dubbhism, I hope you didn't take my OP the wrong way. I've enjoyed reading your thoughtful posts. The bottom line, though, is why astrology works (assuming it does.) The word causality is not really accurate, but I didn't think most folks would know what I meant by explanation in astrology.

I personally do not think there is any problem if different astrological branches or schools of thought all produce good results.

This does raise questions, however. Because if we ask "why astrology works" then it doesn't seem to depend upon sidereal vs. tropical, western vs. Vedic, traditional vs. modern, and so on. And if astrological success is not technique-dependent, then what else is going on that explains why astrology works?

My hypothesis is that a horoscope is a visual language that displays information in a two-dimensional (and rarely, 3-dimensional) format, just like a map or or photograph. As such, unlike the written language that I now write, a map has no beginning, direction, or end-point. You can start anywhere in reading a horoscope and let your eyes roam around it. This gives us a different conceptual relationship with space and time.

Learning to read a horoscope proficiently requires us to expand our ability to grasp space at a distance, as when you read a chart for a stranger living far away. We also have to consider the properties of time as having some simultaneity, as with a horoscope for someone born 40 years ago with predictive power based upon current and future. progressions and transits.Essentially, that past birth moment no longer exists: we don't have that newborn of 40 years ago any longer. Yet we integrate that past moment with present and future moments.

This is why I hope to focus more on what takes place in the mind of the astrologer, vs. some kind of planet>>>human event binary. For Big Data analysis to even do that, we're coming from an astrologer-based system that involves a huge amount of synthesis, not just a handful of variables.

Just as we're about to get to the driverless car, I think we might get to the astrologerless chart reading, but it's still a long way off.

As you know, some astrologers insist on a kind of orthodoxy about their preferred branch of astrology or methods.