Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the
Indians,
Chinese, and
Maya developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. A form of astrology was practised in the
Old Babylonian period of
Mesopotamia, . This was a first step towards recording the Moon's influence upon tides and rivers, and towards organising a communal calendar. By the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with
heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known astrological references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The
Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa is thought to have been compiled in
Babylon around 1700 BCE. A scroll documenting an early use of
electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the
Sumerian ruler
Gudea of Lagash ( – 2124 BCE). This describes how the gods revealed to him in a dream the constellations that would be most favourable for the planned construction of a temple. However, there is controversy about whether these were genuinely recorded at the time or merely ascribed to ancient rulers by posterity. The oldest undisputed evidence of the use of astrology as an integrated system of knowledge is therefore attributed to the records of the first dynasty of
Babylon (1950–1651 BCE). This astrology had some parallels with
Hellenistic Greek (western) astrology, including the
zodiac, a norming point near 9 degrees in Aries, the trine aspect, planetary exaltations, and the dodekatemoria (the twelve divisions of 30 degrees each). The Babylonians viewed celestial events as possible signs rather than as causes of physical events. The ancient Arabs that inhabited the
Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam used to profess a widespread belief in
fatalism (
ḳadar) alongside a fearful consideration for the sky and the stars, which they held to be ultimately responsible for every phenomena that occurs on Earth and for the destiny of humankind. Accordingly, they shaped their entire lives in accordance with their interpretations of astral configurations and phenomena. Criticism of astrology by
academic skeptics such as
Carneades,
Cicero, and
Favorinus;
Pyrrhonists such as
Sextus Empiricus; and
neoplatonists such as
Plotinus, has been preserved.
Carneades argued that belief in fate denies
free will and
morality; that people born at different times can all die in the same accident or battle; and that contrary to uniform influences from the stars, tribes and cultures are all different.
Cicero, in
De Divinatione, leveled a critique of astrology that some modern philosophers consider to be the first working definition of
pseudoscience and the answer to the
demarcation problem. The philosopher of science
Massimo Pigliucci, building on the work of the historian of science, Damian Fernandez-Beanato, argues that Cicero outlined a "convincing distinction between astrology and astronomy that remains valid in the twenty-first century."
Cicero stated the twins objection (that with close birth times, personal outcomes can be very different), later developed by
Augustine. He argued that since the other planets are much more distant from the Earth than the Moon, they could have only very tiny influence compared to the Moon's. He also argued that if astrology explains everything about a person's fate, then it wrongly ignores the visible effect of inherited ability and parenting, changes in health worked by medicine, or the effects of the weather on people. The historian Stefano Rapisarda notes that the text is formally "equally balanced between
pro and
contra, and no final or definite answer is given."
Favorinus argued that it was absurd to imagine that stars and planets would affect human bodies in the same way as they affect the tides, and equally absurd that small motions in the heavens cause large changes in people's fates.
Sextus Empiricus argued that it was absurd to link human attributes with myths about the signs of the zodiac, and wrote an entire book,
Against the Astrologers (Πρὸς ἀστρολόγους,
Pros astrologous), compiling arguments against astrology.
Against the Astrologers was the fifth section of a larger work arguing against philosophical and scientific inquiry in general,
Against the Professors (Πρὸς μαθηματικούς,
Pros mathematikous).
Plotinus, a
neoplatonist, had a lasting interest in astrology, including the question of how the world of humans could be affected by the stars, and (if so) whether astrology could predict events on Earth. He argued that since the fixed stars are much more distant than the planets, it is laughable to imagine the planets' effect on human affairs should depend on their position with respect to the zodiac. He also argues that the interpretation of the Moon's
conjunction with a planet as good when the moon is full, but bad when the moon is waning, is clearly wrong, as from the Moon's point of view, half of its surface is always in sunlight; and from the planet's point of view, waning should be better, as then the planet sees some light from the Moon, but when the Moon is full to us, it is dark, and therefore bad, on the side facing the planet in question.
Hellenistic Egypt Tetrabiblos, translated into Latin by
Plato of Tivoli|alt=Ptolemy's
Tetrabiblos, the Hellenistic text that founded Western astrology In 525 BCE,
Egypt was conquered by the Persians. The 1st century BCE Egyptian
Dendera Zodiac shares two signs – the Balance and the Scorpion – with Mesopotamian astrology. With the occupation by
Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, Egypt became
Hellenistic. The city of
Alexandria was founded by Alexander after the conquest, becoming the place where
Babylonian astrology was mixed with Egyptian
Decanic astrology to create
Horoscopic astrology. This contained the Babylonian zodiac with its system of planetary
exaltations, the triplicities of the signs and the importance of eclipses. It used the Egyptian concept of dividing the zodiac into thirty-six decans of ten degrees each, with an emphasis on the rising decan, and the Greek system of planetary Gods, sign rulership and
four elements. 2nd century BCE texts predict positions of planets in zodiac signs at the time of the rising of certain decans, particularly Sothis. The
astrologer and astronomer
Ptolemy lived in Alexandria. Ptolemy's work the
Tetrabiblos formed the basis of Western astrology, and, "...enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more."
Greece and Rome The conquest of
Asia by
Alexander the Great exposed the Greeks to ideas from
Syria, Babylon, Persia and central Asia. Around 280 BCE,
Berossus, a priest of
Bel from Babylon, moved to the Greek island of
Kos, teaching astrology and Babylonian culture. By the 1st century BCE, there were two varieties of astrology, one using
horoscopes to describe the past, present and future; the other,
theurgic, emphasising the
soul's ascent to the stars. Greek influence played a crucial role in the transmission of astrological theory to
Rome. Satirist
Lucian of Samasota wrote a satirical critique of the astrology in the Roman Empire. Modern scholars of the
Second Sophistic consider this an early example of a rationalist polemic against "what the author considers a pseudoscience." The first definite reference to astrology in Rome comes from the orator
Cato, who in 160 BCE warned farm overseers against consulting with Chaldeans, who were described as Babylonian 'star-gazers'. Among both Greeks and
Romans, Babylonia (also known as
Chaldea) became so identified with astrology that 'Chaldean wisdom' became
synonymous with
divination using planets and stars. The 2nd-century Roman poet and satirist
Juvenal complains about the pervasive influence of Chaldeans, saying, "Still more trusted are the Chaldaeans; every word uttered by the astrologer they will believe has come from
Hammon's fountain." One of the first astrologers to bring
Hermetic astrology to Rome was
Thrasyllus, astrologer to the
emperor Tiberius, the first emperor to have had a court astrologer, though his predecessor
Augustus had used astrology to help legitimise his
Imperial rights.
Medieval world Hindu The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval compilations, notably the
Bṛhat Parāśara Horāśāstra|, and
Sārāvalī by . The
Horāshastra is a composite work of 71 chapters, of which the first part (chapters 1–51) dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries and the second part (chapters 52–71) to the later 8th century. The
Sārāvalī likewise dates to around 800 CE. English translations of these texts were published by N.N. Krishna Rau and V.B. Choudhari in 1963 and 1961, respectively.
Islamic translation of
Abū Maʿshar's De Magnis Coniunctionibus ('Of the great
conjunctions'),
Venice, 1515 Astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars following the collapse of
Alexandria to the Arabs in the 7th century, and the founding of the
Abbasid empire in the 8th. The second Abbasid
caliph,
Al Mansur (754–775) founded the city of
Baghdad to act as a centre of learning, and included in its design a library-translation centre known as
Bayt al-Hikma 'House of Wisdom', which continued to receive development from his heirs and was to provide a major impetus for Arabic-Persian translations of Hellenistic astrological texts. The early translators included
Mashallah, who helped to elect the time for the foundation of Baghdad, and
Sahl ibn Bishr, (
a.k.a. Zael), whose texts were directly influential upon later European astrologers such as
Guido Bonatti in the 13th century, and
William Lilly in the 17th century. Knowledge of Arabic texts started to become imported into Europe during the
Latin translations of the 12th century.
Jewish Medieval
Jewish astrology developed significantly in the Islamic world, where Jewish scholars studied, adapted, and debated astrological knowledge inherited from Greek and Arabic sources. While some, like
Maimonides, famously rejected astrology as unscientific and theologically problematic, others, including
Saadia Gaon,
Sherira Gaon, and
Hai Gaon, addressed astrological ideas in their commentaries and responsa.
Dunash ibn Tamim, active in
Kairouan, incorporated astrology into biblical exegesis and authored a critical treatise on its principles. The first astrological book published in Europe was the
Liber Planetis et Mundi Climatibus ("Book of the Planets and Regions of the World"), which appeared between 1010 and 1027 AD, and may have been authored by
Gerbert of Aurillac.
Ptolemy's second century AD
Tetrabiblos was translated into Latin by
Plato of Tivoli in 1138. The thirteenth century mathematician
Campanus of Novara is said to have devised a system of astrological houses that divides the
prime vertical into 'houses' of equal 30° arcs, though the system was used earlier in the East. The thirteenth century
astronomer Guido Bonatti wrote a textbook, the
Liber Astronomicus, a copy of which King
Henry VII of England owned at the end of the fifteenth century. to the astrological planets, though he adapted traditional astrology to suit his Christian viewpoint,
John Gower in the fourteenth century defined astrology as essentially limited to the making of predictions. The influence of the stars was in turn divided into natural astrology, with for example effects on tides and the growth of plants, and judicial astrology, with supposedly predictable effects on people. The fourteenth-century sceptic
Nicole Oresme however included astronomy as a part of astrology in his
Livre de divinacions. Oresme argued that current approaches to prediction of events such as plagues, wars, and weather were inappropriate, but that such prediction was a valid field of inquiry. However, he attacked the use of astrology to choose the timing of actions (so-called interrogation and election) as wholly false, and rejected the determination of human action by the stars on grounds of free will. The friar
Laurens Pignon (c. 1368–1449) similarly rejected all forms of divination and determinism, including by the stars, in his 1411
Contre les Devineurs. This was in opposition to the tradition carried by the Arab astronomer
Albumasar (787–886) whose
Introductorium in Astronomiam and
De Magnis Coniunctionibus argued the view that both individual actions and larger scale history are determined by the stars. In the late 15th century,
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola forcefully attacked astrology in
Disputationes contra Astrologos, arguing that the heavens neither caused, nor heralded earthly events. His contemporary,
Pietro Pomponazzi, a "rationalistic and critical thinker", was much more sanguine about astrology and critical of Pico's attack.
Renaissance and Early Modern Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 1617
Renaissance scholars commonly practised astrology.
Gerolamo Cardano cast the horoscope of king
Edward VI of England, while
John Dee was the personal astrologer to queen
Elizabeth I of England.
Catherine de Medici paid
Michael Nostradamus in 1566 to verify the prediction of the death of her husband, king
Henry II of France, made by her astrologer Lucus Gauricus. Major astronomers who practised as court astrologers included
Tycho Brahe in the royal court of Denmark,
Johannes Kepler to the
Habsburgs,
Galileo Galilei to the
Medici, and
Giordano Bruno who was burnt at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600. The distinction between astrology and astronomy was not entirely clear. Advances in astronomy were often motivated by the desire to improve the accuracy of astrology. Kepler, for example, was driven by a belief in harmonies between Earthly and celestial affairs, yet he disparaged the activities of most astrologers as "evil-smelling dung".
Ephemerides with complex astrological calculations, and
almanacs interpreting celestial events for use in medicine and for choosing times to plant crops, were popular in Elizabethan England. In 1597, the English
mathematician and
physician Thomas Hood made a set of paper instruments that used revolving overlays to help students work out relationships between fixed stars or constellations, the midheaven, and the twelve
astrological houses. Hood's instruments also illustrated, for pedagogical purposes, the supposed relationships between the signs of the zodiac, the planets, and the parts of the human body adherents believed were governed by the planets and signs. While Hood's presentation was innovative, his astrological information was largely standard and was taken from
Gerard Mercator's astrological disc made in 1551, or a source used by Mercator. Despite its popularity, Renaissance astrology had what historian Gabor Almasi calls "elite debate", exemplified by the polemical letters of Swiss physician
Thomas Erastus who fought against astrology, calling it "vanity" and "superstition." Then around the time of the
new star of 1572 and the
comet of 1577 there began what Almasi calls an "extended epistemological reform" which began the process of excluding religion, astrology and
anthropocentrism from scientific debate. By 1679, the yearly publication
La Connoissance des temps eschewed astrology as a legitimate topic.
Enlightenment period and onwards Chicago women discuss spiritualism (1906). During
the Enlightenment, intellectual sympathy for astrology fell away, leaving only a popular following supported by cheap almanacs. One English almanac compiler, Richard Saunders, followed the spirit of the age by printing a derisive
Discourse on the Invalidity of Astrology, while in France
Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire of 1697 stated that the subject was puerile. Astrology saw a popular revival starting in the 19th century, as part of a general revival of
spiritualism and—later,
New Age philosophy, and through the influence of mass media such as newspaper horoscopes. Early in the 20th century the psychiatrist
Carl Jung developed some concepts concerning astrology, which led to the development of
psychological astrology. == Principles and practice ==