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 means of prolonged observation, the ancient astronomers have been in a position to predict the recurrence of cosmic phenomena, and astrologers began to forecast the earthly events which coincided with these.
Astronomy is possibly as old as man’s conception of time itself. In the beginning, astronomy was largely utilised to predict climate patterns and the most propitious time for sowing and planting crops. Later, these orbs of moving light the planets, had been believed to be gods, and the subsequent quest for divine experience was possibly the beginning of astrology.
Ancient Origins
Astronomy-astrology is mentioned 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 getting applied by rulers to predict the fate of nations: war or peace, famine or a lot.
www.astrologyvalley.com have 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 professionals believe that Chinese astronomy could extend as far back as 5000 BC.
Current researches into the Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza suggest that observation of heavenly bodies may well nicely have even a lot more distant origins. There is startling new proof that the principal Giza monuments sort an correct terrestrial “map” of the three stars of Orion’s belt as these constellations appeared in 10,500 BC.
Greek and Roman Situations
Substantially later, just after the death of Alexander The Great, astrology began to influence Greek life, as Greeks and Orientals mingled in the kingdoms of the Seleucids and Ptolemy. It became an increasingly important 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 establish the crucial days in an illness and the poet Hesiod, who lived in the 8th century BC, wrote in his extended poem “Operates and Days” that the positions of the planets and stars really need to be utilised to predict propitious situations at which to start off factors. Astrology reached its zenith in imperial occasions, was utilized by persons of each social strata, and in truth, was a component of virtually each and every and each and every branch of ancient culture.
Around the 2nd century A. D. Ptolemy, a Greek scientist, wrote a colossal perform on astrology, which is divided into two components: The Almagest and The Tetrabiblos: The Almagest deals with the movement of the Sun, Moon, and planets the Tetrabiblos with the interpretation of these movements as they effect man and human events. These books are maybe the most complete written records of ancient astronomy and astrology that have remained to us, and are a compilation of performs from preceding 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 particular indefinable energies or vibrations of the Sun, Moon and planets, and words nonetheless applied now to define distinct human qualities, 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 execute of these occasions.
The Age of Reason
Astrology for centuries was utilised by kings, emperors, popes, scientists, physicians, the bourgeoisie and the poor alike, and collectively with astronomy was taught in the schools and universities of the planet. But, as with most factors, it was destined to reach an interval in the affairs of men, and toward the close of the sixteenth century in Europe, astrology was losing ground despite the truth that in England it continued to flourish through most of the 17th century.
The motives for the decline in astrology are varied. A new scientific age was dawning and with it an excessive demand for technical explanation-almost everything not scientifically provable or rationally explicable was rejected, which includes astrology. The vast distance of the planets involving every single other was found, and people started to say that these distances have been also terrific for any influences to attain earth. Also, the realization that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the solar program somehow added to the devaluation of astrology-even even though Sir Isaac Newton, and other people, pointed out that astrology is about the relationship amongst planets, and could thus be valid no matter which heavenly physique was at the center of the plan.
To add to all of this, an escalating quantity of “quacks” appeared out to make speedy revenue, mingling with the genuine astrologers, which could not have helped matters-and although it is correct that there have ordinarily been consultant astrologers and their buyers-in Europe and in America, astrology for a lengthy period seemed to lie dormant, and was utilised for tiny further 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. Considerably of this is owed to the superb Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustave Jung, who applied astrology in his research and wrote on the subject extensively, awakening at the comparable time the interest of other scientists.
The English astrologer Alan Leo, and Russian, Madame Blavatsky did much for the resurgence of astrology in England and Germany. There have been other folks, also, such as the American, Dane Rudhyar, who came to astrology by signifies of study in music and philosophy, and wrote a useful operate 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 specialist astrologers have been founded in America and in Britain, and these days astrology is once again practiced in quite much just about each and every nation of the planet.