A Brief History of Astronomy and Astrology
Astronomy is concerned with the observation of the motions of heavenly bodies, and reduces to mathematical order these observations. Astrology is the study of the effects the movements of these celestial bodies have on human affairs. By suggests of prolonged observation, the ancient astronomers have been capable to predict the recurrence of cosmic phenomena, and astrologers started to forecast the earthly events which coincided with these.
Astronomy is likely as old as man’s conception of time itself. In the starting, astronomy was largely employed to predict climate patterns and the most propitious time for sowing and planting crops. Later, these orbs of moving light the planets, have been believed to be gods, and the subsequent quest for divine knowledge was possibly the starting of astrology.
Ancient Origins
Astronomy-astrology is stated to have originated with the Chaldeans, in Babylon, Mesopotamia, (now Iraq) around the fourth millennium BC. It was practiced in the temples, exactly where it was blended with religious elements. Later, it spread to Egypt, and about the third millennium BC was receiving used by rulers to predict the fate of nations: war or peace, famine or lots.
The Chinese had been also skilled astronomers, and are thought to have independently begun to use types of prediction, along with the Maya of Central America and the peoples of ancient India. Some experts believe that Chinese astronomy could perhaps extend as far back as 5000 BC.
Venus opposite Sun synastry into the Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza suggest that observation of heavenly bodies could have even a great deal far more distant origins. There is startling new proof that the principal Giza monuments kind an precise terrestrial “map” of the 3 stars of Orion’s belt as these constellations appeared in ten,500 BC.
Greek and Roman Situations
Substantially later, following the death of Alexander The Great, astrology started to influence Greek life, as Greeks and Orientals mingled in the kingdoms of the Seleucids and Ptolemy. It became an increasingly significant element of Greek and Roman life. The Stoic philosophers secularized this ancient art: Hippocrates, the “father of medicine” taught astrology to his students so that they could decide the very important days in an illness and the poet Hesiod, who lived in the 8th century BC, wrote in his extended poem “Functions and Days” that the positions of the planets and stars must truly be employed to predict propitious times at which to commence points. Astrology reached its zenith in imperial instances, was employed by people of each and every and just about every social strata, and in truth, was a element of pretty a lot each and every branch of ancient culture.
About the 2nd century A. D. Ptolemy, a Greek scientist, wrote a colossal work on astrology, which is divided into two components: The Almagest and The Tetrabiblos: The Almagest bargains with the movement of the Sun, Moon, and planets the Tetrabiblos with the interpretation of these movements as they impact man and human events. These books are likely the most complete written records of ancient astronomy and astrology that have remained to us, and are a compilation of works from previous centuries.
The Middle Ages
The tradition of Greek, Arabic and Medieval astrology which was inseparable from the parallel tradition of alchemy, believed that Man responds to certain indefinable energies or vibrations of the Sun, Moon and planets, and words nonetheless applied correct now to define distinctive human traits, such as mercurial, saturnine, lunatic, venereal, jovial, martial, came from the astrological-alchemical schools of the 13th to the 17th centuries, remaining a tribute to the function of those occasions.
The Age of Explanation
Astrology for centuries was applied by kings, emperors, popes, scientists, physicians, the bourgeoisie and the poor alike, and together with astronomy was taught in the schools and universities of the planet. But, as with most things, it was destined to attain an interval in the affairs of males, and toward the close of the sixteenth century in Europe, astrology was losing ground though in England it continued to flourish through most of the 17th century.
The elements for the decline in astrology are varied. A new scientific age was dawning and with it an excessive demand for technical explanation-every thing not scientifically provable or rationally explicable was rejected, which involves astrology. The vast distance of the planets involving each and every single other was discovered, and folks started to say that these distances have been as properly amazing for any influences to attain earth. Also, the realization that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the solar method somehow added to the devaluation of astrology-even though Sir Isaac Newton, and other people today, pointed out that astrology is about the partnership in among planets, and could therefore be valid no matter which heavenly physique was at the center of the method.
To add to all of this, an growing number of “quacks” appeared out to make fast dollars, mingling with the genuine astrologers, which could not have helped matters-and whilst it is true that there have normally been consultant astrologers and their shoppers-in Europe and in America, astrology for a lengthy period seemed to lie dormant, and was utilised for little considerably far more than the publication of Almanacs for predicting the climate.
The Twentieth Century
It was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that started the present revival of interest in Astrology. Drastically of this is owed to the great Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustave Jung, who utilized astrology in his studies and wrote on the topic extensively, awakening at the precise exact same time the interest of other scientists.
The English astrologer Alan Leo, and Russian, Madame Blavatsky did a excellent deal for the resurgence of astrology in England and Germany. There had been other folks, as effectively, such as the American, Dane Rudhyar, who came to astrology by indicates of research in music and philosophy, and wrote a important carry out referred to as “The Planetarization of Consciousness” in 1970. In this way astrology was revived in America, in France, and in Holland. Associations and schools for seasoned astrologers have been founded in America and in Britain, and these days astrology is when a lot more practiced in almost every single nation of the globe.
