Astrology is a broad sort of umbrella word, like how "Abrahamic" covers and references Christianity, Islam, and Judaism despite those three being pretty clearly distinct from one another. What I'm trying to communicate is that I use the word "astrology" to refer to a very large, fragmented body of disparate beliefs that are certainly distinct and unique, but all share a common thread. Generalizing? Yeah, but I wanted to clarify that a person can't really be labeled an "astrologist" in the same way as other beliefs; astrology is usually a belief held alongside or as an aspect of others. It's a powder-keg. Enough of my prevaricating and trying to be polite.
Astrology, at an elementary level, is essentially the belief that astronomical phenomena (movements of planets, visibility or obfuscation of stars, perceived size and shape of the moon, and so on) have an impact on events in the progression of human life. Moreover, these phenomena are detectable, measurable, and even predictable. This is where the "-ology" part comes from; many believers of astrology have an impressively clear system of prediction and a substantial literature of interpretation. Also, astrologers seek to understand and explain the underlying workings of the world around them. This may sound familiar from descriptions of more traditional fields of empirical study like physics or chemistry, and astrology's proponents often present it as a science.
It is not. A science must have an element of falsifiability, and astrology relies heavily on individual interpretation. As such, there is by definition no way to be demonstrably wrong (or right, for that matter) in the field of astrology. Additionally, the "effects" of astrology are inseparable from other phenomena in the world and also unrepeatable. Perhaps an astrologer does predict an event, sure, but it may have been the result of them closely reading the news, or having a degree in the related field, or some such situation. This is not to say astrologers are all two-faced charlatans trying to dupe people, of course. Many people do genuinely believe in the mechanical power of the heavens' movements.
And there we get into my problems with astrology. Let the playa-hatin' commence!
The core assumption of astrology is that the movement of planetary or other "heavenly" bodies has significant and sometimes predictable effects on human life and experience. My issue is this: put another way, this assumption holds that life is simple. As I've discussed previously (and at belabored length), it is not. Life happens in an uncontrollable chain reaction with a fair amount of random chance involved. In spite of my status as a believer in "God," I most certainly do not believe that the universe turns on a set of wheels according to predetermined patterns. Even if such patterns exist, they are most certainly not comprehensible to any human intellect, but that's another story.
Another key problem with astrology is the extent to which (at least to my perception) it robs the humans in question of control of their own fate. The moon was at a specific phase at your birth, and Jupiter had obscured two of its biggest moons, and so you have a predisposition to become a talented guitarist? On the other side of the coin, astrology (as with any other system) can very readily become a crutch, robbing people of responsibility for what happens. Yeah, you got into a fight with your spouse over something and it escalated into shouting, but I absolutely refuse to believe that it was simply the Fire element of your Sagittarius nature being manifested at a moment of emotional vulnerability. This goes back to over-simplification; people are complicated beings, and the explanations for their actions are correspondingly not so single-step.
On the lighter side, there's a very simple, non-philosophical reason I find astrology interesting to read about but ultimately useless in any practical way. The effective premise of astrology is that the movement of a "celestial" body, like a planet or a star, can affect events on the surface of the Earth. Assuming we treat astrology as science and don't delve into the ideas of a spirit plane, that means it acts with a force. Between planets, that force would be gravity. Fair? (I'm also going to ignore the obvious problem that gravitation is mutual, so Earth would also be affecting events on other bodies in a measurable/predictable way.)
Here's the thing. Gravity obeys the inverse-square law, meaning that the intensity of gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the intervening distance. Put another, much better way:
Let's do this for one of the many, many bodies referenced in astrology. I choose Jupiter, because it's pretty. When Jupiter comes the closest to Earth (and the intensity of gravity is at its highest), the two planets are about 598 million kilometers apart.
So, the strength of gravity at that peak point is: 1/357,604 Newtons. Ha! Fooled you, divide that by a million squared.
For reference, a fairly average-sized apple, held out in your flat hand, produces about a newton worth of force as it presses down into your hand. Jupiter, at its closest point, causes an astronomical number of times less force than that.
What this means, then, is that to produce the effects astrology ascribes to cosmic motion (states of mood being the big one), the more reliable way to do it would be to force them to hold a cantaloupe over their head.
TL;DR You make your fate, not the planets.
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