Astrologers believe that the study of the horoscope - the map of the sky for a given location in time and place - can yield insights into the character and fate of a person, event, or enterprise on earth.

Most ancient cultures throughout the world - including the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, and Mayans - have developed their own systems of astrology. In the West, the idea that certain patterns of life are reflected in the planetary cycles goes back as far as the ancient Near East, where a system of divination existed from the fourth or third millennia BCE. Western astrology evolved out of a synthesis of Babylonian and Persian religion and Greek rationalism and mathematics, with contributions from Egyptian and Arabic cultures, among others.

Until the 17th century, the sister sciences of astronomy and astrology were considered two aspects of the same vocation. Both were taught in the universities of Europe. However astrology's popularity began to wane in the 17th century, due largely to the rise of Cartesian rationalism and Newtonian mechanistic science, which could not find a rational explanation for astrology.

After over two hundred years of decline, a rebirth of interest in astrology began to emerge in the West in the late 19th century, beginning in England under the influences of Romanticism and Theosophy.

Today, with new advances in quantum physics and holistic healing, as well as influences from Eastern religions, the holistic, participatory worldview in which astrology is steeped does not seem so implausible anymore. A revival of interest in astrology has been growing steadily in the West since the 1960's, and continues to expand to this day.