Astrology Is Not Vague

One of the most commonly held misconceptions by the would-be critics of astrology is its alleged vagueness. To the extent to which that is attributed to a manipulative technique know as Barnum or Forer effect, I will write a separate article focusing on that whole branch of research. To the extent to which it would have to do with sheer arbitrary randomness, I will deal with it in a separate article explaining exactly how un-random and un-arbitrary astrology is in comparison to modern psychology. In this article, I will deal with what vagueness means and why astrology doesn't produce vague statements, even if they were outright manipulative or random. From what I was able to put together from various definitions of vagueness one can come across, vague statements would be such statements, that are one of the following:

1) Not clear

2) Not explicit

3) Not definite

4) Not distinct

I have decided not to deal in this article with the last potential definition of vagueness which I have found - the statements being uncertain (not really known), since that is a complicated enough matter for a standalone article, or indeed a series of articles. If astrology is vague, you wouldn't understand what exactly it is that the astrologer is saying (for any reason), and/or you wouldn't know what are all of the statement's major implications, and/or you wouldn't be able to differentiate the various statements from each other in any useful way.

However, to be fair, you need to realize that you cannot require absolutely everyone to be able to understand every single nuance of any astrological statement. If you were that strict, you'd certainly have to consider most of advanced science to be vague. If astrology is to be considered not vague, then in my humble opinion, one has to be able to differentiate astrological statements from random statements (indicating a method), discern similarities and differences between various astrological statements (achieving communication of meaning) and know the extent to which any particular statement applies (such as, but not limited to, conditions causing different outcomes or their approximate statistical probability).

Firstly, it is important to note, that astrology is a language. It is not a normal human language, however, which means that every attempt at communicating astrology in any normal human language is a translation, and translation can be done poorly. It is akin to trying to explain what a mathematical equation means on a personal level - the result is more poetry than anything else, there are next to no direct translations. Astrological language uses ultimately numbers, in a numerological fashion, to define secondary symbols, such as planets, houses or signs, which are then translated for example into English.

The important thing to note at this point is that ultimately, each astrological statement has distinct numerical signature, making at least the structure of the language distinct, passing one of the criteria for non-vagueness. How well the meaning's distinctiveness survives the chain of translations varies from astrologer to astrologer, and that can indeed be a decent indicator of that particular astrologer's ability to understand astrology. What matters, though, is the fact that astrology in principle can produce completely distinct statements. If I say (just by reading the natal chart) that you have a particular planet in a particular sign in a particular house, it precisely defines what it isn't - any of the remaining combinations of the other symbols in any of those three classes.

Now you may wonder, whether these can be differentiated from each other - a planet from a sign from a house. It is one of the common arguments against astrology - there are so many overlapping similar things in the natal chart, that you can always find whatever meaning in there that you wish to find. That would be true, if a planet meant essentially the same as a sign or a house, which would allow you for example to guess that a person has for instance predominantly piscean personality and then claim that you guessed it right because in their natal chart, something somewhere is in pisces, of which there is the better chance the more layers of analysis you invent. To understand why that isn't the case, you need to be familiar with several different things, which is admittedly annoying and boring, but if you simply don't care to learn what you need to understand, then I simply don't care about any "criticism" you might want to say, because it would only be a waste of time to debate you.

What you need to know is how infinite variables work in math, how information can be compressed, decompressed and displayed at different resolutions, what ideal typology is and something about psychoanalysis and its model of the human personality. Astrological symbols are not fully explicit, true, but that is because they are something like infinities in math. Sums you can't really list (at least unless you have an infinity of time to waste), but which you can define well enough to be able to compute them. A sign of aries for example would be the sum of all the possible things an aries could be, an infinite amount of characteristics which depend in their precise manifestation on context, but which are only 1/12 of the whole infinity of all possible human characteristics (or those of events in the so called mundane astrology). That is why more layers are needed, since if you divide people only by twelve (which is still more than in several popular psychological typologies of personality), what you can say about an individual in a vacuum is only very general. Each planet represents one distinct part of human psyche (or the world of nature, which are analogical in astrology), while a sign represents, as I have already established, 1/12 of possible traits grouped along one of twelve fundamental sets of principles. Those are distinct classes of symbols.

In terms of mathematical combinatorics, 10 planets (including Sun, Moon and Pluto, given that "planet" in its original meaning is simply a wandering light in the sky) mean that a list of planets in signs divides people into hundreds of thousands of distinct categories, since almost any possible combination can happen in our solar system. Add another layer, twelve houses in which any number of any planets can be located, and the total number of possible combinations grows bigger than the amount of humans living on the planet at this moment. It doesn't make astrology more vague, it makes it less vague with each new layer - just like when you increase digital resolution of an analog image.

You can also think of the conversion of information from astrological symbols into human language as the decompression of an archive file, but an imperfect one. You will never be able to convey the source information with absolute fidelity, it will always be a matter of degree. That is the part of astrology which is art, specifically the art of interpretation. Astrologer can be vague, but the astrological information packed in the distinct signature of the natal chart isn't. On the off chance you still need more convincing of that, here is a deeper explanation of how astrological terms differ, specifically how houses differ from signs and planets.

While signs are sums of internal characteristics a person may draw from and planets distribute those potentials among different parts of human psyche, the houses define areas in the life experience of the person where those potentials of different parts of psyche manifest. Something in the house of pisces would not make a person piscean personality, if what is located there goes against pisces the sign or the planet of Neptune, ruler of the part of psyche most dominant in a piscean person (the unconscious in this case). If a Mars in aries (a very egoistic, aggressive, proactive and straightforward drive) is in that house, for example, it would probably only reinforce exactly how much that person is not like pisces (a typically introverted, submissive and selfless type of personality).

The non-vagueness of astrology is especially clear in the case of what's missing - if certain signs and houses are empty, there is no way around how to interpret that in astrology. It clearly means what that person is lacking in terms of attitude, aptitude or circumstance in his personality (in case of signs) or life (in case of houses). I haven't seen a single study anywhere trying to test astrology based on its negative claims, which are arguably much more clear-cut than positive potentials. A complete absence of a whole element for example (a quarter of the signs) would be just as significant as anything that could be present there, but more certain in what it means.

ANECDOTAL ADDENDUM

The only person that anyone can truly know is themselves, and even though I realize that it doesn't objectively prove anything, I still think it may be of some value to discuss in regards to this matter. One of the best tests of how vague astrology may be is of course to read some descriptions that are supposed to match your personality, but ideally also all the other options, which are not supposed to describe you. If astrology is vague, there will be little to no difference between those two categories, yet I personally find time and again, no matter how strictly I put it to a test, that what is supposed to be about me feels like it is about me, while that which is not meant to be about me doesn't feel like it describes me at all. Or to be precise, it fits only to the precisely defined extent to which it should, based on the fact that in my natal chart, I do have about half of the signs and miss the other half entirely. I have tried to control for any possible trick of the mind (yes, I have read Derren Brown's book too), but it is not a matter of flattery, since most things astrologers have to say about my sign, scorpios, is perhaps the least traditionally positive of all the signs. 

One of the most subtle hits in my case is that my Mercury is in a different sign than my Sun, the less usual configuration, which brings about a paradoxical description of how my conscious mind works, which is not what you would say if you were going for what is statistically likely to identify with. My Sun, which stands for ego and self-image, is in scorpio, while my Mercury, which stands for reasoning and communication, is in neighboring libra. Neighboring signs are really not very alike, since each sign is a reaction, the next evolutionary step forward from the personality of its predecessor.

Libra is an extroverted sign, while scorpio is introverted, libra is an idealist and ultimately optimist, while scorpio is typically a pessimist or nihilist, a skeptical realist at the most positive, yet still physiological level for a scorpio. Libra is a theoretical abstract thinker and won't shut up, scorpio is the silent, personally introspective, intuitive type. I could go on for a very long time, as I explained earlier, the list does go ad infinitum, but there is clear pattern. I have characteristics of both, but the fact that one is Sun and the other Mercury means that libra guides the way I speak, never being able to express my real experience in words, while the person who I am on the existential level only ever communicates anything in the absence of intentional attempts at communication. On this basis, people tend to misjudge my feelings frequently when all they do is listen to me speak.

At this point, if you are a stubborn skeptic, you can still think that it is merely the "everyone is a bit extroverted and a bit introverted" vague nonsense. However, the natal chart usually aligns the Sun and the Mercury into the same sign, and that would mean a different thing - no conflict between who I am on the existential level and how I reason and communicate, interact with people. It could be inverted in signs, meaning that the inside is like libra and the outside like scorpio, which unmasks the subtlety to how astrology treats extroversion and introversion - libra is an extrovert sign and scorpio an introvert sign, but either can govern the inner life or the behavior on the outside. What it would mean is that in the scenario opposite to mine, deeper emotional life and greater introversion would be attributed to the person by other people, also wrongly, because his inner experience, his essential, true self, would be experienced differently.

Astrology is often misunderstood by people acquainted with behavioral psychology, since astrology doesn't really say that any planet in any sign in any house leads to a specific or most frequent behavior of any kind. It explains what it means when that specific person engages into that behavior - from his or her inner perspective, for his or her future development, for the people related to him or her, for the society at large, perhaps even for the world itself or some kind of higher being. A happy scorpio means much more significant event than a happy libra, while silent libra is an indication of a problem, while silent scorpio is nothing significant. You could measure how often either is happy or silent, but it could very well be equally often, and that is of next to no significance in astrology, anyway. Astrology is not vague in terms of quantitative statistics, it generally treats them as circumstantial and largely inconsequential. Ask a qualitative scientifically valid question, and you will get a very precise and nuanced answer.