A Short History of Astrology and Astrology FAQ
I get a lot of various questions about Western astrology from people all over the world. Here is a short FAQ to start things off (I will add to it as I get more questions about astrology in general):
Q: Is Western astrology better/more accurate/worse/less accurate than [insert your favorite other astrology style here]?
A: Let me answer your question with a question. Which alphabet is better and more accurate/effective? The Latin or the Arabic, or perhaps the Cyrillic alphabet? Of course the answer is that none of them are better or more accurate than any others. Rather, each alphabet has developed to suit the needs of the culture and language where it was used. Each language has unique sounds that can be approximated best by their given alphabet. In that sense, all alphabets are created equal.
In that sense, too, astrology is similar, because it is a self-contained system best adapted to the needs of the culture in which it is used. So no astrological system that is logical and based upon sound principles is better than any other. As far as accuracy goes - that has to do with the individual practitioner, rather than the astrology itself. The Cyrillic alphabet is not suddenly inferior because some four-year-old in St. Petersburg keeps drawing his Rs backwards (or rather forwards, in this case). He’s just not very good yet at using the given system.
And if Western astrology, properly practiced, was less accurate than other types of astrology, why on earth would I practice it, with today’s smorgasbord of astrological options?
Q: Where is Pluto?! And what did you do with Neptune, you crazed woman?
A: To continue the above analogy, imagine a perfectly good alphabet that suddenly starts adding “newly discovered” letters that represent existing sounds. So the sound for “r” can now be visually represented by r, r@#!$%, and &$*r. Same sound, just now with added redundancy and spelling complexity. Good old “r” just does not seem as interesting any more, now that our society has “evolved” to need these new, exotic letters. There is an analogy here to 20th century Western astrology - one inherent problem with the Western mentality is that we just LOVE novelty, and this has landed us in all sorts of trouble over the years.
Who needs the old 7 planets any more? We have Sedna, Chiron, Lilith, and Ebertin midpoints. Of course, the pre-20th century Western astrological system had symmetry, and had reason. Only the visible-with-the-naked-eye planets were used, and somehow, everything in the world was able to fit into that system. Another analogy: adding a fifth wheel to a wagon is not going to get you there any faster, and if anything, will probably slow you down.
Q: But what about electricity? And the atom bomb? And massively destructive biochemical wars? Don’t we need outer planets to represent these modern indications of progress?
A: Nope, and it’s pretty liberating. Take Neptune (please!), for example. In modern astrology, it represents, among other things, water, deception, dreams, idealism, and drugs. I would humbly propose that all of those things existed long ago, way before Neptune was discovered in 1846. Here is an example of how an old-school astrologer might classify the above items, depending on the context of the inquiry:
- Water - the Moon
- Deception - Mercury, the 12th house
- Dreams - the Moon, the 9th house
- Drugs - Moon (if they are wet and soporific), Saturn (because they are addictive and harmful), Venus (because they are pleasurable and seductive), 10th house (if they are used in medical treatment), 12th house (drug abuse)
- Electricity - Mercury (electricity as such) or the Moon (light), or Mars (because it burns you when you stick your fingers in the socket)
- The Bomb - Mars
- Biochemical wars that can kill millions - still Mars, whether it’s spears and shields or germ warfare
- Idealism - Jupiter
So there you go: no outer planets or other wild stuff needed. It’s very Zen, very simple.
Q: Where does Western astrology come from?
A: In 1000 words or less: We don’t know where it started, but we know the ancient Babylonians used it way back in 2000 B.C. Some historians think the Babylonians invented it, but I strongly suspect it’s far older than that. The ancient Egyptians used astrology, and as the Greeks looked to Egypt for many things spiritual, the Greeks took the Egyptian astrology and modified it to fit it with their worldview. Since the Romans looked to the Greeks as the source for culture and education (see a theme developing here?), astrology really caught on in Rome about 100 BC. There are a few very good surviving works on astrology by Roman writers; Manilius (who writes of the horoscope of the Deified Augustus among other things), Thrasyllus (Tiberius’s court astrologer), Dorotheus (who wrote five books on astrology in verse), and of course, the encyclopedist Ptolemy, who wrote THE book on astrology, the Tetrabiblos.
As the Arabic world became wealthier and more established in the 8th century AD, Arabs became more interested in the astrological wisdom of Byzantium and India. The Arabs took a very scientific approach to astrology, and connected its concepts to geometry,trigonometry and the other sciences. One such integrative, encyclopedic work is Al Biruni’s Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology. At this time, many Indian astrologers visited Baghdad, which became a center of culture and learning in the 10th century (did you know that Baghdad was founded in an astrologically elected moment? And yes, its chart looks very bad these days.). Similarly, many Arabic astrologers journeyed in India and tried to integrate elements of Indian astrology with their own Greek-based astrology, for better or for worse. Some major names from this period are Masha’allah, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and Al-Khayyat, all of whom wrote important treatises that survive today.
As the Arab world began to wane in influence in the Middle Ages, and the European civilization began its economic and political ascent, European scholars started studying old Arab astrology sources. Some of the best-known medieval and Renaissance astrologers were Guido Bonatti, Albertus Magnus (who wrote:”There is in Man a double spring of action, namely nature and his will; and nature for its part is ruled by the stars, while the will is free; but unless it resists, it is swept along by nature and becomes mechanical.”), Cardan, William Lilly, and Placidus.
Then astrology fell into a decline with the Age of Enlightenment, the major European universities stopped teaching astrology, and by 1700, very few people were interested in the subject. In the late 1700s, however, interest in astrology in the West began to resurface, with a small but dedicated following. With the discoveries of Uranus, Neptune, the planetary moons and asteroids, the modern, post-Enlightenment astrology looked rather different. By the late 1800s, the Theosophists adopted astrology as their means of determining who, in addition to them, was spiritually evolved, and the likes of Alan Leo and John Ackroyd, among others, made their own mass-market style contributions to astrological knowledge around the turn of the 20th century. Since then, Western astrology has been heavily influenced by New Age and psychological theories, and has refocused from prediction to personality and “tendency” analysis.
