Astrology Rejected
Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim
God created innumerable astonishing creations. He designed the amazing faculties of human senses and reason enabling us to distinguish reality from imagination. As we are driving on a mountain, we see no bridge beyond the cliff. Imagining a bridge exists denies reality. Our senses are accurate; our reason determines if we drive off the cliff, we will plummet thousands of feet and die. Again, when we see a rock thrown at a window, followed by seeing the window shatter, that is evidence that the rock shattered the window. That is reality. But we do not witness any relationship between a child’s birth while the Moon is rising over the April horizon, which astrologers suggest influences the child’s personality, his free will, or earthly events. No evidence or natural law suggests a relationship between moonrise and unique personalities, free choice or events. (All that is witnessed is changes in sea tides based on the Moon’s gravitation.) One might equally suggest that by selecting chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream causes a meteor to crash into Saturn. Our senses and reason laughingly dismiss any such relationship, and rightly so. Furthermore, why do astrologers claim “birth” at moonrise is any more significant than conception a moonrise? From this question, we see the psyche at work: man has a tendency to attribute significance to birth. This stems from the ego, as one attributes greatness to the day he was born: “I am born, now the world can start.” But as we are merely one of billions of humans, reason suggests minuscule significance to any one person. Thus, it is human insecurity that seeks to validate self-significance that compels people to align their births with some heavenly event, thereby placating their insecurities. One will think, “I was born on Sunday, the lead day of the week. Thus, I will be a leader.” Maimonides completely dismisses astrology in his Letter to Marseilles: https://www.mesora.org/marseille.html. We must follow reality, which is God’s will that we dismiss beliefs unsupported by evidence or reason.
To protect their positions, Pharaoh’s astrologers kept on advancing their predictions when they saw Pharaoh’s concerns increase. They saw Pharaoh’s concerns about the multiplying Jews, and felt, “If we do not produce new information sustaining our value to Pharaoh, we risk our posts, and perhaps also our lives.” The astrologers told Pharaoh, “A Jewish savior will eventually be born and that you should murder the Jewish males.” But as the midwives failed to comply with this massacre, Pharaoh once again faced frustration. The astrologers then submitted “new” information: “The Jew’s savior was born today, but we don’t know if he is Jewish or Egyptian.” The astrologers made this claim to say in other words, “Astrological wisdom is greater than us and we can only see a part of it.” This drives Pharaoh’s sustained respect for astrology, as even his advisors could not decipher all mystical knowledge they claimed to have perceived. With Pharaoh’s continued concerns, the astrologers were forced to continue providing solutions.
People in power gain appointment to their posts, due to their desire to fill and retain such powerful posts. The astrologers lied to Pharaoh, for there is no clairvoyance or mystical knowledge. This is because human knowledge is gained only through observation, and the future is not observable. Additionally, one cannot speak of any certain “future,” because the numerous future uncontrollable variables and human free will interfere with any present day forecast. Therefore, without observation, and without control of all variables, what will occur is known by God alone, unless He shares that knowledge with man, as when He told Moses “Pharaoh will not free the Jews.”
With much superstition and mystical beliefs abounding in Jewish communities for so long, it is vital that you distinguish with 100% clarity what is true and real—i.e., what God created—from what is imagination. So I will spell this out once again.
Human Knowledge is Based on Observation
The future is not yet in existence; it is not observable. And as man knows events only through observation, the future is not knowable through our senses.
The Future: Non-existent and Undefined
Uncontrollable infinite variables make the future undefined. While predicting human behavior might be guided by psychology, man also has free will which prevents forecasting his actions. Outside human behavior is the natural world which too has infinite variables, preventing any accurate forecasts.
Astrology
Suggesting planetary influence on man’s personality and events is false for 3 reasons:
1) Planetary action at a distance is false: there is no observable relationship between objects millions of miles apart, unless we discuss quantum entanglement where such relationships do exist. But even those relationships are limited to particle’s physical states. No particle affects human personality.
2) No relationship: heavenly entities are unrelated to the dynamics of human psychology, just as color is unrelated to number, and as distance is unrelated to humor,
3) Arbitrary claims: correlating the position of a planet to the moment of birth is arbitrary, and what is arbitrary follows no law and is undefined and unknowable. Just as the stream of smoke leaving a burning cigar never follows the same path twice, there is no more correlation between moonrise to human birth vs. moonrise and human conception or one’s 12th birthday. Selecting birth and correlating it to astronomical events is arbitrary and offers no meaning.
God’s Knowledge Differs
While God knows all future events, without Him sharing that knowledge, man has no means to know, detect or observe what has not yet occurred.
Avi: Very interesting regarding astrology. [But] how is it that Pharaoh’s astrologers were correct about certain details? They knew when the savior would be born and that he would stumble due to water, as Rashi states (Exod. 2:22):
Regarding the Egyptian males too, Pharaoh made a decree (Sotah 12a). For on the day when Moses was born his astrologers said to him, “Today their deliverer has been born, but we know not whether he is born of an Egyptian father or of an Israelite; but we see by our astrological art that he will ultimately suffer misfortune through water”. Pharaoh therefore made a decree that day regarding the Egyptians also, as it is said here, “Every son that is born you shall cast into the river”, and it is not stated “every Hebrew son.” They (the astrologers), however, were not aware that Moses was ultimately to suffer misfortune through the waters of Meribah and not through the waters of the Nile.
Rabbi: The astrologers did not know anything a bout the future; no person can know the future without prophecy. The astrologers only made claims in order to protect their positions by giving Pharaoh new “valuable” information. There are certain axioms that we can't reject and that is that man has no future knowledge.
Rashi is merely stating the position of the astrologers when he says, “For on the day when Moses was born his astrologers said to Pharaoh, ‘Today their deliverer has been born.’” That’s not Rashi’s personal view. People in positions of power attain those positions due to their desire for power; the astrologers were no different. To retain their positions, they must continually prove valuable to their leader. So when they first saw Pharaoh disturbed by the spike in Jewish population growth, the astrologers had to come to Pharaoh’s aid offering him a solution, which was killing the firstborn males of the Jews. They presented Pharaoh with a plausible scenario of a savior who would oppose Egyptian authority to free the enslaved Jews. However, when the Jewish midwives disobeyed Pharaoh’s decree to kill the Jewish males on the birthing stools, again the astrologers saw Pharaoh disturbed and upped their value to Pharaoh by making a new fabricated claim: “We have seen in our astrology that the savior was born today, but we don't know if he is a Jew, or any Egyptian sympathizer.” Now they gave immediate value to Pharaoh, all to preserve their positions. But why did they add an element of ignorance—“We don't know his nationality”—instead of saying they had full knowledge? After all, their claims were fabrications and they could say whatever they wished! But they claimed some ignorance of their astrological forecast to impress upon Pharaoh again, their great value. In other words the astrologers said, “Pharaoh, the art of astrology is very deep, and even we can't plumb to its depths, but at least you have us to share some of its forecasts.” In this manner, the astrologers reinforced in Pharaoh’s mind the validity of astrology, but more so, their great value to Pharaoh.
Regarding the last part of Rashi, where the astrologers seem to predict Moses punishment through water, this is not a prediction, of course. But they knew about the Flood, and felt that to be a safe element to include in their fabricated forecast: “God punished with water, and will do so again.”