Hello, Sinbad, I hope all is well with you and yours. It is good to hear from you.
Actually, it is solar activity that does the influencing. To explain: the Sun is a giant electromagnet radiating lines of energy into space. These lines of energy are cut by the various planets revolving around the Sun much as the armatures of a dynamo cut the lines of energy radiated by the electromagnet at the center.
Many years ago the great physicist, Tyndall, indicated how dependent upon the Sun are most mechanical actions, chemical changes, and other manifestations of power on the surface of the earth. Add to this conception that investigators into the occult (that which is hidden) have added the assurance that whatever of a mental and spiritual nature is expressed on earth also derives its energy from the Sun. (It is for this reason that the ancient Egyptians in their wisdom honored – not worshipped -the Sun. It is only lesser men who have attempted to explain their actions as ignorance).
In any case, the Sun can be regarded as a great step-down transformer because our earth and the other planets probably are not suitably constituted for handling the high frequencies that abound in the path of the Sun.
Thus the planets revolving about the Sun in elliptical paths cut its energy field and these planets in turn become transformers and transmitters of energy and each being of different chemical composition and different density of material, they each are adapted to picking up energies and stepping them down to certain other frequencies and radiating these into space. Eventually these energies are transmitted to earth and to every living being on it.
Horoscopes map the interaction of planetary energies and their relationships to each other. It is these that the astrologer interprets.
Solar periodicity is the domain of astronomy and those who think they know but know not.