Why You Don’t Believe in Astrology

Astrology, said the late astrologer Grant Lewi, is not something to believe in.  It is something to know about.

He believed this to be an important distinction:  ”Some things in life demand they be accepted based on higher spiritual authority. But astrology is clearly not in this category.”

Lewi was a graduate of Columbia University with a master’s degree in English and taught English and creative writing at Dartmouth and at the Universities of North Dakota and Delaware in the pre-World War II era. But he was overwhelmed by the incredible, observable evidence that astrology does, in fact, drive human destiny. This revelation prompted a seismic shift in his life-path direction.

Lewi was blessed with a birth chart that supported his ambition to be a successful writer of ground-breaking books. His Astrology for the Millions first published in 1940 and, through 10 printings, sold more than a million copies. Its publication introduced countless numbers of people to astrology.

Lewi observed that astrology is “believed in” by a lot of people who know practically nothing about it. And it is “disbelieved in” by even more who know absolutely nothing about it.

“Of no other art or science can this be said,” he noted.

“Astronomy, the haughty scientific offspring of astrology, has developed through the centuries into a science of celestial measurement. It has developed even farther than the lay mind can comprehend, into a sort of metaphysics of time, space and motion which only initiates can talk about, let alone comprehend.

“Mathematics, intimately related to astronomy both through astrology and through the developments of centuries, has, like astronomy, grown with the ages into a part of the taken for granted language of our thinking,” he points out.

The astrologer wrote that few have the temerity to disbelieve in the law of gravity, Newton’s laws of motion or Einstein’s theory of relativity.  These are not matters to “believe in” or “disbelieve in” but things to know about.  Once you know, it is not necessary to believe; such things are verifiable by experiment, and subject thereafter to the working of law.

“Astrology’s position in human thought develops from the fact that it is frequently the subject of the most violent controversy, militantly carried on in the presence of practically no knowledge whatsoever,” he suggested.        

The author said he believes in astrology for the same reason people believe in the multiplication table or in the intoxicating effects of alcohol. Because it works.

“I have put together known facts of people’s lives with known planetary influences, and I have observed, in thousands of cases, correspondences which are laws. I have watched these laws operate in the lives of individuals – of clients, of those close to me, of great men whose biographies are known or whose stories appear from day to day in the press of the contemporary world.”

“I have watched Hitler and his chart as well as Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Stalin. I’ve studied the careers and the charts of Napoleon, Bismark, the old Kaiser, Lincoln, Washington, Wilson as well as thousands of lesser individuals who, like yourself, respond to planetary action quite as much as do the great, the near great, and the pseudo-great who, for better or worse, make the headlines.”

“The response of human beings to planetary stimuli is among the most amazing of all phenomena capable of being observed,” he claimed.

Lewi’s tight scrutiny of the astrological charts of Hitler and other 20^th century dictators is particularly instructive.  Appropriately, he described the 1934 – 1941 transit of planet Uranus through the astrological sign of Taurus as the significator heralding a new “Age of Dictators”.  And he provided ample supporting evidence for this claim.  

Uranus moved into Taurus on June 7, 1934, only two months before Hitler consolidated his power by merging the posts of Chancellor and President to become the supreme leader of Nazi Germany, which evolved as a craven and despotic regime.  Under the influence of this transit, militant, authoritarian dictators in Italy (Mussolini), Imperial Japan (Hideki Tojo), and Russia (Stalin) were on the prowl as well, following Hitler’s strategies to the extent possible.

Using the language of astrology, by Lewi’s reckoning “the genius of this period was directed toward revolutionizing ideas (Uranus) of geographic boundaries and property rights (Taurus).” But the tug and pull of this transit ushered in an incredibly dark historical period in which grievances and a lust for power and territorial conquest became inexorably linked.

Roughly 84 years later, orbiting Uranus has returned once again to the sign of Taurus. It arrived in May 2018 and will remain in the sign until its final exit in April 2026.

In today’s world there is no shortage of authoritarian dictators positioned around the globe. Atop an expanding list are Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. None of these authoritarian leaders have much use for Western-style democracy. 

Were he alive today Lewi most likely would be heard warning the civilized world to remain especially vigilant during this phase of the Uranus cycle. But he would also caution that it is never a good time to squander human potential.

Lewi’s life work primarily focused on timing issues and the impact of planetary motion on human affairs. He was especially concerned about the tendency of individuals to limit the possibilities available to them.

“We leave vast possibilities untouched, either through not seeing them or through doubting our own capacities. It is the task of encouraging men and women to go as far as possible within the mold of their possibilities that astrology fulfills one of its most useful functions,” he wrote.

“It is not limitations that eats out the heart, but inaction, the knowledge of powers not used, the sense of having failed to develop to the utmost. The overcoming of fate is not the overcoming of limitations; that is impossible.  It is the exercise of free will, the assertion of the full self expanding to its utmost with the tools at hand, in the circumstances that are set.”