A Short History of Astronomy and Astrology

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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 signifies of prolonged observation, the ancient astronomers had been in a position to predict the recurrence of cosmic phenomena, and astrologers started to forecast the earthly events which coincided with these.

Astronomy is virtually certainly as old as man’s conception of time itself. In the beginning, astronomy was largely utilized 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 know-how was most likely the beginning of astrology.

Ancient Origins

Astronomy-astrology is stated to have originated with the Chaldeans, in Babylon, Mesopotamia, (now Iraq) about the fourth millennium BC. It was practiced in the temples, where it was blended with religious elements. Later, it spread to Egypt, and about the third millennium BC was receiving applied by rulers to predict the fate of nations: war or peace, famine or plenty.

The Chinese had been also skilled astronomers, and are believed to have independently begun to use forms of prediction, along with the Maya of Central America and the peoples of ancient India. Some professionals believe that Chinese astronomy could properly extend as far back as 5000 BC.

Current researches into the Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza suggest that observation of heavenly bodies could have even far a lot more distant origins. There is startling new proof that the principal Giza monuments type an precise terrestrial “map” of the 3 stars of Orion’s belt as these constellations appeared in 10,500 BC.

Greek and Roman Instances

Substantially later, following the death of Alexander The Outstanding, astrology began to influence Greek life, as Greeks and Orientals mingled in the kingdoms of the Seleucids and Ptolemy. astrologyvalley.com became an increasingly critical portion 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 essential 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 will need to be applied to predict propitious instances at which to commence out points. Astrology reached its zenith in imperial instances, was utilized by people today currently of just about each and every social strata, and in reality, was a component of just about each 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 offers with the movement of the Sun, Moon, and planets the Tetrabiblos with the interpretation of these movements as they have an effect on man and human events. These books are possibly the most total written records of ancient astronomy and astrology that have remained to us, and are a compilation of functions from earlier 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 specific indefinable energies or vibrations of the Sun, Moon and planets, and words nevertheless utilized now to define several 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 operate of these situations.

The Age of Purpose

Astrology for centuries was created use of 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 challenges, 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 although in England it continued to flourish by way of most of the 17th century.

The causes for the decline in astrology are varied. A new scientific age was dawning and with it an excessive demand for technical explanation-all the issues not scientifically provable or rationally explicable was rejected, like astrology. The vast distance of the planets in between each single other was located, and guys and girls began to say that these distances had been also amazing for any influences to attain earth. Also, the realization that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the solar system somehow added to the devaluation of astrology-even even even though Sir Isaac Newton, and other people, pointed out that astrology is about the connection in between planets, and could as a result be valid no matter which heavenly physique was at the center of the system.

To add to all of this, an expanding number of “quacks” appeared out to make swift cash, mingling with the genuine astrologers, which could not have helped matters-and while it is correct that there have constantly been consultant astrologers and their clientele-in Europe and in America, astrology for a extended period seemed to lie dormant, and was applied for tiny a lot more than the publication of Almanacs for predicting the weather.

The Twentieth Century

It was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that started the present revival of interest in Astrology. Significantly of this is owed to the good Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustave Jung, who created use of astrology in his investigation and wrote on the topic extensively, awakening at the precise similar 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 have been other persons, too, such as the American, Dane Rudhyar, who came to astrology through investigation in music and philosophy, and wrote a critical function named “The Planetarization of Consciousness” in 1970. In this way astrology was revived in America, in France, and in Holland. Associations and schools for skilled astrologers have been founded in America and in Britain, and nowadays astrology is after once more practiced in fairly significantly every country of the planet.

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