One of the most important things to know about astrology is the way in which it came to be. Unfortunately, the exact details of that have been lost, or were never recorded in the first place. Just as it is the case with any other ancient oral tradition, only that which was passed down from master to apprentice survived from the earliest period. In this article, I will try to assume that astrology is a reasonable practice rooted in logic and observation, and see whether the fundamental steps could be reconstructed. After all, there must have been some rationale to it, even if ill-informed, as well as some system or procedure through which it was developed, other than everyone involved just making up all of it. I will focus especially on the various different forms of practical application and on the similarities and differences of the major regional variations.
As far as anybody can tell, astrology originated in prehistory, based on archaeological finds of markings recording lunar cycles. At the most superficial level, keeping track of natural cycles is a necessity if you want to measure time, which is of importance that couldn't be overstated. That much is undisputed, but beyond the most direct practical utility, there is certain divide between modern astrologers and astronomers as to what was the dominant paradigm of the first star gazers. Astronomers tend to call that practice archeo- or paleo-astronomy, implying the primacy of fully naturalistic and practical reasons for observation over any kind of divination. Given that we are talking about universally spiritual and completely pre-scientific humanity, I think it is quite a stretch to assume that they would believe the celestial objects to be lifeless and with no personality at all.
Human mind, especially that of a child, is automatically configured to assume agency behind natural occurrences, as the current state of research on the matter suggests. And that is true today. It is only logical to expect that to be more, not less, accentuated among prehistoric people. On the other hand, I do not automatically consider that approach to reality to be primitive or stupid, unlike modern scientists. As long as you do not expect that agency to be completely human-like, it may lead to a discovery of a real pattern. Subjective interpretation of a real phenomenon can still be completely accurate, as well as easier to communicate to human minds and to be understood and memorized by them, which is precisely the primary purpose of myths. We need to realize, that the pre-modern world involves people with a pre-modern way of thinking about things and of communicating them, and that we need to understand what the ancient people mean, when they say things that may sound silly today, if you try to interpret them using modern mindset.
Modern revisionism of history is not a way to get to the truth, it is merely a tool of politics, and scientists fighting against "superstition" are among the most political. The political agenda here is to paint all traditional, pre-scientific approaches to reality as useless nonsense. To that end, not only gets ancient astrology renamed, but also the most prominent astrologers get reclassified as proto-scientists or painted as secret atheists, such as Johannes Kepler or Sir Isaac Newton. Astronomy and astrology were typically practiced by such bright people in equal measure, as well as held as equally valid, no matter how inconvenient that might be to admit. If nothing else, it is a proof that it wasn't just scam or complete idiocy all along. To really bridge this gap between ancient and modern times in regards to astrology and science, all skeptics should read Tetrabiblos, the bible of Astrology written by Ptolemy, or at least read what it is about. Most of the basic "modern" criticisms had already been addressed by Ptolemy, over 2000 years ago!
Ptolemy doesn't really offer much to show how astrology began, only that it is a body of knowledge handed down as tradition, but a tradition based on logical principles and observation, and most importantly, an evolving body of knowledge. Counter to what critics of astrology assume, astrology is not dogmatic. As Tetrabiblos clearly proves, astrology was an academic discourse even as far back as ancient Greece, not a church. Ptolemy didn't present himself as a prophet, in fact he openly detests those who practice astrology without being able to explain logically what exactly it is they are doing. Tetrabiblos may have been respected as an authoritative text ever since, but it was never heresy to improve upon it or discard some of its elements, if they were found to be wrong. If anything, dogmatic churches or modern ideologies have always had a tendency to suppress astrology, while all scientific progress in ancient and medieval times was achieved by cultures fond of astrology. That doesn't necessarily make it accurate, but it definitely makes it at least benign to scientific endeavors.
If anything, there is hard evidence that astrology was stimulating the scientific progress of Hellenistic Greeks - the Antikythera device. That is an advanced mechanical computer from ancient times, an apparent impossibility, which only goes to show how little we know about the level of science the ancient people had achieved, before most of it was lost in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Antikythera device is an astrological computer, most likely intended as a tool for the making of horoscopes, functioning much like modern astrological software. The fact that the first computer of such complexity was used for astrology is quite significant, since even if astrology says nothing about reality itself, it has motivated ancient inventors to push their mastery of mechanics forward, not to mention math or optics (for the observation of celestial phenomena). It seems odd that the brightest minds of that age would devote so much effort to something entirely without any practical merit.
As far as we know, only someone like Archimedes could design devices that complex, and inventors such as him were generally very practical - Archimedes is famous in no small part thanks to his war machines that had literally kept Roman army at bay. Why did ancient people hold astrology in such high regard? If Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos is any indication, they believed there is a connection between the movements of celestial objects and the weather, which is for the most part quite obvious and undeniable in the form of seasons or tides. That was probably the starting point. Since it historically took some time to develop the notion of individual self or free will, the next step was probably moving from connection to weather to connection to civilizations, which after all, were heavily defined by weather related phenomena, mainly the quality of harvests or the emergence of natural disasters. The word "disaster" even etymologically speaking means "bad star". The final connection was most likely the one to individual destiny, subordinate to the fate of civilization, which is itself subordinate to natural cycles and major natural events.
As Ptolemy himself would admit, it is part conjecture, but only a part. Using carefully measured temporal cycles to look for repeating patterns seems quite logical to me, and useful even if you do not always turn out to be 100% correct about everything that will happen to everyone. Especially if you devote generations of analytical observers to systematically record events and collectively look for reoccurring correlations. And then discussing the findings critically. In terms of method, it is scientific, absolutely so at that point in history. So where is the problem? As for the compatibility with modern sociology, Ptolemy already suggests that things knowable in conventional way should be taken into account in that astrology should be taken into consideration within the context of what is conventionally known about the individual's personal and social background. The way I see it, astrology always was a systematic method of educated guessing beyond what can be known conventionally. In modern terms, a heuristic for approximating unknowns, developed as a scientific discipline. Since the only alternative beyond the borders of any state of science is pure baseless guessing, I can see why the ancient scientists would try to invent something better than that.
If modern chaos theory is to be trusted, science may be fundamentally unable to make sense of most of what is happening in the universe and to people, given the famous butterfly effect - tiny nudges can unpredictably cascade into huge events. In the face of irreducible complexity, it is still useful to have any edge in guessing, and astrology, at least to the ancients, probably was precisely that. It may be why astrology was so ubiquitous in the ancient times and why several isolated cultures have developed their own versions of it. Some share the same fundamental heritage, such as the western, Indian and Chinese astrologies (traceable to Babylonian culture), but those are entirely unrelated for example to the ancient South American version of astrology. At least unless all ancient cultures somehow were in contact or share an unknown predecessor. Given the prehistoric findings, astrology in some form could be as old as humankind, spreading to all corners of the Earth along with it. As it usually is with evolution, things that stick around may be sticking around for a reason. Maybe it produces some useful knowledge, like when it is better to plant crops or have children. Maybe the belief that one is making sense of the world is helpful in and of itself. It certainly couldn't be any worse than guessing, when used in situations where guessing is the best that can be done anyway.
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