How Elites, Empires, and Demons Use Astrology to Deceive the Nations

JD Hall, Insight to Incite, 8/24/25

Netflix has just launched an “Astrology Hub.” You can now open the world’s most powerful streaming service and see a watchlist custom-made for your zodiac sign. Aries gets “Squid Game: The Challenge,” Leo gets “The Crown,” and on down the line. It is algorithm-driven fortune telling, content marketing disguised as cosmic destiny. This is not just the local newspaper horoscope column of the 1970s, this is a trillion-dollar platform that has chosen to baptize itself in the zodiac. It is Silicon Valley priestcraft, served through your Roku stick.

Meanwhile, TikTok has become a digital revival tent for the cult of the stars. Oracle cards, aura nails, and endless astrology talk dominate feeds, especially for the young and restless. A generation that rejects Moses and Christ as oppressive has embraced Jupiter and Saturn as liberators. It is absurd on the surface, but it is also deeply revealing. When people stop looking up to heaven for truth, they start looking up to the stars. Babylon has returned, and it comes packaged in apps and watchlists.

The irony is thick. We live in an age that preaches the gospel of science. We are told to “trust the experts,” to bow before the priests of data, to scoff at anything that smacks of superstition. Yet the same ruling class that assures us of its rational superiority cannot stop dabbling in horoscopes. The deeper you go into history, the more obvious it becomes. The most rational civilizations never abandoned astrology. They kept it in the back pocket of statecraft, pulling it out when the times demanded it.

NAZIS AND THE STARS

The Nazis built their regime on race science and industrial warfare, but they also kept an astrology wing in the house of power. Heinrich Himmler, obsessed with the occult, consulted horoscopes and astrological charts. Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, was so addicted to astrology that he eventually flew to Scotland in 1941 in what he believed was a divinely appointed mission of peace, guided in part by astrological calculations. Hitler himself had an official astrologer named Karl Ernst Krafft who prepared charts predicting assassination attempts and political turning points.

It would be easy to dismiss this as one more eccentricity of the Nazis. After all, they were already enthralled with myth, runes, and occult nonsense. But what matters is that a regime that claimed to be the pinnacle of modern science did not scoff at astrology. It institutionalized it. At the very moment the Reich was building V-2 rockets and jet planes, it was also reading the stars like Babylonian priests.

The British took notice. The same government that gave us the Bletchley Park codebreakers and Alan Turing’s computers also created Operation Mistletoe, a clandestine project dedicated to countering Nazi astrology with counter-astrology. British intelligence literally forged horoscopes to feed back into German channels, hoping to influence decisions at the highest levels of the Reich. Imagine bespectacled bureaucrats in London offices carefully drafting fake star charts to trick Himmler and Hess. It sounds like satire, but it is documented history.

Operation Mistletoe was not comic relief, it was deadly serious. The Allies were willing to exploit Hitler’s fascination with the stars to wage psychological warfare. They did it because they knew astrology had pull inside the Reich’s inner circle. This was the Second World War fought not only with tanks and planes, but with horoscopes. The powers of this world have always known that belief in the stars can move men, and if it can move men, it can shape history.

THE CIA AND COLD WAR ASTROLOGY

When the Third Reich fell, the fascination with astrology did not. It traveled across the ocean into the black budget of the American intelligence services. The CIA poured money into parapsychology programs during the Cold War, some under the umbrella of the Stargate Project. Remote viewing, psychic phenomena, and yes, astrology were studied for potential use against the Soviets.

The files are out there. Astrological profiles of foreign leaders were compiled. Could Khrushchev’s moods be predicted? Could an enemy’s decision making be tracked through the stars? The same agency that denies you information under the Freedom of Information Act paid men in lab coats to look at charts of Mars and Venus. Again the irony is staggering. A nation that mocked superstition funded it in the name of national security.

If you think astrology was confined to the shadows, think again. After John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, First Lady Nancy Reagan turned to Joan Quigley, a San Francisco astrologer, to schedule the president’s activities. For years the White House calendar was quietly shaped by a woman consulting the stars. Air Force One flight times, summit meetings with Gorbachev, even routine press conferences were scheduled only after Joan Quigley approved the astrological timing.

That means that while Americans were told the Cold War was a contest of freedom versus tyranny, with nuclear Armageddon hanging in the balance, the most powerful man in the world was being scheduled like a Babylonian prince. The missiles may have been nuclear, but the timetable was astrological.

WHAT THIS MEANS

The lesson is simple. Astrology has never gone away. It has only shifted from the public square into the hidden rooms of power. From the Nazis to the CIA to the Reagan White House, the stars have never stopped being consulted by the men and women who move history. The ridicule of astrology is for the masses, the horoscope columns are for entertainment, but in the shadows, serious people with serious power have always wondered whether the stars can tip the scales.

This should be a warning. If astrology were simply nonsense, no empire would waste its time. But again and again, the elites have gone back to the same well. They may mock Christianity as unscientific, but they bow to the constellations in their most desperate hours. Astrology is treated as silly for the common man and as secret wisdom for the rulers.

Netflix’s “Astrology Hub” is not harmless fun. It is the mainstreaming of an old cult, the normalization of Babylonian priestcraft through streaming platforms. It is proof that the world is not getting more rational, but more religious, more occult, more eager for enchantment. And when the most powerful companies in the world embrace astrology, you should assume they are signaling not entertainment but faith.

Astrology is not just a cultural fad or an eccentric hobby of elites. The Bible itself speaks of it. The prophets treated it not as nonsense but as rival sorcery. The Church Fathers, the Reformers, and the greatest theologians of the faith did not laugh at astrology, but condemned it as demonic precisely because it had power to deceive. If you think this is harmless, you have not read Isaiah or Augustine. The stars have always been worshiped.

If astrology were nothing more than an ancient board game, Scripture would ignore it. Yet the Bible brings it up again and again, not as a laughing matter but as a rival power. Babylon had its star-gazers and Chaldeans, and God’s prophets treated them as enemies, not clowns. The inspired authors never told Israel that astrology was fake. They warned that it was forbidden, dangerous, and capable of deceiving nations. The modern Christian mistake is to believe that because it is evil it must also be empty. The truth is the opposite. It is evil because it is potent.

ASTROLOGY IN SCRIPTURE

In Isaiah 47:13–14, the prophet taunts Babylon. “Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up.” Notice Isaiah does not say their art is fake. He does not say they are liars. He says they cannot withstand the judgment of the Lord. They may speak, but their words will be consumed in fire.

In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar summons his magicians, astrologers, and sorcerers to interpret his dream. These are not circus performers. They are his official advisors. The Bible reports them as serious men who truly believed their charts and calculations could pierce the veil. They failed, not because astrology was always nonsense, but because God withheld the answer and gave it to His prophet. Their failure proved the supremacy of the God of heaven, not the silliness of their practice.

Deuteronomy 4:19 warns Israel not to lift up their eyes to the heavens and be drawn away to worship the “host of heaven.” The very command shows the plausibility of the temptation. You do not have to warn men against worshipping what has no allure. Israel was surrounded by nations who thought the stars governed their destiny. Moses warned them that the temptation was real and deadly.

Even the New Testament does not sweep the stars aside. Matthew 2 tells us Magi from the East came to Bethlehem, following a star. They were astrologers. They were practitioners of a forbidden art, yet God in His sovereignty used their crooked tool to bring them to the true King. Their star-gazing led them to Christ, but only because God was gracious enough to bend their error toward truth. The story is not an endorsement of astrology, but a testimony that God rules even over the stars.

The consistent witness of Scripture is that astrology is real enough to tempt, powerful enough to mislead, and dangerous enough to require constant warning. The Bible’s problem with astrology is not that it never works, but that it enslaves people to false gods and draws their hearts away from the true Creator.

THE CHURCH FATHERS ON ASTROLOGY

The early Church knew this well. The Fathers did not laugh off astrology as an old superstition. They treated it as a spiritual poison. Tertullian, writing in the second and third century, declared that astrology was a form of idolatry. In his treatise On Idolatry he wrote that astrology attributed to the stars what belongs to God alone. He did not say astrologers were harmless. He said they were servants of demons. To Tertullian, the blacksmith who forged a sword was serving Mars, the god of war, even if he never bowed at Mars’ altar. By the same logic, the astrologer who charted the stars was serving fallen powers whether he admitted it or not.

Augustine was even clearer. In The City of God he acknowledges that astrologers often tell the truth. They are sometimes accurate, and that is why they are dangerous. He explains the accuracy by appealing to demonic meddling. Demons, he said, can influence events and time their deceptions so that astrologers look prophetic. In Augustine’s words, “Astrologers, by the deceit of demons, oftentimes foretell many true things.” Their truth-telling was never sovereign truth, only bait laid by the devil.

John Chrysostom echoed this in his sermons. He mocked astrology not as fake but as fatalism. He said astrology enslaves men by convincing them they are puppets of the stars. He conceded that astrologers were “often right” but warned that this was precisely how Satan ensnares the gullible. A lie mixed with truth is more dangerous than a lie alone.

To the Fathers, astrology was not just error. It was a rival gospel. It told men that their fate was sealed in the heavens rather than in Christ. It told them their lives were bound to signs and seasons rather than to the providence of God. That is why the Fathers struck it down with such vehemence.

THE REFORMERS ON ASTROLOGY

The Reformers carried this forward. Martin Luther despised astrology as the devil’s counterfeit providence. He said demons could manipulate events to make horoscopes look accurate, but the Christian must never trust them. For Luther, astrology was the devil’s way of mocking God’s sovereignty.

John Calvin was equally sharp. In his commentary on Genesis he dismissed astrology as “profane trifling” and insisted it must be rejected by any who believe in the providence of God. Yet Calvin did not treat it as powerless. He recognized why pagans believed in it, and he warned Christians not to give their hearts to it. He wrote that astrology was not only false, but blasphemous, because it replaced the God of heaven with the stars of heaven.

From the prophets of Israel to the Fathers of the Church to the Reformers of the sixteenth century, the consistent witness is the same. Astrology is not treated as fairy dust. It is treated as rival priesthood. It is the sacrament of Babylon, the counterfeit gospel of the nations, the old lie written in the heavens to distract men from the true Word written on tablets of stone and fulfilled in Christ.

The biblical writers, the patristic preachers, and the Reformers all agreed on this much: astrology has power, but it is not divine power. It is the manipulation of demons, the twisting of creation order, and the theft of God’s glory. That is why it must be renounced.

If the Bible and the great theologians treat astrology as real enough to deceive, then the question naturally follows: how does it work? Why does it sometimes look plausible? Why do even intelligent men get caught in its spell? The answer lies in creation order, in the spiritual reality of the cosmos, and in the way Satan counterfeits the signs of God. And if astrology is making a cultural comeback today, then it may be a signal that the world is returning to the strange, enchanted days of Noah.

WHY ASTROLOGY SEEMS TO WORK, AND WHY IT IS BACK

The question must be faced. If astrology is condemned by Scripture and denounced by the Church, why does it sometimes look plausible? Why do intelligent people fall into it, from Babylonian kings to Nazi generals to modern tech billionaires? The answer is that astrology is not nonsense. It is a counterfeit. It works the way a forged coin works. It looks real enough to deceive, but it bears no true authority. To understand why astrology appears to function, you must see how God ordered the world, how spiritual powers operate, and how Satan twists truth into a net for the gullible.

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