we would not have life as we know it today, and i mean that completely seriously

astrology cannot be divorced from its roots in ancient calendrical systems. humans began to track the movements of the celestial bodies as a way to keep track of time https://twitter.com/ayyriestrology/status/1325580299091275789

why do we need to keep track of time? because we need to know what time of year to plant things and what time of year to harvest them. in order to move from hunter-gatherer society into agricultural society, we need to have a sense of time in the long term, not just day and night

could we have done without the myth-making and simply noticed these movements without ascribing meaning to them? maybe so. but once things get symbolic, it's hard to stop that ball from rolling

i read in a book recently (the time falling bodies take to light by william irwin thompson) about an early calendrical stick with animal figures carved into it. the number of notches in the stick matched the number of lunar months in a year, and each space had an animal

sound familiar? he argued this could be an artifact of an early astrology with animal representations for lunar months, coinciding perhaps with the behaviors of certain animals during particular times of year. it's pattern recognition

and astrology, at its core, is really all about pattern recognition. observe a pattern for long enough, and, assuming the pattern will continue in the same fashion it has previously, you can start to make predictions

technology has many benefits, but it's made us complacent. before clocks and calendars and phones, we had to watch the stars closely in order to orient ourselves in time. this is how we notice patterns. like that whenever the sun goes dark in the daytime, the king falls

humans are still highly disposed to notice patterns and connect seemingly disparate events and facts (like this thread, which links ancient coastlines, plankton, and US election results) https://twitter.com/latifnasser/status/1323333293467525126

we still do this all the time. it's just that most of us aren't paying attention to the stars (hell, a lot of us can't even see them)

all of this to say, without astrology, we don't have agriculture. without agriculture, we don't get...any of this

tl;dr without astrology, humanity as we know it doesn't exist