A few years ago Time magazine featured an article, "Astrology and the New Cult of the Occult." It ended with the following conclusion: "But there are many troubled people who refuse to accept personal responsibility for their lives, insisting that some outer force is in control. For these, a first-class astrologer can seem a necessity—and perhaps he is." ^{Time, March 21, 1969;}

How this contrasts with the teachings of the Bible, which speaks of man's God-given dominion and our individual responsibility to act in obedience to God's law! We read that when Moses was urging the children of Israel to obey the Ten Commandments, he warned them, "Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves ... lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them." ^{Deut. 4:15, 19;} This makes it unmistakable that astrology violates the first commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." ^{Ex. 20:3;}

The basic claim of astrology is the superstitious importance placed on the exact moment of birth, which is supposed to put one in a particular relationship to the fixed and orderly pattern of movement of the stars and planets. It suggests that everyone has a fixed fate determined by a mysteriously operating astrological "law" whose effects he cannot possibly escape. This, in turn, has produced through the centuries a vast accumulation of superstitions having an aura of pseudoscientific respectability. Hence the widespread appeal astrology has on college campuses today as an intriguing and imaginative exercise of the human intellect.

Astrology is even woven into our language. Numbers of words have an astrological origin; for example, the word "disaster," from a negative prefix combined with the Latin word for "star." That is, when the stars are against you, you are apt to have a disaster! This is, of course, ridiculous to one who understands and trusts the law of God, or good, but it's necessary to be alert to such deeply rooted superstitions.

Now, a lot of people don't go along with astrology. They say, "Why, I don't believe that nonsense. So how on earth can it possibly have any effect on me?" But Christian Science shows that whatever is strongly believed by millions of mortals, no matter how false, can influence the human experience of other mortals who merely ignore this mass belief.

The remedy? Oppose this false law of superstitious belief by an understanding application of God's law. This calls for a real effort sometimes. Many people are just too lazy to do anything but mentally drift along without realizing where they are going. They succumb to belief in a fixed fate rather than rouse themselves to make the spiritual effort necessary to demonstrate that their destiny is actually determined by absolute, fixed Principle.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "The planets have no more power over man than over his Maker, since God governs the universe; but man, reflecting God's power, has dominion over all the earth and its hosts." ^{Science and Health, p. 102;} This statement should wake us up to see that if some recurring pattern of discord prophesied by astrology does seem to come true, we are merely experiencing the effect of the centuries-old belief in the power of the stars and planets to influence or control men. The stars and planets themselves have no such power. Belief in astrology in turn springs from the older, more fundamental, and almost universally accepted beliefs that life is in matter; that we live in a material body, which constitutes our identity; that this body is man—a tiny speck in a vast material universe controlled by awesome forces we cannot really understand. Christian Science squarely challenges this whole concept. It declares this complex structure of educated beliefs to be totally false.

Christian Science reiterates and explains the great Bible truth that God is Spirit. Since Spirit is unconfinable and unlimited, Spirit and its manifestation is everywhere, the All-in-all. And because all is Spirit, matter has no opportunity to exist; man is God's perfect expression, His image and likeness. The entire universe, rightly conceived, must therefore be spiritual, not material. What seems to be a material man is only a material concept of life. Experience shows that the further we explore these spiritually scientific truths, which at first seem so startling to the materialist, the more convincing is their logic and the more prolific their proofs. These proofs include liberation from all sorts of restrictions, limitations, and discords, so often taken for granted as normal and inescapable in human experience.

The more we exchange finite beliefs of material existence for infinite spiritual ideas, the more harmony, beauty, purity, health, happiness, and satisfaction are ours. And this is the practice of the Principle of Christian Science. Simple? Yes, but it is a demanding discipline that is incredibly rewarding. We find a joy we can know in no other way, the joy of the kingdom of heaven within us, of government by divine Principle, which Christ Jesus came to preach and to practice, healing sickness, sin, insanity, and even raising the dead.

A study of astrology can never show us the spiritual truth of our being. It can only take us further and further into the quagmire of conjectural limitations. It is a will-o'-the-wisp enticing us from the master Christian's way of individual freedom and responsibility. Astrology can never show us how to discover our God-given dominion as the sons and daughters of the creative Principle, Love. It merely intensifies self-centered thinking, whereas, what we need most is God-centered thinking.

At one time I urgently needed to resolve a complex and frustrating set of circumstances. Through prayer I was led to a helpful passage from Science and Health, where Mrs. Eddy writes of Jesus, "His three days' work in the sepulchre set the seal of eternity on time." ^{ibid., p. 44;} Also I clung to the part of the Lord's Prayer as it is given in Science and Health with its spiritual interpretation which reads,

Not long after this I learned of a particular claim of astrology that if one is born at a certain time his whole life may be marked by a recurring pattern of incompleted transactions. Looking back, I could see that this indeed had seemed to dog my footsteps over a period of years. Then I saw how the truth that Jesus' "work ... set the seal of eternity on time" had annulled the claim of astrology for me, even though I hadn't realized that was my need. My experience from then on was marked by a most harmonious completion of all sorts of transactions, sometimes in spite of formidable obstacles.

When awaking to the falsity of astrology it's important for us to know we are not dealing with a mysterious evil power, just with a sneaky false belief. Its trickery is fully uncovered in Christian Science. So we need never fear it, need never have a morbid curiosity about it. But we won't ignore it. And we will refuse to be identified with one of the signs of the zodiac. Whenever one detects any recurring pattern of discord, such as lack, limitation, frustration, accidents or illness—even pain and discord accompanying bodily functions such as normal monthly periods—one can reduce it to nothingness by recognizing the present operation of God's law of harmony.

How do you free yourself from the influence of astrology when you've been an active follower of it? Persist in realizing that there is no power opposed to God, that God is divine Principle, governing individual man and the universe perfectly through spiritual law. In divine Science, in the allness of infinite Principle and His infinite spiritual creation, there is no false law, no astrology. The real man is the preexistent, coexistent, enduring idea of eternal Life. He is not a mortal governed by fate or luck—good or bad. The belief that man's true life begins at a certain moment in time, or that his identity emerges from a womb at a certain moment of time, is a totally false belief no matter how widely accepted.

Astrology is superstition. It is a perversion of the precision of Principle. It claims occult power to hold us to a fixed fate. It lulls us into apathy and robs us of the joy and satisfaction of fulfillment and success. It makes life a burden. And the remedy? We just wake up. Claim our God-given dominion as the reflection of Principle. Rise in righteous rebellion against the notion of a fixed fate. Rise with the energy of infinite Spirit, the vitality of eternal Life.

No more procrastination, no more indecision, no more broken resolutions. Because divine Principle is divine Love, we feel the tender warmth of Love as, moment by moment, we live triumphantly the precision of Principle.