Astrology Through the Ages

What seems much more important to us is the correlation and interaction between a society's conception of itself and of the world, and the way it accepts, or refuses, astrology at a given time and in a given place on the globe. We certainly do not claim to address the entire history of astrology in a few pages, which would make for tedious reading... We focus instead on several significant examples which help us understand how this discipline has evolved over the centuries.

Some people will probably argue that astrology is not a science, and yet... Through its history, it is remarkable that astrology was often better understood by societies that were technically advanced and intellectually open to the world, and that the way it was approached depended more on society itself than on the period. For instance, during the Renaissance, a time of formidable intellectual, scientific, and cultural renewal in European society, astrologers were influential in political circles. In Hungary, astrology was used to decide the date on which the University of Presburg was to be built. In England, astrologers were employed as ambassadors. Astrology was thriving and was taught in universities throughout the kingdom.

Later on, in France, despotism became the very foundation of society, and the monarchy made the major mistake of entrenching itself in a rigid position, whereas the world around it kept changing. Astrology was first advised against and shortly afterwards forbidden. Colbert, Minister of Finance under King Louis XIV, forbade academicians to practise it, and Leibniz, though tolerant, declared that he despised only "that which leads to pure illusion, such as astrological divination". Diderot and Voltaire, renowned French philosophers of the 18th century, mocked astrology.

Whether astrology is a science, a philosophy, or a school of thought is not the topic of this article. Its purpose is not to argue in order to convince the reader that... astrology works! The aim is only to say a few words about its history. To quote Ernest Cassirer, a German philosopher of the early 20th century, the history of astrology is "one of the greatest attempts ever made by the human mind to give a comprehensive representation of the world"...

Divinatory calendars, which date back to Antiquity and were found in Egypt, China, and pre-Columbian America, indicate that some sort of archaic form of astrology was practised. It would require too much time to describe them all, and even though the subject is fascinating, it is beyond the scope of this article. Therefore, we have chosen to deal only with Egyptian divinatory calendars, also referred to as Nilotic calendars, because they seem to represent a subtle perception of the world and an interesting ability to approach the environment in intellectual, scientific, and religious ways, so as to better understand it.

The starting point of these divinatory calendars was the Nile's fluctuations and the need to foresee its fertilising yet destructive floods, with a view to regulating agriculture more efficiently. It is important to highlight that the entire Egyptian society was organised around the Nile's cycles, not in order to domesticate the river, but to live in harmony with this godsend. Preparing for the floods was of vital importance for the survival of the community. Furthermore, seeking harmony with nature led to the emergence of an intellectual elite of mathematicians, engineers, and astronomers.

Around 1500 BC, by observing the rising of Sirius, the Egyptians predicted the coming of the river's floods and knew when the annual cycle was beginning again. In ancient Egypt, science and religion were not opposed. The ancient Egyptians were very pious, worshipping light as the source of eternal life and believing that God manifested through the Sun. Thanks to this piety and to their unquestionable knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, Egypt was the first civilisation to implement a calendar dividing the year into 12 months and 360 days, to which five intercalary days were added at the end. The celebration of the New Year coincided with the annual rising of the Nile. Each month was placed under the aegis of a specific god and comprised three "decanates" of 10 days. Days were organised into two periods of 12 hours, themselves placed under the influence of higher forces, the planets. Depending on the month, day, and time of birth, a person was thus placed under the influence of a specific god and planets.

It is obvious that such divinatory calendars have little in common with the understanding and practice of today's astrology. However, they reveal that human beings were determined to try to master their destiny.

Like the Egyptians, the Chinese had a subtle perception of the surrounding world. The discrepancy between the evolved aspects of their civilisation and their religion may seem extremely simplistic nowadays, with for instance the belief in gods protecting the home. For the Chinese, there was a total harmony between heaven, earth, and man. The latter's duty was to ensure that the established order was maintained between life and death, activity and rest, and day and night. This harmony is the basis of the fundamental principles of Yin and Yang. The concept is that, as one increases, the other decreases and starts to gain strength as the former weakens. In order to take on this task of "surveillance", man had to observe and compare events and note the meaning of their connection with the cosmos. Very early in China, around 2350 BC, calendars were created in which the Chinese year was divided into 12 lunar months. There was also, from very ancient times, an oracle system based on eight trigrams, symbols made of horizontal solid or broken lines reflecting the Yin and Yang principles. Yang is believed to be masculine, active, solar, diurnal, and constructive, and Yin to be feminine, passive, lunar, nocturnal, and sometimes destructive.

The principles of Yin and Yang are associated with five elements: wood, fire, metal, water, and earth, which are themselves linked to the 12 zodiacal animals: the Rat (Sagittarius), the Ox (Capricorn), the Tiger (Aquarius), the Rabbit (Pisces), the Dragon (Aries), the Snake (Taurus), the Horse (Gemini), the Goat (Cancer), the Monkey (Leo), the Rooster (Virgo), the Dog (Libra), and the Pig (Scorpio). These three principles protected the harmony of the cosmos and constituted the foundations of Chinese astrology.

At birth, every Chinese person had a sort of "stellar identity card" comprising eight trigrams, two for the year, two for the month, two for the day, and two for the double hour. To interpret them, Chinese astrologers had to take into account a great number of combinations. It is interesting to note that Chinese astrology considers the time of birth on the basis of two-hour periods. Therefore, two persons born for instance at 2:00 PM and at 3:55 PM have exactly the same chart, since the day is divided into 12 periods, each comprising a double hour. This gives grounds for criticism in favour of Western astrology, which clearly distinguishes between the natal charts of persons born only one minute, or even a few seconds, apart.

Unlike the Egyptians and the Chinese, the Romans, a people of farmers and soldiers, were more interested in warfare, politics, and conquest than in science. In ancient Rome, even though astrology went through several favourable periods, it was used only to serve those in power. In 118 BC, one of the consequences of the defeat of Antiochus III, king of Syria, was that hundreds of nomads flocked to Rome, then a prestigious metropolis.

Among them were the "Chaldeans", fortune-tellers and horoscope-makers. People consulted them to know their future, and in 139 BC, an edict was promulgated banning the Chaldeans from Italian soil because they "exploited the people's gullibility with their mendacious astrology". However, slaves and freed slaves working for Roman families were not targeted by this prohibition and carried on their predictions under the protection of rich and powerful Romans who were willing to assimilate Greek culture, then a rival to Roman culture.

Numerous debates ensued, during which a few members of the Academy stood up as detractors of astrology, making criticisms which can still be heard today, such as "people born at the same time and in the same place have the same horoscope, and yet they have completely different destinies".

Later on, astrology enjoyed a bright spell with the arrival in Rome of Posidonius of Apamea, who had remarkable encyclopaedic knowledge and taught in Rome. Among his students were such illustrious figures as Caesar and Cicero. Astrology became fashionable, and only uneducated people did not believe in it. Horoscopes were widely circulated and people would buy jewellery and precious stones representing zodiacal signs, in spite of the fact that the imprecise Roman calendar gave rise to serious doubts regarding the sign one was supposed to be born under. The famous emperor Augustus himself, who had a passion for astrology, never knew whether he was a Capricorn or a Libra... Besides, the mathematician and poet Manilius (in Rome, astrologers were called either Chaldeans or mathematicians owing to the calculations involved) composed for the emperor his Astronomica, a didactic poem in five books dedicated to astrology.

The mighty Roman Empire lasted more than 500 years, and we do not intend to explain here the details of its history. However, it is important to understand that during that period, and unlike ancient Egypt, astrology, whether rejected, denied, and forbidden or acclaimed and encouraged according to the personal ambitions of politicians, was used exclusively to serve power.

As intellectual circles fought each other and weakened the foundations of ancient culture, astrology gained ground and found unexpected allies in Christianity, even though astral "fatalism", which in those days was somewhat akin to the Stoic school of thought, was in total opposition to the Christian dogma of divine omnipotence. But astrology adjusted to the Christian belief in salvation, and gradually replaced a certain type of fatalism with free will. For many people, the stars were not active forces, but mere signals, and this astrological view influenced the first Christians.

As a result, a form of "Christianised astrology" emerged, which considered heavenly configurations to be divine signs and left man his free will. It therefore attracted many followers among Christians and even the clergy. It was only after Saint Augustine, a man with an outstanding personality, gained influence, and after a new situation prevailed in the Church and the state, that ancient astrology declined.

In India, the first traces of astrology, found in the ancient texts of the Vedas, date back several thousand years, hence the name Vedic astrology rather than Hindu astrology.

It comprises three different systems:

• Parasari, after the sage Parasara, a disciple of Saunaka, himself a follower of Narada. Parasara is a descendant of the Vedic prophet Vasishta. He was the son of Uma Sakti and is believed to have lived more than 5,000 years ago.
• Jaimini, named after its author.
• Jatakapi, or Tajak, more modern and influenced by Arab astrology. It deals with progressions, a technique which moves the natal planets forward on the basis of one year for one ephemeris day.

Hellenistic astrology is the first "horoscopic" astrology, meaning that it computes the exact degree of the ecliptic rising on the eastern horizon at birth, also referred to as the Ascendant. This form of astrology considers four main features: the Zodiac, the circle formed by the 12 Houses, the planets, and their aspects.

Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and musician who spent a large part of his life in Alexandria, a city which was home to numerous scholars. Ptolemy is one of the founders of modern astrology. One of his most renowned books, the Almagest, contains a description of the cosmos and remains an authority today. He was praised for his astronomical calculations, and particularly for the motions of the planets. His geographical works enabled him to draw a map of the world with a precision that was remarkable by the standards of his day. He also devised the astrolabe, a tool for measuring the distance of stars and other celestial bodies against the horizon line.

Ptolemy is the author of the very wise saying, which reflects our modern view of astrology, that "the stars incline, but they do not compel".

The Arabs used Ptolemy's treatises, among other works, to interpret horoscopes. Here, the word "Arab" refers to all peoples writing in Arabic. Arab astrology had three components: genethliacal astrology, which pertains to individual astrology based on the day of birth, horary astrology, which answers a specific question, and magical astrology, which invokes planetary gods and makes amulets and talismans while combining a planet's influence with corresponding metals and signs. Genethliacal astrology, of which few writings are available, but whose knowledge has been passed on to us through oral transmission, is based on the principle that life is a struggle, and that human beings are born under the sign of two weapons, the first one at birth (what are we at the beginning and what is our potential?) and the other at the end (what have we become?). There are three categories of weapons, short, medium, or long, depending on their symbolic impact.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, astrology was generally considered to be a pagan practice. The Celts, Slavs, and Germans used astronomy for their numerous journeys. Although it is established that Louis the Pious consulted astrologers, he constitutes an exceptional case. After the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, conflicts broke out. In those troubled times loaded with uncertainty and fear, the influence of Greek-Arab philosophy considerably increased and was particularly felt in monasteries, which became places of reflection deeply interested in new schools of thought.

In those days, nature was the main theme of philosophy and religion. It was generally believed that God had created nature and put it at the service of man, and that astrology could predict anything related to nature, such as the weather for farmers, or diseases having natural causes. However, under no circumstances could astrology foresee that which directly depends on free will. Great minds of the time, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, an Italian philosopher and theologian (1225-1274), thought that predicting the destiny of a man was a demonic illusion.

Nevertheless, learned astrology, as opposed to popular astrology, which deals with individual planetary aspects for each person, also had its advocates. An outstanding example is the English Roger Bacon (1214-1294), a man with a very modern standpoint who fought the formalism of the Dominicans, an order to which Saint Thomas Aquinas belonged. Bacon argued that astrologers did not believe in fatalism, and that experience was the only important thing, as it is the very basis of all philosophy, of which astrology was one of the pillars. He carried out a relentless struggle in order to impose his viewpoint, sometimes in quite an unorthodox fashion. Indeed, he had a bellicose character, and he did not hesitate to request that the Church support astrological research in order, on the one hand, to prevent the practice of pagan astrology, and on the other hand, to strengthen what he called "astrologia sana", which relied on experience and experimentation.

Greek-Arab astrology steadily penetrated the Western world. In Italy, at the Court of Palermo, the king kept astrologers in high esteem and granted them his favours. Frederick II also requested them to write astrology treatises in which it was explained that the stars had no action and could not produce anything by themselves, since they were mere signals. Astrology books were available in all universities and libraries. In England, astrologers devised ephemerides and "prognostications", whereas in France, astrologers thrived at court, despite the fact that predictive astrology was considered a pagan and demonic practice.

Jean de Meurs, a renowned astrologer, made sensational predictions about the Great Conjunction of 1345. Public opinion as well as the court were deeply alarmed, and King Charles V the Wise commissioned people to write treatises claiming that Jean de Meurs' forecasts were mere superstition and that astrologers had failed to predict the Black Death epidemic of 1349, which was totally untrue.

Heated debates ensued between proponents and adversaries of astrology, particularly in France and England. As a consequence, Ptolemy's enormous work was questioned, and many scientists, scholars, and religious people dismissed it as flimsy speculation.

By the end of the Middle Ages, the protective and reassuring schools of thought which placed nature at the centre of their philosophy wore off, and people started to look for other answers. Simultaneously, scientific discoveries flourished... The Renaissance was taking shape.

In astronomy, the first major discovery of the Renaissance was made by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1469), a German mathematician, philosopher, and theologian, who was considered to be the last thinker of the Middle Ages and the first one of the Renaissance. He affirmed that the Earth had neither centre nor perimeter, and that it rotated around an axis. He called this theory "the theory of the relativity of location and motion". In those days, scientific and intellectual circles remained indifferent to his statement, but astrologers understood the tremendous importance of such a discovery.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), a Polish astronomer, was the first person to place the Sun at the centre of the universe, whereas for 14 centuries no one had dared to affirm that the Earth rotated on an axis. As he observed Mercury and Venus, Copernicus reached the conclusion that the Earth rotated on its axis and revolved around the Sun. His theory, known as heliocentrism, was scoffed at by scientists, but welcomed by astrologers. At first, Copernicus strove to convince his peers, but he rapidly became disheartened. It was an astrologer who published his work in numerous copies, which contributed to the slow acceptance of his revolutionary findings, despite the fact that they contradicted the Bible. In 1616, Copernicus' theory was judged heretical by the Church.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), an Italian astronomer and a devout believer, took up Copernicus' work again. He devised the telescope, a tool which enabled him to observe the sky and its phenomena with much greater precision, and to discover Jupiter's moons. He travelled to Rome in an attempt to convince the Church of the validity of his discoveries and became a friend of Pope Urban VIII. Since Copernicus' works were still banned as heretical, the young and progressive pope requested that Galileo write a contradictory and objective book about the different systems of the universe.

Galileo spent many years drafting the book. At the same time, he kept on practising astronomy and astrology and reassured astrologers who feared that these new discoveries might undermine the foundations of astrology. In 1631, when Galileo's work was published, the Catholic Church was challenged by the emerging Reformation movements, and the pope had the book placed on the Index by the Inquisition. This was done a little late, and many copies were already broadly circulated. Galileo was found guilty of heresy. To save his life, he had to abjure. He was rehabilitated long after his death, only after the Church accepted Copernicus' theories, in 1757.

During the Renaissance, the foundations of astrology inherited from the Hellenistic tradition did not evolve very much and kept the principles of planets, signs, houses, and aspects. However, astrological calculations greatly improved thanks to discoveries in algebra and trigonometry. Detailed tables featuring the planets' rising and setting, positions, and motion were published and became easily available thanks to the newly invented printing technique.

Mentalities changed rapidly, as is most often the case when prevailing trends promote openness to the world. Astrology thrived tremendously. Learned astrologers remained cautious and fought fiercely against charlatans who did not hesitate to give advice on hairdressing or fashionable clothes, predictions which people were very keen on. Medical astrology also developed and was taught in several European universities, since it was believed that to be a good medical practitioner, one had to be a good astrologer.

Nostradamus' prophecies are among the most famous ones. Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566) was a French astrologer and clairvoyant whose predictions were very controversial. In addition to great conjunctions, he would use planetary cycles and chronological periods and tap into his clairvoyant gifts. He caused a sensation after King Henri II died in a way that seemed to match the published prophecies.

Many people still have in mind the case of Nostradamus' son, also an astrologer, who set fire to the city of Le Pouzin in Ardèche, France, in order to make his prediction come true!

Astrology slowly reached its climax as the Renaissance unfolded. In Italy, it was supported by the popes, while in France, Queen Catherine de' Medici protected and encouraged astrology, gathering around her astrologers, among whom Nostradamus would remain one of the most famous.

Several events were at the root of astrology's decline. The Thirty Years' War, with its procession of deaths and horrors, strengthened beliefs in devils and witches, and astrologers were rapidly seen as charlatans who exploited people's fears.

The control exerted by the Church on research and philosophy aggravated the bad reputation of astrology. An additional worsening factor was the development of rationalism, which was mainly linked to progress in the natural sciences and invalidated the philosophy of the Renaissance.

The French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) published his Discourse on Method, in which he somewhat echoed the theory of English lawyer and philosopher Francis Bacon. Descartes based his reasoning on experimentation with a view to explaining nature. He also argued that only that which is quantifiable should be considered true and real, which obviously excluded occult sciences. This new mechanical and mathematical approach to nature was in total contradiction to the deductive aspect of astrology.

During the Enlightenment, astrology, which was already fairly weakened, was swept away by rationalism and despotism, which had become the organising principles of the state. Astrologers were deprived of their working tools and, without powerful protectors, astrology fell into the hands of charlatans and marginal people. It was sometimes used as mere entertainment by the ladies at court. In the Encyclopedia published by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, one of the major works of the 18th century, astrology was scoffed at. Voltaire, a renowned French philosopher, wrote that no sensible human being could take it seriously. It is worth mentioning that Uranus was discovered during this century, in 1781.

In 1811, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German novelist and philosopher, did not hesitate to start his memoirs with comments on his own horoscope. He confessed his passion for this discipline, which he had been practising for several years. Actually, it was in Germany that astrology's first advocates started the slow process which led to its rehabilitation. Indeed, German Romantics wanted to take the cosmic machinery out of mechanical rationalism so that it could become alive again.

At the outset of the 19th century, the Romantic movement spread to England where it kept developing. The majority of astrologers would hide under a pseudonym, which is quite revealing of astrology's poor reputation. In France, the homeland of rationalism par excellence, defenders of astrology gathered into secret societies. Among the most famous representatives were Abbé Constant, whose pseudonym was Éliphas Lévi, and the medical practitioner Gérard Encausse, known under the pseudonym of Papus.

It was not until 1885, some forty years after the discovery of Neptune, that the French astrologer Abel Haatan published a serious work, Manual of Spherical and Judicial Astrology, which was followed by Planetary Genius, written by his disciple, François-Charles Barlet. These works were taken up and improved by other astrologers and constitute the foundations of scientific astrology as it is practised nowadays.

We hope that you enjoyed our brief summary of the history of astrology. An article about its various modern forms is in preparation and will be published online shortly.