While astrology may produce in its believers a feeling that they are in harmony with the universe, it also carries a heavier, fatalistic component—a feeling that certain events are "in the stars"—that, at best, we can adjust to them but not hope to change them. The view that certain human events are beyond human control tends to make one feel absolved from responsibility for his actions. Yet a clear-eyed acceptance of the fact that our own decisions determine the relative success or failure of our lives is basic to healthy, mature thinking.

Shakespeare comments on the human tendency to evade responsibility for one's decisions and actions in the words he gives to the ambitious and scheming Cassius in Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings." ^{Julius Caesar, Act I, scene 2;}

Cassius rightly understands that he cannot blame the stars for his own position as underling to Caesar, yet when he asserts himself and tries to become master of his fate, he achieves only bloodshed and destruction because he is guided by the blindness of human will and personal ambition. He has apparently thought deeply enough to unhitch his wagon from a star, but he has not really found anything better.

Mankind has sought guidance and wisdom in decision-making from many sources—rational and irrational, scientific and superstitious. Like Cassius, everyone wants some sense of dominion and mastery. People do not usually want to feel they are merely playing out a relatively fixed role assigned by fate, or that they are powerless victims of forces beyond their control—social, political, environmental, economic, hereditary, or whatever. But what are they to turn to if not to their own desire and will to power?

If they look to the theories of astrology, they still find themselves more or less subject to the limitations of their own belief in implacable, cosmic forces. They must wait for auspicious moments when the positions of certain astral bodies signal that they can act with safety or success. They are still not master of their fate; they have merely sought to harmonize their life by subordinating it to what they take to be the controlling forces of the universe.

From Genesis onward the Bible indicates that man's proper state is one of dominion—that as we perceive the truth of our indestructible relationship to God, we are freed from the burden and bondage of fears and superstitions. We no longer seek out "wizards that peep, and that mutter" ^{Isa. 8:19;} —or horoscopes or fortune-telling cards or any other substitute for that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus." ^{Phil. 2:5;} The Galilean Prophet summed up our capacity for dominion and autonomy when he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." ^{John 8:32;}

One of the liberating truths taught by Christian Science is that God is the only cause. The firmer one's grasp of this fundamental fact, the less will his thinking and actions be characterized by superstition. Superstition, in essence, is a mistaken and insupportable belief about cause and effect—as, for instance, that there is some connection between a broken mirror and bad luck, or that the conjunction of planetary bodies is somehow related to human prosperity or misfortune.

Mrs. Eddy writes: "Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical. It lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body. It shows the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of being, and sets free the imprisoned thought." ^{Science and Health, p. 114;}

It is our spiritual, perfect being in God, recognized and understood, not our human relation to physical stellar bodies, that brings about good results in our lives. Superstitious thought is imprisoned or locked in material, finite modes. It mistakes cause, so it must mistake effect. God, who is infinite Spirit, is not limited or contained in temporal form, nor is His creation, man and the universe. He is infinite intelligence, and no part of this infinitude could be circumscribed in an earthly or stellar body. The governance of the universe is with God. Material planets and stars do not have the capacity for governing or influencing man.

Christian Science teaches that we should indeed look upward, but not that we should look to the stars—or any other part of nature—to find out how our lives are patterned. All substance and intelligence reside in Spirit, and to Him is due all reverence. We owe no allegiance to inanimate, nonintelligent matter.

The ecliptic is an imaginary line in the heavens that traces the path of the sun against the background of stars and planets. As the solar year progresses, the various configurations that we call the constellations appear and disappear on this great imaginary wheel. But this view, as impressive as it may be to the eye and whatever impetus it might give to the human imagination, is strictly earthbound. From other vantage points in space the same configurations or "heavenly signs" simply don't exist.

Just as a change of physical viewpoint alters our perception of objects and their relationships, so the mental change from a limited, material point of view to a limitless, spiritual one can quite literally reveal "a new heaven and a new earth." ^{Rev. 21:1.} This change of thought—of mental viewpoint—is one of the demands of Christian Science. The goal of the student of this Science is nothing less than the complete spiritualization of thought. He strives to attain to the view of reality that opened out to St. John from the mount of revelation. Newness of understanding is possible when thought is freed from all materiality—all earth-weights—and rises to the vantage point of spiritual revelation, which confers dominion.