We present a novel rule-based semantics for causal reasoning as well as a number of modal languages interpreted over it. They enable us to represent some fundamental concepts in the theory of causality including causal necessity and possibility, interventionist conditionals and Lewisian conditionals. We provide complexity results for the satisfiability checking and model checking problem for these modal languages. Moreover, we study the relationship between our rule-based semantics and the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to causal reasoning, as well as between our rule-based semantics for causal conditionals and the standard semantics for belief base change.