I grew up with a whole bunch of books on astrology (among other nuage
subjects) that belonged to my mother and I used to be quite fluent in this
"language" you talk about, as a kid.
My impression, already since grade school, was that astrology did its level
best to flatter you and stroke your ego, even when it supposedly discussed
your "negative" traits which were always presented as if they were actually
positive. For instance, I remember Scorpio's vicious vindictiveness (my mother
is a Scorpio) and bloody-mindedness first noted as being the Scorpio's
downfall (from a soaring eagle to a crawling lizard) but then discussed as a
strength, a powerful weapon at the Scorpio's disposal that everyone should
take care not to provoke. Far from making it sound like vindictiveness is a
bad thing, it made Scorpio sound like a total badass (well, my mother is
badass so I was kind of convinced).
The other thing I noticed was that it didn't matter if you were a Scorpio, or
a Leo, or a Virgo, or a Libra. I could open any random page on one of my
mother's astrology books, discussing any one of the 12 signs and find a
passage that I felt described me absolutely. That is, I noticed that the
descriptions of the signs' personalities had absolutely no predictive value
whatsoever. Anyone could have any of the traits that were described as being
characteristic of their sign, or their ascendant, but also any of the traits
ascribed to every other sign.
So at least in the books that I've read (and I apologise that I don't remember
their titles but that was a while ago) astrology was basically a well-thought
out system for flattering people and filling them with empty platitudes.