Astrology: a Critical, Historical and Philosophical Review

1. Astrology: a Critical, Historical and Philosophical Review Nicholas Campion School of Archaeology History and Anthropology University of Wales Trinity Saint David

2. Modern Astrology: The Problem • Astrology is a part of modern popular culture. • Depending on how the question is asked, toughly between about 25% and 75% of the adult population ‘believe’ in it • It is widely regarded as being an anachronistic survival of a superstitious past, whose existence in the modern world is deeply problematic • Astronomers especially see it as a challenge

3. The Problem • Theodor Adorno: • ASTROLOGY is • ‘basically discordant with today’s universal state of enlightenment’. • The question: Is he correct? • Adorno, Theodor, The Stars Down to Earth (London: Routledge, 1994[1953]), p. 36.

4. Alan Smithers, Sydney Jones Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Liverpool, in 2001: • ‘The continuing hold of astrology on the human psyche is curious’ • Alan Smithers, ‘Astrology, like literature and music, can invest life with meaning’, The Independent Wednesday 4 April 2001, http://www.rudolfhsmit.nl/h-chai2.htm, accessed 4 March 2003.

5. So.... • What is this thing that has a curious hold on the human psyche and has a discordant relationship with the Enlightenment?

6. Religion or Science? • Perhaps – both some critics and sympathisers support this view, or sub-define it as a substitute religion or pseudo-science • BUT: such typologies depend on competing definitions of science and religion.

7. A matter of definition: exclusive(David Pingree) • ‘the study of the impact of the celestial bodies - Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars and sometimes the lunar nodes - upon the sublunar world’. • David Pingree, ‘Astrology’ in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (place, publisher), Vol. 1, p 118.

8. Definitional Problems • David Pingree’s definition is influential • BUT......... • It defines astrology strictly within an Aristotelian context. • It can therefore not exist in any other culture in a non-Aristotelian framework.

9. For example • Stephen McCluskey: • the content of the Maya astronomical texts was ‘purely astrological’ • Stephen McCluskey, ‘Native American Cosmologies’ in Norris Hetherington (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Cosmology, (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1993), p. 427. • Anthony Aveni: • the Mayan astronomical texts were ‘purely astrological’ in their function and intent. • Anthony Aveni, 'Introduction: Making Time', in The Sky in Mayan Literature, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4.

10. A matter of definition: or inclusive? • ‘Astrology is the practice of relating the heavenly bodies to lives and events on earth, and the tradition that has thus been generated’. • Patrick Curry, Patrick, ‘Astrology’, in Boyd, Kelly (ed.) The Encyclopaedia of Historians and Historical Writing, 2 Vols. London: Fitzroy Dearborn 1999, Vol. 1, pp 55-7 (p. 55)

11. My definition • ‘Astrology is the search for significance or meaning in the stars, and any consequent action’ • (As long as we can avoid the discussion of what ‘meaning’ means.)

12. Fundamental Premise: 1. The Reflective Cosmos • The fundamental premise of astrology is reflective: that the earth is a mirror of heaven, in the sense of the celestial realms, and vice versa. • Nicholas Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in th World’s Religions, New York : New York University Press, 2011

13. Fundamental Premise: 1. The Reflective Cosmos • ‘The universe was conceived not as an object independent of man, but as a counterpart of and mirror of human society’ • XiaochunSun, ‘Crossing the Boundaries between Heaven and Man: Astronomy in Ancient China’, in HelaineSelin (ed.), Astronomy Across Cultures: the History of Non-Western Astronomy, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 425. • native North American cosmology, talked of a ‘patterned mirroring’ between sky and earth’. • Trudy Griffin-Pierce, Earth Is My Mother, Sky Is My Father: Space, Time and Astronomy in Navajo Sandpainting, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), p. 63.

14. Fundamental Premise 3The cosmos is an interdependent whole • The Stoic philosophers Chrysippus, On Providence, and Posidonius: • The cosmos ‘is a living being, rational, animate and intelligent • It is alive in the sense of an animate substance endowed with sensation. • DL VII.142 • DL VII.142

15. Fundamental Premise 3Divinity speaks through the stars • Celestial patterns were the ‘writing’ of the gods and goddesses (šitiršamê = the 'writing of heaven‘). • The sky is a ‘text’ • Right: enumaanuenlil, 8th c BCE

16. Explanatory Models 1: The sky can be read like a text – as warnings (Omens) • the 'signs on earth `just as those in the sky give us signals. Sky and earth both produce portents though appearing separately, they are not separate (because) sky and earth are related'.[1] • The ‘Diviners Manual’‘As Above, so Below’[1] Oppenheim, A.Leo., ‘A Babylonian Diviner’s Manual’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 33, January-October 1974, p. 204.

17. Omens • The appearance of a bird whose head was a mirror in which the stars could be seen was a bad omen which was later linked to the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs.

18. Explanatory Models 1Divine intervention • Right: Quetzalcoatl (Venus) and Innana (Venus) • Yahweh • '"And on that day," says the Lord God, "I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight'. • Amos 8.9.

19. Explanatory Models 2:Time as Universal Order: events in earth correlate with those in the sky • ‘'Wherefore, as a consequence of this reasoning and design on the part of God, with a view to the generation of Time, the sun and moon and five other stars, which bear the appellation of "planets" [i.e., 'wanderers'], came into existence for the determining and preserving of the numbers of Time.' Timaeus 38C).

20. Time as universal order:Johannes Kepler and the Jupiter-Saturn cycle

21. Pattern, Order and Time • ‘Events follow definite trends, each according to its nature. Things are distinguished from one another in definite classes. In this way good fortune and misfortune come about. In the heavens phenomena take form; on earth shapes take form. In this way change and transformation become manifest’. • Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951, 3rd edition 1968), p. 280.

22. Explanatory Models 3Aristotle: causes and influences • Metaphysics 995b-996a and Physics 194b-195a. • Four causes: • Material. • Formal. • Efficient • Final • Influence • celestial motion • celestial light (lumen) • influentiae,

23. Explanatory Models 3.2Plato: causes • The physical cosmos, i.e., the revolutions of the Same and Other, the planets and stars, are 'auxiliary' (or 'secondary') causes which 'God employs as his ministers in perfecting, so far as possible, the Form of the Most Good'.

24. Claudius Ptolemy (2nd c CE) applies the causal model. Aristotle left, Ptolemy right

25. Explanatory models 4Physical Influences • Saturn is cold and frozen, Jupiter is warm • Mars very hot, • Venus is 'the cause of the birth of all things upon earth' and 'scatters a general dew' at its rising which stimulates the sexual organs. • The sun is hot • The moon is moist. • Pliny, Natural History, II.iv.12, vi.32-40, see also xvi,19.

26. Action 1 • Sir Karl Popper • Astrology is ‘historicist’ • Historicism: the paradox that belief in a predetermined future requires action to implement the future.

27. Action 2 • Claudius Ptolemy: • 'they [Egyptian astrologers] would never have devised certain means of averting or warding off…the universal and particular conditions that come or are present by reason of the ambient, if they had any idea that the future cannot be moved and changed'. • Ptolemy, Claudius, Tetrabiblos, trans. F.E. Robbins, Cambridge Mass., London: Harvard University Press, 1940, I.3, pp. 32-3. • Sapiens, a wise Man doth Co-operate with the Coelestial Operations, and doth assist Nature, as the Husbandman in the ploughing and preparing his Ground.

28. Action: Calendar Rituals • Kumbha Mela • Held on a 12 year cycle to mark the Jupiter cycle. • Attended by up to 60m people

29. Action: Apotropaic Rituals • 'Sun-god of Heaven, my Lord! That omen which the Moon-god gave - if he found fault with me, accept ye, Sun-god of Heaven and (all) ye gods, these substitutes that I have given and let me go free'. • From the Hittite 'Removal of the Threat Implied in an Evil Omen' in Pritchard, James B. (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 355.

30. Action: Magic • ‘Nature worked on man and, by magic, men could take action in return and alter their destiny. So they assiduously visited diviners, magi and astrologers in order to lift curses, know their future or read their horoscope’.[1] • [1] Lançon, Bertrtand, Rome in Late Antiquity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2000, p. 96.

31. Action: Counselling • Know yourself and open up your life! • Astrology and Counselling can help you to know yourself better and become who you were really meant to be - not someone else's idea of you! Find yourself through astrology or counselling! • With the help of Astrology, Counselling or even Astrological Counselling you can open up your life - and you'll have more real friends. When we are more real we draw more real people around us. • Gill Chesney-Green - BA Hons. • As heard on Radio Nottingham in2008, 2009 and 2010!! • http://www.astrologica.co.uk/

32. Conclusion 1 • Astrology exists in all cultures. • Complex technical systems have only developed in 3 cultures: • 1. Mexico • 2. China • 3. Near Easter/East Mediteranean/South Asia

33. Conclusion 2 • Astrology is primarily intended to manage the present: to maintain stability through harmonisation of earth with the wider cosmos. • Knowledge of the past and prediction of the future are designed to this end.

34. Conclusion: in the modern world, a simple distinction... • Astrology is primarily concerned with meaning • Astronomy is primarily concerned with measurement

35. Astrology: (in general) a human activity

36. Is Modern Western Astrology Concerned with the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena? • In its origins: yes. • It took the awe, wonder, fear evoked by the sky and sought to codify it. • Now? The sky is not required – due to technology contact with the sky is optional. • Most astrologers say that their attraction to astrology is based on the sense it gives them of place within the cosmos.