I do not understand how an Astrologian does its Magic.

[Anonymoose]

DISCLAIMER: This is a lot of rambling and theorycraft; I don't have much in my citation bin for this at the moment (digging now) and I encourage you to correct me if you do.

Astrologian pays a lot of homage to real-world mysticism, especially (of course) astrology and tarot. This never-ending quest for clairvoyant foresight seems to fog up the actual mechanics of the job quite a bit. Even I'm not 100% on what's supposed to be happening, but I'll tell you where I've made it so far.

Aether can be "attuned" to (tuned to the frequency of, so to speak) the elements and various mixes thereof; seemingly to almost any behavioral profile. Aether can do almost anything if you can weave it right. Now, the vast majority of Final Fantasy XIV abilities - down to even the punches and kicks of the monks - rely on an internal reservoir of aether. Rarely, this will be circumvented by a mage using ambient aether, but it seems to be an exception rather than the rule. Therefore, I doubt astrologians are actually drawing energy from such extremely distant objects.

Rather, I'm increasingly confident that they're just attuning their own internal aether after associating various "frequencies" with knowledge of the heavens - much like how a ninja can attune their internal aether based on association with certain hand movements. If such and such a hand motion (for a ninja) helps them attune their aether to have "Heaven"-ly qualities, such and such a constellation and/or alignment or behavior of stars (for an astrologian) might be tied to a certain aetherial state relating to those traditions and beliefs.

If this is true, "opening a gate" to a constellation might simply be calling upon a mental association between your knowledge of the heavens and aether being in a certain state, allowing you to attune your internal aether to that state. Real-world association is powerful; even memory can be context-dependent. You might do (slightly) better on a test if you have a hot cocoa while studying and drink a hot cocoa during the test, for example. (A more familiar example for most would be a smell or song triggering memories.)

If you look up terms like benefic, malefic, and combust (a certain type of conjunction), these are all just real-world terms for how relative positions of stars are thought or believed to influence reality (they most probably don't, especially taking into account that stars drift, calendars drift, and astrology has out of its own alignment for a long time).

But for a mage in a fantasy game? Anything is possible. Reading the stars for fortunetelling, you'd know where they are and can call to mind a malefic association to attune your aether to weave a damaging spell. You could call to mind a benefic association to attune your aether to weave a healing spell. Using cards for fortunetelling, you'd trust that what you've drawn is or will be the right card at the right time foretelling the right events to come, and that how you choose to use it will determine if you properly interpreted its warnings, and then you can attune your aether based on your strong association with that card and what it means.

I would assume it's just as much in the mind of the mage as the "darkness" of the Dark Knight, the "mudra" of the Ninja, the "chi" of the Monk, and so on and so on. It would be no different than believing roses are associated with fire and then carrying around a rose to touch and see and smell to harness that association and have an easier time channeling fire.