Astrology and the Signs of the Heavens
The heavens were appointed by God to declare His glory and signal His acts — but they were never given to rule your fate, and to read them as oracles is divination, condemned in every age.
There is a line that runs straight through scripture, sharp and unmistakable, and it separates two things that the world is forever confusing. On one side stands the testimony of the heavens — the sun, moon, and stars that God himself appointed to be signs of His glory and His mighty acts. On the other side stands astrology, the ancient and stubborn attempt to wring fate and fortune out of those same stars, as though the creation could be made to speak in the place of its Creator. The first God ordained; the second He condemned. To honor one and reject the other is not contradiction — it is the very heart of the matter.
God Appointed the Heavens as Signs
From the very first chapter of revelation, the lights of heaven are given a purpose by the hand of God. They are not random fires; they were set in their courses by divine appointment, to mark and to measure and to testify.
“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”
They were made “for signs.” The word is God's own. And what those signs proclaim is not the destiny of men but the majesty of God. The psalmist looked up and heard the heavens speak: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1). The order of the stars is itself a sermon, but it is a sermon about their Maker.
How then is that order to be understood? Not by stargazing, but by revelation. When God taught Abraham the governance of the stars — the greater and the lesser lights, Kolob set nearest the throne, the times and seasons in their order — He did not send him to consult the heavens as a fortune-teller. He gave him the Urim and Thummim and spoke to him face to face (Abraham 3:1–4). Abraham came to know the order of the heavens because the God of the heavens revealed it to him. The knowledge flowed downward, from the Creator to the prophet — never upward, wrung out of the silent stars.
And God has used those appointed signs to herald His own great acts. When His Son was born, a new star rose, and wise men who knew the heavens were drawn by it across the world: “We have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him” (Matthew 2:1–2). The star went before them and stood over the place where the child lay, and they rejoiced with exceeding great joy (Matthew 2:9–10). The same heaven preached the same gospel on the other side of the world, where the believing Nephites watched the promised sign appear: “And it came to pass also that a new star did appear, according to the word” (3 Nephi 1:21).
So too at the last day. The heavens that announced His coming will announce His return: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars” (Luke 21:25). Joel foresaw wonders in the heavens, the sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood (Joel 2:30–31); the Lord declared the sun would be darkened and the stars fall from heaven (Matthew 24:29); and in our own dispensation He confirmed it: the sun, moon, and stars shall be in commotion as the sign of the Son of Man (D&C 45:42). The heavens genuinely testify; they genuinely signal. But they do so by God's appointment, and their message is read by His Spirit.
But Astrology Is a Counterfeit, and Condemned
Here the line turns sharp. Astrology does not read the stars as testimony of God; it reads them as oracles apart from God. It claims to draw fate, fortune, and hidden knowledge out of the heavens themselves — to say that the stars govern the man, that the hour of one's birth dictates one's destiny, that the future may be cast and calculated from the sky. That is divination, and scripture condemns it without softening.
Isaiah mocks the proud astrologers of Babylon to their faces — they who labored over the heavens could not so much as save their own souls:
“Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame.”
Jeremiah commanded Israel to keep clear of it entirely — not to be schooled in the ways of the nations nor frightened by the heavens as the heathen are: “Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them” (Jeremiah 10:2). The host of heaven was never to be worshipped or served: God divided the lights to all nations under heaven, but His covenant people were forbidden to bow to them (Deuteronomy 4:19). When righteous Josiah purged Judah, he swept away precisely those who burned incense “to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven” (2 Kings 23:5).
And the law set astrology among the abominations: there shall not be found among you any who uses divination, or is an observer of times, or an enchanter, “for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord” (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). To consult the stars as oracles, or to imagine that they rule your destiny, is to trade the Creator for the creation — to bow to the lamp instead of the One who lit it.
Daniel and Babylon: The Decisive Contrast
Nowhere is the contest staged more dramatically than in Babylon, the ancient world's very capital of astrology. Its king kept a whole college of celestial experts on his payroll — “the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans” — the most sophisticated readers of the heavens the age could produce. And at every true crisis, their art failed utterly.
When Nebuchadnezzar dreamed and demanded both the dream and its meaning, the assembled astrologers were helpless. They protested that no king had ever asked such a thing, “and there is none other that can shew it before the king, except the gods” (Daniel 2:1–11). Years later, when a hand wrote upon the wall of Belshazzar's palace, the same guild was summoned, and again it stood mute: “Then came in all the king's wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof” (Daniel 5:7–8).
Only one man could read what the stars could not tell — and not by any art of the heavens, but by revelation from the living God. Hear Daniel draw the line himself, in the throne room of the astrologers:
“The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, shew unto the king; But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.”
There is the whole doctrine in a single breath. The astrologers cannot; God revealeth. Daniel lived and served in the very court of the Chaldeans, surrounded by the finest astrology of the age, and yet he drew his light straight from heaven and never once from the stars. The contest was no contest at all: where the celestial arts were powerless, revelation triumphed every time.
We Do Not Summon the Heavens — We Watch Them
This draws out the distinction that matters most in practice, for it is the difference between two opposite postures of the soul. The forbidden thing is to invoke — to take the initiative and reach into the unseen to wrest hidden knowledge out of it: to summon spirits, to consult the dead, to conjure portents from the stars, to demand that the creation surrender a secret. The commanded thing is to watch — to keep faithful eyes open for the signs God Himself has hung in the heavens and freely reveals. The first knocks on a door the Lord has sealed; the second waits at the window He has opened. Latter-day Saints do the second and never the first.
Scripture forbids the summoning in every form. Israel was never to seek “a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer” — one who calls up the dead (Deuteronomy 18:11). When Saul, forsaken of the Lord, crept by night to the woman of Endor to summon up the spirit of Samuel, that act of invoking the dead was the very thing that sealed his ruin — “Saul died for his transgression… and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it; and enquired not of the Lord” (1 Samuel 28:7–15; 1 Chronicles 10:13). Isaiah names the sheer absurdity of it — that a people who possess the living God would go knocking among the dead and the mediums:
“And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
“To the law and to the testimony” — there is the whole rule of guidance. The Latter-day Saint does not summon a spirit, conjure a sign, cast a horoscope, or interrogate the stars; he seeks unto his God, and to the law and the testimony God has already given. We invoke nothing from the unseen. We ask of the Lord, and we wait on the Lord.
But to seek unto God includes watching — for God Himself commands us to read the signs He appoints. Christ rebuked those who could forecast tomorrow's weather from the evening sky yet would not read the heavens' far greater witness right before them:
“When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red… O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?”
He commanded His disciples to lift their eyes when the signs begin: “when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28). And in our own dispensation He pronounced a blessing on those who do exactly that: “he that feareth me shall be looking forth for the great day of the Lord to come, even for the signs of the coming of the Son of Man” (D&C 45:39). The wise men did not conjure the star or compute it from a chart; they saw it where God had set it, and followed it to Christ. That is the entire pattern — never invoking, always watching; never wresting a portent out of the dark, but receiving with open and reverent eyes the signs the God of heaven freely gives.
Revelation, Not Divination — and a Destiny Still Yours
Now the principle stands clear. The heavens are God's handiwork and His appointed signs — but they are not oracles to be consulted, and they do not dictate the fate of man. God reveals the meaning of His signs by His Spirit, downward and freely; astrology tries to seize hidden knowledge from the creation apart from God, upward and by force. The one is revelation; the other is the same dark counterfeit as sorcery and the casting of fortunes. They are not two shades of the same thing. They are opposites.
And there is a further reason the stars cannot govern your destiny: God has given you agency. No alignment of planets fixed your path before you drew breath, for you stand free before God, an agent unto yourself.
“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life… or to choose captivity and death.”
You are free to choose. That single truth shatters the horoscope at its foundation, for astrology can only promise a fate already written, while the gospel offers a destiny still in your hands. The heavens declare God; they do not rule you.
Conclusion
So look up. Read the glory of God written across the firmament; rejoice in the star that marked His birth and watch in faith for the signs He has appointed to mark His return. The heavens are a book, and every page declares the handiwork of their Maker. But never summon what God has not sent, and never look to the stars for what only God can give. They cannot reveal the future — that belongs to the God in heaven who revealeth secrets. They cannot dictate your fate — that remains, by His gift, yours to choose. The wise men followed the star until it brought them to Christ; the astrologers of Babylon followed the stars and were left standing mute before a writing they could not read. Follow the signs of God to the God who set them, and look no further than His throne for revelation, for the future, and for a destiny that is yours.