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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY
OF ASTRAL PREDICTION FOR ANTIQUITYOF NEWTON
1
Marriage and Divorce of Astronomy and
Astrology
History of Astral Prediction from
Antiquity to Newton
by
Gordon Fisher
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY
OF ASTRAL PREDICTION FOR ANTIQUITYOF NEWTON
Contents
Chapter 1. Some Sources of Astral Beliefs
Chapter 2. From Astral Beliefs to Kepler, Fludd and
Newton
Appendix: Newton’s Laws
Chapter 3. Some Astrological Techniques
Chapter 4. From Babylon to Copernicus
Chapter 5. Stoics, Kepler and Evaluations
Chapter 6. Earlier Christians and Astrology
Chapter 7. From Ptolemy to Newton
Chapter 8. Updates and Addenda
Chapter 9. Pierre d'Ailly and Newton again
Chapter 10. John Dee and Astrological Physics
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Chapter 1. Some Sources of Astral Beliefs
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"Even a god cannot change the past.”
--- Agathon, born c. 445 BC
"It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians
can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He
tolerates their existence.”
--- Samuel Butler, Erewhon Revisited, 1901
1. The heavens—the physical ones—were for a long time
regarded as the locus of divinity by many people, and a source of what
takes place on earth. In his On the Heavens, Aristotle says there is
something beyond the bodies which are on earth, different and separate
from them, and the glory of this something grows greater as its distance
from this world of ours increases. The primary body, at the greatest
distance from earth, is eternal and unchanging. For, Aristotle says, surely
there are gods, and they are immortal, and everyone agrees they are
located in the highest place in the universe. The evidence of our senses
tells us, at least with the certainty attainable by humans, that in the past, as
far as our records reach, no change has taken place in the outermost
heavens. So the primary body is something beyond earth, air, fire and
water. We call it the aether, Aristotle says, because it runs forever.
(Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), De caelo (On the Heavens), 269b12-16, 270b123, translated by J. L. Stocks.)
2. Aristotle based his theory on the evidence of our senses. He
says phenomena confirm his theory. He also says his theory confirms the
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phenomena. That is, predictions made with his theory were verified by
observation. He had an empirically based procedure, contrary to what
some have said. His failures are often due to lack of information, or
incorrect interpretation of it; to phenomena unnoticed, or not examined
closely enough; to new stars (if any were known to him) and comets
interpreted as being relatively near, perhaps because they showed change;
to insufficient knowledge of the chemical constitution of matter; and so
on. That celestial objects are alive wasn't a bad conjecture in the context
of what was known, since they appear to be self-moving. This seems
obviously to be a characteristic of living entities. That the celestial objects
are divine wasn't too bad a conjecture, either, given their overall regularity
and permanence, over periods of time which are very long relative to
human lives.
3. When Aristotle associates the divine with the outer heavens, he
doesn't actually say the outer heavens or the stars are gods. He says they
are like gods by virtue of their unchanging nature. On earth, change is
everywhere. The living are born or sprout, are transformed or transform
themselves, and die. Ores in the earth can be changed to metals, metals
rust. Mountains explode or wear down. Waters flood or dry up, spring
from the earth or fall from above; when boiled they shrink and turn into a
small residue of minerals; when frozen they turn to transparent "earth"
(that is, to one of the four basic elements in the theory of Empedocles and
Aristotle). And so on. Only the stars appear permanent and unchanging.
But are there any bodies which last forever in one form? Those who
believe there are immortal gods, says Aristotle, may be prepared to believe
this too, and that the planets and stars are such bodies.
4. The divinity and regularity of the movements of the sun, moon,
planets and stars were taken as evidence that these celestial objects
regulated or at least influenced various kinds of changes on earth. The
objects were considered by some to be quite tyrannical, and to dictate
events on earth. But this autocracy let one make predictions about events
on earth. If everything is dictated in advance, then it is reasonable to try to
find out in advance what will happen. Success of prediction depends on
events being completely or partly determined in advance of their
happening. There grew up an association of the divinity and the regularity
of celestial objects with astral determinism, the doctrine that some, at
least, of the myriad changes on earth are dictated by the stars and planets.
This, in turn, is associated with the problem of determinism in general.
Crudely, the problem is to decide whether or not everything that happens
is in some way determined in advance. This seems to be true of the
movements of the celestial objects themselves. The question is, how much
of the change on earth and in the heavens is determined in advance, and
what kind of changes are involved?
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5. Connections between religion, astronomy, astrology and
prediction are very ancient, probably prehistoric. In The Etruscans Begin
to Speak, Zaharie Mayani describes a relatively late ceremony which
unites the three. His description is based on a fresco on the wall of a
tomb, known as the Tomb of the Augurs, which dates from 530 B.C. Two
priests are seen marking out the bounds of a holy area consisting of a
square in which two medians were marked, one running from north to
south and the other from east to west. The quarters of the square are also
subdivided, and each resulting section is assigned to a particular deity.
The square is a kind of mirror of the heavens, since the divisions of the
square correspond to a conceptual division of the sky. A priest could
stand in the center of the square and with the help of a special staff
determine in which zone of the square the direction of a celestial omen
fell, hence which deity was sending the omen. Thus the holy area or
templum constituted an observatory for determining positions of omens
which could be used for predicting future events. The observations were a
means of learning the will of the gods. (Zaharie Mayani, The Etruscans
Begin to Speak, translation by Patrick Evans, 1962, of Les Étrusques
commençent parler, 1961, p. 222-224.)
6. Another example, from David Chandler, A History of
Cambodia, Westview Press (HarperCollins), 2nd edn updated, 1996, p. 5152: "In the mid-1970s …. Eleanor Moron began studying the dimensions
of the temple [at Angkor Wat] in detail, convinced that these might
contain the key to the way the temple had been encoded by the savants
who designed it. After determining that the Cambodian measurement
used at Angkor, the hat, was equivalent to approximately 0.4 meters (1.3
feet), Moron went on to ask how many hat were involved in significant
dimenstions of the temple, such as the distance between the western
entrance (the only one equipped with its own causeway) and the central
tower. The distance came to 1,728 hat, and three other components of this
axis measured, respectively, 1,296, 867, and 439 hat. oron then argued
that these figures correlated to the four “ages,” or yugaa, of Indian
thought. The first of these, the Krita Yuga, was a supposedly golden age,
lasting 1,728,000 years. The next three ages lasted for 1,296,000,
864,000, and 432,000 years, respectively. The earliest age, therefore, was
four times longer than the latest, the second earliest, twice as long. The
last age is the Kali Yuga, in which we are living today. At the end of this
era, it is believed, the universe will be destroyed, to be rebuilt by Brahman
along similar lines, beginning with another golden age. "The fact that the
length of these four eras correlates exactly with particular distances along
the east-west axis of Angkor Wat suggests that the “code” for the temple
is in fact a kind of pun that can be read in terms of time and space. The
distances that a person entering the temple will traverse coincide with the
eras that the visitor is metaphorically living through en route to the statue
of Vishnu in the central tower. Waling forward and away from the west,
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which is the direction of death, the visitor moves backward into time,
approaching the moment when the Indians proposed that time began. "In
her research, Moron also discovered astronomical correlations for ten of
the most frequently occurring distances at Angkor Wat. Astronomers
working with her found that the siting of the temple was related to the fact
that its western gate aligned at sunrise with aa small hill to the northeast,
Phnom Bok. Moreover, at the summer solstice “an observer …. standing
just in front of the western entrance can see the sunrise directly over the
central tower of Angkor Wat.” This day, June 21, marked the beginning
of the solar year for Indian astronomers and was sacred to a king whose
name, Suryavarman, means “protected by the sun” and who was a devotee
of Vishnu [this king, who was a devotee of Vishnu, commissioned the
building of Angkor Wat]. "The close fit of these spatial relationships to
notions of cosmic time, and the extraordinary accuracy and symmetry of
all the measurements at Angkor, combine to confirm the notion that the
temple was in fact a coded religious text that could be read by experts
moving along the walkways from one dimension to the next. The learned
pandits who determined the dimensions of Angkor Wat would have been
aware of and would have reveled in its multiplicity of meanings. To those
lower down in the society, perhaps, fewer and fewer meanings would be
clear. We can assume, however, that even the poorest slaves were
astonished to see this enormous temple, probably with gilded towers rising
60 meters (200 feet) above the ground and above the thatched huts of the
people who had built it.”<![endif]>
7. This lining up of temples could serve utilitarian purposes. Ernst
Zinner reports that temples were aligned by the ancient Egyptians so they
could be used as star clocks. Sun clocks were used for daytime
measurement, and the Egyptians had water clocks which could be used
day or night. However, they also determined the hours of the night by
noting when certain constellations reached their highest point in the sky.
In order to determine these zeniths, it was necessary to known where the
meridian was. "This presented no difficulty for the Egyptians," says
Zinner, "since the determination of the north-south and east-west
directions at the laying of the foundation-stone of a temple was among the
most important functions of the king. The process of determining these
directions was depicted in exactly the same way on reliefs from the 4 th
millenium up to the birth of Christ." (Ernst Zimmer, Die Geschichte der
Sternkunde, von den ersten Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 1931, p. 12.)
The measuring apparatus used by the king consisted of a straight edge (an
alignment stick) bent upward at one end and with a plumb line attached,
together with the split rib of a palm leaf. There are tables found in the
burial chambers of the pharaohs Ramses VI and IX dating from between
about 1160 and 1120 B.C. which list what constellations correspond to
what hour of the night, and show a picture of a sitting man. The process
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of observing the passage of the hours of the night required two such
observers, aligned along the meridian.
8. These examples show ways stars were connected to prediction
and time -keeping. People have tried to predict the future in many ways
besides observing stars. To take an exotic case, Seneca says of the
Etruscans that they were consummately skilled in foretelling future events
by interpreting lightning. We (the Romans), Seneca says, think that
because clouds collide, lightning is emitted; they (the Etruscans) think the
clouds collide so lightning will be emitted. Thus the gods can send
messages to humans about what is destined to happen. (Seneca,
Questiones naturales (about 62 A.D.), II.32, translated by Thomas
Corcoran, 1971, v. 1, p. 150-151.)
9. Sometimes visions of the future were read in bowls of water. E.
R. Dodds speaks of this use of scrying, as it is sometimes called, for
precognition. This is future-telling carried out by staring into a translucent
or shining object, called a speculum, until a moving vision or hallucination
is produced which seems to come from within the object. It is dsaid that
only a small proportion of people will be able to see such pictures. In
modern times, the process is best known as crystal-gazing, but it can be
carried out with other objects besides crystals. Crystals don't seem to have
been used as specula before Byzantine times, but the practice of scrying is
much older. In one ancient method, a mirror was used as a speculum;
catoptromancy is divination using a mirror or other reflecting object. (A.
Delatte, La catoptromancie grecque et ses derivés, 1932.)
10. In another ancient method, used more frequently as time went
on, the speculum was simply a bowl of water. Sometimes a film of oil
(occasionally, flour) was spread on the surface of the water. This method
was known as lecanomancy, literally "divination by bowl". The Greeks
and Romans got this method from the Middle East, where it had a long
history. It appears to have developed from a method in which events were
foretold by spreading oil on water, and interpreting the moving shapes
formed by the oil. Evidently prolonged staring at the shapes led to visions
in some seers, and eventually the visions in the seers became more
important than the shapes in the oil. It was realized that visions could be
induced just by staring into the water, without the oil. However, the oil
was sometimes still used, presumably because it was traditional or because
it increased luminosity. The Greeks and Romans took up the practice in
the 1st century B.C. or earlier, probably importing it from Egypt. By this
time, the use of oil seems to have been abandoned. (E. R. Dodds,
"Supernormal Phenomena in Classical Antiquity", in The Ancient Concept
of Progress, and other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief, 1973, p.
186-188).
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11. The most direct way to know the future is by means of
revelation. Among the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians (and others),
this was often taken to happen in dreams. A god appeared in a "night
vision" and clearly predicted the future or gave commands. Sometimes,
though, the dream was mysterious, and had to be interpreted. Besides the
interpretation of dreams, therewere methods of divination based on
observations of the births of humans, sheep and other animals, especially
abnormal and monstrous births. There were techniques based on
observations of involuntary facial movements of people, and on
physiognomy, the features of people's faces and skulls. In another popular
method, the diviner read the entrails of animals killed or sacrificed. With
entrails in general, the method was known as extispicy or haruspicy, and
with livers, hepatoscopy. (Édouard Dhorme, Les Religions de Babylonie et
d'Assyrie, 1949, p. 276-281.)
12. Divination no doubt has its sources in basic features of animal
behavior and learning. It is natural for animals to make projections.
Specific expectations are linked to specific observations. Signs are
recognized. Among humans, signs of future events or processes may be
described with language, and transmitted from person to person. The use
of such signs can be very helpful in making decisions, and for overcoming
indecisiveness. In favorable cases, such signs are always or very
frequently followed by the signified, and may indicate caused events.
Occasional failures may be attributed to faulty observation or
interpretation of the sign, to intervention of external powers, to chance,
etc. A preponderance of failures may, or may not, lead to alteration in
interpretation of the signs, or even abandonment of a project to use such
signs for projections and predictions.
13. Certain decisions based on chance are a kind of limiting case
of decisions based on signs. Gamblers, for example, read thrown dice,
flipped coins, dealt cards, etc., and make decisions based on their readings
about who gets to possess certain amounts of money. The signs in this
case—the numbers on the dice, etc.—cause the the money to be
distributed in this or that way in some sense of "cause", but not, it seems,
in the sense we use when we say the earth causes an eclipse of the moon
when it gets between the moon and the earth. A person who makes
investments on the stock market according to hunches (which, I'm taking
it, are kinds of signs) may be gambling in the same way as people who
play roulette, depending on the source of the hunches. If the hunches are
based in some way, perhaps unconsciously, on actual economic trends, the
investor's chances of profiting are better than if they are not. Inside
traders (those who use information about future financial trans actions
illegally) read signs of a kind which reduces their chances of loss
considerably—unless they're caught at it. We can only conjecture about
how many important political, military and business decisions have been
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made by flipping a coin, or—sometimes reducing the chances of failure to
some degree—on the basis of probabilities drawn up by statisticians,
engineers or managers.
14. One motive for wanting to predict the future is the removal of
anxiety, temporary though it may be. It can be very conso ling to decide
one knows in advance what an outcome will be. Even if the decision
proves to have been wrong, the previous peace of mind will not be taken
away. Nancy Reagan, wife of the former U.S. president Ronald Reagan,
says in her memoirs, regarding her use of astrology to make schedules for
the president: "Astrology was simply one of the ways I coped with the
fear I felt after my husband almost died" (referring to the assassination
attempt of March 30, 1981). Speaking of an astrologer she consulte d,
Joan Quigley, Nancy says: "Joan's recommendations had nothing to do
with policy or politics—ever. Her advice was confined to timing -- to
Ronnie's schedule, and to what days were good or bad, especially with
regard to his out-of-town trips." (Of course, timing is a part of politics.)
"While I was never certain," says Nancy, "that Joan's astrological advice
was helping to protect Ronnie, the fact is that nothing like March 30 ever
happened again. Was astrology one of the reasons? I don't really believe
it was, but I don't really believe it wasn't. But I do know this: it didn't
hurt, and I'm not sorry I did it." (Nancy Reagan, with William Novak, My
Turn, The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan, 1989, p. 44, 47, 49.)
15. One can, of course, have faith in signs of this sort without
attributing religious significance to them. But, as Walter Burkert tells us,
in ancient cultures signs about the future—omens—were often considered
to come from gods. The gods use signs, clear or cryptic, to give orders
and guidance to men. Among the classical Greeks and Romans, who had
no written scriptures, signs were a principal way for gods to communicate
with men. Thus among the Greeks, someone who doubted theefficacy of
divination was liable to be suspected of impiety or godlessness. All of the
Greek gods dispense signs, and especially the king of them all, Zeus. The
ability to interpret divine signs requires special inspiration, and this ability
is dispensed by Apollo, the son of Zeus.
16. Among the classical Greeks, a specialist in interpreting signs
was a seer, a mantis, someone who makes contact with the gods. The
word for god, theos, is closely related to the art of the seer. A seer is a
theopropos, one able to sense—see or hear—the gods. An uninterpreted
sign is a thesphaton, a saying or command of the gods. What a seer
performs is a theiazein or entheazein, an act inspired by the gods. In the
Iliad, the seer Kalchas is the son of Thestor. In the Odyssey, the seer with
second sight is Theoklymenos, and the tribe which guards the Oracle of
the Dead in Epirus is called the Thesprotoi, the see-ers of the gods. A seer
may speak in an abnormal state —the word mantis for seer is related to
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mania, madness—so an interpreter of the words of a seer, a prophetes,
may be required. Thus the art of interpretation becomes a more or less
rational technique, even when the words of the seer—hence of the gods—
are cryptic. (Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, translation of Griechische
Religion der archaischen und klasischen Epoche, 1977, by John Raffan,
1985, p. 111-114.)
17. Any abnormal occurrence which can't be manipulated could
become a sign for the ancient seers: a dream, a sudden sneeze, a stumble,
a twitch, a chance encounter, the sound of a name caught in passing,
celestial phenomena such as lightning, comets, shooting stars, eclipses of
sun or moon, even a drop of rain. We see here a kind of border zone
between divination, and scientific psychology, meteorology and
astronomy. The observation of the flight of birds played a special role in
Greek prediction, perhaps from a prehistoric Indo-European tradition. In
sacrifices, everything is a sign: whether the animal goes willingly to the
altar and bleeds to death quickly, whether or not the fire flares swiftly,
what happens when parts of the animal are burned in the fire, how the tail
curls and the bladder bursts. The inspection of the livers of the victims
developed into a special art: how the various lobes are formed and
colored was evaluated at every stage of slaughter. This technique appears
to have been transmitted from Mesopotamia, probably in the 8 th or 7th
century B.C. There is an allusion to the practice by Homer. The
Etruscans obtained their much more detailed haruspicina (as these gut
omens were called) from the same source, not via the Greeks. The
inspection of entrails was the prime task of the seers who accompanied
armies into battle. Herds of sacrificial victims were driven along with the
armies, although the animals were also used for food. Without favorable
signs no battle was joined. Before the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.), the
Greeks and Persians stayed encamped opposite each other for ten days
because the omens didn't advise either side to attack. (Burkert, ibid.)
18. The philosophical question as to how omens,
predetermination, and freedom of the will can be reconciled began to be
discussed extensively in Hellenistic times. The discover of natural laws in
the sphere of astronomy acted as a catalyst in this discussion, and at the
same time produced a new and enormously influential form of divination
in the shapes and forms of astrology. Earlier, one could always try to
avoid the outcomes predicted by unfavorable signs by waiting and hoping
the outcome would not occur after all, or by acting or not acting in ways
which lead to circumvention, or by performing purification, or by praying,
etc. But according to most astrological beliefs, outcomes necessarily
follow their astrological signs at least to some degree, or at least for events
of some kinds. In other methods of prediction, it was frequently important
that even favorable omens be accepted with an approving word or vow to
the gods in order for them to achieve their fullest efficacy, but it was often
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believed that in the case of astrological signs, whether or not they were of
divine origin, appeals were useless. (Burkert, ibid.)
19. In classical Greece, seers or priests or priestesses, called
oracles, were attached to particular localities where they could be asked to
consult with the gods. The localities were also known as oracles, and cults
were attached to them. The gods were especially disposed to give signs in
these places. Success in the interpretation of such signs led, from the 8 th
century B.C. onward, to the fame and importance of certain places which
extended beyond the region of the oracle, sometimes becoming
international. The Greeks called a place of this kind a chresterion (place
where chresmos is performed, i.e. where needed answers are provided) or
manteion (place of divination, of contact with gods). The Romans called
such a place an oraculum. It appears that preservation of oracular
utterances was one of the earliest applications of writing in Greece,
starting about 750 B.C. Thus the utterances were freed from the context
of question and answer sessions with the gods, and could become
important at other places at other times. Age inspires respect, sometimes,
so ancient sayings were collected in writing and thus became always at
hand. However, about the same time as actual ones began to be recorded,
forged sayings appeared. (Burkert, ibid., p. 114, 117.)
20. Revelation is the basis of Biblical prophecy, both in the sense
in which the prophets of the Bible predicted the future, and in the sense in
which people up to our own time have interpreted the Bible as providing
knowledge of their own futures. It is always arresting to remember that
the arch-scientist Sir Isaac Newton was a life-long student of Biblical
prophecy, and that his last work, published posthumously, was
Observations on theProphecies in Daniel and Revelation (1732). The
kind of revelation which is at the root of Biblical prophecy is often direct
communication from an omniscient deity. It is only occasionally
communicated in dreams. In general, no inspection and interpretation of
natural events and no inferential reasoning are required. The content,
nature and validity of Biblical prophecy is, of course, a vast subject which
we will not broach here.
21. For some, the age of Biblical prophecy did not end with the
prophets of the Old Testament and apostles of the New Testament. For
example, there was Nostradamus (1503-1566), who has played an
extraordinary role in people's attempts to know the future. Richard Popkin
reports that Nostradamus first asserted that he was a prophet in the
Biblical sense, and that God had revealed future events to him, despite the
fact that the prevailing view of the Church was that prophecy of this kind
terminated with the death of the apostles. Nostradamu s told King Henri II
of France that he was a member of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, the
Issachar, which had been given the gift of prophecy. (Richard Popkin,
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"Predicting, Prophecying, Divining and Foretelling from Nostradamus to
Hume", History of European Ideas, v. 5, 1984, p. 117-135.) Nostradamus
was the grandson of two prominent rabbis who converted to Christianity
shortly before his birth. He became a court physician, astrologer and
advisor. At some point, says Popkin, he abandoned his stance as a prophet
in the Biblical sense, and told his son that God had revealed future events
to him by means of astronomical cycles, i.e. astrology. However, it seems
that Nostradamus left no indication of the astrological techniques he used.
We have only his completed predictions, in verse form, in his Centuries
(1555).
22. Among all the techniques devised by people to predict the
future, we will concentrate mainly on ones based on observations of
celestial objects. This includes what we now call astronomy and
astrology. For many centuries the terms astronomy and astrology were
widely used as synonyms. It has been suggested that astronomy originally
referred merely to the connection of meteorological phenomena with the
risings and settings of certain stars and constellations. An astronomer, in
this sense, was someone who assigned individual stars or whole
constellations roles in prognosticating or even determining weather,
presumably on the basis of accumulated observations. By the 5 th century
B.C., however, a more extended meaning had been given to the term.
Socrates, according to Plato in his dialogue Theaetetus, defined astronomy
as the discipline devoted to investigating the movements of the stars,
including the sun and moon, and the relations of th eir speeds. This term
did not find favor with the next generation, and Aristotle customarily used
the term astrology (astrologia) where Plato and others had used astronomy
(astronomia). Aristotle's influence lent a long life span to this use of
astrology. The development of astrology as understood in most presentday senses of the word led to a separate term for astronomy in our sense of
the word: the term was mathematics (mathematike). This term in turn
was in time usurped to apply to mathematics in our sense of the word.
Near the end of antiquity, the circle closed. Once again astronomy
(astronomia) came to denote, as it still does, people's purely scientific
endeavors to find rational explanations for the nature and motions of the
stars. But not until the 17th century of our era did this readopted term
come to definitely exclude astrology. (Frederick Cramer, Astrology in
Roman Law and Politics, 1954, p.3.)
23. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) distinguished in his
Etymologiae between natural and superstitious astrology. The former, he
says, is just another name for astronomy, while the latter "is that science
which is practised by the mathematici, who read prophecies in the
heavens, and who place the twelve constellations as rulers over the
members of man's body and soul, and who predict the nativities and
dispositions of men by the courses of the stars." (Quoted by Theodore
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Otto Wedel in The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology, Particularly in
England, 1920, p. 27.) In the Etymologiae, the mathematici and
genethliaci (casters of natal horoscopes) appear in company with many
other representatives of magic. However, Laura Smoller reports in her
History, Prophecy, and the Stars (1995) that Isidore in his Etymologiae
distinguishes between astronomia which deals with the motions of the
heavens and astrologia which deals with their effects. But she goes on to
say: "The neat distinction between the two words did not persist, hoever,
and the terms were blurred, jumbled, and sometimes reversed throughout
the Middle Ages. Pierre d'Ailly, for example, fairly consistently used
astronomia for "astrology" and astrologia for "astronomy." (p. 27).
Presumably the reason she uses the quotation marks in to indicate that
"astrology" and "astronomy" are here used in some present-day senses.
24. Lynn Thorndike reports that John of Salisbury (1120(?)1180)uses magica, mathematica and maleficium almost synonymously.
Thorndike doesn't translate, but I suppose these to mean magical art,
mathematical art and sorcery. Furthermore, John explains that the word
mathesis, when it has a short "e", denotes learning in general, but when it
has a long "e", it signifies the "figmentsof divination, whose varieties are
many and diverse". (Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and
Experimental Science, 1923-1958, v. 2, 1923, p. 158.) Wedel remarks:
"Although John of Salisbury was unusually sane and enlightened in the
matter of medieval superstitions, he subscribed fully to the patristic
doctrine of demonology. The Church Fathers, he says, rightly denounced
all forms of magic—species mathematicae—inasmuch as all of these
pestiferous arts spring from an illicit pact with the devil." (Wedel, ibid., p.
37). Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great; 1193-1280) distinguishes two
kinds of mathematics. One is the abstract science in our sense of the
word. The other, more probably called mathesis (with a long "e”, this
time) is divination by the stars, which may be either good or bad,
superstitious or scientific. (Thorndike, ibid., p. 580.)
25. Richard Lemay tells us that John of Salisbury also
distinguished between the mathematicus, concerned with mathesis, and the
physicus, concerned with the philosophy of nature. The former, according
to John, studies abstract figures extracted from nature, while the latter
studies processes concretely embedded in nature. The mathematici are
therefore concerned with stable, unchanging objects, while the physici
depend on evidence of the senses. Both, however, try to discover the
courses of nature, and the extent of their regularity or irregularity. In
John's view, physica had absorbed much of what had long been considered
as the proper object of mathematica. In particular, foreknowledge of the
future, formerly the concern of the mathematicus, he considered to have
become a domain of the physicus. However, in making his distinction
between mathematics and physics, John was embarassed by the ancient
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strictures placed on mathesis by the Church Fathers, because much that
had been linked with mathesis had become the proper concern of a
physicus. (Richard Lemay, Abu Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the
Twelfth Century, The Recovery of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy through
Arabic Astrology 1962, p. 300-307.) Thus John indicates not a union of
mathematica and physica, not a mathematical physics, but a movement
from investigations based on mathematical abstractions to investigations
based on the human senses.
26. Michael Scot (early 13th century) often used astronomia to
denote what today would usually be called astrology and "distinguishes
between mathesis, or knowledge, and matesis, or divination, and between
mathematica (with an "h"), which may be taught freely and publicly, and
matematica (without an "h", which is forbidden to Christians". (ibid., p.
319.) Thorndike states that by the time of Peter of Abano (1250 -1318(?)),
the words "astronomy" and "astrology" were beginning to be used in
about their present meaning. (ibid., p. 890.) This may be compared with
the claim of Frederick Cramer, referred to above, that it was not until the
17th century that this occurred—more precisely, Cramer places the
distinction in the "Age of Newton". Perhaps it is a matter of who was
using the terms —philosophers (natural or otherwise), poets, educated or
uneducated people, etc. In any case, Peter himself sought to establish,
against various theologians and scholastics who had distinguished between
the two, that they were actually the same. (Graziella Vescovini, "Peter of
Abano and Astrology", in Astrology, Science and Astrology, Historical
Essays, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 23-24.)
27. Astrology, as formerly practiced, was intertwined with other
methods of prediction, with various kinds of magic, and with alchemy.
There were many links between astrology, magic, sorcery and witchcraft.
Astrology sometimes provided a coherent justification for such methods of
prediction as geomancy, palmistry, physiognomy and similar activities.
Cornelius Agrippa, author of a famous work on magic in the early 16 th
century, declared that all these skills of divination are rooted and grounded
upon astrology. Palmists and physiognomists, for example, assigned
different parts of the hand or head to different signs of the zodiac
according to correspondences postulated between heavenly bodies and
earthly substances.
28. Geomancy was especially linked to astrology. The word
geomancy is somewhat elastic in meaning, but in a narrow sense it is a
method of divination in which a set of 16 patterns is obtained by getting
someone (a child, perhaps) to draw lines in sand or on a slate or paper, or
obtaining other presumably random outcomes, such as by spinning wheels
in such a way that exactly two outcomes are possible, or flipping a coin, or
grasping a number of beans and seeing whether there are an odd or even
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number, etc. Each of the sixteen patterns consists of 4 choices of "even"
and "odd" depending on whether the number of lines or beans drawn is
even or odd, or whether the coin comes up head or tails, etc. Each of the
16 patterns is a house, and the set of patterns are interpreted according to
various rules. Geomancy, as customarily practiced, also employed the
astrological houses, often taken to be 12 in number. Analogies were
drawn between the astrological houses and the geomantic houses.
According to a leading textbook of the time on the subject (1591),
geomancy was "none other than astrology". (See J. D. North, Chaucer's
Universe, 1988, p. 234-243.)
29. Until relatively recently, astronomy/astrology was commonly
compounded with alchemy, magic, medicine, divination and weather
prediction by many people. Some people still do associate some or all of
these.
30. It has often been conjectured that astrology/astronomy
originated in a marriage of religion and science. Apparently it was born
in Babylonia and reached an apex in the Hellenistic era. Here Babylonia
is taken to be synonymous with Chaldea and Mesopotamia, and to include
the lands occupied at various times by Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians
and Iraqis. In Hellenistic times, Egypt, and especially Alexandria, was a
renowned center for astrological and astronomical studies. In a narrow
sense, the Hellenistic period ran roughly from the time of Alexander the
Great (356-323 B.C.) to the 1st century B.C., to the conquest of Egypt by
the Romans under Augustus in 30 B.C. This conquest culminated in the
battle of Actium at which the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra were
defeated by the forces of Octavian. Others make the Hellenistic era run
from the time of Alexander the Great to the end of the ancient world, often
taken to be marked by the victory of Christianity in the 4 th century A.D.,
the age of Constantine the Great.
31. The first extant horoscope is said to date from 410 B.C.
However personal and judicial astrology, requiring the casting of
individual horoscopes, developed later than omen astrology, the prediction
of events involving kings and kingdoms on the basis of planetary positions
and appearances, and on various meteorlogical phencomena. Personal
astrology was based on investigation of planetary positions (including the
sun and moon) at the time of birth or conception, and seems to have been
founded on a thoroughly deterministic conception of the cosmos. Side by
side with it flourished catarchic astrology, which only assumed nonfatalistic influences on mundane enterprises like travel, marriage and
business. Some have suggested that the two kinds of astrology, fatalistic
and non-fatalistic, have conflicting bases. Either stars exert an immutable
or merely an avoidable influence on affairs, although this distinction might
not have been clearly made by individual users of astrology. However, it
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is not inconsistent to believe that stars exert an immutable influence on
some affairs and not on othe rs.
32. Although the origin of omen astrology is usually attributed to
the ancient Babylonians, judicial (personal, horoscopic) astrology appears
to have arisen in Egypt, during the Hellenistic era. This is what most
people understand by the unmodified word "astrology" today. The
originators of judicial astrology may actually have been Greeks living in
Egypt, rather than native Egyptians (whoever they might have been). W.
and H. G. Gundel have recorded numerous indications of the Egyptian
origin of judicial astrology in Hellenistic texts: numerous writings in the
collection called the Hermetica; other writings in a handbook attributed to
King Nechepso (reigned 677-672 B.C.) and his high priest Petosiris; and
other sources. (W. and H. G. Gundel, Astrologumena, Die astrologische
Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte, 1966, p. 40.)
33. As to the Mesopotamians, the Gundel's say: "The
investigation of the sources leads to the result that for the Seleucid era in
Mesopotamia [312-65 B.C.] the later much-praised ideologicalphilosophical foundations of a 'Babylonian' system cannot be established.
The assertion that the 'Babylonians' had considered the grandiose idea of
cosmic sympathies as the essence of astrology, and expressed this
conception in systematic and technical works and books of oracles, must
be regarded as a fantasy of later authors who do not attain real value as
sources." (Gundel and Gundel, ibid., p. 51.) For example, in their omen
astrology, the Babylonians might base a prediction on whether or not such
and such a planet was visible at some position in the sky, located by
means of a nearby constellation, but there appears to have been nothing
corresponding to a systematic interpretation of the positions of the planets
(including the sun and moon) in a zodiac or system of decans. ( Decans
are, roughly speaking, subdivisions of the zodiac, with 3 decans to a
zodiac sign).
34. According to Otto Neugebauer: "Before the fifth century B.C.
celestial omina probably did not include predictions for individuals, based
on planetary positions in the signs of the zodiac and on their mutual
configurations. In this latest and most significant modification astrology
became known to the Greeks in the hellenistic period. But with the
exception of some typical Mesopotamian relics the doctrine was changed
in Greek hands to a universal system in which form alone it could spread
all over the world. Hence astrology in the modern sense of the term, with
its vastly expanded set of "methods" is a truly Greek creation, in many
respects parallel to the development of Christian theology a few centuries
later." (Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy,
1975, Part Two, p. 613.)
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35. What was it that made fatalistic astrology/astronomy survive
in the face of persistent onslaughts from the best minds of the Greek
world? One answer, by Frederick Cramer: a faith which was as deep as
the scepticism of their enemies—a faith in reason. Astrologer /
astronomers and their followers believed that descending through the ages
since the creation of the world, there have been unending chains of cause
and effect relations which have obeyed immutable laws of nature which
not even a deity can contravene. They believed, like later scientists have,
that the cosmos functions like a supremely well-designed machine
constructed on rational principles and governed entirely by rational nature
laws.
36. Certain philosophers of the Hellenistic era found in rational
fatalism the faith in reason which scientists of all ages have hoped for:
assurance that their concepts of the nature of things possess cosmic
validity in space and time. Ancient scientists became supporters of
fatalism, and many of them championed fatalistic astrology/astronomy.
Their logic seemed sound. That stars—for instance, the sun—have some
powerful influence on people is unquestionable. Five other "stars" besides
the sun and moon were known whose orbits wandered among the fixed
stars—the five then-known planets of our solar system. Weren't the se also
likely to influence mundane affairs? The zodiac can be used to trace the
wandering of the sun among the other stars. Wasn't the zodiac therefore to
be reckoned with? (Cramer, ibid.)
37. The fallibility of astrologers was in many cases obvious but
instead of probing to see if the axiomatic foundations of astrology were at
fault, many people were inclined to blame failures on human fallibility.
Astrologers were compared to physicians. Who condemns medical
science as a whole because a physician occasionally makes a wrong
diagnosis, and fails to be able to cure all diseases? It may seem
inconceivable to modern minds that highly cultured Greeks and Romans
succumbed to the spell of what to some of us seems a monstrous web of
truth and fiction. Ye t unless we try to place ourselves as best we can into
the spirit of a given historical period, we cannot hope to understand it from
a point of view which resembles to some extent how a person who lived
during that period might have understood it. The two premises on which
the fascination of astrology for many of the best minds of the time was
based, according to Cramer, were these: (1) by the use of the proper
techniques the future can be ascertained; (2) astrology alone is a truly
scientific method for doing this. Today many no longer subscribe to these
tenets, but many still believe that anything rationally possible is at least
theoretically attainable by scientific means. When condemning beliefs
and actions of the ancient astrologers, one should in fairness remember
their glowing faith in reason. (Cramer, ibid., p. 281-283.) It can be
sobering to realize that people who lived in past times had as many
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varieties and degrees of certainty and uncertainty about their knowledge of
the world as we do today. Furthermore, today we can only work with
what fragments of their writings or other material traces have survived up
to our present times, and each of us must interpret such traces as we come
in contact with according to our own lights, and must like wise interpret
reports and interpretations of others more recent than the people of the
historical period under consideration.
38. The stars move according to patterns, accessible to reason. Do
our lives move according to patterns accessible to reason? Astrologers of
all epochs have believed they do, and that the patterns of our lives and the
patterns of the stars are related in some way. The underlying argument
may be based on analogy. The gods, or God, rules the stars
systematically, likewise he rules us. And—a crucial assumption for
astrologers—our movements and the movements of the stars —by which
astrologers customarily meant the planets, taken to include the sun and
moon—are somehow correlated, since they must obey the same
commands or laws. From this point of view, astrologers may fail because
they postulate over-simple relationships. As Einstein is re[uted to have
once said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no
simpler."
39. The Stoics were prime supporters of astrology. Stoicism was
one of the foremost philosophical doctrines of the Hellenistic era. The
Stoics as a whole tried to base their views on what they took to be the best
physical science of their time, and they did a fair bit of theorizing about
the nature of things. The physics of the Stoics has been viewed as a kind
of deterministic thermodynamics. According to S. Sambursky, the
cornerstone of Stoic physics is the concept of a continuum in all of its
aspects. Among the later Stoics, a revolutionary advance was made when
the dynamic functions of fire and air were extended to cover all natural
phenomena. "From a certain standpoint," he says, "this may be called a
first tentative approach to the conception of thermodynamic processes in
the inorganic world, a conception which began to percolate through into
the scientific view of later generations." In addition to the continuum
itself, the Stoics had the concept of pneuma, that which binds matter
together. The most significant quality of the pneuma is a kind o f tension
"by the force of which," Sambursky says, "it becomes an entity not
altogether unlike the concept of a physical field in contemporary science."
(S. Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, translated from the
Hebrew by Merton Dagut, 1960, p. 132-133, 135).
40. It appears, however, that the Stoics differed among themselves
as to the constitution of nature. According to David Hahm, Zeno, one of
the three heads of the heads of the Stoa in the 3 rd century B.C., defined
nature as "a craftsma nlike fire, proceeding methodically [literally, by a
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path] to genesis." Hahm emphasizes that Zeno means that nature is fire,
one of the four basic elements in the Aristotelian theory of the constitution
of nature. (David Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology, 1977, p. 200.)
Zeno's dynamic "fire" suggests the concept of energy as used in present day science. Here Zeno differs sharply from Aristotle, for whom fire or
heat was the most active and important element in nature, but still only a
tool that nature uses to accomplish its ends, and not nature itself. (Hahm,
l.c., p. 207.)
41. One of the other heads of the Stoa, Cleanthes, held a similar
view, although he seems to have spoken of "vital heat" rather than fire as
the substance that holds together the cosmos. (Hahm, l.c., p. 142). Hahm
comments that "the most striking thing about the three functions of heat in
Cleanthes is that they correspond exactly to the three functions of soul in
Aristotle"—the nutritive, perceptive and rational faculties of the soul.
(Hahm, l.c., p. 146-7.) What for Aristotle is caused by soul, for Cleanthes
is caused by the vital heat. Finally, Chrysippus, the third of the heads of
the Stoa, held the theory of pneuma which Sambursky refers to. The
pneuma according to Chrysippus is a kind of mixture of fire and air, and it
is what the "world-soul" is made out of—for the Stoics believed that the
universe has a soul, albeit a material one. In Chrysippus' view, it is this
pneuma which holds everything together. (Hahm, ibid., p. 158, 165.)
42. Some of the Stoics were as strict, or stricter, determinists than
Laplace. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) is a symbol of belief in the
usefulness of Newton's laws of classical mechanics for predicting the
future and retrodicting the past, on the basis that the future and past are
completely determined, and completely describable by means of these
laws. According to Newton's prescription, this is to be done by setting up
differential equations using his laws of motion, and solving them to find
expressions from which quantitative predictions and retrodictions can be
derived. In his works on celestial mechanics and theory of probabilities,
Laplace asserts that all events, no matter how momentous or insignificant,
follow certain mathematically formulable laws of nature just as surely, he
says, as the revolutions of the planets follow from Newton's laws of
motion and gravitation. When people don't know what links events to the
rest of the universe, he says, they may attribute them to final causes, goals
to which they tend, or to divine purpose, or to sheer chance. But, says
Laplace, these are only expressions of our ignorance of true causes. An
event can't occur without a cause. We make choices only when we are
caused to. Otherwise, according to Laplace, our choices would be the
result of blind chance, which Laplace rejects. Laplace says we should
regard the present state of the world as the effect of its previous states, and
the cause of its subsequent states. An intelligence who could kn ow at a
given instant values for all the forces or momenta which propel nature,
and values for the positions of all the bodies in it, could enter these values
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into statements of the laws of mechanics and calculate future or past
momenta and positions. However much of nature is determined by forces
and positions—Laplace evidently believed this to be all of nature—could
be predicted or retrodicted in this way. However, Laplace says, the human
mind offers only a weak idea of such an intelligence, as seen in the
perfection which it has been able to bring to astronomy and mechanics.
By way of comparison, for the Stoics everything comes to pass in the
world according to an unbroken causal connection, according to a law of
fate, in which not even a god can chang e something. (cf. Max Pohlenz,
Die Stoa, Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, 1948, v. 1, p. 102.)
Manilius' line, fata regunt orbem, certa stant omnia lege (the fates rule the
world, all things exist by law), may be regarded as pure Stoicism.
(Manilius, Astronomica, between 9 and 15 A.D.)
43. Aristotle thought there were two kinds of physics, one for the
sublunary world, and one for the heavens. Some hold that the Stoics, in a
manner of speaking, invented astrophysics, because they believed that the
same physical laws apply throughout the universe. They believed that
such laws determine everything that happens. Nevertheless, they
maintained we are still free in the sense that we can always choose to
accept what is going to happen as Fate and Nature decree, or not. This
consitutes living according to nature. Whether or not we do live according
to Nature makes no difference to what happens. What is bound to happen
will happen anyway. But how we choose makes a great difference to the
quality of our lives. We can act in conflict with Nature, and suffer
disappointment and pain and grief. Or we can walk with Fate, and achieve
peace. Furthermore, according to the Stoics, since all things are
constituted of one and the same stuff, and subject in every respect to the
same laws, there is a kind of universal "cosmic sympathy" among things,
which is what makes divination and astrology work. (cf. Jim Tester, A
History of Western Astrology, 1987, p. 30, 32, 68-69).
44. H. Rackham says: "The Stoics ... held that the universe is
controlled by God, and in the last resort is God. The sole ultimate reality
is the divine Mind, which expresses itself in the world-process. But only
matter exists, for only matter can act and be acted upon; mind therefore is
matter in its subtlest form, Fire or Breath or Aether. The primal fiery
Spirit creates out of itself the world that we know, persists in it as its heat
or soul or 'tension,' is the cause of all movement and all life, and
ultimately by a universal conflagration will reabsorb the world into itself.
But there will be no pause: at once the process will begin again, unity will
again pluralize itself, and all will repeat the same course as before.
Existence goes on for ever in endlessly recurring cycles, following a fixed
law or formula (logos); this law is Fate or Providence, ordained by God:
the Stoics even said that the 'Logos' is God. And the universe is perfectly
good: badness is only apparent, evil only means the necessary
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imperfection of the parts viewed separately from the whole. The Stoic
system then was determinist: but in it nevertheless they found room for
freedom of the will. Man's acts like all other occurrences are the
necessary effects of causes; yet man's will is free, for it rests with him
either willingly to obey necessity, the divine ordinance, or to submit to it
with reluctance. His happiness lies in using his divine intellect to
understand the laws of the world, and in submitting his will thereto." (H.
Rackham, Introduction to edition and translation (1933, 1951) of De
natura deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) by Cicero (106-43 B.C.), p.
viii-ix.)
45. Auguste Bouché-Leclercq says of Stoic attitudes toward
astrology: "That which especially predisposed the Stoics to declare
themselves guarantors of astrological speculations, and to look for
demonstrable reasons for them, was their unshakable faith in the
legitimacy of divination, of which astrology is only one particular form.
They never wanted to depart from a kind of reasoning that their
adversaries considered a vicious circle and which can be summarized like
this: "If the gods exist, they speak; in fact they speak, therefore they exist
[this employs the fallacy of affirming the consequent, or assuming the
converse, but Bouché-Leclercq says in a note that it is "the citadel" of the
Stoics—this is hard to believe, given the acuteness of some Stoics]. The
conception of beings of superior intelligence that would be forbidden to
communicate with man appeared to them to be no nsense." However,
Bouché-Leclercq says, an ordinary person wants to know the future in
order to avoid predicted dangers. On the face of it, this involves the
person in a contradiction. For he or she wants to be able to modify what
has been predicted to be certain to happen. Some of the Stoics "exhaust
themselves in vain efforts to reconcile logic, which leads straight to
fatalism, with practical common sense, which demands of divination some
usable warnings."
46. It appears, though, that we can escape from this contradiction
by holding that when we divine the will of the gods, we find what will
happen if such and such conditions aren't met—a sacrifice or other
offering is not made, or the like. Bouché-Leclercq argues against this. He
says: "If the future is conditional, it cannot be foreseen, since the
conditions could be too, in which case there would be no more place
among them for free acts, with freedom escaping by definition because of
the necessity of arriving at a decision set down in advance." That is, if
some future outcomes depend on and can be influenced by actions
previous to the outcomes, then the outcomes cannot be predicted. For if
they could be predicted, then what previous actions will be taken could
also be predicted, since the previous actions are themselves future
outcomes. Thus there is no real choice possible among previous actions to
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be taken. (Auguste Bouché-Leclerq, L'Astrologie grecque, 1899, reprinted
1963, p. 31-32.)
47. However, Bouché-Leclercq assumes here unrestricted
divination. The Stoic Epictetus (1st century A.D.) says: "What can the
diviner see more than death or danger or disease or generally things of that
sort?..... Does he know what is expedient, does he know what is good, has
he learnt signs to distinguish between good things and bad, like the signs
in the flesh of victims [animals sacrificed]?..... Therefore that is a good
answer that the lady made who wished to send the shipload of supplies to
Gratilla in exile, when one said, 'Domitian will take them away': 'I would
rather', she said, 'that Domitian should take them away than that I should
not send them.' What then leads us to consult diviners so constantly?
Cowardice, fear of events. That is why we flatter the diviners. 'Master,
shall I inherit from my father?' "Let us see; let us offer sacrifice.' 'Yes,
master, as fortune wills.' When he says, 'You shall inherit', we give thanks
to him as though we had received the inheritance from him. That is why
they go on deluding us." (Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus, II.47;
translated by P. E. Matheson, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers,
1940, edited by Whitney Oates, p. 293.) The passage isn't entirely clear,
but Epictetus seems to suggest that a diviner can see some things which
will happen in the future (death, danger, disease), but not others (what is
good or bad). To this extent, he doesn't admit unrestricted divination.No
matter what diviners say is portended, Epictetus says, wewe should do
what is good, not what is bad. Presumably, then, w e are free to choose our
moral attitudes to what is inevitable.
48. Bouché-Leclercq continues: "The Stoics valiantly accepted
the consequences of their own principles. They used them to demonstrate
the reality of Providence, the certainty of divination,and they went into
ecstasies at every turn about the beautiful order of the world, due to the
punctual carrying out of a divine plan, as immutable as it is wise. But they
were no less decisive in rejecting the moral consequences of fatalism,
above all the 'lazy reasoning', which always ends by letting inevitable
destiny alone. Chrysippus turned out prodigies of ingenuity to loosen,
without breaking, the links with Necessity, distinguishing between
necessity properly so-called, and predestination, between 'perfect and
principal' causes and 'adjuvant' [auxiliary, catalytic] causes, between
things fated in themselves and things "cofated" or fated by association;
trying to distinguish, from the point of view of fatality, between the past,
of which the contrary is in reality impossible, and the future, of which the
contrary is also impossible, but which can be conceived as possible. All
things considered, the Stoic school succeeded in saving only the freedom
of the Sage, which consists in freely wanting wha t the universal
Intelligence wants. The Sage exercises this freedom better, the better and
longer in advance he knows the divine plan." (Bouché-Leclercq, ibid.)
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY
OF ASTRAL PREDICTION FOR ANTIQUITYOF NEWTON
23
49. Here is how it appeared in the 2nd century A.D. to a Stoic
astrologer, Vettius Valens: "Fate has decreed for every human being the
unalterable realization of his horoscope, fortifying it with many causes of
good and bad things to come. Because of them, two self-begotten
goddesses, Hope and Chance, act as the servants of Destiny. They rule
our lives. By compulsion and deception they make us accept what has
been decreed. One of them [Chance] manifests herself to all through the
outcome of the horoscope, showing herself sometimes as good and kind,
sometimes as dark and cruel..... The other [Hope] is neither dark nor
serene; she hides herself and goes around in disguise and smiles at
everyone like a flatterer and points out to them many attractive prospects
that are impossible to attain. By such deceit she rules most people, and
they, though tricked by her and dependent on pleasure, let themselves be
pulled back to her, and full of hope they believe that their wishes will be
fulfilled; and then they experience what they do not expect..... Those who
are not familiar with astrological forecasts and have no wish to study them
are driven away and enslaved by the goddesses mentioned above; they
undergo every kind of punishment and suffer gladly..... But those who
make truth and the forecasting of the future their profession acquire a soul
that is free and not subject to slavery. They despise Chance, do not persist
in hoping, are not afraid of death, and live unperturbed. They have trained
their souls to be brave and are not puffed up by prosperity nor depressed
by adversity but accept contentedly what comes their way. Since they
have renounced all kinds of pleasure and flattery, they have become good
soldiers of Fate. For it is impossible by prayers or sacrifice to overcome
the foundation that was laid in the beginning and substitute another more
to one's liking. Whatever is in store for us will happen even if we do not
pray for it; what is not fated will not happen, despite our prayers. Like
actors on the stage who change their masks according to the poet's text and
calmly play kings or robbers or farmers or common folk or gods, so, too,
we must act the characters that Fate has assigned to us and adapt ourselves
to what happens in any given situation, even if we do not agree. For if one
refuses, "he will suffer anyway and get no credit" [Cleanthes]." (Vettius
Valens, Anthologiae, quoted and translated by Georg Luck in Arcana
Mundi, Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, 1985, p.
349-350.)
50. Tamsyn Barton is somewhat skeptical about considering
Stoics to have been as much devoted to astrology as has been claimed by
some. She says, in connection with the flourishing of astrology in Late
Republican Rome: "Much has been attributed to the influence of the Stoic
Posidonius on Rome on elite Romans in the generation before Cicero and
Caesar in making astrology intellectually respectable. But, as A. A. Long
(1982) observes, the older authorities who formed this consensus, such as
Cumont, were writing at a time when it was fashionable to see Posidonius ’
tademark everywhere. Long rightly casts a skeptical eye over the
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY
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24
evidence for Stoic enthusiasn for astrology in the earlu period. It is true
that in Stoicism the existence of the gods required divination and that
astrology would suit the Stoic search for natural signs revealing the order
of the universe, but the evidence is scanty. … This is the period in which
horoscopic astrology takes off in the Hellenistic world, and it could be
seen as a natural move from other sorts of divination. He concludes,
however, that astrology was at most a subordinate feature of Stoic interest
in divination." On the other hand, Barton says "Long is surely right to
recognize that the Stoics cannot be convincingly isolated as the
determining factor in the rise to prominence of astrology in Rome, though
he overstates the case against their interest, in this period. It seems clear
that Stoic ideas, as generally diffused among the ruling elite, did lend
themselves to the support of astrology, and that their concept of cosmic
sympatheia (harmony) binding together the heavens and the earth became
the first axiom of philosophical astrology. " (Tamsyn Barton, Power and
knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman
Empire, 1994, p. 37-38. The reference to Long is A. A. Long, "Astrology:
arguments pro and contra" in Science and Speculation: Studies in
Hellenistic Theory and Practice, ed. J. Barnes et al., 165-92, 1982.)
51. Laplace's deterministic methods of prediction might well have
been welcomed by Hellenistic astrologers, since his methods, derived
from those of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Euler and other scientists of their
time, would have enabled them to calculate the past and future positions of
the stars with techniques in some ways superior to those of Ptolemy. Such
calculations are the basis of astrology, in most any way the term is
properly defined. Frederick Cramer says that in republican Rome from
140 B.C. to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., the more a person
adhered to Stoicism, the more liable he or she would be to accept fatalistic
astrology. The 96 years from the consulate of Laelius (140 B.C.) to the
death of Julius Caesar encompassed a crucial period in the history of
astrology in the Roman republic. In 139 B.C. astrologers had been
summarily expelled as undesirable foreigners. By the time of Julius
Caesar's death, the majority of Rome's upper class had been converted to a
belief in it. To a humanist who believed in rationalism and the governance
of nature by immutable laws linking cause and effect, astrology was
scientific, and it linked mundane causality with the cosmic laws which
regulated the movements of the stars and ruled the universe. (Cramer,
ibid., p. 58, 80.)
52. Tamsyn Barton says that "It is striking that astrology in any
form was marginal to Roma n elite politics until the late Republic." (ibid.,
p. 33) . Barton is especially concerned with relations of astrologers and
astrological practices (as well as physiognomy and medicine) to political
power. It seems incontestable that knowledge of the future is often related
to desire for or use of power, from, in some instances, political power on a
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