Astrology and Astronomy

Astrology and Astronomy

Astrology contends that which constellation the planets are in at the moment of your birth profoundly influences your future. A few thousand years ago, the idea developed that the motions of the planets determined the fates of kings, dynasties, empires. Astrologers studied the motions of the planets and asked themselves what had happened the last time that, say, Venus was rising in the Constellation of the Goat; perhaps something similar would happen this time as well.

Astrologers came to be employed only by the State. In many countries it was a capital offense for anyone but the official astrologer to read the portents in the skies: a good way to overthrow a regime was to predict its downfall. Chines court astrologers who made inaccurate predictions were executed. 

I wonder what the symptoms of the “rising of lights” illness were? Image: Black and Red Winged Lion Griffin Like © Elena

Others simply doctored the records so that afterwards they were in perfect conformity with events. Astrology developed into a strange combination of observations, mathematics and careful record-keeping with fuzzy thinking and pious fraud.

But if the planets could determine the destinies of nations how could they avoid influencing what will happen to me tomorrow?

The notion of a personal astrology developed in Alexandrian Egypt and spread through the Greek and Roman worlds about 2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as disaster, which is Greek for “bad star”; influenza, Italian for astral influence; mazeltov, Hebrew – and ultimately, Babylonian – for “good constellation”, or the Yddish word shlamazel, applied to someone plagued by relentless ill-fortune, which again traces to the Babylonian astronomical lexicon.

According to Pliny, there were Romans considered sideratio, “planet-struck”. Planets were widely thought to be a direct cause of death. Or consider the word consider: it means “with the planets”, evidently a prerequisite for serious reflection. Consider the mortality statistics in the City of London in 1632. Among the terrible losses from infant and childhood diseases and such exotic illnesses as the “rising of lights” and “the King’s evil”, we find that, of 9,535 deaths, 13 people succumbed to “planet”, more than died of cancer.

See also:

• Astrology as in Astronomy