How is it possible for distant planets to exert any influence on human lives and destinies? A great body of evidence suggests that they do. But if indeed they do, how do they do it?

The question is not so unanswerable nowadays, when it has been found that living creatures are affected by magnetism of many kinds. Mollusks open their shells in rhythm with the moon’s motion. The direction snails’ move is affected by the earth’s polarity. Human behavior is often more erratic when the moon is full, as has been revealed by various studies of criminal and mental hospital records. A number of meteorologists have found that by consulting astrology the precision of their forecasts is definitely enhanced. Countless psychiatrists have taken to casting their patients’ horoscopes for greater accuracy in their diagnoses. Recently the Wall Street journal printed an article on the startling accuracy of certain predictions* of stockmarket rises and declines based on the movements of the planets. The planets affect man, not personally and deliberately, but more in the way that different people are affected by the rain. Some become gloomy and depressed; others, exhilarated; still other feel themselves somehow cleansed and purified. One person may become more peaceful; another may find himself unaccountably nervous and uneasy. The objective condition is similar in all cases. It is the human responses that differ.

The planets, similarly, exert certain magnetic influences; individually as well as in various combinations, to which people respond according to their own magnetic constitutions.

An individual’s subjective make-up is always affected by objective influences in the universe, but never more so than by the influences that occur at the time of his greatest openness and susceptibility: his birth. The special combination of magnetic planetary rays that were being received at the place and at the moment of his first appearance in this life affect him more exactly than they can at any subsequent time of his life, simply because his body and nervous system at that time represent a relatively clean slate.* Thus, they establish to a very great extent (though not entirely) the specific magnetic pattern that will determine his unique character and destiny, and how he will react to all future astral influences.

It sounds like a very interesting, but of course fanciful, theory. The compelling argument is that it works.