Invention of Astrology

 

The sky is the most mysterious part of our everyday experience. Familiarity may make the amazing events going on at ground level seem almost ordinary. Plants and animals grow and die, rain falls, rivers flow. We feel we understand that.

But the sky is beyond comprehension. Two great objects travel through it, one hot and constant, the other cold and changeable. In the daytime it is moody; there may be blazing sun, or racing clouds, or darkness followed by thunder and lightning. And yet on a clear night the sky is the very opposite - predictable, if you look hard enough, with recognizable groups of stars moving in a slow but reliable manner.                   

Man's interest in the sky is at the heart of three separate stories - astronomy, astrology and the calendar. Astronomy is the scientific study of sun, moon and stars. Astrology is a pseudo-science interpreting the supposed effect of the heavenly bodies on human existence. In early history the two are closely linked. The sky is the home of many of the gods, who influence life on earth. And the patterns in the sky must surely reflect that influence.

Early astrological systems were concerned with weather patterns, seasons and crops. Because early humans didn't understand the causes of things like eclipses or the retrograde movement of planets, they created stories, passed on for hundreds of generations, that tried to explain them in a context they understood. Shapes in the stars and the planets themselves became gods -- or at least symbols of gods. Every ancient culture had some form of science/religion that was concerned with patterns of movement in the stars. At this point, astronomy and astrology were one and the same. Ancient scientists observed and recorded the patterns they saw in the sky (astronomy); then, they extrapolated those observations to fit their cosmology and life experiences (astrology).

The Mayan, Aztec and Inca cultures of South America had complex astrologies based on a zodiac of 20, including symbols like the jaguar, the earthquake, the ape, rain and the dog (Snodgrass, pg. 13). These systems have not been passed on or incorporated into modern astrology because the civilizations themselves died out.

The Chinese had developed one of the most complex astrological systems by 1000 B.C., with some characters in written Chinese languages corresponding to their constellations. This system combined 24 divisions of the year with a 28-part lunar zodiac, as well as 12 branches that correspond to an animal (Campion, pg. 13). Someone born in a given year is thought to have certain characteristics -- for example, 2005 is the Year of the Rooster. In addition, each year has an element associated with it, further delineating someone's type as, say, a Fire Rooster or a Water Dragon.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Jesuit missionaries brought western astrology to China, where it was incorporated to some extent into the traditional Chinese system. Today's Chinese astrology is a simplified system which only takes into account the animal years.

Mesopotamian Origins

Mesopotamia, the "Land between the Two Rivers," is one of the so-called "cradles" of civilization, along with Egypt, China, and the Indus Valley. It also appears to be the oldest of these. The evidence indicates an urban civilization as early as 4000 B.C.E. The first people in the area were a people known as the Ubaidians. We know virtually nothing about these people except that at a fairly early period another people began moving into the area and intermarrying with them. These were the Sumerians who became dominant and whose language replaced whatever was the language of the Ubaidians. Also the Sumerians invented the oldest known form of writing, cuneiform, which is done by impressing wedge-shapes into soft clay.

After a period of time Semitic peoples began moving into the area as well. The first of these were the Akkadians centered around their city of Akkad. In about 2330 B.C.E. Sargon of Akkad conquered the Sumerians and created the first of several Semitic empires that would dominate not only Mesopotamia but also the Mediterranean coast and eventually even Egypt. The language of the Akkadians was the direct ancestor of the Assyrian and Babylonian languages, these being in fact dialects of Akkadian.

The Akkadian Empire fell in about 2218 B.C.E. After this various Semitic and other peoples struggled for control of the area. This constant struggle among various peoples in fact marks the major difference between the Mesopotamian civilization and that of Egypt. Egypt had many centuries of relative peace with occasional periods of disturbance, but nothing like the chaos of Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamian Astrology First Stages

In the beginning Mesopotamian astrology was much like that of other cultures, a simple examination of the heavens for omens that might affect the kingdom. Often these observations of omens would include weather phenomena intermixed with true astronomical ones. What made the Mesopotamians different is that they began at an early time to make systematic observations of phenomena with an eye to finding regular patterns in the heavens that might correlate with patterns in human events.

According to Van der Waerden (Science Awakening, Vol. II, Oxford Univ.Press) the earliest astronomical writings known in Mesopotamia are from the old Babylonian period, roughly the time of Hammurabi. It is not known whether the Sumerians were involved in astronomical studies or not, but it would seem plausible that they were. There are also some writings which refer to the Akkadian period and which may date from about 2300 B.C.E. Here is an example of one of these early writings.

What Happened Next

Whatever may have been the language of Egyptian astrology when it first began to come into being, by 1 C.E. it was Greek. This is not to say that there were no astrology texts written in Coptic, the last form of ancient Egyptian, but no clear reference to any has survived. All of the Egyptian texts that are referred to in the later literature seem to have been written in Greek. Possibly some were translations from Coptic.

The use of Greek had important consequences. Although the Persian empire was a truly cosmopolitan empire with a considerable level of equality among the races that made up the empire, no one language came to predominate. No doubt Persian was used for official purposes, but Babylonian and Egyptian also continued to be used in their own areas in preference to Persian. But when Alexander the Great conquered all of Persia and Egypt, and advanced all the way into northwest India, Greek became the dominant language not only for official purposes, but also for any purpose that involved communicating from one ethnic area to another. The original languages continued to be used for local purposes, such as Aramaic (which completely supplanted Babylonian) and Coptic. But a scholar or traveler could go anywhere from Greece in the west to India in the east and Egypt in the south and be understood. Any idea expressed in Greek could have a similar range of travel.

Meaning of a horoscope

The technical meaning of a horoscope keeps resemblance with that of the pack of medicine. If we got a package of medicine we find:

• Manufacturing date
• Expiry date
• Composition
• Batch number
• Contraindication
• Indication

A horoscope is also like a STAMP from the manufacturing company of NATURE. For the preparation of a horoscope we need astronomical data, such as these three types of information are required:

• Place of birth
• Date of birth
• Time of birth

This general system absorbed influences from the many cultures that populated the Mediterranean and Middle East thousands of years ago. The specific names for the modern western zodiac come from the Greeks. The word Zodiac itself comes from the Greek root word zoe, or life.

Science or Superstition? 

Some astrologers claim that they practice a true science with verifiable results. If the forces that are measured and studied by astrologers do exist, then repeated experiments ought to show that star and planet patterns really do affect the course of people's lives.

Another school of thought on astrology suggests that the forces involved in astrology exist beyond science, in a quasi-religious realm involving a person's soul; or perhaps the influences extend to an ethereal, other dimension, where our laws of science do not hold true. In this case, belief in the power of astrology is just that: belief. Just like belief in a god or gods, it can neither be proven nor disproven.

Perhaps the most important criticism of the scientific viability of astrology are the empirical studies which have found that astrological predictions are no better than random chance. Divorce rates do not correlate with astrological compatibility. Sun signs do not show a greater chance of following one career path over another. Subjects who read horoscopes are just as likely to feel that the horoscope applies to them when the terms of the reading are reversed (i.e., instead of saying, "You're an outgoing, lively person," it might say, "You tend to be quiet and protective of your privacy.").