit (back) into “Western” cultures and astrology holds complementary skills and values necessary to do so.
The ethic of planetary and stellar relationship reaches beyond those who would consider themselves magical or spiritual practitioners. A relational ethic runs through every astrologer who encourages clients to relate to the planets not solely as analogy or messenger or simply part of oneself but as celestial-terrestrial spheres of influence, power, beauty, and force who express themselves and relate with us directly and through every aspect of creation.”
V. Astrology has always been magical
Stepping into a relational ethic and a magical worldview means giving up certain ideas and ways of seeing, in the interest of revitalizing older, more ancestral, more connected ways of seeing and knowing and relating with the mysteries. What we are naming here as relational astrology is not new. It is not a discovery, it is not an invention, it is not a brand. It is not something you can buy. It is not something that can be sold. It is a way of practicing astrology that is yours to step into.
“’Relationality’ is a contemporary term for something ancient. As a way of articulation, it flows out of psychology and philosophy as most quasi-mystical academic terms do. Relationality discourse found roots in the fertile ground of feminist and queer theory, performance studies, and disability justice, all sites invested in rallying around interdependence and questioning the tyranny of an isolated human self. More recently, theology and anthropology have jumped on board, recognizing relationality as a balm to the violence that has plagued their disciplines, finding language for something that has always been there gasping for air.
—Pallas K. Augustine, The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home, pp. 44-45
Ideally, relationality in disciplines such as ‘Western’ astrology offers language for approaches that learn, reciprocate, and rhyme with Indigenous and Black ways-of-knowing without claiming to be the same as those ways nor taking those ways out of their appropriate contexts. Unfortunately, that is only an ideal and now, of course, there are relational approaches articulated to basically everything that often claim to be some new way of doing things including public policy, corporate organization, and natural resource management, to name a few particularly egregious examples.
One thing relational astrologers need to stay passionate about when articulating our work as relational astrology is to resist the temptation to consider it new despite the acclaim and legacy that can come with such audacity. Calling the ways we practice ‘relational astrology’ is a corrective move to main currents in ‘Western’ astrology, currents in which many of our astrologer-selves were raised. From the profound depths of psychological astrology to the strict hierarchies of Hellenistic, from the lofty heights of archetypal to the riptides of evolutionary and the warm streams of humanistic, these currents and others can pretend astrology exists outside the lived political socio-economic context in which it is practiced.
Relational astrology necessitates recognizing the positions, lineages, and particular magic of the astrologer in all their complexity, as only then can relationship truly begin—with our clients, the chart, the planets and stars and their many spirits. Recognizing one’s positionality—where one stands in relation to others—is a very old and still very common way of being-in-the-world, but colonialism and isolated individualism rely on the forgetting and ignoring of that fact. Only recently in human history terms—and localized most commonly in the West—has the isolated individual, the very absence of a relational position, become the expectation and norm. The modern unique totality of the natal chart, understood only in relationship to itself, also reflects this forgetting.
With the humanistic astrology of the twentieth century as forebear of relational astrology, turning to relational ways of being is an antidote to the broken promises of humanism more generally. Around the world, the framework of human rights has failed to bring them to bear on the majority of the Earth’s population. Faulty premises abound in discourse on the rights of the individual even when the collective identity of individuals is understood strategically. Primarily, the disconnect between Human and Nature is so enshrined that any valuing of the Earth and her creatures attempts to make them more human and thus worthy of rights. Asymmetry and inequality are baked into institutions of humanism as many people were not even considered human when they were founded. Humans denied rights must still fight for humanization. In the New Age of Air, these structures evaporate. A turn toward relationality is a turn away from the violence and exceptionalism of humanism. Relational astrology is for liberation and connection, for the possibility inherent in collectivity, and the dreams of worlds to come and worlds that are already here.”
VI. So, is your astrology magic?
We cannot, of course, know your thoughts and intentions as you read this piece. But we imagine that if you have read this far and are wrestling with the question of whether astrology is magic, you are wrestling with the question because there is something at stake for you: the question matters. Perhaps it matters because you see a world that seems to be disintegrating and no one is offering a vision for how to put it back together, or how to see it as whole. Perhaps it matters because you have encountered something within the world of astrology that sparked a sense of something real, something true, something magical. Perhaps you’re asking because you’re trying to find your way.
As we noted above, astrology does not have to be magic. There are plenty of ways of engaging with it that do not rock the boat and do not threaten to take you outside of the contemporary worldview. If you’d like to try another way, however, there are paths out there if you would like to walk them, a more relational astrology rooted in the Earth and tethered to the stars:
“On the ground is where astrology can become a tool for connection that both tethers us deep within ourselves and far outside ourselves to allow for a lived experience of presence and relatedness. This is how we reckon with the hauntings and resist the evacuations of our beloved astrology: we can practice astrology with rigour and devotion informed by scholarship, history, and technique and we can care a great deal about our place in the world, about people, about the Earth and her creatures, about spirits and the gods, about matters of Fate and facts of magic.
—Pallas K. Augustine, The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home, pp. 39-40
Neither rigour of technique nor care for other beings can be taken for granted just because we are astrologers. Care and rigour must both be made intentional and essential pieces of the ideas, worldviews, realities, beliefs, and values that shape and guide our practices.”
“Relational astrology holds both that we can never fully know how another walks in the world and also that we walk the same sacred ground. The existence of that sacred ground is reason enough to walk together. Relational astrology wrangles with its own history and recognizes its own complicity. Relational astrology holds space for discomfort, including the discomfort of having to hold multiple things as true. Relational astrology necessitates humility—not only humility in the face of a one-on-one client interaction but also humility in the face of astrology as a whole.
To practice relational astrology is to plant a stake which says,
‘Here marks the end of my striving to make sense of it all on my own.Here marks the beginning of my commitment to stop going it alone.
From here on, I let the Earth and Sky guide my inquiry.
From here on, I accept responsibility for my portion of this precious world.
From here on, I listen.
From here on, I speak.
From here on, I trust the magic.”’
—Pallas K. Augustine, The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home, pp. 45
And around that singular stake planted among so many other stakes, what abundance is possible to grow!”
We hope these initial ideas and excerpts from Pallas’s The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home have given you something to work with as you seek to answer important questions about yourself, the world, and your worldview.
If you are a consulting astrologer or serious astrology enthusiast and would like to read more from the chapter quoted above, Pallas’s book is available in print or e-book in our shop.
If you’d like to read of our writing, you can check out a variety of free offerings on our blog; we also have a guide to Idola Stellarum resources and maintain a list of links to other (free) resources on astrological magic.
If you are interested in really delving into astrological magic, you might be interested in the Inner Sanctum.
Whatever path you choose, may it be real and have integrity.
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